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Election leaves young Japanese
cold
By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO - "I urge more people to vote this time.
This election is a critical turning point for the
nation," Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi
pleaded on television last week. But when the country
goes to the polls on Sunday, its young people are
expected to stay away in droves.
"Politicians
are boring and untrustworthy, so what's the point in
voting?" asked Seiko Tayama, 31, a part-time English
interpreter. In her view, her Sunday will be better
spent at home making plans to further her education than
in a polling booth.
Jun Ando won't be there
either. Next year, the university graduate plans to open
a shop selling Asian arts goods, and he will be
traveling to look for and buy material for his venture.
"Voting is a waste of time," said Ando, who
still lives with his parents at the age of 29. "I am
sick of politicians who never change anything in Japan
for the better."
Surveys show that while voting
turnout rates range between 60 and 70 percent for
Japanese over 70, it is barely over 50 percent for those
in their 30s and below. The contrast has led analysts to
speak of a "serious" political vacuum in Japan.
In the face of this vacuum, Sunday's voting will
decide the fates of 1,159 candidates competing for 480
seats in Japan's Lower House, the House of
Representatives.
As in past elections, the
campaign pledges this time have been grand and sweeping,
but surveys indicate that public enthusiasm in the
voting process has hardly been boosted. Illustrating the
apathy, Japan's largest daily newspaper, the Yomiuri
Shimbun, last week conducted an opinion poll whose
results showed that 40 percent of the respondents had
not yet decided which party to support.
Professor Rei Shiratori, a political expert at
Tokai University, explained: "Koizumi was a big draw in
the 2000 election with people charmed by his
outspokenness and the promise to usher in important
changes. But since he has not achieved much during his
tenure, there is less interest now, especially among the
young."
Shiratori said a greater number of youth
are turning their backs on politicians in the belief
they can do without them. "This is in stark contrast to
Japan's war-experienced older generation who continue to
depend on the government to draw up their future," he
said. "Young people are more individualistic."
Yet the prognosis for the ruling coalition, led
by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), remains bright.
It will almost certainly be returned to power in
Sunday's general elections, according to opinion polls,
but the major opposition party, the Democratic Party of
Japan (DPJ), is also likely to increase its number of
parliamentary seats.
The DPJ is wooing voters
with such pledges as more funds for welfare, reforms
that make the protection of jobs a priority and a policy
of providing only humanitarian assistance in Iraq.
Indeed, party president Naoto Kan's campaign slogan is
to make Japan a "safer and happier place" for the
people.
In contrast, Koizumi is promoting an LDP
platform that promises a turnaround of the lengthy
economic recession through drastic structural reforms, a
bigger role for privatization and changes in the
country's pacifist constitution to allow the deployment
of Japanese troops internationally.
Despite the
different platforms, undecided and apathetic Japanese
voters - many of them young - remain a significant
section of the electorate. Hence Kan's exhortations such
as "This election is your last chance for change."
Parties challenging the ruling LDP coalition are
campaigning on their own manifestos that bitterly
criticize LDP politics which, they claim, promote
businesses over the needs of people. Yet a series of
polls in Japanese newspapers are indicating a scenario
in which both big parties do well at the expense of the
smaller challengers.
Koichi Ishiyama, an
international-relations expert and media commentator,
blames the absence of "a sense of crisis among Japanese
youth" for the low confidence they have in politics.
"This has brought about an LDP-led government for too
long," he said.
He believes that the affluence
of Japan's young, financially supported by their parents
and more interested in brand-name goods than fighting
for political change, has led to this apathy. Also
contributing is Japan's constitution, which he says "has
produced a generation of peaceniks who have never been
faced with making difficult decisions".
Equally,
Ishiyama accords blame to the country's postwar
education system, one he says deliberately resisted
promoting a deeper national debate on Japan's aggressive
invasions in Asia before and during World War II.
The focus has instead been "overwhelmingly on
economic success", he pointed out. "The result will be
an election with no surprises, as before. We are stuck."
(Inter Press Service)
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