The Economist spoke for most of the serious foreign press in welcoming the beginning of the election campaign. In an article entitled “Japan sees the light”, its anonymous journalist sounded a note of genuine excitement:
A revolution may indeed be taking place in Japan. First, the Liberal Democratic Party’s dominion is probably over. Second, and more important, the politics of Japan is changing because the people of Japan are changing ... the man in the noodle bar thinks he has subordinated his own interests to those of company and government for long enough.
Or, in the words of the Peter Finch character in the film Network: “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more.”
The article did not actually appear in the run-up to last Sunday’s election, in which the Democratic Party of Japan swept the LDP from power, but in 1993. It describes the split in the LDP that led to the formation of the short-lived administration of Morihiro Hosokawa, the first time since 1955 that the LDP was out of power.
The consensus view at the time, which I fully shared, was that the LDP had reached the end of the road and would, like the Italian Christian Democrats — another right-wing, pro-American, business friendly, party of perpetual government with alleged links to organised crime — quietly fade away. Japan, its days of dramatic postwar growth becoming a slightly faded memory, clearly needed a change and seemed about to get one.
We were all wrong. Although the LDP was a construct of the Cold War, it survived the collapse of communism. The British Army of the Rhine, another historical relic that outlived the ending of the era that gave it birth, at least had the decency to change its name but for the LDP it still seemed to be business as usual. Within a year the Hosokawa Government had crumbled, and the LDP was back. Japan, deprived of the change it deserved, slipped further in torpor and stagnation.
Nonetheless, the LDP’s dominion was indeed coming to an end but like, Charles II, it has been an unconscionable time a-dying. The party lost its majority in the (less powerful) upper house in the 1980s and has ruled in coalitions since regaining power in 1994 with prime ministers coming and going in dizzying succession.
The only incumbent to serve for any length of time was Junichiro Koizumi (2001-06), the only LDP leader in living memory to win the approval of the foreign press. This was because: (a) he seemed to share the media’s disdain for his own party and (b) because he was in favour of “reform”. The exact nature of this “reform” was never specified but it seemed to involve the privatisation of the Post Office, a policy that had long obsessed Mr Koizumi and in which no one else had ever shown any interest.
At the time Mr Koizumi seemed to be building a bright new future for the party that he sometimes claimed he wished to destroy, but in retrospect his occupation of the crease seems less of a match-deciding innings than a low-order cameo that entertained the crowd and produced some bravura strokeplay but had no real effect on the match. Once Mr Koizumi was out the opposition DPJ wasted little time in wrapping up the tail of lacklustre LDP politicians. The DPJ took control of the upper house in 2007, making any legislation difficult for the Government and the last three prime ministers have each only lasted a year.
Will the defenestration of the LDP lead to real change? The leaders of the DPJ are hardly wild-eyed revolutionaries. The leader, Yukio Hatoyama, is the grandson of the first LDP Prime Minister and seems keen to continue in his father’s tradition. His predecessor as DPJ leader — and still the power behind the throne — is Ichiro Ozawa, who occupied a similar role in the 1993-94 Hosokawa administration and was, before that, an LDP powerbroker.
The DPJ is frequently criticised for the diverse political histories of its members and the consequent fuzziness and incoherence of its policies. Certainly the DPJ has been a little evasive about how its spending programme can be financed by a country as fiscally challenged as Japan and is unrealistic about the scope for reducing government waste.
But there will be shifts and they will largely be the ones identified in 1993. Power will shift from bureaucrats to politicians (a big plank of the DPJ platform), from the countryside to the cities (even if the DPJ has latterly stolen some of its rival’s clothes by appealing to agricultural interests), from corporates to consumers (the man in the noodle bar). The DPJ has identified the Japanese dependence on overseas demand as a source of weakness and is seeking to reduce it by boosting domestic consumption. In foreign affairs there will be a (slight) move away from the US embrace and a snuggling up to the rest of Asia.
These are radical changes that strike at the heart of LDP policy and politics. A close relationship between the Government, the bureaucracy and the corporate sector, the so-called “iron triangle”, has characterised postwar Japan. Under the DPJ it is unlikely to be reduced to a single point but it may become a little more malleable. Very tight links with the US have been the lodestar of Japanese foreign policy since the 1960 Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security. Will the DJP prove radical deviating from Japan’s traditional US-friendly foreign? Probably not. Will everything change overnight? One doubts it. Vested interests will, as elsewhere, fight to hold on to the privileges vested in them.
But the DPJ will, if a little erratically, be swimming with the current of history. Japan has been ripe for change for many years. The virtues and mindset that served Japan in the immediate postwar years — regimentation, thrift, dedication to the company — no longer seem appropriate and haven’t for some time. The LDP, aided by opposition incompetence, voter timidity and the flashiness of Mr Koizumi, was able to swim against the current — but the effort has exhausted the party and the country it led.
Jonathan Allum, Japan strategist of KBC Financial Products.