Jonathan Allum: Japan votes to swim with the current of history
[Jonathan Allum is Japan strategist of KBC Financial Products]
The Economist spoke for most of the serious foreign press in welcoming the beginning of the election campaign. In an article entitled “Japan sees the light”, its anonymous journalist sounded a note of genuine excitement:
A revolution may indeed be taking place in Japan. First, the Liberal Democratic Party’s dominion is probably over. Second, and more important, the politics of Japan is changing because the people of Japan are changing ... the man in the noodle bar thinks he has subordinated his own interests to those of company and government for long enough.
Or, in the words of the Peter Finch character in the film Network: “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more.”
The article did not actually appear in the run-up to last Sunday’s election, in which the Democratic Party of Japan swept the LDP from power, but in 1993. It describes the split in the LDP that led to the formation of the short-lived administration of Morihiro Hosokawa, the first time since 1955 that the LDP was out of power.
The consensus view at the time, which I fully shared, was that the LDP had reached the end of the road and would, like the Italian Christian Democrats — another right-wing, pro-American, business friendly, party of perpetual government with alleged links to organised crime — quietly fade away. Japan, its days of dramatic postwar growth becoming a slightly faded memory, clearly needed a change and seemed about to get one.
We were all wrong. Although the LDP was a construct of the Cold War, it survived the collapse of communism. The British Army of the Rhine, another historical relic that outlived the ending of the era that gave it birth, at least had the decency to change its name but for the LDP it still seemed to be business as usual. Within a year the Hosokawa Government had crumbled, and the LDP was back. Japan, deprived of the change it deserved, slipped further in torpor and stagnation.
Nonetheless, the LDP’s dominion was indeed coming to an end but like, Charles II, it has been an unconscionable time a-dying. The party lost its majority in the (less powerful) upper house in the 1980s and has ruled in coalitions since regaining power in 1994 with prime ministers coming and going in dizzying succession.
The only incumbent to serve for any length of time was Junichiro Koizumi (2001-06), the only LDP leader in living memory to win the approval of the foreign press. This was because: (a) he seemed to share the media’s disdain for his own party and (b) because he was in favour of “reform”. The exact nature of this “reform” was never specified but it seemed to involve the privatisation of the Post Office, a policy that had long obsessed Mr Koizumi and in which no one else had ever shown any interest.
At the time Mr Koizumi seemed to be building a bright new future for the party that he sometimes claimed he wished to destroy, but in retrospect his occupation of the crease seems less of a match-deciding innings than a low-order cameo that entertained the crowd and produced some bravura strokeplay but had no real effect on the match. Once Mr Koizumi was out the opposition DPJ wasted little time in wrapping up the tail of lacklustre LDP politicians. The DPJ took control of the upper house in 2007, making any legislation difficult for the Government and the last three prime ministers have each only lasted a year.
Will the defenestration of the LDP lead to real change? The leaders of the DPJ are hardly wild-eyed revolutionaries. The leader, Yukio Hatoyama, is the grandson of the first LDP Prime Minister and seems keen to continue in his father’s tradition. His predecessor as DPJ leader — and still the power behind the throne — is Ichiro Ozawa, who occupied a similar role in the 1993-94 Hosokawa administration and was, before that, an LDP powerbroker..
Read entire article at Times Online
The Economist spoke for most of the serious foreign press in welcoming the beginning of the election campaign. In an article entitled “Japan sees the light”, its anonymous journalist sounded a note of genuine excitement:
A revolution may indeed be taking place in Japan. First, the Liberal Democratic Party’s dominion is probably over. Second, and more important, the politics of Japan is changing because the people of Japan are changing ... the man in the noodle bar thinks he has subordinated his own interests to those of company and government for long enough.
Or, in the words of the Peter Finch character in the film Network: “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more.”
The article did not actually appear in the run-up to last Sunday’s election, in which the Democratic Party of Japan swept the LDP from power, but in 1993. It describes the split in the LDP that led to the formation of the short-lived administration of Morihiro Hosokawa, the first time since 1955 that the LDP was out of power.
The consensus view at the time, which I fully shared, was that the LDP had reached the end of the road and would, like the Italian Christian Democrats — another right-wing, pro-American, business friendly, party of perpetual government with alleged links to organised crime — quietly fade away. Japan, its days of dramatic postwar growth becoming a slightly faded memory, clearly needed a change and seemed about to get one.
We were all wrong. Although the LDP was a construct of the Cold War, it survived the collapse of communism. The British Army of the Rhine, another historical relic that outlived the ending of the era that gave it birth, at least had the decency to change its name but for the LDP it still seemed to be business as usual. Within a year the Hosokawa Government had crumbled, and the LDP was back. Japan, deprived of the change it deserved, slipped further in torpor and stagnation.
Nonetheless, the LDP’s dominion was indeed coming to an end but like, Charles II, it has been an unconscionable time a-dying. The party lost its majority in the (less powerful) upper house in the 1980s and has ruled in coalitions since regaining power in 1994 with prime ministers coming and going in dizzying succession.
The only incumbent to serve for any length of time was Junichiro Koizumi (2001-06), the only LDP leader in living memory to win the approval of the foreign press. This was because: (a) he seemed to share the media’s disdain for his own party and (b) because he was in favour of “reform”. The exact nature of this “reform” was never specified but it seemed to involve the privatisation of the Post Office, a policy that had long obsessed Mr Koizumi and in which no one else had ever shown any interest.
At the time Mr Koizumi seemed to be building a bright new future for the party that he sometimes claimed he wished to destroy, but in retrospect his occupation of the crease seems less of a match-deciding innings than a low-order cameo that entertained the crowd and produced some bravura strokeplay but had no real effect on the match. Once Mr Koizumi was out the opposition DPJ wasted little time in wrapping up the tail of lacklustre LDP politicians. The DPJ took control of the upper house in 2007, making any legislation difficult for the Government and the last three prime ministers have each only lasted a year.
Will the defenestration of the LDP lead to real change? The leaders of the DPJ are hardly wild-eyed revolutionaries. The leader, Yukio Hatoyama, is the grandson of the first LDP Prime Minister and seems keen to continue in his father’s tradition. His predecessor as DPJ leader — and still the power behind the throne — is Ichiro Ozawa, who occupied a similar role in the 1993-94 Hosokawa administration and was, before that, an LDP powerbroker..