Asia Times: ANALYSIS: Japan's ruling party at a crossroads



	August 18, 1999	atimes.com

Japan

ANALYSIS: Japan's ruling party at a crossroads

The extended session of the Japanese parliament (it was originally scheduled to finish in mid-June) ended last Friday; so - sort of - did an LDP/Liberal Party coalition crisis; and also on Friday, the campaign for the ruling party's presidency kicked off with former LDP secretary-general Koichi Kato and former LDP policy research council head Taku Yamasaki declaring their intention to challenge current party leader and Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi for the job. (The election is to be held on September 21.) For a change of pace, time to review where Japanese politics (rather than the endlessly discussed economy) stands at this point.

The 207th Diet session will go down in history as having passed more important laws and spent more money than any other since the Meiji Restoration. Desparate times call for desparate measures.

The Liberal Democrats' presidential poll will produce no surprise and not much for the press to write about by way of debate: the Eto-Kamei faction, the Komoto faction, the Kono group and the faction led by LDP Secretary General Yoshiro Mori have already expressed their support for Prime Minister Obuchi and Obuchi himself leads the largest LDP faction. Only Kato's faction (Miyazawa) will vote for Kato and only Yamasaki's 30-member group and its followers will vote for Yamasaki. Kato and Yamasaki are positioning themselves for the Obuchi succession and will say little that's controversial - and that's about all there is to this exercise (or show) of party-internal democracy.

The coalition question is a more serious matter with much at stake for all concerned - the LDP, LP, and New Komeito Party, but especially for the LDP's and LP leader Ichiro Ozawa's future. On Friday, Obuchi and Ozawa settled their fight over reduction of the proportional representation seats in parliament from 200 to 150 by postponing a decision, but Obuchi promising that a law to that effect would be passed before the next general election. Ozawa accepted and stayed in the coalition saying, ''It's not a 100% perfect agreement. But in today's economic climate, I think people will understand late payments.'' What's not at all clear is what the New Komeito Party (NKP) makes of this late payment deal and whether it'll eventually go along with some form of it.

But in any case, there is not much reason to take this issue too serious as such. Yes, the LDP with lots of organization and power constituency by constituency can more easily maintain its majority if proportional representation seats are reduced; so it's logical for it to be calling for that. And yes, for New Komeito which has lots of loyal voters all over the place (Buddhist lay sect Soka Gakkai members), but would find it difficult to come out ahead in any one constituency, keeping the 200 proportional representation seats is important to its strength in parliament. But for Ozawa, leading a smaller party, calling for reduction on the face of it makes no sense. It would almost certainly hurt the LP. So, why is he playing this game?

In a recent interview, Eto-Kamei faction leader Shizuka Kamei, a close Ozawa ally who helped bring about the LDP/LP coalition, said: ''Ozawa is not a kid but an adult and a great politician, so he does not think that it [reduction of proportional representation seats] can really happen. What Ozawa wants to question is, 'how can we change Japan by forming an LDP-LP-NKP coalition?' In that sense, symbolically, he is proposing the 'reduction of the number of seats' . . . The original intention [of the LDP/LP coalition] of creating a dynamic current has been diminished [with the inclusion of the NKP].''

That - vigorous reform of the Japanese body politic - is the real issue Ozawa was and is trying to force. Ozawa and in their own way Kamei and his faction member Kajiyama (who ran against Obuchi last summer) ARE committed reformers. The Obuchi faction (Takeshita) on the other hand is all about power and chief cabinet secretary Nonaka is the power broker who brought in the NKP for the sake of convenient parliamentary majorities and also as a counter to the Kamei/Kajiyama/Ozawa current as well as Kato.

''If the LP, one corner of the conservatives, removes itself from the coalition, the legitimacy of the national unity structure will be gone. Then it will become simply the 'LDP-NKP shacking-up'. Then, we will completely lose any support,'' says Kamei [in the same interview as above].

Ozawa (the hawk) and Kato (the dove) have their differences on security issues. That's why the press often plays them as opposite poles. But on economic and broader political and administrative reform issues they are almost entirely on the same line and oppose the type of hand-outs and public spending ''ueber alles'' attitude of the Obuchi/Takeshita/construction industry types and of the petit bourgeois NKP. They want in-depth reform and are determined to make it happen.

A couple of months ago, Kato was questioned on that by Soichiro Tahara. Here are some excerpts from the interview carried by Chuo Koron and translated by Japan Echo.

TAHARA: Are you saying we need a Thatcher rather than a Blair?

KATO: Yes. Japan is in effect the world's most successful socialistic planned economy. Historically, too, the tombs of Japanese emperors and feudal lords are much more modest than the tombs of ancient Chinese or Egyptian rulers. From the Nara period (710-94) onward Japan had an egalitarian society, and it also aimed at building an egalitarian nation after the Meiji Restoration of 1868. After World War II the LDP assimilated policies of the rival Japan Socialist Party a few years down the line in order to stay in power; so Japan took on quite a social democratic coloring. I think that's why the nation lost its vitality . . . So I think we absolutely must infuse more vitality into the private sector.

TAHARA: Ozawa strongly advocates free competition and self-responsibility. We call him and his ilk neoconservatives, while we call you and your supporters liberals. We've thought of you as advocating not a ruthless survival of the fittest but a society that helps the underdog--in other words, as being closer to Blair than to Thatcher. Are we wrong?

KATO: However people may label me, I believe Japan is in peril unless we return to a society that has a vigorous private sector and manages the economy on the basis of self-responsibility.

TAHARA: That's pretty close to Ozawa's thinking.

KATO: Yes, we have the same orientation in this area.

So, there you have it. Could Ozawa and Kato overcome or put aside their security policy differences, they would make a capable reform team. There are rumors that the reason why Ozawa didn't blow up the LDP/LP coalition now is because he and the LP ultimately want to rejoin the LDP. Let's see. In the meantime, it can only be hoped that the Obuchi types and their new sectarian Buddhist allies don't run the cart further into the mud to a point where pulling it back out will become a task not of some years, but of a generation.

back to the top

©1999 Asia Times Online Co., Ltd.