Aftermath of the Japanese 2009 General Election

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama

This week, Yukio Hatoyama became Japan’s Prime Minister. The government has changed hands, as was widely predicted, in a landslide. The Democratic Party, Minshuto, received 308 votes to the Liberal Democratic Party’s, Jiminto’s, 119. On the day of the election, I wrote that the election was to be a landmark For democracy in Japan, and sure enough with Jiminto out of power, the election was historic. However, the reasons for Jiminto’s catastrophic defeat demonstrate mundane causes.

Working in a job that allows me to probe other people’s lives for the sake of their studies, I have been able to gauge how and why my students votes. That insight gave me only one solid reason for Jiminto’s defeat: dissatisfaction.

Many of my students voted Minshuto, a few voted Jiminto, but a noticeable number voted for the Communist Party, Kyosanto, or the independent Minnanoto, ‘Your Party’. These are representatives of the urban middle classes, and no one was ‘happy’ with Minshuto’s victory. Only a handful would admit to being ‘satisfied’.

Many voted not for a party, but instead simply voted against Jiminto. After governments derailed by scandals, it is no surprise that many were dissatisfied with their leadership, and for many people punishing this long-ruling party was a top priority. Most students complained that Minshuto did not offer a viable alternative, hence their rather pessimistic unease over the results: they lacked concrete details over the changes they seek, and seemed to be offering unbalanced accounts of how they would supply all the cash handouts they have planned. Indeed, even with the recent important announcement regarding curbing climate change, Hatoyama’s nascent cabinet have few concrete details. Theirs was a hollow victory, but Jiminto’s defeat was total.

As a gauge of how the people voted, it is interesting to look at how some of Jiminto’s recent cabinet ministers fared, particularly those embroiled in scandals. On election night, a few names stood out for me.

The Gaffe-Makers Fumio Kyuma Hakuo Yanagisawa Bunmei Ibuki Shoichi Nakagawa	The Potential Leaders Kaoru Yosano Yuriko Koike Seiko Noda
Komeito’s Leadership Postscript: Jiminto’s Winners

The Gaffe-Makers

Since Jun’ichiro Koizumi‘s exit from the Kantei, Japanese politics has become, more so than ever, a catalogue of people who should think before they speak. Insulting their constituents, whole swathes of the population, or the international community, they stand out for seeming amateurish and incompetent.

Jiminto Candidate		Minshuto Candidate
Name	Number of Votes	Number of Votes	Name
Fumio Kyuma	106,206	120,672	Eriko Fukuda
Hakuo Yanagisawa	109,120	154,035	Nobuhiro Koyama
Bunmei Ibuki	81,913	105,818	Tomoyuki Taira
Shoichi Nakagawa	89,818	118,655	Tomohiro Ishikawa

Fumio Kyuma

Fumio Kyuma

Fumio Kyuma, 68, of Nagasaki Prefecture’s 2nd District, was Director-General and Minister of Defence under Shinzo Abe. He was outspoken with regards to the US-Japan alliance, the bedrock of Japanese security, and that made him prone to ‘Foot-in-Mouth Disease’, as I discussed back in 2007.

• “The United States doesn’t understand [the importance of] spadework.”

• “I think President Bush launched the war in the belief there were nuclear weapons, but I think that decision was wrong.”

• “I now have come to accept in my mind that in order to end the war, it could not be helped that an atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki and that countless numbers of people suffered great tragedy.”

Eriko Fukuda

While Kyuma may not have been wrong in saying these things, it showed great insensitivity to the victims of Nagasaki (which in many ways could have been avoided), the Japanese people, and Japan’s ally.

However this was aeons ago in political time, while I have no definite idea as to why Nagasaki voters ousted Kyuma in the 2009 election, I would like to think that it had something to do with an ‘assassin’ sent by Ichiro Ozawa’s (Minshuto’s political mastermind): Eriko Fukuda, 28.

Fukuda was the public face of lawsuits by about 170 people against the government in a major health scandal in 2002 and 2003. When she was 20, she discovered she had contracted Hepatitis C through a blood transfusion as a baby. One of the few to publicise her name during the suit, Fukuda wrote a book and blogged about the victims’ struggle for the truth, and when the Health Ministry admitted in October 2007 that it had had a list of victims but had sat on it, ostensibly to protect the companies involved, she was at the forefront of the public response.

She represents the youth of Minshuto’s ranks, and she is by all means a heroine in her role in publicising the scandal. Hand-picked by Ozawa to stand against Kyuma, after proving that she was about more than just her disease through a series of weekly public meetings, Kyuma didn’t stand a chance.　However, the polls bear out a close fight.

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Hakuo Yanagisawa

Hakuo Yanagisawa

Nobuhiro Koyama

Next on the list is another gaffe-maker. Hakuo Yanagisawa, 74, of Shizuoka Prefecture’s 3rd District, famously insulted the women of Japan with this comment in 2007:

“The number of women aged between 15 and 50 is fixed. Because the number of birth-giving machines and devices is fixed, all we can do is ask them to do their best per head … although it may not be so appropriate to call them machines.”

He was right about that last part. While I believe he was simply trying to explain a complex issue using the language of economics and production, he nevertheless did so in such an insensitive way that he was forced to resign.

Yanagisawa, in what was described by Tobias Harris of Observing Japan as “the LDP’s most secure seat”, lost to Nobuhiro Koyama, 33, who previously worked for the central bank of agricultural, forestry and fishery cooperatives, Norinchukin. A newcomer and unknown quantity, it is surprising that he secured his victory by 45,000 votes and thus managed to thrash Yanagisawa.

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Bunmei Ibuki

Bunmei Ibuki

The last of the Abe cabinet gaffe-makers to be ousted from his seat, Bunmei Ibuki, 71, served as Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology during the Abe administration, and briefly as Yasuo Fukuda‘s Minister of Finance, and is a previous holder of the prized Secretary-General position within Jiminto. His two most memorable gaffes occurred during his time as Abe’s Education Minister.

• “Japan has been historically governed by the Yamato (Japanese) race. Japan is an extremely homogenous country. In its long, multifaceted history, Japan has been governed by the Japanese all the way.”

• “If you just eat nothing but butter every day, then you will develop metabolic syndrome. Human rights are important, but if you eat too much of it, then Japanese society will develop “human rights metabolic syndrome.”

Tomoyuki Taira

Many inferred that the latter statement’s use of butter as a metaphor for human rights was calculated to highlight their foreign origins. Dairy products did not figure into the Japanese diet prior to Japan’s opening by Commodore Perry. Once, if something was said to ‘reek of butter’, that meant that it had a foreign feel to it, in a derogatory sense.

These statements hint at underlying culturalist values that leech from those studies of Japanese uniqueness – Nihonjinron. This is not particularly strange, many Japanese hold themselves and their country to be unique. In an afternoon class of ladies, I asked what they thought was special about Japan, several mentioned its having four seasons… Such ideas of uniqueness is prevalent not just on the international level, but casting down into prefectural and urban differences too.

While these statements have been long since forgotten, and have very little bearing on the election results, they do highlight the relative lack of media savvy these Jiminto candidates have displayed. In Kyoto, Minshuto recruited minor radio personality, Tomoyuki Taira, 50, a head of a policy think-tank, to face off against Ibuki. He seemed to have done the trick.

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Shoichi Nakagawa

Shoichi Nakagawa

Tomohiro Ishikawa

Shoichi Nakagawa, 56, will forever be remembered as an example of politics at their most embarrassing. Nakagawa was a important thinker among Jiminto’s forward-thinking defence-policy nationalists and he held some important positions within the party, including Chairman of the Policy Research Council. He offered true potential for leadership, but squandered it at a G7 meeting in Rome in February 2009. There, whether under the influence of alcohol or just cold medicine, he slurred and napped his way through a press conference before being the worst possible visitor to the Vatican Museums as he tripped alarms and touched exhibits. This incident led him to be immortalised in a mobile phone game.

At the start of his campaign in Hokkaido’s 11th district, he renounced alcohol, but the image of him drifting off in Rome is just too fresh to save him. After inheriting his district from his father, Ichiro Nakagawa, Shoichi Nakagawa would lose it to Tomohiro Ishikawa, 36, a former aide to Ichiro Ozawa and PR representative.

Ishikawa was questioned during the scandal that erupted over Ozawa’s fundraising which resulted in the arrest of his chief secretary earlier in the year. He had run in the 2003 and 2005 elections, but was beaten by Nakagawa albeit narrowly in 2005. He faced having to prove himself against Nakagawa’s proven pork-barrel projects, but in the end, he was clearly successful.

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The Potential Leaders

Three Jiminto candidates stood out for their potential to rise to the top of the party. They represent some of the best and brightest of the party, and luckily for them, all three have been thrown a lifeline: they will remain in the Diet through the proportional representation system, through which voters vote twice: once for a local candidate and once for a party. However, none have formally entered the race to replace Taro Aso as leader of Jiminto.

Jiminto Candidate		Minshuto Candidate
Name	Number of Votes	Number of Votes	Name
Kaoru Yosano	130,030	141,742	Banri Kaieda
Yuriko Koike	96,739	105,512	Takako Ebata
Seiko Noda	99,500	111,987	Masanao Shibahashi

Kaoru Yosano

Kaoru Yosano

Banri Kaieda

Kaoru Yosano, 71, was Abe’s Chief Cabinet Secretary for one month and Aso’s second Minister of Finance since February 2009. Following Fukuda’s resignation in 2008, Yosano ran in the leadership contest to become President of Jiminto, but lost to Aso who received a staggering 351 of the 527 votes available.

Yosano is a fiscal conservative who has put his expert knowledge of taxes to good use by arguing for the need to increase consumption tax to recover the government debt and the take the strain of Japan’s ageing society.

He is an avid and gifted Go player, and claims to have taught the game to Ichiro Ozawa, the mastermind of Minshuto’s election strategy and its former leader (although some claim he is still pulling the strings). Running in the political heart of Tokyo, its 1st district, Yosano faced Banri Kaieda, 68, and would put his former Go student to the test.

The two men share a history. Yosano had lost to Kaieda in 2000 and 2003, reclaiming his seat in 2005 during Koizumi’s landslide victory. A survivor of cancer of the pharynx, on the first day of the official campaign, on August 18th, Yosano collapsed at a rally in Shinjuku, which saw him sitting out of a later G7 meeting. Regardless of this, and no doubt wanting to prove himself to be a strong campaigner against the odds, Yosano fought on and became a loud, if not ironic, advocate of a need for Jiminto to survive as a strong opposition party.

Kaieda, for his part, has been the key economic policy-maker within Minshuto despite having no seat in the Lower House. Prior to finding his home in Minshuto, he was a member of Nihon Shinto (New Japan Party) before joining the ultra-local Tokyo Shimin 21 (Tokyo Citizens 21).

They campaigned on similar grounds, but Kaieda had the advantage of a population that was looking to shed Jiminto’s blood.

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Yuriko Koike

Yuriko Koike

Takako Ebata

Yuriko Koike, 57,replaced Fumio Kyuma as Minister of Defence under Abe but remained in the job for only a month before she resigned. She also ran for Jiminto top spot, but came third behind Aso and Yosano.

Koike, originally from Hyogo Prefecture but running in Tokyo’s 10th District, had a successful TV career before entering politics. Somewhat of a free agent, Koike has been a member of several small parties (mostly because they were coalescing into the big parties we seen now, but what is clear is that in 2000 Koike switched from the moderately liberal Jiyuuto (Liberal Party) to the firmly rightist Hoshu Shinto (New Conservative Party). When that party was absorbed by Jiminto, she simply stuck around.

A successful woman who knows how to play up to a feminist audience (coining the term ‘iron ceiling’ in contrast to the ‘glass ceiling’ preventing women from reaching top positions in other countries), she has also addressed environmental issues (she was instrumental in two famous Koizumi campaigns: Cool Biz and Mottainai), as well as a worshipper at the controversial Japanese shrine and a constitutional revisionist. An Arabist by trade, due to the influence of her father who saw potential energy security in good relations with the Arab states, she has something a little different to most Jiminto politicians… so what went wrong?

The Minshuto candidate was also a woman, Takako Ebata. Successful and very well educated, she holds an MBA from MIT, she was an associate professor at the University of Tokyo, considered Japan’s best, and yet she seemed more down-to-earth as ran with the clear support of her family. This is in contrast to the divorced and childless Koike, who seems to epitomise less desirable traits for career women. Couple this with the dissatisfaction of the public with Jiminto, and Ebata’s victory looked promising. Even though Koike brought out her popular former colleague, former Prime Minister Jun’ichiro Koizumi to lend some support, she couldn’t hold off the swell for change.

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Seiko Noda

Seiko Noda

Masanao Shibahashi

In 1998, Seiko Noda, then 37, set the record as she became Obuchi’s Minister of Posts and Telecommunications, the youngest post-war cabinet minister. She was the first woman to become Programme Director of Jiminto’s House Steering Committee and served as State Minister for Consumer Affairs under Fukuda and Aso.

Noda, now 49, is an active feminist within the Diet, advocating women’s rights to keep their maiden name after marriage (which is not currently an available option for Japanese women), as well as helping bring about much needed legislation to curb child pornography, and video games that promote sexual violence. She has also been a powerful voice for the creation of equal opportunities for disabled people too.

Noda is also a politician who seems to stand by her convictions, not only on equal rights, but also more generally. After opposing Koizumi’s postal  privatisation bill, she lost recognition from Jiminto in the 2005 election. With no small amount of guts she continued into the election as an independent (albeit with Komeito’s backing), and faced off against Yukari Sato, the ‘assassin’ appointed to stop Noda from winning her seat in Gifu Prefecture’s 1st District. Noda won the seat by about 10,000 votes, a figure quite common in the elections results above too. Sato won a seat through the proportional representation system (the same system that would bring Yosano, Koike and Noda herself back this year). Sato also lost her seat in the 2009 election.

Minshuto’s man in 2005, Masanao Shibahashi, now 30, faced Noda in the 2009 election. A former bank clerk, Shibahashi is young and ultimately benefited from dissatisfaction with Jiminto, just like his colleagues.

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Komeito’s Leadership

While Jiminto were certainly had more seats than any other party after the 2005 election, they did not govern alone. Jiminto had a coalition partner, Komeito, which suffered heavily at the hands of the voters this year. It is a political front for Soka Gakkai, the international Buddhist new religion, and some might say cult.

Komeito Candidate		Minshuto Candidate
Name	Number of Votes	Number of Votes	Name
Akihiro Ota	108,679	118,753	Ai Aoki
Kazuo Kitagawa	84,883	100,548	Hiroyuki Moriyama

Akihiro Ota

Ai Aoki

Akihiro Ota, 63, became Komeito’s Chief Representative in 2006, succeeding Takenori Kanzaki. He has been with Komeito since 1971, starting first as a reporter for the party’s newspaper. A former university sumo wrestler, he has primarily concerned himself with issues of the constitution and structural reform making him the ideal partner for the 2005-2009 string of Jiminto leaders.

Early in the run-up to the election, it appeared that Ichiro Ozawa himself would go head to head with Ota in Tokyo’s 12th District, but Ozawa apparently had a change of heart and instead registered in Iwate, where he was born. His proxy was Ai Aoki, 44, a former singer and TV reporter who had won a seat in Chiba in the 2007 Upper House Election by proportional representation. Aoki’s victory decapitated Komeito until they elected Natsuo Yamaguchi to replace him on 8th September.

Ota wasn’t the only Komeito honcho to suffer. Most notably Kazuo Kitagawa, the party’s 56-year old Secretary-General, lost in Osaka’s 16th District. His opponent, Hiroyuki Moriyama, a 38-year old former Osaka assemblyman had a strong victory when viewed in relation to the more closely contested seats in the other sections above.

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Postscript – Jiminto’s Winners

Jiminto suffered a heavy blow at the hands of the electorate, and perhaps as a result of the canny election strategy put forward by Minshuto’s Ichiro Ozawa, who put younger and often female candidates against the stuffy Jiminto politicians of old. This energy added to the calls for change that was the rallying cry of the Minshuto candidates. At the same time, Komeito suffered a massive blow, unable to secure any single seat constituencies. However, it was not all tears and gloom for Jiminto, there were a number of notable successes too.

Jiminto Candidate		Minshuto Candidate
Name	Number of Votes	Number of Votes	Name
Shinjiro Koizumi	150,893	96,631	Katsuhito Yokokume
Kunio Hatoyama	138,327	119,481	Issei Koga
Taro Aso	165,327	96,327	Kousei Yamamoto
Yasuo Fukuda	103,852	91,904	Yukiko Miyake
Shinzo Abe	121,365	58,795	Takako Tokura

Kunio Hatoyama

Shinjiro Koizumi

Shinjiro Koizumi, former Prime Minister Koizumi’s 28-year old son, took over his father’s seat in Kanagawa Prefecture’s 11th District. He scored a stunning victory against Minshuto’s Katsuhito Yokokume, 27. A fourth-generation politician, he seems, like his father, destined to being against the grain of traditional Jiminto. He researched the US-Japan relationship at the renowned Center for Strategic and International Studies in America in 2006-07. Some of his work from his time at CSIS can be accessed [here].

There was good news too for 60-year old Kunio Hatoyama, Jiminto candidate for Fukuoka Prefecture’s 6th District, and brother of the new Prime Minister. He beat his Minshuto opponent, Issei Koga, 62, by a significant margin. Hatoyama was dubbed ‘the Grim Reaper’ for the speed with which he signed off on death penalties as Abe and Fukuda’s Justice Minister. In June 2009, he resigned as Aso’s Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications over a disagreement regarding replacing Japan Post Agency head, Yoshifumi Nishikawa. This incident reflected poorly on Aso’s leadership and only contributed to his rapid decline.

Finally, it should be noted that all three post-Koizumi Prime Ministers kept their seats. Outgoing Prime Minister Taro Aso, 68, kept his seat in Fukuoka’s 8th District against Kousei Yamamoto, 37. Yasuo Fukuda, 73, held his seat in Gunma’s 4th District against Yukiko Miyake, 44. Lastly, Shinzo Abe, 54, held his seat in Yamaguchi’s 4th District against Takako Tokura, 50.

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The Start of a Historic Day?

Today Japan will vote for the future of its democracy. That may sound lofty, but the story of Japanese history has been one of conservative unity versus weak opposition parties in which the Liberal Democratic Party, Jiminto, held over the reins of power.

With America’s urging, Jiminto was forged in 1955 from two conservative parties: the Liberal Party, Jiyuuto, and the Democratic Party, Minshuto. The Japanese conservatives and the United States were concerned about the influence of socialism in Japan, given the country’s strategically important position which blocks access to the Pacific Ocean from the Russian Far East and China. The Communist Party, Kyosanto, remains a continual presence even today. It is more vocal here than in other countries; just the other day Keiko’s company’s health insurance urged her to vote for Kyosanto this weekend.

At the time of the conservative merger, Jiyuuto was led by the father of Japanese postwar political, economic and defence strategy, Shigeru Yoshida, current Prime Minister Taro Aso’s grandfather. Minshuto, on the other hand, was led by then Prime Minister Ichiro Hatoyama. Minshuto split from Jiyuuto in 1954, and Hatoyama was behind Yoshida’s loss of power in the party. The merger of the two parties, instigated by Hatoyama, began what has since been called the 1955 System: a monopoly over the controls to Japan’s democracy, most notably in the relationship with its bureaucrats.

In his seminal book, The Enigma of Japanese Power, Karel van Wolferen described the complex and reliant system by which the civil servants of the central government maintained social cohesion, disrupted opposition, and generally maintained the conditions which kept Jiminto in power. By the regulation of unions and its wooing of the agriculture and construction industries, Jiminto was given an unrivalled power-base. As the only credible governing party, Jiminto had a secure place at the head of the government, but it was by no means monolithic. Indeed, it is a meta-party comprised of numerous fluid factions and groupings, zoku, which fight for power in the party and thus for the use of the voter’s mandate.

However, this stable and rather depressing system has been corroding for years. In 1993, after a series of scandals, the LDP lost power to an unlikely coalition led by the Renewal Party, Shinseito. The coalition quickly fell apart with the defection of the Socialist Party, Shakai Minshuto, and Shinto Sakigake. The LDP came back as strong as ever, but has been growingly challenged in the Diet and on the streets by the new Minshuto, which was formed in 1998. That party has grown in strength thanks to politically savvy leaders, Jiminto’s scandals, and Jun’nichiro Koizumi’s blow to Jiminto from within.

Japan has had three Jiminto prime ministers in three years, and no election since 2005. The rapid turnover in leaders has been caused by poor leadership and further scandals, and certainly, Taro Aso’s decision to delay the general election, if the polls hold true, has seriously damaged Jiminto’s strength. As a more activist and credible opposition which has survived a serious scandal of its own (involving then party leader, Ichiro Ozawa), Minshuto is more ready than ever to step into the Kantei.

So today the Japanese electorate are being given the chance to change their political lot. They can continue to support Jiminto, with its tried and tested control over the bureaucrats in Kasumigaseki, or they can give real pluralism a chance and embrace the challenge presented by Minshuto as led by Yukio Hatoyama (Ichiro Hatoyama’s grandson). It is by no means a simple choice: Minshuto has been criticised for its idealistic manifesto, which is lacking in the details (primarily as a result of Jiminto’s control over the organs of governance). However, the time is ripe for change… When the votes are in, we could be looking at a new mandate for Jiminto, or more likely, the first opposition party in power since 1955 without the formation of a coalition.

Fukuda Rising

The race is now on, and it is between Fukuda and Aso, with Fukuda ahead. Both candidates put forward their views on Japanese international relations, and it is worth a read:

Aso, Fukuda agree on refueling mission, but differ on N Korea, Yasukuni
Saturday, September 15, 2007 at 17:25 EDT
Kyodo News

TOKYO – Former Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda and Liberal Democratic Party Secretary General Taro Aso clashed over issues surrounding North Korea and Tokyo’s war-related Yasukuni Shrine as they kicked off a dove-versus-hawk duel Saturday for the Sept 23 party presidency election to succeed Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

But Fukuda and Aso offered little differences in their policy platforms over other issues in a joint news conference, with both agreeing on the need to extend an antiterrorism refueling mission in the Indian Ocean and vowing to continue the course of structural reforms albeit with policy adjustments where necessary to revive local economies.

The ruling LDP’s election appears to be a done deal with Fukuda as the winner having already garnered widespread factional support to succeed Abe, 52, who on Wednesday abruptly announced his intention to step down and was subsequently hospitalized.

On Japan’s position on North Korea, especially in dealing with the unresolved abductions of Japanese nationals, Fukuda called for a flexible stance while maintaining the “dialogue and pressure” approach to resolve the issue.

“We must devise some means to convey to the other side our desire and readiness to conduct negotiations,” Fukuda, 71, said at the joint press conference held after the two officially filed candidacies at the LDP headquarters in Tokyo.

But Aso, who was foreign minister under both administrations of Abe and his predecessor Junichiro Koizumi, defended the pressure-oriented approach as the correct way and that it has achieved results.

“The abductions were the extreme of inhumanity,” said Aso, who shares many of Abe’s hawkish and conservative views. “We have learnt from experience that we won’t get to negotiations without pressure.”

On Yasukuni, which enshrines 14 Class-A war criminals along with the war dead, Fukuda said he wants to realize the plan to build a secular national memorial facility to commemorate the war dead.

Fukuda, who has been pursuing the plan since 2002 when he was chief Cabinet secretary, said earlier on Saturday when announcing his candidacy that he will not go to the controversial Shinto shrine to avoid upsetting Asian neighbors that suffered from Japanese wartime aggressions.

Meanwhile, Aso stressed that even if a new memorial facility is built, it would not be a replacement for Yasukuni. But he did not make clear whether he will visit the shrine.

On other issues, however, the two shared similar views. Both vowed to rebuild public trust in the party and to create a society where Japan’s graying population can live at ease, in an apparent reference to growing concerns over the sustainability of the public pension system and the possibility of a consumption tax hike.

Both candidates said they will seek to extend the Maritime Self-Defense Force’s refueling mission to support U.S.-led antiterrorism operations in and around Afghanistan.

Fukuda said he intends to consult closely with the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan and others to convince them to agree to the extension.

Aso said he will pursue a new law or other options to continue the mission beyond the Nov 1 legal deadline, noting that simply seeking an extension of the current special antiterrorism law is “quite” difficult due to strong rejection by the opposition side.

The refusal by the DPJ, which overtook the LDP as the largest party in the House of Councillors in the July 29 election, to agree to the extension was one of main reasons cited by Abe in his sudden resignation announcement. The opposition camp can delay the passage of legislation with its DPJ-led majority in the upper house.

Whoever wins will face the daunting task of steering the party through the current political deadlock with the DPJ-led opposition camp, including the imminent showdown in parliament over legislation to extend the refueling mission.

Fukuda has gained support by many LDP members in all nine factions except a small one led by Aso, 66. Public opinion in a recent Kyodo News poll also favored Fukuda 28.1% to 18.7% for Aso.

Another key issue in the LDP election will be how to shore up the party base after the devastating setback in the July election where the ruling coalition of the LDP and New Komeito party lost its upper house majority.

Earlier in the morning, Fukuda said in officially announcing his candidacy, “The current circumstances were certainly unexpected…After listening to the recommendations by many who supported my running in the race and the ensuing encouragement, I felt strongly that I must shoulder the responsibility to face this difficult situation.”

Fukuda repeatedly said he plans to seek talks with the DPJ, including its leader Ichiro Ozawa, to gain cooperation in parliamentary affairs. He was most notably referring to the refueling mission’s extension and the opposition’s demand for a snap election in the lower house.

Aso announced his candidacy Friday, criticizing the overwhelming factional support for Fukuda as backroom dealing by the other faction leaders and a “regression to old LDP politics, but vowing to “fight fairly and squarely till the end” despite being in a disadvantaged position.

Aso indicated he aims to campaign for the support of those unaffiliated with any factions, as well as the party rank and file.

The winner is assured of Japan’s premiership as the LDP controls the country’s lower house, which has final say in appointing the prime minister. The new party leader’s term will last until September 2009.

Both Fukuda and Aso come from famous political families – the former a son of former Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda and the latter a grandson of former Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida.

Both held key posts under Abe’s predecessor Koizumi, with Fukuda as chief Cabinet secretary and Aso as foreign minister. But their political ideologies differ in some fields.

The dovish Fukuda favors promoting amicable relations with neighboring countries, while the hawkish Aso is known for his conservative views and controversial remarks that have angered China.

Fukuda and Aso are scheduled to hold a policy debate at LDP headquarters and street campaigns in Tokyo on Sunday. They will campaign in Osaka and Takamatsu in western Japan on Monday, a national holiday, and in the northeastern city of Sendai next Saturday.

Voting will begin at 2 p.m. Sept 23, with the 387 eligible LDP lawmakers each given one ballot and the 47 prefectural chapters given three each to reflect the choices of rank-and-file members.

Fukuda is one of the LDP’s old guard. He was Chief Cabinet Secretary to Koizumi and is in large part responsible for the diplomacy that led to the Pyongyang Summit in 2002. With North Korea, he favours the ‘pressure and dialogue’ track which can be attributed to Keizo Obuchi in 1998. This places him resolutely outside the nationalist conservative camp, aligning him closer to Koizumi (who effectively used both aspects of diplomacy while in office). Fukuda has the statesmanship that Abe lacked, a Woodrow Wilson to Abe’s George W. Bush. If Fukuda can take office, then the LDP has rejected the Abe’s Young Turks.

Abe appears to have been a necessary evil, however. He pushed through the normalisation of the Defence Agency to a ministry, and tipped the balance on North Korea so that they will be grateful to see a new face in office. It has often been said that Abe was Koizumi’s ‘bad cop’ at the Pyongyang Summit. I would take this further and suggest that he was the ‘bad cop-PM’ to whatever more moderate leader follows.

I recall the NBR Japan Forum debating this very issue (although with relation to taxes) as the reason that Fukuda withdrew his candidacy last year. Abe was to be a temporary hard-liner who would get the dirty jobs of reassembling the LDP and implements tough policies so that the air would be cleared for a longer-term minister. Perhaps then, we should not underestimate the back-room management of the LDP. If such machinations are at work, then it only goes to show one thing: Japan is going through some interesting times.

Japanese NSC vs US Alliance: A Follow-up

Well, if my understanding in the last post was correct, then the NSC is the tougher fight… I can only imagine how hard when the extension of the Counter-Terrorism Special Measures Law has to face this:

Japan opposition risks U.S. ire over Afghan mission

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan’s main opposition party will find it hard to agree to extend support for U.S.-led operations in Afghanistan, its policy chief warned on Monday, a stance that could sour U.S. ties and deepen divisions among its own members.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants to extend a law enabling Japan’s navy to provide fuel and goods for U.S.-led coalition warships in the Indian Ocean as support for operations in Afghanistan, and called on Monday for opposition cooperation.

But Ichiro Ozawa, the leader of the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), has come out against the move — and despite calls from his predecessor to rethink that stance, party policy chief Takeaki Matsumoto said switching gears would be tough.

“We aren’t saying from the beginning that we won’t give approval … but fundamentally we want to discontinue the law and have them come home,” Matsumoto told Reuters in an interview.

More…

Every Dog Has its Day

Those of you following the live-blogging coverage of the Upper House elections (my thanks to Observing Japan for its excellent coverage) will have witnessed a stunning victory by the DPJ today.

Who would have thought that the DPJ would do so well? Even its helmsman, Ichiro Ozawa (left), doubted their prospects of reaching the stated 55 seat aim. However, at the most recent count, the DPJ has won 60 seats to the LDP’s 37! That is a stunning win for the DPJ and far beyond the disappointment of the previous election (which forced the resignation of party leader Okada Katsuya, and it signals a possible fork in the road for Japanese politics.

This is an outstanding performance and genuinely shows the disappointment of the core LDP voters in the rural inaka. My fiancée’s mother told us that she was excited for the future, but that it was a muted excitement. The Upper House is not as significant a win as the Lower House (although it should scuttle LDP-led constitutional reform), and the Japanese electorate appear to be resigned to the fact that no one politician can make a difference (perhaps showing Koizumi’s time in power to be an interlude to a longer story, and also very reminiscent of the situation here in the UK).

My own feelings are that the DPJ owes its success not only to LDP scandals, but the power of Ichiro Ozawa. That man is a dreamer, and has been criticised as being lacking in his time at the top of the DPJ. He has been my favourite Diet member ever since I picked up his book (published in English as Blueprint for a New Japan). Although he has been struggling with illness, his campaign to compete with the LDP in the rural districts appears to have paid off in a big way.

I want to congratulate the DPJ, Ichiro Ozawa and the rest of the campaigners for a job well done. My only hope is that they can now translate this into victory in the next General Election.