DPJ victory in Japan’s election key moment, but unlikely to bring great policy change
In 1955, Japan had been a sovereign state for three years and a democracy for nine. The nation had not yet escaped the wake of the Second World War, and its people had only just begun to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives.
That year, Japan’s two largest conservative parties, the Liberals, led by Yoshida Shigeru, and the Democrats, headed by Hatoyama Ichirō, joined to create the Liberal Democratic Party, or LDP, a political juggernaut that proceeded to dominate Japanese politics for the next fifty-four years. During the LDP’s half-century, Japan achieved the most triumphant economic recovery in human history, rising from the ashes to claim its position as the world’s second-largest economy.
That half-century ended last week. On August 30th, the LDP suffered its second electoral defeat in history, and most disastrous. The opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) headed by the grandson of Hatoyama Ichirō, Hatoyama Yukio, scored a landslide 308 of 480 seats in Japan’s more powerful lower house of parliament. The moment was an important watershed in the story of Japan’s democracy, but will not likely translate into large, concrete changes in the Japanese political system.
Five decades of effective single-party rule have gradually chipped away at the LDP brand. Whereas years ago a voter might have supported the party for its sound economic track record, that same voter today would likely be put off by the organization’s gradual descent into cronyism, corruption, and ineptitude. The LDP has historically maintained a strong “iron triangle” with bureaucracy and big business, a relationship that, in the past, was vital to the implementation of many successful growth policies. Yet, the cataclysmic implosion of Japan’s “bubble” economy smashed the party’s economic credentials, and recently the “triangle” has become the source of a growing number of scandals.
The party has proven unable to produce qualified leadership, and has fallen into a pattern of electing the incompetent sons of famous postwar politicians to the premiership. Japan has cycled through three such “succession” PMs in the last three years. Shinzo Abe, whose father and grandfather had both been prominent politicians, resigned after his administration lost 50,000 pension records and a cabinet member to suicide. Fukuda Yasuo, whose father held the premiership from 1976 to 1978, was dumped for conspiring to cover-up contaminated dumpling imports from China. And now Aso Tarō, the soon-to-be former LDP President and ex-prime minister, whose grandfather was Yoshida Shigeru of the old Liberal Party, father a close associate of Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei, and father-in-law Prime Minister Suzuki Zenko, has been ousted for a poorly administered cash-handout policy, aura of aloof wealth and embarrassing inability to read complicated Japanese characters.
On August 30th voters decided they had had enough. The Japanese electorate spoke decisively in favor of regime change, and granted the opposition DPJ a significant majority in the lower house. The party now holds majority sway in both houses of parliament, enabling it to pass legislation with little obstruction.
The result is a slap against the Liberal Democrats, but not a sign of confidence in their rivals. Practically speaking, the DPJ has brought very little new to the table, and rather than promoting substantive debate in parliament, the party has appeared more interested in obstructing the LDP. Many Japanese fear that the DPJ lacks the tact and maturity to lead the nation, but having little in the way of viable options, have chosen to put aside this fear and trust them with the reins of government.
Exit poll data indicates that voters sought a change in leadership over a change in direction. After all, the DPJ is an LDP offshoot, and both parties are nearly identical in terms of worldview and political ideology. Those interviewed did not express disapproval of the general policy orientation of their government, but rather sincere distrust of the LDP’s ability to rule effectively. They hoped their votes would serve as reminders to the Liberal Democrats that their position is not assured, and that they must clean up their act if they hope to return to power again.
This is a moment of democratic revival in Japan. It is a reminder to Japanese voters that they are the masters of their own futures. Many who have never voted against the LDP in their lives are learning the problems that can arise when a political party is empowered for decades without being kept properly accountable. Even if the LDP were re-elected in the next election, they would be a better party for having lost, and the Japanese voter a better citizen for having voted them out. Due to the parties’ similarities, in practical terms the election of the DPJ will amount to little more than a change of face, but in the long run it could prove an important step to a more responsive Japanese democracy.