Koizumi’s Win: A Mandate for Change

KABASHIMA Ikuo

In the November 9 general election for the House of Representatives, Prime Minister Koizumi Jun’ichirô’s Liberal Democratic Party won 237 seats, 10 fewer than its pre-election figure of 247. But the ruling coalition, consisting of the LDP, the New Kômeitô, and the New Conservative Party, came out with a total of 275 seats, well over half of the 480 seats in the chamber, and Koizumi’s hold on the premiership was confirmed.

The LDP fell short of its goal of winning an outright majority of 241 for itself, though its numbers were boosted after the election by the addition of independents and members of the New Conservative Party, bringing its total up to 244. The Conservatives lost 5 of their pre-election 9 seats, and on November 10 they decided to merge with the LDP. The other coalition partner, the Kômeitô, fared better, adding 3 seats to its pre-election 31. Though the coalition as a whole ended up with fewer seats than its pre-election total of 287, its post-election figure of 275 (raised to 278 with the addition of 3 independents) is above the 269 required to form an “absolute stable majority,” meaning that it has enough members to retain a majority on all 17 of the lower house’s standing committees even after the designation of committee chairs.

The Democratic Party of Japan, which merged with the Liberal Party about a month before the election, surged from 137 to 177 seats. But the smaller opposition parties took a drubbing. The Social Democrats fell from 18 to 6 seats, and the Communists from 20 to 9, leaving the DPJ holding an unchallengeable lead within the opposition camp. The election results can thus be seen as a step toward the formation of a true two-party system in Japan.

The major distinctive feature of this year’s election is that for the first time the parties prominently displayed “manifestoes” setting forth the policies they would implement if elected to power. The DPJ was the first to come out with such a document, and the other parties followed suit. Some analysts suggest that the DPJ’s strategy of going on the offensive against the LDP in the policy debate by issuing a manifesto proved successful, and there is a good chance that manifestoes will play an even more important role in next summer’s election for the House of Councillors.

Koizumi became prime minister on April 26, 2001, and on September 20 this year he won reelection as president of the LDP. Thanks to the ruling coalition’s electoral victory, he has received a lease on power for the remainder of his current term at the helm of the LDP, which expires in September 2006.

The emergence of the Koizumi administration and the recent confirmation of its mandate spell the end of the LDP’s traditional approach to politics, one that might be described as a form of social democracy. In the LDP presidential contest Koizumi roundly defeated his three opponents, including Kamei Shizuka, the standard-bearer of the “forces of resistance” within the party. And shortly before the party vote, former LDP Secretary General Nonaka Hiromu, another leading figure among the old guard, announced his retirement from politics. These developments indicate that the LDP is indeed changing, and on a level that transcends the usual jockeying among the various factions.

DEMISE OF THE JAPANESE/LDP SYSTEM

The “forces of resistance” label that has been pinned on Koizumi’s opponents within the LDP has a negative ring, but what these forces actually represent is what we may call the Japanese/LDP system. This is a system that has pursued a social democratic agenda of “equal growth,” taking political action to share the wealth produced by economic development.

To be sure, the LDP never adopted “equal growth” as an explicit philosophy. Rather, it was something that emerged as a result of the fact that the party’s main support base was in rural communities. Solid backing from rural voters kept the LDP in power, and in return LDP administrations protected the farming sector from foreign competition and appropriated massive sums for public works and other spending in nonurban regions. These policies succeeded in eliminating the urban-rural income gap during the period of rapid economic growth after World War II.

For a number of reasons, however, it has now become impossible to sustain this Japanese system. One reason is the erosion of urban-rural solidarity. The large-scale migration of people from farming districts to cities has caused the rural population to plummet and given urbanites a commanding majority. Even so, in years gone by, many of those living in Tokyo and other big cities were originally from rural communities and sympathized with rural concerns. But as the first generation of city dwellers has given way to a second and third generation, such sentiments have attenuated.

An even more important reason is the prolonged economic slump. The LDP system was predicated on rapid economic growth; without it, the government cannot afford to maintain lavish outlays to spread the wealth among the rural population.

In the minds of today’s Japanese urbanites, the large-scale redistribution of revenues from urban to rural areas stands for waste; it is also seen as often leading to environmental destruction. Furthermore, it is associated with an unsavory set of vested interests. Koizumi, who hails from the metropolitan Tokyo area (the city of Yokosuka in Kanagawa Prefecture), took office pledging to destroy the existing Japanese/LDP system. This is a major factor behind the support that he has enjoyed. Kamei and Nonaka were unable to take the high ground in this year’s LDP presidential race because they took it to be the usual sort of struggle among the party’s factions and were unable to convince the party membership that a return to the traditional approach of spreading the wealth would be either beneficial or sustainable.

NATIONAL SECURITY AND SOCIAL POLICY

In August my research group at the University of Tokyo, in cooperation with the daily Asahi Shimbun, conducted a survey of the attitudes of members of the House of Representatives. Factor analysis of the results on a party-by-party basis revealed that the members’ positions could be plotted against two axes. One is national security, with those favoring greater defense strength on one side (“conservative”) and those opposed on the other (“reformist”). The other is social policy, with those favoring the traditional Japanese system (arrangements like lifetime employment and the redistribution of income to weaker members of society and less affluent regions through public works and such) on one side (“conservative”) and those favoring reforms based on the market mechanism on the other (“reformist”).

Viewed against the horizontal national-security axis, the LDP is on the right-hand, or conservative, side, and the Social Democratic Party and Japanese Communist Party are far to the left, with the Kômeitô and Democratic Party of Japan in between. The poor performance of the SDP and JCP in the November election thus represents a major shift in the conservative direction with respect to national security.

When it comes to the vertical social-policy axis, however, the Liberal Democrats’ position is surprisingly close to that of the Social Democrats and the Communists, while the Democrats are on the opposite side. It is a headache for the DPJ, which is the top opposition party and identifies itself as “liberal,” to see the LDP in the position of being more “compassionate” toward the weaker members of society.

If we plot the results within the LDP against this same pair of axes on a faction-by-faction basis, we find that all the factions fall in similar positions on the conservative side with respect to national security, with the exception of the Kôno group, which falls slightly to the left of center. But when it comes to social policy, the positions vary greatly. The faction of Kamei Shizuka, Koizumi’s top opponent in the September party presidential election, is at the far end of the conservative side, while the Mori faction, of which Koizumi is a member, is on the reformist side. Koizumi himself did not respond to the survey, but it seems likely that his position is further in the reformist direction than that of his faction. In other words, on the issue of reforming the Japanese system, his position is close to that of the DPJ. This makes the LDP under Koizumi’s leadership a difficult target for the DPJ to attack.

Why was Koizumi able to win in the party election despite the numerical superiority of his opponents’ factions? The decisive factor was that the LDP needed to have Koizumi as its “face” for the general election. Under the old electoral system of multiseat districts for the lower house, it made little difference who held the LDP presidency. Now, however, the identity of the party leader has a tremendous effect on the election results.

At the time of the previous lower house election, in 2000, Mori Yoshirô was prime minister and LDP president, and his unpopularity acted as a drag on the party. Conversely, in the following year’s House of Councillors election, the popularity of Koizumi, who had just replaced Mori, greatly buoyed the LDP’s fortunes. Before Koizumi took the helm, the LDP had generally been seen as likely to win 45 seats at most (out of 121 up for election), but in fact it captured 65, about 20 more than expected. The victory of Koizumi in the September LDP contest owes much to the decision by Aoki Mikio, the party’s leader in the House of Councillors, to support him rather than the candidate of his own Hashimoto faction. Surely Aoki was strongly influenced by the memory of Koizumi’s positive impact in the 2001 upper house election.

In the September LDP contest Koizumi himself made maximum use of his own value as the party’s electoral “face” by letting it be known that he was likely to call a general election soon. And he further enhanced his appeal by replacing LDP Secretary General Yamasaki Taku with the young and popular Abe Shinzô immediately after he won the LDP race.

Under the current system of single-member districts for the lower house, the opposition parties cannot hope to defeat the LDP unless they combine their forces. Given Koizumi’s popularity and the fact that the LDP was working together with its coalition partners, the Kômeitô and New Conservative Party, it was only natural that the DPJ faced tough going, even after Ozawa Ichirô’s Liberal Party merged with it. But one factor that worked in the DPJ’s favor was the existence of a substantial number of “buffer players”—voters who would rather see a close-to-even split between the ruling and opposition parties than a large LDP majority.

KOIZUMI’S LASTING APPEAL

When Koizumi took office as prime minister in April 2001, he was widely seen as a shining new light, and he appealed to voters with his slogan of “No growth without reform.” Over two years have passed since then, and Koizumi has maintained a high level of support for his administration despite the ongoing sluggishness of the economy, high unemployment, worries about the financial system, and lack of thoroughness in dealing with the bad-debt problem.

In June 2001, shortly after Koizumi’s inauguration, support for his cabinet topped 70%. The figure subsequently declined from this extraordinarily high level in response to developments like the messy sacking of Foreign Minister Tanaka Makiko early in 2002, but recently the prime minister’s ratings have once again improved, with polls showing consistently strong support for his administration.

In September 2002 Koizumi had a historic summit meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang, which produced a North Korean admission of involvement in the abduction of Japanese nationals in the past and the return to Japan of five surviving abductees. Alongside an outpouring of sympathy among the general public for the victims and their families and heightened anger at the North Korean government that perpetrated the kidnappings, this outcome led to increased support for the prime minister.

Aside from this, a number of general factors have contributed to Koizumi’s sustained popularity. One is the fact that he is so unlike previous LDP leaders. In sharp contrast to his predecessors, he has often resisted the majority opinion within the party. This can be seen in his stance on privatization of the postal services, which he has insisted on pushing ahead with despite strong opposition from other Liberal Democrats.

Another positive factor has been Koizumi’s skill at using the media in presenting his positions. He has succeeded in identifying his opponents within the LDP as the “forces of resistance,” offering an easy-to-understand picture of a struggle between this old guard and the “forces of cooperation” that support his reform agenda. The term forces of resistance has often been used to refer in particular to the Hashimoto faction, the largest grouping within the LDP. Koizumi became LDP president in a contest that pitted him against the head of this faction, former Prime Minister Hashimoto Ryûtarô. This is Koizumi’s starting point as a leader, and it is the source of his attachment to the “forces of resistance” label.

The prime minister has managed to position himself as the standard-bearer of the reform camp seeking to promote the interests of the electorate and fighting the self-serving politics of the resistance camp. And he has used the media to play up this struggle inside the LDP, turning it into a drama that has captured the popular imagination. In terms of factional strength, Koizumi’s forces are a minority within the LDP. But he has benefited greatly from his image as the champion of reform, which has enabled him to sustain his high approval ratings, thereby strengthening his hand against his opponents within the party.

If a leader in the traditional LDP mold were to replace Koizumi at this stage, it seems unlikely that the public would approve. The majority of today’s Japanese would probably reject such a leader as incapable of responding to the need for an overhaul of Japan’s political and economic systems.

How about the DPJ? Is it capable of replacing the LDP as the top party in the government? Many voters are concerned by its lack of experience and feel that entrusting it with the reins of government would be too large a risk. However, at the same time, the voters are also evidently unwilling to increase the size of the LDP contingent. The lukewarm endorsement Koizumi received in the November election may make it difficult for him to keep up his earlier style of leadership.

Translated from an original article in Japanese written for Japan Echo.

© 2003 Japan Echo Inc.