FROM THE EDITOR

KOIZUMI VICTORIOUS On September 20, Prime Minister Koizumi Jun’ichirô handily won another three years as president of the Liberal Democratic Party. This was thanks in part to some good luck, notably the timely arrival of some long-awaited signs that the economy is finally turning up. Stock prices rose sharply in the months leading up to the LDP election, and in mid-September the Nikkei average topped the 11,000 mark, registering a gain of over 40% from the low of 7,607 recorded late in April. Around the same time, the authorities released various figures indicating that the outlook for business was improving. These developments lent credibility to Koizumi’s central campaign message—that his reforms were just beginning to bear fruit and should be given a chance to succeed—and took the steam out of his opponents’ strident criticisms of his administration’s handling of economic policy. The public, meanwhile, in its eagerness to believe a true recovery was underway, seemed willing to overlook the persistently high unemployment rate and to ignore the fact that stock prices are still substantially lower than when Koizumi first took office (at which point the Nikkei average was close to 14,000) and seem to have risen again primarily thanks to the improving US economy.

Borne aloft by public support in this way, Koizumi was victorious on the first ballot, eclipsing his three challengers. Although his reelection had been predicted, the decisiveness of his victory came as a surprise. It was assumed that Koizumi, viewed as an eccentric by much of the LDP, would suffer for his clashes with party heavyweights on matters of policy and politics. Although the outcome of the election owes something to his political prowess in handling such power struggles and to party members’ doubts about the rival candidates’ ability to appeal to voters in the next general election, those factors alone cannot explain why so many LDP members came out in support of a man so disliked by the party’s other leading figures.

In fact, what Koizumi’s victory signified for the ruling party was the breakdown of the factions that were once virtually synonymous with LDP politics. For years, party bosses were able to impose strict discipline on their faction members because they controlled vast funds, which they allocated to members’ costly election campaigns, and because cabinet and party posts were distributed according to the faction leaders’ recommendations. For this reason, faction members almost invariably voted as one, giving the largest faction—the faction built up by former Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei and currently headed by former Prime Minister Hashimoto Ryûtarô—the biggest say over LDP elections. But this time around, the dynamics were very different. In the Hashimoto faction, disagreement over who to field as a candidate caused an open schism, and the system collapsed. Factional discipline has declined dramatically across the board. In this sense, it might be said that Koizumi made good on his earlier campaign promise to “break the LDP” by undermining the factions that have been its hallmark.

In truth, however, it would be wrong to give Koizumi credit for the breakdown in factional discipline. This is in fact largely due to a pair of changes predating his administration. One is the 1994 overhaul of the electoral system for the House of Representatives, replacing multiseat constituencies with a combination of single-seat districts and seats filled by proportional representation. This means that LDP candidates no longer vie with each other for votes within the same district and that the focus is on the race between the LDP and other parties. The other is the introduction of public subsidies for parties; within the LDP these funds are under the control of the party’s central governing apparatus, which has thus taken over from the factions as the main source of campaign funds.

Upon reelection, Koizumi underscored his independence by appointing Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Abe Shinzô to the key party position of secretary general, a move of which the public strongly approved. Abe has won plaudits, notably for his role in Japan’s dealings with North Korea, and in the process he has earned the trust of the victims of the North Korean abductions of the 1970s and their families, but his relatively young age (49) and lack of cabinet experience made his appointment to this critical post unprecedented.

NOVEMBER GENERAL ELECTION One factor leading to Koizumi’s surprising decision must have been the recent merger of Ozawa Ichirô’s Liberal Party with Kan Naoto’s Democratic Party of Japan on October 5. As a result of the merger, the DPJ holds over 200 seats in the Diet, and with Ozawa lending his political experience and savvy to the DPJ’s legion of young politicians, the party has begun to look like a possible threat to LDP rule. Koizumi doubtless decided that his party needed a new look going into the general election for the House of Representatives.

Koizumi defied the LDP brass again by keeping Takenaka Heizô as his minister of state for financial services and for economic and fiscal policy. He has dubbed his new lineup the “reform promotion cabinet,” but his failure to offer up a clear vision of the kind of Japan he hopes to create through these reforms remains cause for skepticism.

On October 10, Koizumi dissolved the House of Representatives and set November 9 as the date for a general election. After the DPJ came out with a manifesto detailing its position on various issues, the LDP and other parties rushed to follow suit by drawing up written platforms realistic enough to withstand public scrutiny instead of the vague campaign promises typical of past elections. The voters seemed ready for a change of regime but at the same time apparently felt that the DPJ might not yet be capable of running the nation.

The election results reflected this sentiment. The LDP lost some seats, but the ruling coalition, which includes the New Kômeitô, held on to its commanding majority. The DPJ made significant gains, but these were largely at the expense of the smaller opposition parties, the Japanese Communist Party and Social Democratic Party, which suffered critical losses. It is still far short of its goal of taking the reins of government. But the DPJ does deserve credit for conducting a campaign focused on its policy proposals. And we seem to have moved a step closer to a genuine two-party system comparable to that of the United States and Britain.

An election issue of particular interest among the electorate was that of pension reform. The current “pay as you go” system, which finances the pensions of the current generation of retirees with payments of mandatory contributions from those now working, operated well enough when Japan had a pyramid-shaped distribution of population by age, but it is obvious that it cannot continue to function in a society where the elderly population is ballooning and the birth rate continues to drop. Nonetheless, our politicians have avoided tackling the issue in earnest, leaving the Japanese—especially the young—deeply mistrustful of the system. Indeed, widespread concern over financial security in old age is one of the reasons consumption continues to languish. Realizing that they can no longer delay, our politicians have begun discussing raising the consumption tax to finance an overhaul of the pension system, but they have avoided committing themselves on the size or timing of the increase for fear of incurring the wrath of the voters.

In other domestic news, a year has gone by since the return of five Japanese citizens who, though they had absolutely no prior connection to North Korea, were kidnapped and spirited off to that country many years ago. Still the North Korean government refuses to allow their families to join them in Japan. The returnees are understandably impatient and looking to the Japanese government to speed progress toward a resolution of the issue.

In the summer of 2004, the portrait of Nitobe Inazô (1862-1933) will disappear from the ¥5,000 bill. In addition to writing the book Bushido: The Soul of Japan, originally published in 1900, Nitobe served as under secretary general of the League of Nations, the highest diplomatic post ever held by a Japanese, but the full range of his achievements has generally gone unacknowledged, within Japan as well as abroad. The section on Nitobe Inazô in this issue is our modest attempt to redress this situation. (Iwao Sumiko)

© 2003 Japan Echo Inc.