Splitting headaches

Splitting headaches

Party divisions suggest Japan’s political transformation has a long way to go

Apr 8th 2010 | TOKYO | From The Economist print edition

THE survival instincts of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) have long been extraordinary.

Born early in the cold war, it was still clinging to power almost 20 years after the fall of the Berlin

Wall. Though neither particularly liberal nor especially democratic, nor even (by Western

standards) much like a real party, the LDP still once hoped to rule Japan for “half an eternity”. Yet

this week it lurched closer to extinction after senior figures walked out to form a new political

group.

Compared with the LDP’s overwhelming electoral defeat last year, the departure of Kaoru Yosano,

a 71-year-old former finance minister, and at least two other party veterans might be an historical

footnote. But it reflects a growing fragmentation of Japan’s political landscape in advance of

upper-house elections in July. This poses a threat not just to the LDP but to the ruling Democratic

Party of Japan (DPJ).

The Stand Up, Japan party—to be formed by Mr Yosano, and another former LDP minister, Takeo

Hiranuma—is unlikely to represent a progressive force. Mr Yosano is a fiscal conservative, Mr

Hiranuma a hard-line right-winger. The party appears to have the blessing of some of the Jurassic

elements of Japan’s establishment, such as Shintaro Ishihara, governor of Tokyo, and Tsuneo

Watanabe, 84-year-old head of the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper.

Its formation, however, comes at a moment when, for the first time, opinion polls show that more

than half of voters reject the DPJ as well as the LDP. That could benefit Japan’s array of

upstarts—and one of them in particular, the pro-free-market Your Party, which is edging up in the

opinion polls. By setting up to the right of others, Stand Up, Japan may be hoping to draw

right-wingers away from both main parties. For the DPJ government that is troubling because its

own poll support has slumped as a result of indecisiveness and funding scandals involving Yukio

Hatoyama, the prime minister, and Ichiro Ozawa, the party’s influential secretary-general. Until

recently, the party’s only consolation was that its rival, the LDP, was even less popular.

Within the DPJ, despair at Messrs Hatoyama and Ozawa is growing. On April 7th Kozo Watanabe,

an influential DPJ rebel, went so far as to suggest that Mr Hatoyama’s cabinet should resign en

masse if it fails by next month to resolve a fractious issue concerning the relocation of an

American marine base in Okinawa, an island in southern Japan.

A day earlier, Yosuke Kondo, a deputy minister in Mr Hatoyama’s government, said that 80% of

the DPJ think Mr Ozawa should leave his post, and that kicking him out would be a good way for

Mr Hatoyama to show leadership. However, he acknowledged there was a risk that a disgruntled

Mr Ozawa could team up with Mr Yosano and take some of the party with him. He said Naoto

Kan, the finance minister, had recently warned party members of the dangers of turning Mr Ozawa

into an opponent. “You have to keep him in the birdcage,” as Mr Kan supposedly put it.

The DPJ is traumatised by fear of internal strife. The previous time the LDP lost power in 1993,

the government that took over—which includes many of today’s DPJ stalwarts—promptly tore

itself apart through internal wrangling, much of it orchestrated by Mr Ozawa. The LDP was back

in charge 11 months later.

What is more, before it took power the DPJ lambasted the LDP for changing a string of prime

ministers without holding a general election. “Hardly anyone in the party wants to remove

Hatoyama-san from the leadership before he finishes his four-year term,” Mr Kondo says. A revolving door of prime ministers, “damages people’s trust.”

If the polls are right, however, trust is dwindling anyway. Unless the party can restore its lustre

before the upper-house elections, say political analysts, the DPJ may be forced to rely on scrappy

coalition partners.

If it does badly in those elections, it may find it easier to jettison Mr Ozawa, as the architect of the

poor performance, and perhaps get rid of Mr Hatoyama, too. But as Japanese politics fragment,

the party may no longer be able to count on an anti-LDP vote. The most powerful message from

last August’s election was not of people’s loyalty to the DPJ, though it won overwhelmingly. It

was that voters, after five decades of one-party rule, suddenly grasped that they have the power to

change politics. The DPJ is now realising, to its alarm, that that change cuts both ways.