The DPJ’s crushing of the LDP in the House of Representatives election and takeover of the government last year completed the task started by the LDP’s upper house defeat. However with this victory and the change in government, the main remaining purpose of Sunday’s House of Councillors election–the scourging of the LDP–also disappeared. The DPJ and its allies were in control of both Houses of the Diet, at the expressed wish of the voters. There was no one left to punish.
As soon as last year’s poll was over, a bewildering process began to find a new intellectual purpose for the 2010 upper house election (senators are elected to fixed terms of six years, with half the house coming up for election every three years).
In the first rush of excitement after the fall of the LDP, this year’s poll loomed in the imagination as the LDP’s Armageddon. The 2009 elections had merely stripped the LDP of its power; the 2010 elections were going to drive the LDP to extinction, as a vastly more popular DPJ simply wiped the LDP off the electoral map.
In anticipation of this, two processes were set into motion. Independents in the House of Councillors, who had lived in the comfortable middle ground between the LDP and the DPJ, applied to join the DPJ, further increasing its control. Second, members of the LDP in both houses, including the party’s most prominent and telegenic members, began to fight open battles for leadership of the LDP. Frustrated and convinced the LDP was headed for oblivion, luminaries like Kaoru Yosano and Yoichi Masuzoe bolted from the LDP to start their own parties.
But just as quickly as the annihilation of the LDP became the dominant narrative of the 2010 elections, the political finance scandals and diffident leadership of the DPJ’s ruling duo–Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and DPJ Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa–began creating a counter-narrative. As revelations of shady accounting and arrests of the duo’s associates began to dominate political news, the story of this year’s election became less one of a certain LDP defeat as a race between the prosecutors chasing after Hatoyama and Ozawa. It also became about the ability of Ozawa, the great political operator of the last 20 years, to cobble together a coalition of interests–the post office and its employees, the trucking industry, farmers, the Japan Medical Association–that looked exactly like the coalitions the LDP had used to cling to power. The popularity of both the Cabinet and the DPJ, meanwhile, declined significantly.
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Ralph Sato
I agree with Gabriel’s view of the situation in Japanese politics. The LDP’s no confidence vote (which failed) on PM Kan due to his “mishandling” of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster is an example of the meaningless political gamesmanship that has gripped politics in Japan for several decades. The public discerns that this is one cause of the malaise that haunts politics in Japan, when they reacted negatively to the LDP no confidence vote. Broad policy changes may be necessary in some areas like energy policy but overall it would be more desirable to grind through the current political process than to risk upheaval.
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Gabriel
Certainly this election is not meaningless, it will be an indication of just how strong the need for change really was for the Japanese public when they voted in the DPJ this time, unlike the short lived one year term in 1993/94.
The 1993/94 electoral reforms aimed to abolish among other things corruption such as pork barrelling and personalised politics the likes of which had contributed to the almost uninterupted rule of the LDP. It is unfortunate and perhaps a little ironic that the drivers of this ‘long-run’ reform agenda, particularly Ozawa, have now exited for the very evils the reformists were against.
The alternative as it was proposed, among other things, should be elections based on policy, which now are arguably possible with what appears to be the beginnings of a functioning two party system (whereas previously, in the 1993 election, the DPJ was largely successful due to alliances with other smaller parties).
It should also be noted that the undecided or perhaps ambivalent voter is certainly not new to Japan. The dilemma appears to be how to best reach these ‘floating voters’, not, as the article suggests, to create a new national agenda or set of national policy platforms. We should give the Japanese voters more credit, they have elected for change and reform, these things take time.
The other element that contributed to the reign of the LDP was their style of campaigning, and is another reason why this election along with those to come will be important to see whether a less corrupt and fairer election campaign may now evolve. One of the reforms mentioned in this article was the restriction of campaigning to three weeks. This is necessary given the stranglehold the LDP had over the election campaign through its overrepresentation in rural areas, strong second/third/fourth generation local support groups (koenkai), and their ability to provide localised, personalised rewards to these voters. Three weeks may be a prudent amount of time to capture the interest of the undecided cohort, rather than too little.
The results of this election then from the perspective of a reform agenda set in motion almost 20 years ago will be very significant indeed.
Dr. Mahendra Prakash
Democracy has always provided space for people of a particular country to get associated with through voting (decision power). In Japan, if people are not interested much in any election, that is very dangerous for the democratic pattern adopted by the politicians. Politicians should make contact with voters and appeal comprehensively for their support in the elections. The interest generated by the politicians and their parties would certainly emphasize interest among the people to take part in the elections and, further, this act will be helpful for democratization process in Japan. Japan is an advance country; the unwillingness by the masses for the ‘election’ will reflect the non-commitment of political leadership. This must be corrected for the political future of the Japan.
Ryosuke KAMI
Meaningless election is a taboo word. If an election is conducted sans violence, fraud, or “miscount” as in Japan, however the result may seem pointless, democratic election is never meaningless. Once an election should be conceived as such, a path to ugly despotism, be it of the extreme rightist streak or of the extreme leftist variety, will be gaping ahead. Germany saw it. Japan saw it. Election, evidently, never comes with complete satisfaction to any voter. It is always a compromise. Japan may lack quality leaders, Japanese voters, I trust, still can discern the difference between a political party whose end goal is just winning an election and never beyond, or one whose perceived mission is administering the affairs of state.
Dr Michael Vaughan
There is certainly a great deal of voter disillusionment with the political process in Japan. Many voters see no connection between the politicians they elect and the effect (beneficial or otherwise) they have on their lives. Prime Minister Kan’s greatest tactical (and electorally costly) error was to change policy mid-stream over the hated consumption tax. It should be remembered that this issue brought down the Hashimoto Government in 1997; and it could badly erode the lack-lustre 40% support polls currently give to the now-struggling DPJ. This Election does have meaning – but with one in three voters (or 35 million people) not knowing or not caring for whom they will cast their ballot – Japan’s leaders must fashion a new set of goals and values for the nation to follow.