In Japanese election, populist appeals and claims of political theater

Published: September 17, 2008

By Martin Fackler

 

 

Barack Obama accused his opponents of trying to put lipstick on a pig, and some people here are saying that Japan's governing Liberal Democratic Party is trying to do much the same thing.

The party, which has governed Japan for a half century, would seem to have departed drastically from back-room politics as usual. As it prepares to choose the next prime minister, it is parading its five candidates, including the first woman to seek the job, on street corners and live television, where they have issued ringing calls for change.

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With the last two prime ministers' having failed in quick succession, the party is making a great show of seeking a reformer with genuine popular appeal to restore its flagging fortunes ahead of crucial national elections. The precedent that most of the candidates invoke is Junichiro Koizumi, the popular former prime minister whose message of reform rescued the Liberal Democrats from political crisis seven years ago.

But it is not clear that the push for change is anything more than a show. The overwhelming favorite in the party vote on Monday is the same politician the experts named as the likely winner months before the campaign began: the insiders' candidate, Taro Aso, a hawkish former foreign minister.

That has led many here to wonder whether the whole campaign has just been a skillful exercise in political Kabuki, an effort not to find an actual populist reformer, but to make the anointed winner, Aso, look like one in front of voters in the general election.

 

"The LDP's only chance is finding someone with high popular support, like Mr. Koizumi," said Takeshi Sasaki, a professor of politics at Gakushuin University in Tokyo, using the party's abbreviation. "But the party is also afraid of a second Koizumi."

According to Professor Sasaki and other political analysts, the party is leery of the real, disruptive change that such powerful populists can bring. Koizumi, after all, became popular by declaring war on his own party.

Koizumi took office in 2001, when Japan was mired in a decade of stagnation and near financial collapse. He turned the country around not only with what he did, but with his oddball charisma and pithy one-liners. Much like Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, he cheered up a nation and convinced it of the need to make painful market-opening changes. Koizumi's strong personal popularity also led the Liberal Democrats to landslide election victories.

That is the part that the Liberal Democrats would love to repeat this time, but without the other policies Koizumi brought with him: smashing the factions that once dominated internal party politics and loosening the grip of Japan's powerful bureaucrats, among other things. These reforms proved enormously popular with the Japanese public, which was fed up with the party's chronic corruption, but wary of handing power to the untested opposition.

Since Koizumi's departure two years ago, the party has been trying to salvage itself from the rubble, with limited success. The factions have made a comeback, though in a weakened state. Even in the current party vote for prime minister, they have failed to play their traditional role of kingmakers, shying from endorsing any of the candidates.

Also, it appears that voters will not tolerate a return to the party's old ways. Dismal approval ratings drove the most recent prime minister, Yasuo Fukuda, out of office in just under a year, after he tried to bring back the politics of closed doors and faction-led deal-making. Public opinion also rejected his predecessor, Shinzo Abe, whose rightist agenda overlooked the bread-and-butter economic concerns of most voters.

Many Liberal Democratic lawmakers describe the party as somehow frozen in mid-evolution. Koizumi destroyed the old political machine, but many Liberal Democrats are resisting their party's transformation into a truly modern political party galvanized by a common ideological agenda.

"The LDP is in a serious crisis because it doesn't stand for anything," said Taro Kono, a Liberal Democratic member of Japan's lower house. "It is just the party in power."

Completing this evolution may take an even more drastic crisis, like the loss of the party's monopoly on power.

"Real change means the creation of a true two-party democracy," said Kozo Watanabe, a senior member of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan. "The LDP does not want real change. It just wants to find someone who can put a popular face on the party."

That someone appears to be Aso, 67, who has been trying to present himself as populist, with some success. He has gotten top marks in popularity polls. Seeking to reach younger voters, he has appeared on television with a popular singing group, and frequently proclaims his affection for comics. He even gave a speech directed at the young people of Japan's comic and videogame subculture, addressing them as "those who call themselves geeks."

Junji Kurokawa/The AP

 

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But Aso is no Koizumi, as seen in the party race. Unlike his opponents, he has sought classic Liberal Democratic policies like trying to bolster the flagging economy with more government spending. Koizumi did the opposite, shrinking government and cutting public works projects that had littered Japan with roads and bridges to nowhere.

The other four candidates have also been borrowing Koizumi-like flourishes.

The only woman in the race, Yuriko Koike, 56, a former environmental minister under Koizumi and a television anchor, caused a minor stir for appearing in a government advertisement wearing a miniskirt. Her campaign's catchphrase — "What a waste, Japan!" — urges the nation not to put off reform. Last week, she received Koizumi's backing in the current party race.

"They are all trying to do Koizumi theater," said Watanabe of the Democratic Party. "But Mr. Koizumi may be the last to do it well."