Twisting in Japan’s political wind

“Sometimes it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.’’ — attributed to Abraham Lincoln.º

Following July’s Upper House election, which saw the ruling Democratic Party of Japan lose big to the opposition Liberal Democratic Party, members of the DPJ must have surely wished Prime Minister Naoto Kan had followed old Abe’s advice instead of advocating a consumption tax increase just before voters went to the polls.

Whatever possessed Kan, an astute political veteran who took over as Prime Minister in early June after his predecessor resigned for reasons discussed below, to call for raising the consumption tax, currently at 5 percent, to 10 percent at a time when his party was sliding in the polls and voters were already disillusioned with his party’s performance is a mystery that may never be solved.

Never mind that the LDP, which lost power in the August 2009 Lower House elections after over a half-century of nearly uninterrupted rule, had long advocated a similar increase. Never mind the idea is supported by most politicians across the political spectrum, especially at the local level, where an increase is seen as financial lifeline to prefectures drowning in debt. No, Kan’s call for a tax increase allowed the LDP to do an about-face and play the angry, folksy populist partydeter- mined to protect people from “Tokyo elites’’ who were out of touch with the economic realities of ordinary Japanese.

It also allowed Japan’s Tokyo-centric media, most of which supported the raise but, for reasons that will also be discussed below, conveniently ignored that fact, to join in the criticism and paint Kan and his party as political amateurs. The ensuing uproar led to a further drop in Kan’s popularity, and by late June had killed any chance the DPJ had of retaining a slim majority in the Upper House.

The July 11 results were, therefore, unsurprising. Of the 121 seats in the 242 member Upper House up for re-election, the DPJ won 44, down from 54 before the election, to bring their Upper House total to 106. The LDP, by contrast, won 84 seats, up from 71 before the election, to increase their total to 117. The DPJ’s coalition partner, the New People’s Party, lost three seats and have only three remaining. The Social Democratic Party, which left the coalition over a disagreement with the DPJ regarding relocating the US Marine Air Base of Futenma, in Okinawa, managed to win back only four of five seats.

Other parties opposed to the ruling coalition also won. Together with the LDP, they now control the Upper House with 133 seats to the ruling coalition’s total of 109 seats. Under the Japanese Constitution, the Lower House is the more powerful and, theoretically, the DPJ, which still has a commanding lead in the Lower House, can pass legislation rejected by the Upper House. Yet that’s politically risky. It might work if the DPJ enjoys high popularity ratings. But it could backfire if the party is in the doghouse with voters before the next Lower House election, tentatively scheduled for 2013 but now likely to take place much sooner.

For the moment, though, Japan’s Diet is a house divided between the DPJ and the LDP, and their potential allies and adversaries. Not surprisingly, the LDP and other opposition parties are demanding Kan dissolve the Diet and call another Lower House election, believing the DPJ victory last August to be less a message that voters wanted to fundamentally change Japan’s political system than a temporary rebuke to the long-established LDP, and that voters will once again support the LDP after it makes a few adjustments.

Be that as it may, it is now a very different DPJ than the one that swept the LDP out of power last year and made Yukio Hatoyama Prime Minister. He and his party were then welcomed as a breath of fresh air by many ordinary Japanese and a good number of those outside the country, and hopes rose that a new day had, finally, dawned for Japanese politics. What few understood, however, was the extent to which the DPJ and Hatoyama were loathed by large segments of the entrenched bureaucracy, powerful business lobbies, and members of Japan’s status-quo oriented media. For them, what Hatoyama and the DPJ were advocating was Big Change’s literal meaning not in English but in Japanese. The kanji for ‘big’’ can be pronounced ‘Tai’ and the one for change can be pronounced ‘Hen’. So, Big Change, in the context of how Hatoyama’s opponents saw him and his party, was quite literally ‘taihen’, which means trouble-some, bothersome, or a serious pain in the rear, depending on your mood.

This ‘Big Change’ antagonized three groups in three different areas. First, upon taking office in September 2009, Hatoyama announced, to the shock of manufacturing and utility companies and the Trade Ministry (all of which had long supported the LDP), that Japan would stick to a DPJ election promise to reduce CO2 emissions by 25 percent compared to 1990 levels by 2020. This was in-line with what scientists believed was needed to prevent irreversible global warming, and Hatoyama was hailed by environmentalists worldwide and the United Nations as a bold leader.

But in Japan, corporations,govern- ment officials, and others who opposed the cut began muttering dire warnings of economic ruin if it became law. Newspapers and TV stations acted as mouthpieces for such views, reporting uncritically their economic reasons against the target and spending less time on the environmental, and economic, arguments for it. Hatoyama was forced to modify his pledge after it became clear the oppositionview- point was dominating the media message, and said that Japan would only pursue the goal if other countries made meaningful cuts.

The second group the DPJ upset was Japan’s mainstream media. Since the end of the 19th century, access to official briefings by media not members of Japan’s press club system has been denied or greatly restricted. Outsiders included freelance reporters for weekly and monthly magazines, foreign correspondents, and reporters for media organizations that didn’t pass muster, for whatever reason, with the members of the Japan Newspapers’ Association, which runs the press clubs.

Just weeks after the Lower House election, rumors began circulating that briefings by the Prime Minister would soon be open to not only foreign hacks, Japanese freelance journalists and even — gasp!— bloggers. It would not be until the spring of this year before Hatoyama finally threw the door open, due largely to press club and bureaucratic opposition. When the first open press conference did occur, the discomfort on some mainstream reporters’ faces at being in the same room with those who weren’t press club members was clearly visible.

The role of the Japanese media in bringing down Hatoyama will be debated endlessly in the years to come. But there is general agreement that, because the media had for so long relied on the LDP and the bureaucracy friendly to it, there was uncertainty at the least and hostility at the most towards a DPJ-ledgovern- ment that the media wasn’t as familiar with. Of course, Hatoyama’s opening of PM press conferences to more competition at a time when advertising revenues and readership andviewer- ship rates were plunging didn’t win the DPJ any favors from the press club members, either.

Finally, there was the United States. In 2006, the US and Japan agreed to relocate, by 2014, the US Marine base of Futenma in central Okinawa to another part of the island. But local opposition and a reluctance on the part the LDP to override thatopposi- tion meant no progress had been made by the time Hatoyama came to power. During last year’s campaign, the DPJ had promised that it would “review’’ the agreement, and Hatoyama had verbally promised the Okinawans he would seek to relocate Futenma outside the prefecture. But most commentators dismissed that as mere rhetoric, believing once Hatoyama was in office, he’d not upset the apple cart.

To the shock of Washington and the defense establishments of both countries, it turned out that Hatoyama was serious about re-examining the Futenma agreement. Shock quickly turned to anger in Washington, and relations between the DPJ and the US soured when it was clear neither side really knew or trusted the other. Like the Japanese bureaucracy and media, few in the US had deep contacts within the DPJ, and their coalition partner the Social Democratic Party was particularly loathed by the small clique of pro-military alliance Japan hands who heavily influence Japan policy.

Between September 2009 and April 2010, the angry words between Washington and Tokyo over Futenma escalated. To be sure, the Hatoyama’s inept handling of the issue, with unsubstantiated leaks almost daily about another possible location for the base, greatly damaged hisrepu- tation as a leader who was in control. When US President Barack Obama snubbed him at a meeting in April, Hatoyama began to backtrack. Finally, at the end of May, a few days after the US and Japan agreed, yet again, to relocate Futenma to the northern part of Okinawa, Hatoyama submitted his resignation and Kan took over.

The coming months will test Kan’s ability to govern a nation outside observers are now wondering is governable, given that there have been eight prime ministers in just over 10 years. At present, the LDP, declared dead and buried last August, seems resurgent. But this hides deep divisions within the party that could split it further. There is no love lost between LDP politicians from rural areas, who sound more like the Social Democratic Party on public works projects, job protection, and care for the elderly, and those from urban areas, who favor cost cutting and the kind of deregulatory legislation that Washington loves, but belies the fact that, outside a couple of prosperous cities like Tokyo and Osaka, most LDP voters don’t buy the whole “free markets are good for our economy’’ mantra anymore to the same extent they did a few years ago.

Yet the DPJ is hardly more unified, and the Upper House loss could cause a few anti-Kan DPJ members to bolt. Further political realignment between factions, and even parties, will likely take place over the coming months, depending on how Kan handleshim- self. He will have to speak carefully on the consumption tax, Futenma, and a host of other issues, and twist around the politics of a twisted Diet, lest voters judge him not a fool but dangerously incompetent, and lest his opponents in, and out, of the DPJ conclude that all doubt has been removed from the argument about whether or not they can push him out the door.

Text: HL Stone Images: KS