| |
The hero of God's
Mountain
By Richard Hanson
SHINANOMACHI, Nagano Prefecture - In late
August, during his soon-to-be-successful campaign for
re-election as governor of the Japanese prefecture of
Nagano, the flamboyant 46-year-old ex-governor Yasuo
Tanaka arrived in Shinanomachi. It was a hot day. Tanaka
was out to recapture the job that the prefectural
legislature had kicked him out of in an almost
unheard-of vote of no confidence in July.
The
hyperactive Tanaka was a well-known writer and "talent"
before turning maverick reform politician in the 2000
governor race in his home prefecture. His victory at
that time ended a decades-old hammerlock on Nagano
politics by only three bureaucratic governors, who
favored development in the form of public works
constructions (dams and such) funded by the central
government. It was a blatant, in-your-face decision by
Tanaka to shut down new dam construction that led to his
booting out of office.
Tanaka's unbureaucratic
ways and somewhat flamboyant bachelor lifestyle
titillated the electorate, mostly the female vote, and
irked the established conservative power brokers who
favored pouring concrete. They lost the election this
past Sunday.
More to the point, the good people
of Nagano in stunning numbers (65 percent of the vote,
with more than 70 percent turning out to vote) told them
to get a new life. Sifting through the tea leaves (which
are grown abundantly in Nagano) was easy.
Most
of the voters of conservative Nagano had already gotten
a new life. What was striking in the most recent
election was not new. Yes, the majority of voters in
Nagano had voted to stop senseless public works and
construction that left them further in debt as a
prefecture, and, as asserted in the campaign, ended up
profiting companies outside of Nagano. Tanaka's ban on
dams was almost symbolic. Nagano has built more dams per
capita than just about any place in Japan. Many don't
even work properly.
The political reality is
that control over future spending is shifting to local
reform-minded groups. This is not exactly a national
wave, yet, but it is one that has sent a strong message
to mainline politicians in Tokyo. This includes the
reform-minded Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. His
ruling Liberal Democratic Party stayed away from any
direct involvement, as did all other parties except the
Japan Communist Party, which supported Tanaka and picked
up a separate victory on election day.
This
should not have surprised many people, but it did.
Nagano is, after all, a conservative-thinking place.
Japan as a whole is in fact a conservative place,
judging by its voters' penchant for avoiding radical
political movements and fads.
The woman who runs
the kiosk at Shinanomachi's sleepy train station
(Kurohime Station, named after the popular skiing
mountain that looms over the town) was skeptical at
first. "I thought Governor Tanaka was just a popular
fad," she said. "The result proved that wrong." It was
probably the second time she voted for him, but she
would not say.
There are plenty reasons for an
electorate to shift political gears. Nagano has never
considered itself a bellwether sort of place. What is
striking about the prefecture is that it has been
remarkably stable as far as demographics and social
structure.
Nagano is ranked in the mid-teens
(among 47 prefectures) in population, income and gross
prefectural product. After spending sprees in building
projects in recent years, namely hosting the 1998 Winter
Olympics, Nagano has about the highest level of
prefectural debt.
Most of its population is
classified as "tertiary", a category that includes
journalists. For the past three decades, statistics
shows little shift in employment categories. The service
industry, along with wholesale and retailing is top,
manufacturing second and construction third. (The
latter, however, is much more important in actual money
terms, though how much benefits the local economy is
debatable.) Nagano has more large mountains (over 3,000
meters), waterfalls, lakes, hot springs and libraries
than most prefectures.
Historically, what is now
known as Nagano was commercially and politically
prominent. Major roads leading to the capital and other
commercial encouraged its industries, silk in
particular, along with other high-tech activities. There
was also a strong military presence.
If Tokyo
had fallen in World War II, a backup government could
have moved to the protected mountains of Nagano. Pre-war
local governors were appointees of the central
government. That unpleasant legacy helps explain why
local post-war assemblies can oust sitting governors
with relative ease (though Tanaka's case was only the
second so far since the war).
All told, Nagano
does not seem the sort of place to send a wake-up call.
But it did. Does Shinanomachi provide any insights? Yes
and no.
Seemingly the township is still the
agricultural-rich, old wayfaring town at the far
northern edge of the landlocked and snow-rich prefecture
of Nagano in central Japan. There are ripening paddies
of rice and flowering fields of buckwheat. In truth, the
climate and growing season are not good. Summer is
short. Just 10 or 15 kilometers away, cash crops such as
fruits flourish. The sudden rise of snow skiing's
popularity in the 1960s was a godsend. The mountains
became assets, though in recent recession times
overvalued ones.
There are other minor
attractions. A grand modern structure will open soon to
honor the town's favorite son, Issa, one of Japan's most
famous haiku poets. Issa draws a healthy flow of
tourists, rivaling only a museum to the discovery of the
bones of a mammoth in the shallows of a deep mountain
lake, Nojiri-ko. These large Naumann elephants were
hunted some 30,000 years ago around the lake - before
developers and public-works projects.
Visitors
generally stop briefly to slurp local buckwheat noodles
while admiring the fertile, mountain-ringed plain of
which the poet Issa often wrote.
More prosaic,
though, is Shinanomachi's ultra-modern sewage-treatment
plant, which may be the only such facility in the world
designed to look like a Christian church. This is one of
the most prominent, and prized, examples of government
spending on public works that do serve the community.
The design is a nod to a summer community founded in the
1920s by foreign missionaries. In that simpler time,
they carved out what is now a large number of basic
cabins on the side of a steep slope leading to the lake.
They called it God's Mountain. This amused the
local woodsmen who sold the poor land to the foreigners.
They had eked a meager living from the mountain by
harvesting charcoal.
In the 1980s, the
missionaries and secular fellow travelers joined local
forces to battle against senseless public construction
and development that threatened the once-pristine lake
with the flow of sewage. Developments during the boom
times of the 1980s bubble for recreation purposes have
mostly lost their luster.
The world of
encroaching development, directed from faraway places in
plans hatched decades ago, has been a mixed blessing.
But the fact that it arrived in full force with the
completion of a highway to link Tokyo and its
surrounding boroughs to the Japan Sea via Nagano has
been revolutionary.
A four-lane toll-charging
superhighway was finally completed two years ago. What
could have been a 10-hour drive from Tokyo to
Shinanomachi was reduced to about four hours, much of it
tunneled through mountains and over bridges. Those who
use it pay a hefty fee in tolls (7,000 yen - US$59 - one
way).
Before that road link was complete, and in
time for Nagano's role as host of the 1998 Winter
Olympics, the super-fast train Shinkansen (which means
New Trunk Line) was built from Tokyo as far as Nagano
City, a 40-minute local train ride to Shinanomachi. This
has produced another a boom and ease of communication.
Two decades ago a trip could have taken nearly half a
day. Before the Shinkansen, the ride was about four
hours. Now the fastest ride is only two hours.
Governor Tanaka can zip from Nagano City to his
Tokyo play spots in only one hour and 19 minutes on the
one daily non-stop train.
On election day on
Sunday, it was possible to witness first-hand just what
sort of revolution has been brewing in the mountains,
valleys and fruitful plains of Nagano.
A voter
from Shinanomachi typically would think little of
contemplating a drive down to the outskirts of the
capital city (a mere 20 minutes, versus a day's walk on
the ancient Nakasendo) to shop in a mall as well stocked
as anything in the big cities such as Tokyo. No traffic
jams on the newly built secondary roads that used to be
badly marked country lanes not too long ago.
The
years of constant construction did produce much waste
and useless dams. The political reality is that they
have been built. Why, the conservative voters asked,
build any more?
That seems to be the essence of
Governor Tanaka's reform message. And he has been at
least close to God's Mountain.
(©2002 Asia Times
Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
