Collected Writings of J. A. A. Stockwin: Part 1

COLLECTED WRITINGS OF J.A.A.STOCKWIN PART 1 THE POLITICS AND POLITICAL ENVIRONMENT OF JAPAN

Arthur Stockwin

Collected Writings of J.A.A.STOCKWIN PART 1 THE POLITICS AND POLITICAL ENVIRONMENT OF JAPAN The Collected Writings of Modern Western Scholars on Japan Volume 10

Edition Synapse

JAPAN LIBRARY

The Collected Writings of Modern Western Scholars on Japan, Vol. 10 COLLECTED WRITINGS OF J.A.A.STOCKWIN Part 1: The Politics and Political Environment of Japan © J.A.A.Stockwin, 2004 This edition co-published by Japan Library and Edition Synapse, 2004 Japan Library is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge's collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” ISBN (J.A.A.Stockwin) 1-903350-15-8 (Print Edition) (vol. 10) (J.Thomas Rimer) 1-903350-16-6 (Print Edition) (vol. 11) (Gordon Daniels) 1-903350-17-4 (Print Edition) (vol. 12) Vols. 10–12 ISBN 1-903350-18-2 (Print Edition) (3–vols. Set) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the Publishers, except for the use of short extracts in criticism. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library Edition Synapse 2–7–6 Uchikanda Chiyoda-ku Tokyo 101, Japan ISBN (J.A.A.Stockwin) 4-901481-29-0 (Print Edition) (vol. 10) (J.Thomas Rimer) 4-901481-31-2 (Print Edition) (vol. 11) (Gordon Daniels) 4-901481-30-4 (Print Edition) (vol. 12) Vols. 10–12 ISBN 4-901481-28-2 (Print Edition) (3 vols. Set) ISBN 0-203-49076-2 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-59777-X (Adobe e-Reader Format) ISBN 1-903350-15-8 (Print Edition)

To Audrey We have climbed mountains And gone down into valleys Our love stays with us

Contents

Introduction

1

PART I: JAPANESE ELECTIONS 1. Electing the Kyoto Governor: Travail of the Opposition Asia Pacific Forum, 1974 2. Shifting Alignments in Japanese Party Politics: The April 1974 Election for Governor of Kyoto Prefecture Asian Survey, 1974 3. Democracy and Elections: Japan Bogdanor and Butler, Democracy and Elections, 1983 4. Electoral Pressures for Change: The Effect of Political Reform AustralianJapan Research Centre, Pacific Economic Papers, 2000 5. Japan’s General Elections of June 2000: Revolution or Ripple Studies on Japan’s Changing Political Economy, 2001

17 21 34 52 74

PART II JAPANESE POLITICAL PARTIES AND POLITICAL ACTIVISM 6. ‘Positive Neutrality’—The Foreign Policy of the Japanese Socialist Party Asian Survey, 1962 7. The Japan Communist Party in the Sino-Soviet Dispute: From Neutrality to Alignment The Disintegrating Monolith, 1965 8. The Japanese Socialist Party under New Leadership Asian Survey, 1966 9. The Communist Party of Japan Problems of Communism, 1967 10. Japan Dissent, 1968 11. Political Parties in Postwar Japan World Review, 1969 12. The Japanese Opposition: Political Irrelevance or Wave of the Future? Australian Outlook, 1971 13. The Ultra-Right Wing in Japanese Politics World Review, 1972 14. The Rights and Lefts of Japanese Politics Melbourne, Japanese Studies Centre, 1983 15. Japan: The Leader-Follower Relationship in Parties Political Parties, 1987 16. Political Parties and Political Opposition Ishida and Krauss (eds) Democracy in Japan, 1989 17. Politics, Power and Parties in Japan Philipps-Universität Marburg, 1990 18. Challenge and Response, or Challenge and Failure to Respond?: The Nihon

94 102 114 127 141 145 154 169 181 191 208 226 242

Shakaitō under Doi Takako ANU, JSAA, 1991 19. Japan’s Opposition Parties and Prospects for Political Change Japan Foundation Newsletter, 1991 20. From JSP to SDPJ: The New Wave Society and the ‘New’ Nihon Shakaitō Japan Forum, 1991 21. On Trying to Move Mountains: The Political Career of Doi Takako Japan Forum, 1994

254 263 277

PART III: THE JAPANESE POLITICAL SYSTEM AND POLITICAL SYSTEM REFORM 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

Perceiving Japanese Politics Dissent, 1967 Is Japan a Post-Marxist Society? Pacific Affairs, 1968 Alternative Politics for Japan? Australia’s Neighbours, 1973–4 Is Japan Becoming Harder to Govern? Japanese History and Politics, 1980 Understanding Japanese Politics Social Analysis, 1980 Japan’s Political Crisis of 1980 Australian Outlook, 1981 Japanese Politics: New Directions or the Story as Before? Asian Affairs, 1983 The Occupation: Continuity or Change? Asian and African Studies, 1984 Japan as a Political Model? East Asia, 1984 Dynamic and Immobilist Aspects of Japanese Politics; Parties, Politicians and the Political System; Conclusions Dynamic and Immobilist Politics in Japan, 1988 New Directions in Japanese Politics Leaders and Leadership in Japan, 1996 The Need for Reform in Japanese Politics The Vitality of Japan, 1997 Deciphering Japanese Politics Asia Pacific Review, 1998 Converging or Diverging? The Politics of Japan and Britain Neesima Lectures Series, 1998 Do Political Parties Matter? Reflections on Japan and Europe Neesima Lectures Series, 1998

294 302 315 324 346 359 375 387 399 411

463 472 491 504 520

PART IV: POLITICAL FACTIONALISM 37. Faction and Ideology in Postwar Japanese Socialism Papers on Modern Japan, 537 1965 38. A Comparison of Political Factionalism in Japan and India Australian Journal 550 of Politics and History, 1970 39. Factionalism in Japanese Political Parties Japan Forum, 1989 566 Bibliography (See Collected Writings of J.A.A.Stockwin Part II) Index

578

Introduction ‘HOW DID YOU first become interested in Japan?’ This is a question I am asked fairly often, especially but not only from Japanese friends and acquaintances. I tend to give an enigmatic answer and then observe the reaction it elicits. The answer is: ‘Because I went to Australia’. Equally, though, I could answer: ‘By chance’. My experience of life suggests that chance plays a huge role in many of our most crucial choices. So far as Japan is concerned, there was very little in my background predisposing me to an interest in that distant country. Let me explain. One fateful morning which must have been in May or June of 1959, shortly before taking final exams at Oxford in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, I walked out of College before breakfast and bought a copy of the Manchester Guardian. There I found an advertisement for PhD scholarships at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra. Over that summer I applied for several jobs and various scholarships, but with little success. The application that I put in to the ANU was more a matter of routine than in pursuit of a clear ambition. Indeed, the fact that I had applied was something half-forgotten when, about three months later, I received a two-line acknowledgement on a postcard sent from Australia by sea mail. But a few days after that I took a phone call from my Oxford politics tutor telling me the ANU was offering me a scholarship. At that point I was just about to start a job working for a shipping research company whose offices were in Piccadilly. I moved into freezing and uncomfortable digs in Highgate, run by an ancient, chain-smoking French landlady who refused to believe that Canberra was the capital of Australia because she had been taught at school that the capital of Australia was Melbourne (as indeed it was, when she was at school). I stayed two months at the Westinform Shipping Service, then left before Christmas to prepare for a new life. Audrey and I were married at the end of January 1960 and a week later We set out on a leisurely honeymoon on the SS Orcades bound for Australia. I went to the ANU intending to write a doctoral thesis on Soviet foreign policy in Asia. Knowing Russian from an intensive army Russian course at the Joint Services School of Languages in 1955–6, 1 I began to examine in more detail the possibilities of the topic I had proposed. It failed to jell, however, and in the course of pre-researching it I became more and more interested in the Asian side of the equation, and most particularly in Japan. I tentatively began to work on a study of Japanese foreign policy since the war, with particular reference to Japan-Soviet relations. I also began to learn Japanese, enrolling in a university course, and supplementing this with conversation classes arranged with native speakers. I also spent many hours recording and trying to decipher NHK overseas radio broadcasts, barely audible through the static. A phrase from one of these broadcasts, endlessly repeated as I played it back, remains in the memory: Higashiyama no fumoto e (towards the foot of Mount Higashi). I think this was in a programme about crafts in Kyoto. I remember taking nearly two weeks trying to puzzle

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out the meaning of a single sentence in a section on international relations in the Asahi Nenkan. It is interesting in retrospect that the ANU authorities were prepared to let me start learning Japanese from scratch as part of what was technically a three-year scholarship. I believe the reason was that they thought learning Japanese was a task roughly on a par with learning Indonesian, or perhaps even Italian. Had they known more about the Japanese language, I am fairly sure they would not have allowed me to do it. I draw from this the conclusion that while in administrative matters absolute knowledge is desirable, absolute ignorance can also be beneficial. About a year after arriving in Canberra I was finally given a supervisor who knew something about Japan. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to him, although I am not sure that I entirely appreciated his efforts at the time. David Sissons is an Australian who had written seminal articles on Article 9 of Japan’s 1946 Constitution, 2 on the political crisis over the Police Duties bill in 1958, 3 and most significantly from my point of view, a two-part article on the Japan Socialist Party 4 in the long-defunct journal Far Eastern Survey, predecessor of Asian Survey. His Masters thesis from the University of Melbourne on the pre-war history of defence relations between Australia and Japan had not been published, but was cited in more subsequent publications than most published books. He was later to concentrate his efforts on the history of Australia-Japan relations, a field in which he became and remained unchallenged. 5 This meant, however, that from the late 1960s he was little involved in the study of post-war Japanese politics. David Sissons is one of the most meticulous persons I have ever met. As his graduate student I did not always appreciate his concern with punctuation and with the precise placing of words in a sentence. At times I was irreverent enough to feel that he was more concerned about commas and semi-colons than with the understanding of political phenomena. But he was, in fact, exactly what I needed: the provider of rigorous discipline to a singularly disorganised graduate student. And in fact he was also decisively concerned with content, and with rigorous analysis. He never let me get away with arguments whose empirical backing was in any way incomplete., and footnoting had to be full and punctilious. It seems possible that my own graduate students may feel that I absorbed his precise concern with language, punctuation and footnoting, and came to apply it pedantically to them. When we first met, in the early months of 1961, I was still struggling with Japanese, finding out all I could about contemporary Japanese politics and foreign policy, and seeking to identify a researchable topic. Like most graduate students in the early stages I had an area but not a focus, and the area was too broad to be capable of comprehensive treatment in a PhD thesis. At that time not much had been published in English that would cover the field, and I remember ploughing through many unwieldy volumes of Keesing’s Contemporary Archives to discover the basic facts of what had happened in Japan politically since the Occupation. When David Sissons arrived, fresh from his researches into the Japan Socialist Party— at that time still a major force in the land—he suggested that I examine the neutralist foreign policies of that party, see what they meant in foreign policy terms and how they played in the context of domestic politics. This was a truly brilliant suggestion, and it furnished me with a line of attack that was to work out well. The thesis, 6 the book later

Introduction

3

based on it, 7 and much subsequent published research, owed their inspiration from that initial suggestion. Another contribution of David Sissons was his insistence that I intensify my immersion in the language. By the end of 1961 I had taken year one and year two of the ANU Japanese course, under the general supervision of the memorable Professor Joyce Ackroyd. But the course was of rather low intensity. So most evenings of the week were devoted to privately arranged conversation classes. Since we had no money to pay for this, I engaged in barter, receiving one hour of Japanese conversation then giving one hour of English conversation. I remember reading The Sun also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway, with a Japanese graduate student of chemistry, until eventually he got fed up with it and said ‘no more Hemingway!’ I also had to teach English to a Japanese woman who had no ear for language at all. I was persistent in goading her to pronounce ‘Woolworths’ correctly. It came out as ‘Urusu’. I would slowly repeat: ‘Woo-l-wor-th-s’. ‘U-ru-u-ru-su-su’ would be the response. I would then step up the pressure and try ‘wolves’. This came out as ‘Urubusu’. I had nightmares in which I was being chased by Urubusu through the kitchen sections of U-ru-u-ru-su-su. We arrived for the first time in Japan a few weeks short of two years after reaching Canberra. To say that I was linguistically insufficiently prepared for the task at hand was an understatement. But at least I had a firm basis on which to build once the language was all around us. Several weeks later I was interviewing politicians, missing the subtleties of what they said, but picking up useful information. My experience of learning Japanese is not one that I would recommend to anybody, and I have remained painfully innocent of much grammatical analysis, but looked at pragmatically it worked—more or less. But when I look back on it, it was not just the language that was the problem. When I began my course at ANU I doubt if I knew more about Japan than I knew about Argentina, and I knew little about Argentina, though I had probably heard of Peron and Fray Bentos beef. It is true that as part of my course in Oxford I had read Richard Storry’s intriguing book The Double Patriots, about Japanese army factionalism in the 1930s. I had certainly heard of the Tokugawa Shogunate, but did I know what it was? This takes me back to the question whether anything earlier might have predisposed me to an interest in Japan. To research this question, I have consulted a diary that I sporadically wrote over a twoyear period in the middle 1950s, including part of my period of national service. In the whole diary I found just two references to Japan. One related to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, though the entry is of little interest. Of course I could remember reports of the atom bombing in 1945, and was just old enough to remember Pearl Harbor, though it would have meant little to a six-year-old. The other entry was dated 15 March 1955 and the location was the freezing barracks of the Joint Services School of Languages at Bodmin in Cornwall, where my fellow kursanty and I were in the early stages of learning Russian. Remember that the writer of the diary was a rather confused and rebellious conscript aged nineteen, confiding subversive thoughts to his diary. The entry read as follows: ‘The weapons training film this morning was made by the US army during the war, to show the military power and tenacity of Japan. What emerged was something like an

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enticement to a five minutes hate. It was difficult to know whether to dislike most the makers of the film or its subjects. No attempt was made to counter the impression that the Japanese were a different and verminous species of animal from ourselves. Indeed the commentary stated that the two races were totally different in mind: ‘their thinking is two thousand years out of date’. There are two reflections to be made: is Japan safe now, while we transfer our hatred to China? And how easily could a nation of fanatics like this be turned into something better?’ Well, I suppose this might have led to a research agenda, of a sort. I might add that I can neither remember the film, nor even the fact that I went to it. But most importantly, I have access to a primary source, and that is greatly to be preferred to the fallibility of uncertain memory. Strangely, I do remember an incident which must have been some months later, after I had given up writing the diary. I was hitch-hiking between the Russian course base at Foxton Hall, near Cambridge (where we had moved to from Bodmin) and home in Birmingham. I was given a lift by a man who turned out to have been trained on an army Japanese course during the war. I asked him what the language was like and he told me that it had adjectives that conjugated like verbs and passive verbs taking a direct object. Having a Latin and Greek background from school, I think my reaction was something like: ‘Cor, the Japanese must be a pretty rum lot, if they organise their language like that’. I also remember putting to him the view, common in Britain at the time, that the Japanese were a race of fanatics. His reply, which I have reconstructed from memory, is interesting: ‘To learn Japanese is to become fascinated by Japanese culture. The army probably didn’t realise what they were doing when they set out to teach us Japanese, but the effect of the course was to make us mesmerised by Japan. From the outside the Japanese may look like fanatics, but you have to understand this in the context of a very different—and in many ways attractive—culture. Forty years later, no doubt this man would have been accused in some quarters of belonging to the ‘Chrysanthemum Club’, on the ground that to study Japan is to risk being subverted by it. Neither of these episodes led to any immediate follow-up, and it was not till Australia that I became interested in Japan in earnest. The first time that Audrey and I set foot in Japan was on 2 February 1962. We saw it, not from the windows of a 747, and what we saw was not Narita Airport, which at that time was a mere glint in the eyes of Mr Kōno Ichirō. No, we saw Japan from the deck of the SS Suez Maru of the OSK Line (Osaka Shōsen Kaisha), a cargo vessel carrying twelve passengers—several of whom had jumped straight out of the pages of a novel by Somerset Maugham—and a number of horses being imported from Australia to Japan for show-jumping. On this fine vessel the two of us with our two-month-old, red-haired daughter Kate had travelled from Sydney. I will quote some sentences from a letter to my parents, some of whose language now astonishes me: ‘The landfall was at sundown of the 2nd (Friday) and we lay offshore overnight. Next morning we had our first proper sight of Japan. The mountains of the Japan Alps covered with snow down to their lower slopes, and Yokkaichi, a complex of huge oil refineries and factories, seen through the early morning haze in the foreground two or three miles from us. The weather, crisp and cloudless. The ship quickly came to the wharf and we

Introduction

5

landed…at about half past ten…. The train from Yokkaichi to Nagoya took forty minutes; it was quite crowded, mostly with students in their black uniforms buttoned up to the neck like tram conductors. Women carrying their infants in slings behind their backs and dressed mostly in dark blue kimonos tight about the legs and making them shuffle. In Yokkaichi and Nagoya we saw many bicycles and scooters and motorbikes but comparatively few cars except taxis and small trucks, mostly with a three-wheel cab in front [ōtosanrinsha]. One immediately striking thing was that a large number of people wore gauze masks over their faces as a protection against colds and other infections. It made the whole place look rather like a hospital’. I noted that train fares were much cheaper than they were in Australia. After experiencing our first earthquake (while I was shaving), I started serious research and we settled into a ramshackle wooden house in Kita-ku, Nishigahara, some twenty minutes by toden (Tokyo trams) north of the University of Tokyo. The house was owned by an elderly woman who lived in Hawai’i, called Mrs Hiroshige! I wrote to my parents the following definitive impression about how the Japanese lived, and how foreigners lived, in Tokyo: ‘Wages…here are ridiculously low (though high in comparison with the rest of Asia) and many people get about £stg15 a month. Most shops are open all day, every day, and are only too anxious to deliver to your door. The rubbish men call every day. On the other hand there isn’t enough electricity to run an electric fire without fusing the system and water pressure is nil during the morning most days. Most Japanese live in an absence of comfort which surprises the westerner (no means of heating water except a gas ring is usual), and most houses still rely on charcoal burners for heating, and yet about seventy percent of houses in Tokyo have television sets.’ ‘[according to some American friends] the members of the international art club mostly buy expensive paintings…as investments, and don’t bother to hang them up, because they don’t like them. Particularly the embassy people here tend to live in a closed world, with vast subsidies enabling them to pay monstrous sums for their rent, and chauffeur driven cars ridding them of the necessity of using the public transport system. An article in the Japan Times… said that some people had actually started using the subway after they had discovered that some of the stations led straight into some of the department stores. The article therefore suggested that its readers do likewise and that they take their drivers with them in order to guide them and read the station names. It seems to be possible, if you are paid by the right people, to live here and come into no contact with the Japanese whatever. Students, on the other hand, mostly American, live in anything from a hovel with one gasring and no bathroom up to vaguely reasonable accommodation.’ The article in the Japan Times mentioned in this extract was by Paul Aurell, a regular columnist on the newspaper at that period. His column would be worth revisiting for insights into the surprisingly closed world of the foreign community—or influential parts of it—in Tokyo a few years after the war. I also remember articles by the paper’s economics correspondent, Joseph Z.Reday, who expatiated on ‘the underlying economic poverty of this nation’. This, let us remember, was in 1962–3, when the growth rate of GDP was around 10 per cent. While in Tokyo I was affiliated with the Institute of Social Science of Tokyo

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University, known as Shaken, short for Shakai kagaku kenkyūjo. Its Director for much of the period I was there was Professor Takahashi Kōhachirō, a specialist on the French Revolution and celebrated bon viveur. I was assigned as supervisor the political historian, Professor Hayashi Shigeru, who was fascinated by the detail of politics and of the personalities of politicians. He gave me useful introductions, and listened patiently to my brash speculations about the workings of Japanese politics (interjecting an occasional gentle word of correction). He and his wife entertained us at his beautiful old house in Kamakura, and we remained close friends until his untimely death in 1985. After Mrs Hayashi died in 1999, and following his wishes expressed before he died, I was allowed to make a selection from his unique book collection for the Bodleian Japanese Library in Oxford. Two other institutions were important to me during that first fifteen months experience of Japan. One was International House (Kokusai Bunka Kaikan) in Roppongi, where we stayed when we first arrived. In those days it was difficult to reach by public transport, but it had (and has) a useful library of books mainly in English, and the staff were (and are) amazingly helpful. The other was the National Diet Library, then newly housed in a modern building across the road from the Parliament building. I spent many hours there, working through the files of the press cutting section (Shinbun kirinuki bu), reading yellowed newspaper articles that had been laboriously pasted onto the pages of notebooks. The section was presided over by Mr Nakai, a man of great kindness, but so soft-spoken that he almost melted into the background. On one occasion a group of foreign graduate students, including me, were discussing in whispered but no doubt animated tones something one of us had discovered from the files. Mr Nakai came up to us and uttered a series of sentences so circumlocutory that none of us could fully understand their purport. Realising eventually that his message had not been comprehended, he said quite simply ‘“Be quiet” to iu koto desu’ (‘What I mean is “be quiet”’). The Japan Socialist Party (Nihon Shakaitō) and its declared foreign policy of neutralism (sometimes called ‘positive neutrality’) was the topic of my doctoral thesis. Armed with introductions from David Sissons and Professor Hayashi, I made contact with various people in the party. In the early stages my Japanese was woefully inadequate for the task of interviewing, but I decided right from the start that I would do without a tape recorder, which seemed likely to inhibit a frank response. Very quickly, I learned several valuable lessons: 1. Avoid scheduling interviews immediately after each other. Leave time to be able to go straight from the interview to a coffee shop, alone, with enough time to decipher the notes of incompletely-understood conversations and write up as coherent an account of the interview as possible, as soon as possible after the event. 2. Avoid, if possible, doing an interview over a meal. (At times, however, this proved unavoidable). Nothing is more nerve-wracking than manipulating chop sticks and writing notes of the discussion at the same time. A meal is a distraction from full concentration on the information being conveyed. 3. Learn up as quickly as possible the specialist vocabulary of the subject. It turned out that I had a topic made in Heaven in one rather peculiar sense. The Socialists wrote, and to a lesser extent spoke, in a semi-Marxist framework of thought. This was much

Introduction

7

more pronounced on the left of the party than on the right, but the point was that it was easy to learn the Japanese used within the conceptual framework within which they were inclined to shape their ideas. Problems arose, of course, when they reverted to ordinary speech, particularly when it was the colloquial language of the street, and of their constituents. 4. Make sure that you know as much background as possible about the person being interviewed before the interview. I learned this lesson the hard way in respect of one individual. Probably rather early in my stay in Tokyo, I interviewed one Satō Noboru, who at the time was influential in the formation of JSP foreign policy. The interview was rather stiff and formal. At one point I asked him whether he originated from the left or right wing of the party. ‘Left’, he replied without former elaboration. I felt the interview had been a failure. Later, however, I discovered what I should known in advance, that Mr Satō, with a number of others, had earlier been expelled from the Japan Communist Party for championing the ‘structural reform’ line of the Italian Communist Party leader Palmiro Togliatti, and was now developing these ideas within the coterie of Eda Saburō. I asked for a second interview, and when I met him again apologised for being badly briefed on the first occasion. This time, the atmosphere could not have been more different. He opened up, and gave me much valuable information and ideas. 5. Closely related to the fourth point, show that you have in depth knowledge about the broad subject under investigation. After I had been in Japan for several months, had read far more about the party and was understanding most of what was said to me, I was in a group of people (politicians, journalists) in the Parliament building. We were dissecting in considerable detail what had been going on in the party over recent times. I must have showed that I knew what I was talking about, because at one point a Mainichi Shinbun journalist looked at me and said: ‘Ah, yoku wakaru, na!’ (‘Ah, you understand what’s going on, don’t you’). This remark no doubt boosted my ego at the time, but much more importantly, it led to me being given much more useful information. I had a sense that I was being taken into the inner circles, rather than drifting on the periphery. On one occasion, though, I had the unfortunate experience that history was being made, but that by inadvertence I missed it. The JSP held its annual Congress in the Kudan Kaikan (Kudan Hall) in Tokyo in October 1962.1 had managed to obtain a ticket and attended the proceedings until late in the evening. This was the heyday of the ‘Structural Reform’ ideas of Eda Saburō and his circle, which in retrospect looks like an attempt to make party policy more appropriate to an era in which many ordinary people were experiencing rapid improvements in their standards of living. Eda, earlier the same year, had announced his ‘Vision’ of a Japan with the high standard of living of the United States, the parliamentary democracy of the United Kingdom, the social welfare provision of the Soviet Union and the Peace Constitution of Japan. This, however, was too eclectic and unorthodox for the Marxist left of the party, and he met determined opposition. At the Congress, debates took place on a range of issues relating to Structural Reform, and things seemed to be progressing smoothly enough from Eda’s point of view. Sometime after eleven o-clock at night, worried about missing the last train home, I decided nothing more was likely to happen and left. To my chagrin next morning I

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learned that a vote had been taken after midnight and Eda had been defeated. This was a fateful event in the history of the party, and I had missed it! (Had I stayed and taken a taxi home the fare would have been calculated on a minimum base of 80 yen.) With the defeat of Eda in 1962 the best chance for the emergence of a viable opposition party, capable of challenging the Liberal Democrats on their own ground, was ended for a generation. In my opinion, without effective opposition the dangers attendant on political dominance by a single party were allowed to fester unchecked, and this has been a major factor creating the intractable politico-economic difficulties of the past decade. Perhaps some indication of the party’s problems in the 1960s is provided by the fact that of three highly intelligent people within the party with whom I became most closely acquainted, two (Yamaguchi Fusao and Fujimaki Shinpei) left soon afterwards for academic positions, and one (Uezumi Minoru) remained but became increasingly bitter and disillusioned. I have dwelled at some length on my period of doctoral research in Japan because it was so obviously seminal in the development of my ideas and because (though to dwell on this may be self-indulgent) it remains incredibly vivid in the memory for both personal and academic reasons. At this point I should attempt some reckoning of the themes that began to emerge in those memorable years of 1962 and 1963. First of all, and most obviously, I became concerned with parties of the left, not only the JSP, but also the Japan Communist Party, and indeed the interactions of those two parties. In the 1960s the rivalry and interaction between them was particularly tumultuous in their relations with China and the USSR, attitudes to the nuclear test ban treaty and control of the anti-nuclear weapons movement. The emergence into the open of the SinoSoviet dispute from around 1960 was particularly divisive for the JCP, but also difficult for the JSP. By the middle of the decade, the Japanese Communists had broken successively with Moscow and Beijing, whereas in the more loosely structured Socialist Party Maoist elements remained well into the Vietnam War period. This was a period when the Communist world seemed to be fragmenting, and in 1964 in Canberra I participated in a fascinating conference that led to a book entitled The Disintegrating Monolith. 8 To the disappointment of many liberals, however, it was to take another twoand-a-half decades before fragmentation ended in collapse, and the ending of the Cold War. Arguably the Cold War still has not entirely come to an end in East Asia. Another related concern was with the development of controversies over Japanese foreign policy. Between the 1950s to the 1970s what may broadly be called ‘Cold War issues’ divided the left of the political spectrum from the right, with the left opposed to the security relationship with the United States and championing the principles—and indeed the letter—of the 1946 ‘Peace Constitution’. The period when Satō Eisaku was Prime Minister (1964–1972) saw severe left-right confrontations over the Japan-US Mutual Security Treaty, relations with the two Chinas, irredentist claims to Okinawa (administered by the US until 1972) and the peace clause of the Constitution. My textbook on Japanese politics that was published in its original edition in 1975 came out under the title: Japan: Divided Politics in a Growth Economy. 9 Some critics, no doubt influenced by consensual notions of how Japanese politics worked, questioned whether Japan really had divided politics. But my studies of the domestic and international politics

Introduction

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of Japan in the 1950s and 1960s had convinced me that there was a fundamental divide between contrasting visions of where Japan’s international destiny lay. On the other hand, I gradually came to realise that a delicate balance had been struck between the principle—favoured on the left—of non-confrontational foreign policy, a distancing of Japan from the US, and minimal defence, and the principle favoured by the bulk of the Liberal Democratic Party of security alliance with the United States and opposition to Communism. Essentially, this meant that Japan provided the US with military bases on her soil, officially supported the anti-Communist aspects of American foreign policy, but kept her own forces at a relatively low level and contributed as little as possible to security outside homeland defence. The balance remained relatively intact (though with substantial increases in the military budget in the 1980s) until the Cold War came to an end at the start of the 1990s, and the shape of the international system began to change. My own view in the late 1960s (and indeed later) was that Japan’s low profile foreign and defence policies would be slow to change, and I wrote an article to that effect in Australian Outlook in 1968. 10 A very different view was put forward at about the same time by Donald Hellmann of the University of Washington in his book Japan and East Asia. 11 Don Hellmann and I had been graduate students together in Tokyo in the early 1960s, where he had been researching the Japan-Soviet negotiations of 1955–6. He believed that the logic of international relations meant that Japan would have to adopt ‘realistic’ defence and foreign policies. I believed, to the contrary, that the logic of domestic Japanese politics meant that this was unlikely to happen, except perhaps in the very long term (and what did Keynes say about that?). We entered into an extensive private correspondence about these matters, and in the end agreed to differ. Thirdly, from an early stage in my research on the foreign policies of the JSP, I became aware of the central importance of factions and factional divisions in Japanese politics. At the time it was widely assumed that whereas LDP factions were largely leader-follower groups, recruited on the basis of personal connections and mutual advantage, factions in the JSP were ideological. There was indeed a good deal of evidence to support such a contention so far as the JSP was concerned, and I was able to show that JSP factions of the early 1960s had genealogies going back to the 1920s, long before the JSP as such was formed immediately after the war. And the groups that formed in the 1920s were indeed created on the basis of different ideological approaches to politics, from Marxism on the left to management-labour co-operation on the right. Nevertheless, as I pursued my investigations in greater detail, it became evident that not all aspects of JSP factionalism could be explained in terms of ideological difference and confrontation. For instance, in 1960, two leading members of the same centrist faction, Kawakami Jōtarō and Asanuma Inejirō, contested the party chairmanship. I formed the view that though ideological differences between JSP factions remained immensely important, personal loyalty and power politics were also crucial. This raised interesting questions of a theoretical order, such as how far JSP factionalism was conditioned by social-cultural factors and how far by institutions (such as who constituted the electorate for the party chairmanship, as this changed over time). I sometimes ventured to wonder (not perhaps in print) which came first, the ideological orientation or the political network. Did those with a given ideology create a faction, or rather, did those

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constituting a leader-follower grouping adopt an ideology? There was evidence for both these propositions to be found in the history of the party. Comparisons with other parties obviously needed to be made, I wrote some articles on Japanese party factionalism in general, but in my opinion a good deal of important comparative research remains to be carried out in this area. A fourth area of concern was how far Marxist-influenced thought continued to be relevant in Japanese conditions. In 1966 Robert Scalapino (who had been an external examiner of my doctoral thesis, and whom I held in high regard) published a book on the Japan Communist Party, in whose final paragraph he argued that in essence, Japan was now a ‘post-Marxist society’. 12 On sabbatical leave in England in December 1967, I gave a seminar at St Antony’s College, Oxford (chaired by Richard Storry) in which I questioned this view. I wrote up the seminar presentation into an article entitled ‘Is Japan a Post-Marxist Society?’, which was published in Pacific Affairs in 1968. 13 Scalapino’s book appeared at a time when the JCP, electorally in the doldrums since the early 1950s, was beginning to make some political headway. There were those in the LDP who were coming to regard the Japanese Communists as potentially more of a threat than the Socialists, and this is probably connected with a ‘dirty tricks’ campaign in the 1970s that had some success in stemming their advance. But I was also arguing that some elements in Marxist theory could be used to good effect with regard to various new political issues that were becoming central to the politics of the 1970s. In retrospect Scalapino’s argument might be seen as merely premature, in that Marxism seems to have largely departed from the Japanese political scene following the ending of the Cold War. But the argument links in with contemporary issues of globalisation, and whether there are one or several possible ways of organising modern societies and polities. For the first half of my academic career I was based in Australia, and watched with great interest the building up of economic relations between Australia and Japan, based to a considerable extent on an expanding minerals trade. A fifth interest, therefore, came to be the development of the Japan-Australia relationship. In 1972 I edited a conference volume on the relationship, entitled Japan and Australia in the Seventies. 14 Later, I contributed several entries on aspects of relations between the two countries to the Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan. 15 The Australian Journal of Politics and History, based in Brisbane, included in each issue a survey of the previous six months of Australian foreign policy. I contributed two of these. 16 For nearly a year in 1975–6 I was an ‘Academic in Residence’ in the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs. This gave me a vantage point to observe the negotiation of the ‘Nara Treaty’ between Australia and Japan. 17 I thus gained further insights into the relationship, even though the research on it remains incomplete. Late in the 1970s my friend Fukui Haruhiro, who had been a graduate student with me at ANU in the 1960s, asked me to co-operate with him in a two-volume work entitled Political Parties of Asia and the Pacific (Greenwood Press, 1985), and I became Associate Editor for Japan. I ended up writing all the entries on Japanese parties from the Meiji period onwards, except for local parties in Okinawa. This entailed trawling through various reference and historical works, mostly in Japanese, and it gave me a sense of the sheer richness of Japan’s political party culture. Indeed, I wrote entries on no less than 176 parties—some of them extremely ephemeral but many of them substantial—that had

Introduction

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existed since the 1870s. The transition from the 1970s to the 1980s was to mean a revolution in our lives. In 1979 the Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. had given endowment funding to the University of Oxford, leading to the establishment of the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies. The Chair was advertised. I applied early in 1980 in the honest belief that I had only a remote chance of success. When, after interview, I was offered the position, we were thrown into turmoil. The new position would be a challenge, there would be a new and exciting life for me and for the rest of the family. But after twenty-one years we should have to leave our beloved Australia, where all our children had been born and whose citizens we had become, for a life in what for the children was a foreign country and for Audrey and me was an environment needing to be rediscovered after two decades of radical change (change, both in ourselves, and in Britain itself). Writing this, in retrospect after twentyone Oxford years, I have a sense of achievement and excitement, but also of wonder about what might have been had we not taken that fateful step in 1980–81. After all, to adapt something I have written elsewhere, things that happen, both good and bad, are ‘the coming together of a virtual infinity of chains of circumstances’. 18 I will move more briefly over the past two decades. Sometime in the mid-1980s I met Peter Sowden, and from this meeting sprang the Nissan Institute/Routledge (earlier Croom Helm, later Routledge Curzon) Japanese Studies Series, in which more than sixty books have been published, many of them now standard works. In 1988 six of us (including three colleagues from Australia) published a book entitled Dynamic and Immobilist Politics in Japan. 19 For some time we had been struck by the contrast between the dynamism of much economic policy (as it seemed then) and the great difficulties in effecting policy change in other areas. We used the term ‘immobilism’ (a term favoured by the political scientist Giovanni Sartori 20 ) to describe the policy paralysis that seemed to affect certain policy areas. The theme of immobilism has been taken up by others subsequently, as it has become increasingly apparent that the Japanese political system is hostage to tight policy networks inhibiting needed change. 21 By the end of the 1980s, signs began to appear that the politics of Japan might be heading for a period of structural change. The Liberal Democratic Party, unchallenged in office since its formation in 1955, unexpectedly lost the House of Councillors elections held in July 1989, though losing the less important of the two houses of Parliament did not entail departure from office. For a while, under the dynamic and somewhat feminist leadership of Doi Takako, the first woman to head a Japanese political party, the Japan Socialist Party was resurgent. Then in August 1993 the LDP was actually replaced in office by a fragile multi-party Government headed by the charismatic Hosokawa Morihiro. Even though the LDP was back in power, in a coalition Government, within a year, its long monopoly of power had been broken, and reform of the system was in the air, though being firmly resisted by the old guard with its links to powerful vested interests. In 1988, before these events, I unfashionably concluded the final chapter of Dynamic and Immobilist Politics in Japan with the following words: Though from the present perspective it may seem impracticably ambitious to suggest it, an arrangement whereby the electorate were presented with a genuine

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political choice, and where therefore one party need not indefinitely remain in office, might with advantage be a priority item on the political agenda. 22 This was an argument that I pressed home subsequently in a number of books and articles, though to general scepticism among Japanese colleagues. Even in the era of coalition governments that has persisted since the mid-1990s, the system has been based on a ruling party that is the centre of a spider’s web of interest networks. Replacing this with truly competitive party politics has seemed to many an impossible dream. And yet, as I observe the continuing immobilist core of the system, I find it difficult to see how genuine reform can emanate from a party so wedded to obstructive interests. The attempt to achieve this by the Prime Minister, Koizumi Junichirō, since 2001, has been ably and pessimistically dissected by my Australian colleague Aurelia George Mulgan, in her book Japan’s Failed Revolution. 23 In 1992, after many years of hard if sporadic work, my translation of a seminal work of Japanese political history was published. This was an innovative analysis of the politics of the 1890s—the first decade of constitutional government—by my good friend Professor Banno Junji. 24 The task of translating it made me even more aware than previously of the continuities that underlie Japanese party politics, despite the many changes that have taken place over the past century. In 1999 I published Governing Japan: Divided Politics in a Major Economy. 25 Technically, this was the third edition of my book Japan: Divided Politics in a Growth Economy, first published in 1975, with a second revised edition in 1982. In fact, over two thirds of the material in it was new. Japan could no longer be described as a ‘growth economy’, but it was still plainly a very major economy indeed. I kept the word ‘divided’ because, despite the demise of a substantial Marxist opposition, ‘(p)owerful sectional coalitions, combining political, bureaucratic, commercial, industrial and even religious interests confront other sectional coalitions made up of different combinations of similar elements’. 26 But I concluded on the not wholly pessimistic note that ‘(t)he system is imperfectly democratic (as are many other so-called ‘democracies’), but the very fact that Japan enjoys divided politics ensures that it does not develop some of the less pleasant characteristics of some plainly non-democratic nation states’. 27 During the late 1990s my concern with democracy in Japan broadened out to take account of the so-called ‘Asian model of democracy’ that had a certain vogue at the time. My own view of the ‘Asian model’ was that it was an excuse for authoritarian rule of a more or less paternalistic kind. But underlying this issue was a much more extensive set of concerns about globalisation and the tendency for politics as well as economics to become more and more homogenised along essentially American lines. Finding a happy and workable mean somewhere between a meretricious ‘Asian democracy’ and ‘globalised democracy’, in which core modern democratic principles might combine with the best of Japanese cultural norms is in my opinion a key question for the years ahead. Unfortunately, unqualified optimism does not seem entirely justified at the time of writing. In my valedictory lecture given at St Antony’s College, Oxford on 30th May 2003, I speculated that Japan might be ‘approaching a period of sudden or precipitate change, caused by a simultaneous build-up of crises in the economy, politics, society perhaps and the regional/international environment’. 28

Introduction

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These and many other issues of Japanese politics were discussed in my Dictionary of the Modern Politics of Japan, published in 2003. 29 For several years, students had been asking for a source that would give information, as comprehensive as possible, about Japanese politics, within the covers of a single volume. Using a variety of reference materials, I compiled entries on individual politicians, political parties, ministries and agencies of government, interest groups, the Constitution, areas of government policy, Parliament, electoral systems and electoral history, the judiciary, episodes, crises and scandals, relations with other countries, cultural concepts having political relevance, theories of Japanese politics and historical background. From my point of view, publication of the Dictionary marks the end of an era, as it shortly precedes my retirement at the end of September 2003. At a conference I attended in Australia sometime in the 1990s a well known Americanbased scholar, who shall remain nameless, gave a presentation under the heading ‘Why Japan is Uninteresting’. I felt like responding by quoting the phrase of Doctor Johnson that ‘he who is tired of London is tired of life’, and adapting it to read: ‘Speaking for myself, if I were tired of Japan—if I had come to find Japan uninteresting—I would conclude that I was tired of life’. I do not remember how much I paid for a copy of the Manchester Guardian that summer morning in 1959. But that trivial purchase started a chain of events that led to Australia, then to Japan, and to a passionate interest into the affairs of a country that attracts, perplexes, exasperates and occasionally repels but never ceases to fascinate. J.A.A.Stockwin 15 June 2003

NOTES 1. See Geoffrey Elliott and Harry Shukman, Secret Classrooms: An Untold Story of the Cold War. London, St Ermin’s Press, 2002. 2. D.C.S.Sissons, ‘The Pacifist Clause of the Japanese Constitution: Legal and Political Problems of Rearmament’, International Affairs, January 1961, pp. 45–59. 3. D.C.S.Sissons, ‘The Dispute over Japan’s Police Law’, Pacific Affairs, vol. 32, no. 1 (March 1959), pp. 34–45. 4. D.C.S.Sissons, ‘Recent Developments in Japan’s Socialist Movement’, Far Eastern Survey, March and June 1960. 5. See for instance his fascinating introduction to the 1996 reprint of James Murdoch’s History of Japan, originally published between 1903 and 1926. Between 1917 and his death in 1921 Murdoch was teaching Japanese studies in Australia: D.C.S. Sissons, ‘Introduction: James Murdoch, 1856–1921’, in James Murdoch, A History of Japan (three volumes). London and New York, Routledge, 1996, vol. 1, pp. vii– lviii. 6. J.A.A.Stockwin, The Neutralist Policy of the Japan Socialist Party. Canberra, Australian National University, PhD thesis, 1964. 7. J.A.A.Stockwin, The Japanese Socialist Party and Neutralism. Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1968.

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8. J.D.B.Miller and T.H.Rigby (eds), The Disintegrating Monolith: Pluralist Trends in the Communist World. Canberra, The Australian National University, 1965. 9. J.A.A.Stockwin, Japan: Divided Politics in a Growth Economy. London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975. 10. J.A.A.Stockwin, ‘Domestic Political Restraints on Japanese Foreign Policy’, Australian Outlook, vol. 22, no. 2 (August 1968), pp 176–89. 11. Donald C.Hellmann, Japan and Easst Asia: The New International Order. London, Pall Mall Press, 1972. 12. Robert A.Scalapino, The Japanese Communist Movement, 1920–1966. Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1967, p. 354. 13. J.A.A.Stockwin, ‘Is Japan a Post-Marxist Society?’, Pacific Affairs, vol. xvi, no. 2 (summer 1968), pp. 184–98. 14. J.A.A.Stockwin (ed.), Japan and Australia in the Seventies. Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1972. 15. Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan. New York, London and Tokyo, 1983. 16. J.A.A.Stockwin, ‘Problems in Australian Foreign Policy, January to June 1972, Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol. xviii, no. 3 (December 1972), pp. 331–43; and ‘Problems in Australian Foreign Policy, January to June 1980, Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol 26, no. 3 (1980), pp. 339–54. 17. The official title of the treaty is: The Basic Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation between Australia and Japan. 18. Arthur Stockwin, The Story of Tim. Folkestone, Paul Norbury Publications, 1993, p. 155. 19. J.A.A.Stockwin, Alan Rix, Aurelia George, James Horne, Daiichi Itō and Martin Collick, Dynamic and Immobilist Politics in Japan. Basingstoke and London, Macmillan,, 1988. 20. Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis. Cambridge and London, Cambridge University Press, 1976, p. 135. 21. For instance Leonard James Schoppa, Education Reform in Japan: A Case of Immobilist Politics. London and New York, Routledge, 1991. 22. Dynamic and Immobilist Politics in Japan, p. 332. 23. Aurelia George Mulgan, Japan’s Failed Revolution: Koizumi and the Politics of Reform. Canberra, Asia Pacific Press, 2002. 24. Junji Banno (J.A.A.Stockwin translator), The Establishment of the Japanese Constitutional System. London and New York, Routledge, 1992. 25. J.A.A.Stockwin, Governing Japan: Divided Politics in a Major Economy. Oxford and Malden MA, Blackwell, 1999. 26. Ibid., p. 221. 27. Ibid., p. 222. 28. J.A.A.Stockwin, ‘Why Japan Still Matters’, Valedictory Lecture, 30th May 2003. 29. J.A.A.Stockwin, Dictionary of the Modern Politics of Japan. London and New York, Routledge, 2003.

Part I Japanese Elections

1 Electing the Kyoto Governor: Travail of the Opposition First published in Asia Pacific Forum, No. 5, 1974, Oriental Press Service Ltd, Tokyo THE PLACE IS the bank of the Kamo River below the bridge on Sanjo Street opposite the Keihan railway station in Japan’s ancient capital city of Kyoto. The time is six o’clock in the evening on April 6, 1974. There is a soft light over the river as a warm spring day draws to a close. The crowds of people crossing the Sanjo bridge on their way home from work pause to watch a folk-dance troupe performing on the river bank below. A row of banners are spread out on the ground nearby. One reads: ‘Unity and solidarity of the working people,’ another: ‘The wisdom of the masses is the voice of tomorrow.’ After each dance is over, a man dressed up as a tiger makes a brief political speech. The tiger-skin symbolises Governor Ninagawa, whose given name, Torazo, includes the ideograph for ‘tiger’ (tora). With careful economy, just one point is hammered home each time the man in the tiger-skin speaks: ‘Look at this beautiful river; it is a river fit for fish to swim in. Think of the contrast with Osaka (where the troupe hails from). In Osaka any fish that has the misfortune to find its way into a river promptly dies from the water pollution.’ Again: ‘A victory for Ninagawa is a victory for progressive local authorities throughout the nation. It would be a national tragedy if he were defeated.’ The next day, April 7, the electors of Kyoto prefecture were to elect their governor for the next four years. The only candidates really in the race were Torazo Ninagawa, a big burly economist with a deep voice and a direct, earthy style of humour, and Kazutaka Ohashi, a local doctor with a smoother and more conventional, but still tough and forthright approach. Ninagawa was seeking the unprecedented in Japanese prefectural politics, to be elected for a seventh four-year term in office. He had first been elected governor in 1950, and had retained the post ever since, through various twists and turns of politics, but always backed by some combination of left-wing parties. No other prefecture in the country could boast a regime so consistently ‘progressive’ in its political allegiance as his, although he drew extensive support from small and medium industry and from farmers—traditionally conservative sections of the electorate. In 1974, however, the political alliance which had helped to keep Ninagawa in power was rent by serious conflict, with national as well as purely local ramifications. Doubts about the wisdom of Ninagawa’s candidacy were spurred in part by his advanced age. In 1974 he was 77, and if he were elected for a seventh term, he would be 81 by the time his term was completed. Even by the normally gerontocratic standards of Japanese politics, this was cause for some concern. (Ohashi, on the other hand, was a comparative stripling at 63.) More serious, however, were the political problems which had developed for

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Ninagawa in the course of the previous eighteen months. During the 1950’s and early 1960’s, Ninagawa’s principal political base had been the Japan Socialist Party (JSP), which was the only Opposition party of significance at that time. His opponents were always backed by the ministerial Liberal-Democratic Party (LDP), or its predecessors, though in 1958 the LDP attempted to attract Ninagawa to its camp by refraining from putting up a candidate against him, and the Japan Communist Party (JCP)—at that time a minuscule political force—put up a rival candidate instead, who attracted only a small fraction of the votes cast. During the 1960’s, the JSP fell upon hard times, for reasons which are too complicated to go into here. A right-wing splinter group broke away in 1960 and formed the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP), which weakened the JSP without developing into a major political force in its own right. In the mid-1960’s a new political party, the Komei Party (KP), based on the neo-Buddhist sect the Soka Gakkai, began to contest national and local elections and made inroads into JSP support in big cities. Meanwhile the JSP found itself also under attack from another direction, since the JCP, now under strong and imaginative leadership, was experiencing a revival, and carving out for itself an impressive base of support in many parts of the country. In 1974 the JSP, though still the largest opposition party in terms of seats in the National Diet, was badly organised, inefficiently led, and chronically divided into left and right wings.

SOMETHING OF REVIVAL Despite their divisions and ineptitudes, however, the opposition parties began to experience something of a revival in the early 1970’s, with a succession of victories in local and national elections in the increasingly polluted big cities of Japan’s Pacific conurbation. The ‘progressive local authority’ became the rallying cry of an opposition determined to make further advances at the expense of the ruling Liberal-Democrats. The extremely serious inflation of the period following the oil crisis late in 1973 gave them hopes of further reducing, or even of overturning, the LDP majority in the House of Councillors elections scheduled for July 1974. The task of sinking their differences to the point of effective electoral cooperation proved too difficult for parties which were fiercely competing with each other for a share of vote. In particular the spectacular success of the JCP in the 1972 House of Representatives election (when its number of seats jumped from 14 to 39) led to a marked anti-Communist reaction among sections of the opposition parties. The JSP was divided between those who thought that electoral cooperation with the Communists was the wave of the future and those who preferred to contemplate alliance with the DSP and KP, parties which stood closer to the centre of the political spectrum. In Kyoto the high point of opposition party cooperation had come in 1970, when Ninagawa, backed jointly by the Socialist and Communist Parties, defeated a LiberalDemocratic opponent by 145,000 votes with an unusually high poll (73%), and so entered his sixth term in office. This was widely heralded as a signal victory for ‘progressive local authorities,’ and was followed by similar victories in Tokyo and elsewhere. In terms of opposition party cooperation, this was a victory for Socialist-Communist alliance,

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since the DSP and the KP supported the Liberal-Democratic candidate. Increasingly, however, strains were coming to be felt within that alliance, as Communist organisational strength within Kyoto itself grew steadily, and Socialist influence within the Ninagawa administration declined. In the 1972 House of Representatives elections, the JCP polled 24.6% of the vote in Kyoto Prefecture, as against 19% for the Socialists. (The LDP polled 29.8%, the DSP 13.8% and the KP 12.7%.) For the first time in Japanese political history, the Communists had two candidates elected from the same (five-member) constituency. Local Socialist resentment at becoming the junior partners in Ninagawa’s electoral machine was compounded by their experience of what they saw as Communist exclusiveness in the day-to-day affairs of Ninagawa’s prefectural administration. At its annual congress held in February, 1973, the local ISP branch resolved not to support Ninagawa’s candidacy for a seventh term, and in November the branch decided to put forward its own Chairman, Ohashi, as an alternative candidate. It was not, of course, within the competence of the local branch to decide on a candidate without reference to the Party central headquarters in Tokyo, and so the question of Ohashi’s candidacy was put into the hands of the top Party leadership. The Party leaders were thus confronted with an almost insoluble dilemma: how to avoid further fragmentation within the opposition camp (and within the JSP itself) which would irreparably harm the chances of electoral cooperation against the LDP in the forthcoming House of Councillors elections. After abortive attempts to find a ‘third candidate’ acceptable to a substantial section of the opposition (but particularly to the JSP and the KP), the JSP central leadership decided to throw the Party’s weight behind Ninagawa as in previous elections. The reasons for this decision involve complex problems of intra-Party factionalism, but also seem to have been based on a calculation (probably erroneous, as it turned out) that Ninagawa was likely to win, with or without Socialist support.

CATASTROPHE The consequences of this decision were catastrophic from the point of view both of opposition party cooperation, and of unity within the JSP itself. The KP was particularly angry at a decision which it regarded as a ‘breach of trust.’ Ohashi shortly afterwards announced his own independent candidacy, and was backed by the large majority of the local JSP branch. Ohashi and his closest supporters were expelled from the Party, and Ohashi resigned his House of Councillors seat, which was subsequently won at a byelection by a Liberal-Democrat. The election for the Kyoto governorship was thus fought between Ninagawa, supported by the Communists, officially by the Socialists but in fact only by a small minority of the local branch, and also by the main trade union federation Sohyo and other local organisations. Ohashi ran with the backing of the majority of the local Socialist branch, the DSP (and the Domei trade union federation), with tacit support from the KP and even the LDP (which refrained from putting up a candidate of its own.) When the results were announced, Ninagawa had won, but only just. The difference between the two candidates was exactly 4,500 votes, or 0.4% of valid votes cast. The turnout was down to 63.8%, no doubt reflecting voter confusion at the complexity of

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events leading up to the election. The ‘national tragedy’ of his defeat had been narrowly averted, but the adverse effects of the episode on the morale of the opposition parties as a whole would be felt for some time to come.

2 Shifting Alignments in Japanese Party Politics: The April 1974 Election for Governor of Kyoto Prefecture First published in Asian Survey, Vol. XIV, No. 10, October 1974, University of California Press THE DOMINANT FEATURE of Japanese party polities over the past decade is the continued success of the conservatively oriented Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in maintaining itself in power despite challenges from the opposition parties. In the mid1950s, the formation of a government in which the Japan Socialist Party (JSP) was a major participant seemed a real prospect. Three main factors, however, conspired to prevent this happening. The first, and most important, was the extremely rapid economic growth which extended from the 1950s to the early 1970s. The bulk of the population received unprecedented increases in its standard of living over this period, and this undoubtedly blunted the appeal of alternative forms of government. The second was the success of the LDP in retaining and developing its cohesion as a political machine. The Party was beset by formidable problems of internal factionalism, and yet was able to overcome these to the point of containing its own divisions within a loose yet reasonably firm organizational structure. The third factor was the contrasting inability of the opposition to remain intact. Whereas in the late 1950s the JSP was the only opposition party of significance, by the early 1970s it was merely primus inter pares, having to share the anti-LDP vote with three other parties. Of these the Kōmei Party (KP) and especially the Japan Communist Party (JCP) presented a formidable challenge to its traditional base of support, while a small proportion of its potential supporters vote for the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP). For the LDP, however, success brought its own problems. Economic growth had a healthy effect on standards of living, but was accompanied by urban overcrowding, fantastic land prices, and such phenomena as photochemical smog and mercurycontaminated fish. Environmentalism became popular and the Government found itself under pressure to place curbs on hitherto largely uncontrolled industrial expansion, especially in polluted urban areas. In national eleetions the LDP percentage of the vote was steadily if slowly declining, and now fell below 50%, 1 although the imbalance in the value of a vote between urban and rural constituencies (approximately 500% at its most extreme) gave the LDP some 60% of the seats in the House of Representatives. The LDP also experienced a period of serious leadership crisis during the final year of Satō’s prime ministership (1971–72) and this was not completely resolved by the transition to Tanaka in 1972. It was in the big cities that electoral support for the LDP was becoming seriously

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eroded. This was happening in both national and local elections, but the most heartening development for the opposition was that LDP candidates were being replaced by opposition-backed candidates in local elective offices in many urban areas. By 1974, prefectural governors had been elected with opposition party backing in Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Saitama and Okinawa, while anti-Government candidates had become mayors of over 200 cities, including Yokohama, Kawasaki, Nagoya, Kōbe and Sendai. The sweeping victory in 1971 in Tokyo of Minobe Ryōkichi, 2 an Independent backed by the JSP and the JCP, was symbolic of the ‘progressive local authority’ (kakushin jichitai), seen by many as a base from which the opposition parties could hope eventually to overthrow and replace the LDP at the national level. During the first six months of 1974, opposition hopes focused upon the prospect of annihilating the LDP majority in the House of Councillors elections in July. If this could be achieved, the opposition would have a veto on Government bills, and the LDP could no longer use its majority to pass legislation objectionable to the opposition without taking their views into account. The inflationary situation in the aftermath of the 1973–74 oil crisis (though serious inflation was already making itself felt before the crisis broke), and a sharp fall in Tanaka’s popularity with the electorate since he became Prime Minister, added substance to these hopes. The prospect of replacing the LDP in office seemed at last no idle dream. The dream, however, once more appeared to recede, largely as a result of acute divisions between the opposition parties and also within the JSP itself. For several months left wing discord focused upon one painful and complex issue, the election for governor of Kyoto Prefecture, scheduled for April 7, 1974. Kyoto, though usually considered traditional and conservative in social outlook, had been a political stronghold of the left ever since Ninagawa Torazō was elected prefectural governor in 1950. Ninagawa, dependent upon Socialist and, increasingly, upon Communist backing, was now standing, at the age of 77, for his seventh four-year term. In 1970, Ninagawa had convincingly won a sixth term with the support of the Socialist and Communist parties against an LDP candidate who was also backed by the DSP and KP. This victory, achieved with an unusually high poll at a time when ‘progressive local authorities’ were emerging in many urban areas, was widely heralded as an event of major importance. 3 In 1974, however, he was seeking a further term in office, which he would complete, if at all, at the age of 81. This struck many observers and participants as excessive, even by the gerontocratic standards of Japanese politics. It was standard practice for the left to campaign against conservative governors in other prefectures on the grounds that they had been in office too long, so that to have one of its own ‘progressive’ governors set a national record for length of time in office was quite embarrassing. Even more problematical, however, was the fact that Ninagawa’s organiza-tional base was controlled more and more by the JCP, while the JSP, his original base of support, was finding itself increasingly excluded from effective power within his regime. The Kyoto branch of the JSP became strongly disaffected from Ninagawa, and beginning in 1973 began to put pressure on the JSP central executive to back another candidate. The JSP Chairman, Narita Tomomi, eventually overruled the wishes of the local Kyoto branch, and confirmed the Party’s official support for Ninagawa. Thereupon a majority of

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the local branch revolted against the JSP central executive and backed its own branch Chairman, Ohashi Kazutaka (aged 63), to challenge Ninagawa. Ohashi was expelled from the Party, and had to resign his House of Councillors seat on standing for election as governor. The local JSP branch thus faced the election divided from top to bottom, and the organization of Ninagawa’s campaign was left largely in the hands of the Communists, with support from a minority 4 of the Kyoto Socialists, but official JSP backing from Tokyo. Ohashi, on the other hand, was sum ported actively by the maj ority of the local JSP branch, and by the DSP. The KP declared a policy of neutrality, although the KP Chairman, Takeiri Yoshikatsu, declared his own sympathy for Ohashi. The LDP, reversing their 1970 approach, did not put up a candidate of their own, but instructed their members to give backing to Ohashi. Both sides of the Socialist Party therefore found themselves in a painful and embarrassing position. Those who supported Ninagawa were greatly outnumbered by the Communists in support of a candidate who, whatever his merits in the past, could now scarcely project an image of freshness and radical reform. The Ohashi supporters, on the other hand, found themselves in effect allies of the LDP in an attempt to overthrow an existing ‘progressive local authority.’ The campaign was clearly as confusing to the electors as it was to the participants, and the turnout was over 9% lower than the high level of 1970. 5 When the final results were announced. Ohashi was slightly ahead in the parts of the prefecture outside Kyoto City, but when the City results were added, Ninagawa scraped home with a 0.4% majority. The results of the 1970 and 1974 elections are given in Table 1. Perhaps the most important issue raised by the election is whether the traumatic struggle within the JSP that it precipitated has seriously or permanently harmed the prospects for cohesion among the opposition parties, and so ultimately the prospects for a change of government. Closely connected with this is the question of how far the ‘progressive local authorities’ can act as a springboard for further electoral advance by the opposition parties. The first of these

Table 1

1970 (turnout 73.0%) Votes

% of valid vote

Ninagawa

636,068

56.2

Shibata

491,168

43.4

1974 (turnout 63.8%) Votes

% of valid vote

Ninagawa

523,708

49.8

Ohashi

519,208

49.4

Note: There were four other candidates both in 1970 and 1974, but their votes in each case were so few that they have been ignored.

questions is too broad and complex to be answered fully in the space of this article, although there is no doubt that in the short term the Kyōto experience was harmful to the cause of opposition party cooperation. On the second question, again, there seems little doubt that ‘progressiye local

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24

authorities’ suffered a setback as a result of dissension in Kyōto. Nevertheless, it is important to realize that the Ninagawa regime was in several respects hardly typical of a left wing local administration. Kyōto itself, Japan’s ancient capital and a major modern city, has an unusually low proportion of heavy to small and medium industry. Besides the many traditional craft workshops in central Kyōto, employment is concentrated in relatively small-scale firms in the textile and other ‘backward’ areas of the economy, and it was from these that Ninagawa drew much of his support, partly through his policy of providing unsecured loans to small and medium industry. Kyōto also boasts a radical tradition going back to the early days of the proletarian movement. 6 Anti-Tokyo sentiment on the part of the inhabitants of the former imperial city may be an element in this, while radicalism within the prestigious Kyōto University is also a factor. Ninagawa’s own career also calls for comment. 7 Ninagawa Torazō was born in 1897, educated in Tokyo, and in 1917 graduated from a government-run fisheries training college. He then entered the economics faculty of Kyōto Imperial University (now Kyōto University), from which he graduated in 1923. He was accepted onto the University staff and became associate professor (jokyōju) in 1927. Between March 1928 and May 1930 he was abroad, conducting research into statistics and economic policy in Germany, Italy and the United States. In 1932 he was commissioned to do research on agricultural economics by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry; in 1939 he became full professor and in January 1945 chairman of the economics faculty. After the war, in 1948, he was asked by Mizutani Chōsaburō, a veteran Kyōto Socialist Diet Member who was Minister for Commerce and Industry in the short-lived Ashida Cabinet, to become Director of the newly-formed Small and Medium Industry Agency—a post with cabinet rank. Ninagawa continued in this post for over a year after the Ashida Cabinet had fallen and had been replaced by the second Yoshida (Liberal Party) Cabinet. 8 After leaving the Government in February 1950 he was elected Governor of Kyōto Prefecture for the first time in April. The publications listed in his curriculum vitae include three books on statistical method, two on fisheries, one on women and education, and two on small and medium industries. 9

Thus like Minobe Ryōkichi, the progressive Governor of Tokyo, Ninagawa’s training was that of an academic economist and statistician; but less like Minobe, his interests were practical and specific, and not typical of the academic elite. No doubt also the problems in which Ninagawa had practical and academic experience, such as small and medium industries, and agriculture and fisheries, specially qualified him to establish himself as an effective Governor of Kyōto Prefecture. There is also the question of his political loyalties in the immediate postwar period. The fact that he was prepared to serve both in the center-left Ashida Cabinet and in the right-of-center Yoshida Cabinet suggests that the political pragmatism which he was later to exhibit as Governor in his relations with the Socialists and the Communists was a natural part of his personality. 10 It should be remembered, however, that the first ten years after the war saw a much more fluid set of relationships between conservative and radical parties than emerged after the establishment of a two-party system in 1955. 11 According to one account, Ninagawa at one stage in April 1950 virtually agreed to stand as an Independent with support from the Democratic Party as well as the JSP, but went

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back on his word and became a member of the JSP. He finally stood as the candidate of the Left, with Socialist and some Communist support. 12 There is not space in this article to record in detail the changing patterns of Ninagawa’s support between 1950 and 1974, but Table 2 will serve as an outline. Except in 1958, Ninagawa always stood as the candidate of the Left against conservatives, and on some occasions also against center parties. What happened in 1958 was that the LDP refrained from putting up a candidate of their own against him, and expressed support for Ninagawa’s candidacy. Ninagawa’s office ultimately rejected the proffered LDP endorsement, 13 but the fact that the Liberal Democrats were prepared to support him prompted the Communists to put up a candidate of their own. In the event, Ninagawa won overwhelmingly on a very low voter turnout, polling about eleven times as many votes as the Communist. Subsequently, Ninagawa moved to consolidate his left wing backing, which in the late 1950s and early 1960s meant largely that of the JSP. In the 1966 election, however, the

Table 2

Ninagawa backing

1950 Official JSP candidate, backed also by ‘People’s Front’ which included both JSP and JCP

Ninagawa majority (rounded)

Anti-Ninagawa candidates

33,000 Inoue, backed by Liberal and Democratic Parties

1954 Stood as ‘Progressive Independent,’ because JSP was split into Left and Right Socialist Parties

100,000 Tamura, backed by all conservative parties

1958 Backed by JSP, with support from LDP (though Ninagawa’s office ultimately rejected the LDP endorsement)

311,000 Ono (Independent) Kawada (JCP)

1962 Backed by JSP, DSP and JCP

110,000 Ueki (LDP)

1966 Backed by JSP and JCP 1970 Backed by JSP and JCP 1974 Backed by JCP, JSP central headquarters in Tokyo, and a minority of JSP Kyoto branch

40,000 Hamada, backed by LDP and DSP 140,000 Shibata, backed by LDP, DSP and KP 4,500 Ohashi, backed by DSP, majority of Kyoto branch of JSP, with support from LDP. KP officially stayed neutral, but KP Chairman Takeiri indicated his own sympathy for Ohashi

Communists, who had been rapidly building up their strength in Kyōto, became an

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important element in his organizational support, and by 1970 they were challenging the Socialists for primacy within his organization. The 1970 election was regarded both locally and nationally as a great symbolic victory for the concept of the ‘progressive local authority,’ but after two years or so strains within the Kyōto alliance of Socialists and Communists began to make themselves felt. The regular congress of the JSP Kyōto branch in February 1973 formally criticized aspects of the Ninagawa prefectural regime. Relations between Ninagawa and the local Socialists thereupon sharply deteriorated, although it was not entirely clear at that point whether Ninagawa would actually seek a seventh term as Governor. In an interview with a popular weekly magazine in July, Ninagawa was quoted as saying that the Socialist Party could not be relied upon. 14 The remark attracted an angry response from the local JSP branch, whereupon Ninagawa held a press conference and withdrew it with apologies. A carefully reasoned, if in some ways rather contradictory, statement of the position at which the local JSP branch had arrived by the autumn of 1973 is contained in a draft ‘platform’ dated October. 15 Consistent with the resolutions of the February congress, the document calls for a second stage in Kyōto’s progressive government. The first stage, defined as having lasted from 1950 to 1972, is subjected to searching analysis. The Ninagawa regime over those years is on the one hand praised for promoting genuine local autonomy as guaranteed in the Constitution, combatting pressure from Tokyo centered on the LDP and monopoly capital, and maintaining itself free of corruption. More specifically, it is commended for its local agricultural stabilization schemes, arrangement of labor settlements, and provision of unsecured capital for small and medium enterprises. 16 On the other hand, much more detail is given about what is alleged to have gone wrong with the regime, and why. The long period in which Ninagawa, as governor, faced a hostile conservative majority in the prefectural assembly, is blamed for having led the JSP to defend him uncritically. Thus, according to the platform, ‘…even if the aim of the argument is to secure genuine local autonomy, we are guilty of misleading the local people if we argue that, just because we have a progressive Governor, all aspects of his regime are democratic. 17 The JCP is accused of blatant opportunism in having failed to cooperate consistently with Ninagawa in the 1950s and then, as it built up its own strength in the prefecture, having used him for its own ends. Communist united front policies are seen as a subtle way of excluding the JSP from influence within the Ninagawa regime. The document also accuses Ninagawa of having permitted, during his sixth term in office, an excessive concentration of power within a section of the prefectural bureaucracy, with highly undemocratic results. Ninagawa is, moreover, said to have cold-shouldered a delegation from the Peoples’ Republic of China, 18 to have personally attended a review of the Self Defense Forces, 19 to have backed a Communist splinter group in the special communities liberation movement, 20 to have been insufficiently enthusiastic about cooperating with other ‘progressive local authorities,’ and to have failed to establish a ‘civil minimum.’ 21 These criticisms clearly reflect the difficult situation in which the local JSP branch found itself as its base of support was gradually whittled away by the better organized Communists. In the opinion of many Kyōto Socialists, the experience of a united front with the Communists in support of Ninagawa was too painful to be continued, and both a

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new candidate and a new alliance was needed. Following its congress of February 1973, the local JSP branch sent a delegation to Party headquarters in Tokyo to explain its difficulties with the Communists and to persuade the Party leaders that a new approach was needed. According to an account by the Kyōto branch itself, the Party SecretaryGeneral, Ishibashi Masashi, tried to persuade them that Socialist-Communist cooperation in Kyōto was a most valuable example which needed to be further developed as part of the current efforts towards overall cooperation between opposition parties. Nevertheless, the meeting appears to have been quite amicable. 22 Later in 1973 the local branch began the task of choosing its own candidate. It was agreed that the candidate should be a Party member, capable of ‘defending progressive prefectural government on the basis of Party responsibility,’ rather than ‘a non-party personality, whose candidacy might give an air of inter-party unity, but a unity that would be spurious.’ 23 The branch’s election policy committee whittled down the choice to three possible candidates: Ohashi Kazutaka, Chairman of the Kyōto branch, Tsubono Yoneo, another leading branch member, and Yanagida Hidezō, a former JSP Diet Member. 24 In late October and early November, intensive efforts were made to obtain unity within the branch. Finally, on November 13, successive meetings were held of the branch’s election policy conmuttee and its central executive committee. Yanagida having dropped out, the election policy committee, in a secret ballot, voted Tsubono: 7, Ohashi: 6. The issue was then handed over to the local central executive committee, which resolved unanimously: (a) that the time had come to take a decision; (b) that the choice should be made by secret ballot, but it should then be ratified by a unanimous vote in order to preserve Party unity; and (c) that no ‘U turns’ were to be allowed. The committee, with only one member absent (through illness), then voted. The result was Tsubono: 13; Ohashi: 13; abstentions: 4. Another vote was then taken, with the following result: Ohashi: 14; Tsubono: 13; abstentions: 3. Ohashi’s candidacy was then ratified by unanimous vote. 25 Formally speaking, the matter of selecting a candidate for the prefectural governorship did not lie with the local JSP branch. The recommendation of Ohashi was thus ‘entrusted’ in effect to the Party Secretary-General in Tokyo, Ishibashi, with the stipulation that ‘entrusted’ meant neither rejection nor referral back, but neither did it mean acceptance. 26 The decision was subsequently put in the hands of the top executives of the Party, which principally meant Narita Tomomi, the Chairman, and Ishibashi. Narita and Ishibashi had to make an extremely delicate choice. Not only did the complex Kyōto situation have to be taken into account, but whatever decision they took would affect the prospects for cooperation between the opposition parties in the Upper House elections to be held in the summer of 1974, and would also have a crucial bearing on the unity of the JSP itself. If Ninagawa had been prepared to stand down, it might have been possible for the JSP, JCP and KP to cooperate in the search for a new candidate whom they could jointly support. The KP had sided with the LDP candidate, Shibata, against Ninagawa in 1970, but after the KP defeat in the 1972 Lower House general elections, the leadership had moved rather sharply to the left. 27 In December 1973 Narita and Takeiri were engaged in talks to find a third candidate who could be supported by all three parties, and at this time also the prospects for JSP-KP cooperation in the Upper House elections seemed

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reasonably good. When, therefore, the Narita-Ishibashi leadership of the JSP finally decided to support Ninagawa, the reaction from the KP was akin to a sense of betrayal. Relations between the leaders of the two parties became so strained that prospects for cooperation in the Upper House elections were shelved. 28 The implications of the Kyōto issue, however, were much more serious than their effect on JSP-KP relations. The cohesion of the JSP itself was at stake, and with it the whole prospect of mounting a credible united front against the LDP. Since the JCP and KP could not be expected to cooperate unless the JSP were available as a bridge between them, 29 a breakdown of cohesion in the JSP was liable to have most unfortunate repercussions upon the effectiveness of the opposition as a whole. Since the 1972 Lower House elections, when the JSP had made a partial recovery from its disastrous defeat of 1969, the left-of-center Narita-Ishibashi leadership had been in fairly stable control of the Party, with the right-of-center Eda faction (dominant in the Party during the early 1960s) in decline. 30 The Kyōto affair, however, served to stimulate the hopes of the Eda faction and bring about an upsurge of faction-fighting within the Party. Meanwhile, an extreme left wing group of Marxist-Leninists, the Shakaishugi Kyōkai (Socialism Association), exhibited surprising strength at the national congress of the JSP held in January 1974. 31 Narita’s move to bring the Party behind Ninagawa rather than Ohashi was connected—perhaps a little speculatively—by many observers with his having thrown his weight behind the Kyōkai, a move which was said to have precipitated a rift between him and Ishibashi who favored electoral pacts with the KP. 32 On the other hand, both leaders appear to have judged that Ninagawa was likely to win, while if Ohashi stood as candidate for the Kyōto governorship he would have to resign his seat in the House of Councillors, which was scarcely in the Party interest at a time when the opposition had a prospect of overturning the LDP majority in that House. 33 A further factor was that both the national leadership of the Sōhyō trade union federation and its Kyōto branch 34 were strongly in favor of the JSP backing Ninagawa against Ohashi, who was favored by the rival Dōmei federation. Various attempts to sort out this situation were made, and some alternative candidacies were canvassed. These included Okuda Azuma, a former President of Kyōto University, and Yanagida Hidezō, one of the candidates originally considered, but rejected, by the Kyōto branch. Agreement, however, proved unattainable, and in early March Ohashi, in direct defiance of the central Party leadership but with the backing of the majority of his local branch, announced his candidacy. 35 The immediate result was that Ohashi was expelled from the Party (as were two of his strongest supporters within the Kyōto prefectural assembly), 36 and resigned his House of Councillors seat in order to stand. Several points about the campaign itself call for comment. Ninagawa’s campaign was conducted through an organization called the Akarui Minshu Fusei wo Susumeru Kai (Association to Promote Bright Democratic Politics in the Prefecture) (henceforth: Susumeru Kai), in which the JCP was clearly by far the strongest element. Relations within the Susumeru Kai between the JCP and the small JSP group of Ninagawa supporters were not always smooth. According to one informant in the Socialist proNinagawa group, the Communists wished to restrict the number of election headquarters permitted to the group, but the Socialists, holding that the Communists were too optimistic about Ninagawa’s prospects, held out for a larger share. 37 Informants from

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both Socialist camps argued that it was an oversimplification to regard the split within the local JSP branch in simple left-right terms. Some moderate Socialists were supporting Ninagawa on the grounds that he was the only candidate clearly opposed to the LDP, while there were some left wingers in the pro-Ohashi camp because of their bad relations with the Communists. 38 Ohashi’s supporters, organized under the banner of the hastily assembled Asu no Kyōto wo Tsukuru Fumin Kaigi (Prefectural People’s Congress to Build Tomorrow’s Kyōto) (henceforth: Fumin Kaigi), concentrated their attacks on Ninagawa’s age and the alleged power of the JCP in his administration, calling for ‘democracy’ to be added to ‘progressiveness.’ The Susumeru Kai campaigned on Ninagawa’s record (with particular stress on antipollution measures and unsecured finance provided to small and medium industries), and the importance of the Kyōto result for the future of progressive local administrations throughout the country. 39 Observation by the writer in the period immediately before the election suggested that in terms of overt mobilizing ability the Susumeru Kai was markedly stronger than the Fumin Kaigi, at least so far as the City of Kyōto was concerned. Nevertheless, the damage done to Ninawaga’s image and to his base of support by the split in the SocialistCommunist alliance on which he had previously relied was no doubt a key factor in his drastically reduced majority. Local pressure groups such as the Ishikai (Doctors’ Association), which had previously rallied behind Ninagawa, were put in turmoil as a result of Ohashi’s candidacy (Ohashi himself was a medical doctor). The fact that the LDP refrained from fielding a candidate meant that Ohashi presumably received the support of LDP voters (who constituted 29.8% of voters in Kyōto Prefecture in the 1972 Lower House general election), but may have alienated some potential supporters who regarded themselves as primarily anti-LDP. On the other hand personal networks of support clearly played a considerable part in this as in previous Kyōto elections. 40 Perhaps the most significant aspect of the 1974 Kyōto prefectural governorship election was that it revealed a shifting pattern of party political alignments at both the local and national level. For the Socialist Party, seriously weakened as a result of the rise of the KP and the JCP, the affair had the effect of straining the unity of the NaritaIshibashi leadership. The emergence of the Shakaishugi Kyōkai as a powerful left wing ideological force at the February national congress had a highly unsettling effect on the balance of factions within the Party. Eda and Sasaki, bitter rivals for power during the 1960s, were beginning to join forces in defense of their factional interests against the impact of the Shakaishugi Kyōkai, and in June they jointly proposed reunification of the JSP with the small and declining DSP. 41 Meanwhile, the LDP were not slow to exploit the kaleidoscopic divisions revealed within the opposition camp, as their decision to support a dissident Socialist in a Communist stronghold clearly shows. The Liberal Democrats

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Table 3 Results of Kyōto Prefecture Upper House by-election, 21 April 1974

Name

Party

Votes

Ogawa Hanji

LDP

290,514

Fujiwara Hiroko

JCP

261,690

Takeuchi Kasuhiko

KP

147,535

Takemura Akira

JSP

82,322

were gradually coming to see the Communists as their principal rivals. In the House of Councillors by-election held to fill the vacancy caused by Ohashi’s resignation to contest the governorship, the LDP was victorious, although the Communists ran them close. The Socialist candidate, however, suffered an ignominious defeat. The results are shown in Table 3. In supporting Ohashi for the governorship, the LDP had shown that it was prepared to be flexible in its search for allies should its own electoral advantage be so served, and especially where its principal rival was the JCP. The Communist united front strategy was being countered by an LDP united front strategy where the occasion warranted it.

NOTES 1. The figures normally given for the LDP vote percentage do, however, need to be treated with some reserve, both because of the question of Independents who affiliate with the LDP after they are elected, and also because of the low LDP vote wastage rate. These points are discussed in J.A.A.Stockwin, Japan: Divided Politics in a Growth Economy. London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson. 2. Japanese names are given in their original order, with the surname first and the personal name second. 3. A comprehensive and invaluable source of materials on the 1970 Kyōto governorship election is the following: Akarui Minshu Fusei wo Susumeru Kai (Association to Promote Bright Democratic Polities in the Prefecture), ‘70 Kyōto fu chiji senkyo no kiroku: shukusatsuban (Record of the 1970 Election for Kyōto Prefectural Governor: Reduced Size Edition). Kyōto, 1970. 4. Estimates given by informants ranged between 20 and 30 per cent. 5. The 1974 turnout was, however, higher than in any of the Kyōto prefectural governorship elections before 1970. 6. In the first national general election following the introduction of universal manhood suffrage, that of 1928, eight candidates of ‘proletarian parties’ were elected. Of these, two, Mizutani Chōsaburō and Yamamoto Senji, were elected from Kyōto. 7. Details are taken from Ninagawa Torazō, Ryakureki (Short Curriculum Vitae), Kyōto, 1974.

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8. Sankei Shimbun Chihō Jichi Shuzai Han (Sankei Newspaper Local Autonomy Data Collection Unit), Kakushin jichitai: sono kōzō to senryaku (Progressive Local Authorities: Their Structure and Strategies). Tokyo, Gakuyō Shobō, 1974, p. 30. The first half of this book takes the Ninagawa regime as a case study of a progressive local authority. 9. Ryakureki, op. cit. 10. It was sometimes pointed out that some of his wartime writings contained statements that could be construed as ‘fascist’ or ‘reactionary,’ although he was not subjected to the Occupation’s purge restrictions. See for instance Sankei Shimbun Chibō Jichi Shuzai Han, op. cit., p. 35. 11. The case of Wada Hiroo, who was Minister of Agriculture and Forestry in the Yoshida Cabinet and later became an important faction leader in the JSP, bears some resemblance to the career pattern of Ninagawa (although Wada was originally a bureaucrat, not an academic). This is an important point, because it suggests that polarization and exclusiveness between left and right is not necessarily a permanent or immutable characteristic of Japanese politics. 12. Sankei Shimbun Chihō Jichi, op. cit., pp. 31–32. 13. Ibid., pp. 55–57. 14. Shūkan Asahi, 20 July 1973. 15. Nihon Shakaito Kyōto Fu Hombu (Japan Socialist Party Kyōto Prefectural Branch), Dai ni dankai no ‘Kyōto Fusei Kōryō’ (an): Kyōto kara han jimin, han dokusen no kokumin rengō wo [‘Platform for Kyōto Prefectural Government’ in its Second Stage (Draft): For an Anti-LDP, Anti-Monopoly People’s Alliance from Kyōto]. Kyōto, October 1973. 16. Ibid., pp. 4–5. 17. Ibid., p. 5. 18. The implication was that Ninagawa was being influenced by the JCP, whose hostility to the Chinese Government is well known. For a reply to this criticism from the Ninagawa campaign headquarters, see Akarui Minshu Fusei wo Susumeru Kai, Fusei Mondō Shū (sono 1) (Questions and Answers about the Prefectural Government, No. 1). Kyōto, 1974, pp. 15–16. 19. This was particularly abhorrent to the JSP given its views on the Constitution and defense. 20. An article in a newssheet put out by the Ohashi supporters in the JSP refers to the Communists as the ‘worst discriminators in the history of the special communities liberation movement.’ ‘Buraku kaihō undo no kyōka hakaru’ (Aim to Strengthen the Special Communities Liberation Movement), Kyōto Shimpō, No. 185, 1 and 11 March 1974, p. 1. 21. Nihon Shakaitō Fu Hombu, op. cit., pp. 5–8. 22. Nihon Shakaitō Kyōto Fu Shokikyoku (Japan Socialist Party Kyōto Branch Secretariat), Fu Hombu Hō (Prefectural Headquarters News), No. 2, 15 May, 1973, p. 1. 23. Ibid., No. 8, 1 December, 1973, p. 1. 24. In broad terms Ohashi can be considered the candidate of the branch’s right wing, and Tsubono of its left wing. See Kyōto Shimbun, 4 November, 1973.

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25. Fu Hombu Hō, No. 8, 1 December, 1973, pp. 1–2. 26. Ibid., pp. 2–3. 27. On the other hand, the KP leaders had experienced something of a rank and file revolt when they decided to support a Socialist-Communist-backed candidate for the mayoralty of Nagoya, so they had to tread carefully. Mainichi Shimbun, 12 January, 1974. 28. Relations were resumed after the Kyōto election was over, but by that time the commitments to their own candidates made by the two parties had become so strong that the principle of ‘give-and-take’ could not be applied except in a very small number of constituencies. 29. Antagonistic relations between the JCP and the KP stemmed from a number of factors, but most importantly from the fact that they were both competing for a very similar type of vote with comparable organizational structures. Late in 1973, the JCP had come under attack from the KP for its views on the Constitution. 30. At the national congress of the JSP held in January 1974 the Eda faction could reportedly only muster some 20% of the delegates. Mainichi Shimbun, 31 January, 1974. 31. It was reported that the Shakaishugi Kyōkai mustered about 30% of the delegates. Mainichi Shimbun, 1 February, 1974. 32. According. to one report Ishibasbi threatened to resign over the matter. Asahi Shimbun, 10 March, 1974. 33. Mainichi Shimbun, 11 January, 1974. 34. According to an informant who was a JSP Ohashi campaign official, of the 16 leading officers in the Kyōto branch of Sōhyō, four supported the JCP, and the remaining 12 supported the JSP, but of these 12 only two could be counted as backing Ohashi. Interview, 8 April, 1974. The writer has chosen to respect the anonymity of his informants. According to some reports, the JSP, threatened by Communist advances within Sōhyō, was reluctant to risk a showdown with the JCP over Ninagawa’s candidacy. See Mainichi Shimbun, 27 January 1974; Asahi Shimbun, 27 January, 1974. 35. Asahi Shimbun, 6 March, 1974. 36. According to information received by the writer from within the JSP, the 15 JSP Members of the prefectural assembly included four strong and two weak supporters of Ohashi, five strong and three weak supporters of Ninagawa,’ while two more (including the Speaker) could be counted as neutral. Interestingly enough the Ninagawa supporters were concentrated in the areas of the prefecture outside Kyōto City. Of the 11 JSP Members in the Kyōto City assembly, there were four strong and two weak Ohashi supporters, one strong Ninagawa supporter, while four were neutral. 37. Interview, 8 April, 1974. 38. Interview, 8 April, 1974. 39. Ninagawa’s policies are set out in Akarui Minshu Fusei wo Susumeru Kai, Junkan Akarui Minshu Fusei (Bright Democratic Politics for the Prefecture—Ten Day Edition), No. 3, 12 March, 1974. 40. According to one informant, the personal support group (kōenkai) of an LDP Diet

Shifting alignments in Japanese party politics

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Member, Tanaka Isaji, supported Ninagawa rather than Ohashi in the governorship election. 41. Asahi Shimbun, 6 June, 1974.

3 Democracy and Elections: Japan First published in Vernon Bogdanor and David Butler (eds), Democracy and Elections: Electoral Systems and their Political Consequences, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983 FEW COUNTRIES in the world today have had longer or more extensive experience with elections than Japan. Elections for the House of Representatives have been held regularly, even during wartime, since 1890. 1 While it is true that until after the Second World War Parliament had a severely limited part to play in the political system as a whole, its role was not completely negligible, and the experience gained over a long period in both the holding of elections and the organising of political parties was of lasting value. Although in early elections under the Meiji constitution, 2 the size of the electorate was small as a result of imposition of a strict property franchise, the number of those males entitled to vote grew by several stages until in 1925 universal male franchise was introduced, with a lower age limit for voting of twenty-five years. 3 Under American auspices following the Japanese defeat of 1945, both men and women over the age of twenty obtained the vote, while a battery of other reforms were introduced, including a new constitution, enshrining the principle of popular sovereignty, and designed to ensure freedom of political organisation with a role for Parliament in the centre of the political stage. 4 A principal concern of those who have investigated Japan’s social, economic and political development since the American Occupation following the end of the Second World War has been the question of continuity and discontinuity. How far did the reforms of the Occupation open up a different path for Japan from that which she had been pursuing before? Or did indigenous norms and practices reassert themselves through the veneer of institutional reforms enacted under American auspices? The argument, indeed, is part of a broader concern about Japanese modernisation from the nineteenth century onwards. Japan was virtually a closed country for some two and a half centuries before the 1850s, and the sociopolitical culture of Japan, emerging as a member of the comity of nations in the late nineteenth century, was highly idiosyncratic from a Western point of view, or even by comparison with most of the rest of Asia. The opening of the country to the outside world involved much absorption of Western norms and ways of doing things, but indigenous values and modes of socio-economic organisation and behaviour proved persistent in many spheres. The practice of voting in elections was, like many other institutions and practices at the time, imported from the West rather than handed down as part of the traditional culture. The behaviour of voters, however, as well as the behaviour of candidates competing for votes, tended to reflect norms and values of the pre-modern society which underlay the operation of an introduced institution. Burke’s definition of ‘party’ as ‘a body of men

Democracy and elections: Japan

35

united, for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest, upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed’ was slow to develop in the Japanese political culture. Early parties were much closer in essence to a term which in English has generally had a pejorative connotation: ‘faction’. 5 Behind-the-scenes politics conducted in and between cliques and cabals was fairly typical of the Japanese scene from the late nineteenth century to 1945 and beyond. The local community was the most important focus for electoral activity, with local solidarity (often enforced through a variety of social sanctions) being the most important factor determining the way people voted. Since the American Occupation, which introduced and reinforced a range of ‘democratic’ political practices and norms, much of the population has moved from close-knit rural communities, capable of ensuring that their members vote as a bloc in favour of the ‘local son’, to much more impersonal and mobile urban environments. Nevertheless, though there has been some change in electoral behaviour in the recent period, older patterns have proved remarkably persistent. The main proposition to be argued in this chapter is that the electoral system constitutes an important independent variable tending to reinforce more traditional forms of electioneering and electoral behaviour, and to retard change. A logically subsequent proposition is that the failure of many proposals to revise the electoral system 6 has hitherto reflected the lack of interest in electoral revision on the part of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which continues to gain considerable advantage from the reinforcement of traditional modes of behaviour inherent in the present electoral system. The Japanese Parliament is called the National Diet (Kokkai), and consists of two Houses, the House of Representatives (Shūgiin) and the House of Councillors (Sangiin). The House of Representatives, or Lower House (equivalent in a very general sense to the House of Commons in the British Parliament) has 511 members—a number which has increased through several jumps from 466 in the immediate postwar period. The House of Councillors, on the other hand, has 252 members (250 before the reversion of Okinawa to Japan in 1972), and is also known as the Upper House. It has much more limited powers in relation to legislation than the Lower House. 7 The electoral system for the House of Representatives is practically unique, though it has a long history in Japan. It may be described as a system based on the principle of a single non-transferable vote in a multi-member constituency. The voter, upon entering the voting booth, is handed a ballot paper which contains two instructions. The first is to write the name of one candidate, and one candidate only, in the appropriate place. The second is not to write the name of a person who is not a candidate. No indication is given on the ballot paper of who the candidates are, let alone their party affiliations, though the names of the candidates are posted within the voting area. A space is reserved for the voter to write the name of the candidate for whom he or she wishes to vote. 8 Voting is voluntary. Constituencies are multi-member. 9 At present there are 130 constituencies throughout Japan, including forty-seven which elect three members, forty-one which elect four members, forty-one which elect five members and one which elects one member only. There is no mechanism for transferring votes from one candidate to another. Those declared elected are quite simply those three candidates in a three-member constituency (or four candidates in a four-member constituency, or five candidates in a five-member

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36

constituency) who respectively attract the largest number of votes. For example, in the Lower House general elections of 22 June 1980, there were 502,572 electors registered in the first constituency of Niigata Prefecture, which is located on the Japan Sea coast of Honshu. Five candidates (two Liberal Democrats, one Socialist, one Democratic Socialist and one Communist) stood for election in this three-member constituency. The results were as shown in Table 1. It will be observed that votes cast for the LDP* heavily outweighed votes cast for any other party. Indeed the LDP had an absolute majority over all other parties of 202,540 votes to 173,447. Nevertheless, the Socialist was elected, with just 20% of the vote. Also it will be readily apparent that while LDP voters divided their votes about equally between Ozawa and Kondō, a large party such as the LDP could be severely disadvantaged by allowing its vote to be spread among too many candidates or by putting forward a candidate who was conspicuously more popular than its other candidates. The term of the House of Representatives is four years at maximum, and in practice the government of the day has freedom to dissolve more or less when it likes. 10 In contrast the House of Councillors has a fixed term of three years. At each three-yearly election one half of the 252 seats come up for re-election for a six-year term. Constituencies for the House of Councillors are of two types: 152 members (seventy-six every election) are elected from prefectural constituencies, in which each of the nation’s forty-seven prefectures are treated as one constituency. The remaining 100 members (fifty each election) are elected from a national constituency, in which the whole country is treated as one constituency. Unlike elections for the House of Representatives, where each voter has one vote, in House of Councillors elections a voter has two votes, one for the constituency formed by the prefecture in which he is registered, and one for the national constituency. He thus votes for two candidates, but as in Lower House elections, there is no way that either of these two votes can be transferred from one candidate to another. Because of the widely different population size of the various prefectures, the number of candidates in prefectural constituencies ranges from two in the case of the least populated to eight in the case of heavily populated. Since, however, only half of the seats for the prefectural constituencies are renewed at each election, the number of seats in contention at any one election varies from one to four. Numbers are in fact weighted heavily at the lower end of the scale: there are twenty-six one-member contests, fifteen contests for two members, * The following abbreviations of party names are used in this chapter: LDP (Liberal Democratic Party): JSP (Japan Socialist Party): DSP (Democratic Socialist Party); JCP (Japan Communist Party); NLC (New Liberal Club); SDL (Social Democratic League); NLCDL (New Liberal Club Democratic League). Kōmeitō is left untranslated because of the difficulty of finding an adequate translation.

Democracy and elections: Japan

37

Table 1

Name

Party affiliation

Votes

Ozawa

Liberal Democrat

102,416

Kondō

Liberal Democrat

100,124 Elected

Yoneda

Socialist

75,318

Yamamoto

Democratic Socialist

74,169

Hayashi

Communist

23,960

Not elected

Source: Asahi Shimbun Senkyo Hombu (Asahi Newspaper Election Headquarters), Asahi Senkyo Taikan: Dai 36 Kai Shūgiin Sōsenkyo, Dai 12 Kal Sangiin Tsūjō Senkyo, Shōwa 55 nen 6 gatsu (Asahi Election Survey: The 36th General Election for the House of Representatives and the 12th Regular Election for the House of Councillors, June 1980) (Tokyo, 1980), p. 71.

four for three members and only two (Hokkaidō and Tokyo) for four members. This means that in twenty-six constituencies scattered around the country, there are regular three-yearly elections in which the system of election is first-past-the-post in a singlemember constituency. This, as we shall see, provides us with the possibility of making an interesting check on the hypothesis that the predominant multi-member (‘medium size’) constituency system substantially affects electoral behaviour. Unfortunately, however, since these Upper House single-member contests take place mostly in highly conservative rural areas, the sample is in no sense random. A fairly typical result of a contest of this kind was that fought in Nagasaki Prefecture in the Upper House general elections of 22 June 1980, with 1,076,590 electors on the roll, as shown in Table 2. The most unusual (and controversial) constituency in Japan is the national constituency of the House of Councillors. As we shall see, the decision has been taken to reform it. At each election fifty members are elected by an electorate which at the 1980 Upper House elections numbered 80,925,034. Quite simply, the first fifty place-getters are declared elected. At the 1980 elections the octogenarian Miss Ichikawa, standing as an Independent, came first with 2,784,998 votes, while the candidate placed fiftieth, a Socialist called Wada, attracted a mere 642,554 votes. Apart from the fifty elected, there were a further forty-three unsuccessful candidates. Besides the two Houses of the National Diet, regular elections are held for an enormous number of chief executive and local assembly positions at the local level. As of December 1972 there were elections for 47 prefectural governorships, 643 mayors of cities, 2,641 heads of towns and villages, 2,788 members of prefectural assemblies, 20,325 members of city assemblies, 49,777 members of town and village assemblies and 1,091 members of special ward assemblies in Tokyo. Chief executive elections were all single-member first-past-the-post affairs, whereas the number of members per constituency in local assembly elections varied widely. When one considers the number of elective positions in both national and local politics, it becomes clear that the act of voting and the routine of elections is a regular and familiar experience for much of the

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38

Japanese population. Turning from a description of the electoral system to an analysis of electoral results and trends, a number of most interesting factors become apparent. Before the Second World War, when political parties were much less important

Table 2

Name

Party affiliation

Votes

Hatsumura

Liberal Democrat

452,561

Tatsuta

Socialist

267,561

Furuki

Communist

55,376

Elected Not elected

Source: Asahi Shimbun Senkyo Hombu (Asahi Newspaper Election Headquarters), Asahi Senkyo Taikan: Dai 36 Kai Shūgiin Sōsenkyo, Dai 12 Kal Sangiin Tsūjō Senkyo, Shōwa 55 nen 6 gatsu (Asahi Election Survey: The 36th General Election for the House of Representatives and the 12th Regular Election for the House of Councillors, June 1980) (Tokyo, 1980), p. 80.

in the political system as a whole than they subsequently became, there was much fluidity in electoral behaviour. Two major parties—both essentially conservative—dominated the scene, and more or less alternated in possession of parliamentary majorities, though this did not necessarily mean alternation in power, since power did not securely lie with the parties. Following the 1945 defeat a further decade of fluidity ensued, though with the difference that parties professing various forms of socialism had come to constitute a major minority force in the electorate and in Parliament. Briefly, in 1947 and 1948, the JSP entered a coalition government together with two parties from outside the socialist side of politics. The year 1955 marks a turning point. In that year for the first time the Socialists mustered enough parliamentary seats to block revision of the constitution, 11 and both the Socialists and the Conservatives successively amalgamated into single parties. Subsequently the Conservatives, with their far greater access to power and patronage, were able to control strong internal fissiparous tendencies to the extent that, apart from the defection of a small splinter group in 1976, they maintained themselves as a single party. The Socialists, on the other hand, were much more prone to destructive internal squabbling, and found it difficult either to avoid the defection of splinter groups or to stem the tide of electoral decline which in turn permitted the formation of alternative parties of opposition. The pattern of electoral trends from the late 1950s to the middle 1970s is extremely interesting. On the conservative side of politics the proportion of the total vote which went to the LDP declined slowly but steadily, and there was no Lower House general election between those of May 1958 and December 1976 at which the LDP did not do worse in terms of proportion of the total votes cast than it had at the previous election. In 1958 the percentage was 57.8, but by 1976 it had fallen to 41.8—a fall of 16.0% over

Democracy and elections: Japan

39

eighteen years. Not surprisingly, during the middle 1970s many commentators were basing their predictions on the assumption that this trend would inexorably continue, and that the LDP therefore could not long hope to maintain its majority of Lower House seats. 12 There was some surprise, therefore, when towards the end of the 1970s the trend began rising again, to 44.6% in the 1979 elections and to 47.9% in the elections of 1980. If we examine this trend in more detail, we see that the downward tendency was most pronounced in the middle 1960s, which was precisely the period when economic growth was at its most rapid, urbanisation was proceeding fastest and the problems facing those living in the big cities were becoming most evident and acute. 13 Towards the beginning and towards the end of the eighteen-year period the rate of decline was much slower 14 (see Figure 1). The connection between urbanisation and a decline in the LDP voting percentage is strongly supported by an examination of the urban-rural breakdown of the vote. Whereas over the whole period the LDP vote held up well in the countryside, it suffered a sharp decline in the big cities, particularly during the high economic growth period of the 1960s and early 1970s. 15 When we turn to the opposition parties, we see, on the part of the JSP, a rather similar but much more marked pattern of secular decline, with the decline most acute in the cities. In the Socialist case, however, there is no recent evidence of recovery. The principal difference between LDP and ISP performance relates to the much poorer record of cohesion and perceived competence of the latter when compared with the former. Whereas, apart from a single small occurrence of defection in 1976 (the formation of the New Liberal Club) the LDP has managed almost to monopolise conservative votes at the national level, the Socialists have more and more had to share the non-LDP vote with smaller and more dynamic parties, directing their appeal largely to urban voters. Since the late 1950s the JSP has suffered two defections, one major and one minor. In 1959–60 much of the right wing of the JSP defected and formed the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP), which has generally won 6% or 7% of the national vote and about 30 seats in Lower House elections. In 1977–8 there was a much smaller and less serious defection from the party’s right wing, leading to the formation of the Social Democratic League (SDL) 16 which in 1981 merged at parliamentary level with the New Liberal Club (NLC) to form the New Liberal Club Democratic League (NLCDL). The best result so far of the SDL is three Lower House seats. The earlier JSP monopoly of opposition seats was also challenged from the outside, by two dynamic and well-organised parties which began to do well in the 1960s. Despite their radically different origins and ideologies, these two parties have much in common organisationally and in terms of the base of their support. The first is the Kōmeitō (also sometimes known, rather inaccurately, in English as the Clean Government Party), the political offshoot of an energetically proselytising neo-Buddhist religion called the Sōka Gakkai (‘Value-Creation Association’) having an appeal in particular to relatively undereducated sections of the population which in an earlier age might well have been called ‘petit bourgeois’. The second such party could in fact boast the longest history of any party in Japan, though between its original foundation in 1922 and its re-emergence as a legal party for the first time in 1945 that history was discontinuous to say the least: the Japan Communist Party (JCP), after a brief flowering during the Occupation, was reduced to

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40

marginal status in the 1950s, but under astute leadership in the 1960s came to attract about 10% of the national vote. 17 The JCP received support from among relatively alienated sections of the population, and although factory workers constituted its core backing, its support extended across the range of socio-economic groups, though it was very weak in the countryside. What the Kōmeitō and the JCP had in common was a seriousness about grass-roots organisation that was largely lacking in the other parties. Strenuous and up to a point successful attempts were made to build up a body of devoted and dedicated members whose lives would revolve around their party, and whose commitment went far beyond that of personal convenience or gain. In both cases, also, organisation was, by comparison with other parties, centralised, hierarchical and carefully structured. They were both strong in the big cities and weak almost everywhere else. Unlike the JSP and DSP they were not dependent upon a kind of substitute organisation in the labour unions. Both experienced their most spectacular flowering in the late 1960s and early 1970s (the JCP a little later than the Kōmeitō) which was precisely the time when the social dislocations created by rapid urbanisation were most apparent, and when both the LDP and especially the JSP were losing urban support. Since the middle 1970s the electoral performance of these two parties has ceased to improve, and in the case of both has recently somewhat declined. Finally, the New Liberal Club (NLC) is the only party of opposition to have originated as a splinter group from the LDP. Although it confounded observers with its capacity to attract votes in the 1976 Lower House elections, held in the aftermath of the Lockheed revelations, it found its initial success difficult to sustain, and was plagued by defections from members wishing to return to the LDP fold. It is a very minor party indeed, its support being virtually confined to the big cities (especially the Tokyo area), and despite its parliamentary union with the even smaller Social Democratic League, its future appears to be in doubt. The voting trends for the various opposition parties are shown in Figure 1. Results of the House of Representatives election from 1958 to 1980 are given in Table 3. Results of the House of Councillors elections from 1971 to 1980 are given in Table 4. To what extent has the electoral system affected the outcome of the electoral process and more broadly the nature of party politics in Japan? Several aspects of the system have clearly exerted a significant influence on both electoral results and political style. One quite important aspect is the failure, in both House of Representatives elections and in elections for the prefectural constituencies of the House of Councillors, to redraw electoral boundaries to take into account changes in the distribution of population. In the case of the House of Representatives the failure is not absolute, since thirty-nine seats in densely populated urban areas have been added since the early 1960s. 18 Nevertheless, at the time of the Lower House general election of October 1979, the discrepancy in the value of a vote at the extremes—that is between the most and the least densely populated constituency—was 3.9 times. 19 This in part at least explains the consistently higher proportion of total seats won by the LDP in comparison with the proportion of votes, since that party enjoys more support in the countryside than in the towns. Without this advantage, the LDP could not have sustained an independent majority in several recent elections. It is not so clear that the JSP is disadvantaged by this factor (and indeed it may

Democracy and elections: Japan

41

now marginally profit from it), but the smaller urban-based parties appear to suffer some disadvantage. The second point is that the system has in practice fostered the fragmentation of the opposition. There have been instances in five-member constituencies of the Lower House where a candidate has been elected with as little as

Figure 3.1 % of total vote in Lower House general elections, May 1958–June 1980

10% of the vote. This means that parties with minority appeal, which in a British-type system would be eliminated altogether (unless their support were heavily concentrated in a particular region), are able to elect one candidate in each of a number of constituencies where their organisation is sufficiently strong to muster, say 15 or 20% of the total vote. It is worth noting that with one exception the Kōmeitō, DSP, JCP, NLC and SDL have never elected more than one candidate in a House of Representatives election in any single constituency. The exception is in the Communist stronghold of Kyōto, in whose first constituency the JCP elected two candidates in the 1972 and 1979 elections. It is possible to check this point by reference to those constituencies of the Upper House

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42

where a single member is elected, as mentioned above. The normal pattern in those constituencies is for the LDP, the JSP and the JCP to put up candidates, though Independents also sometimes stand. The JCP has a policy of contesting every constituency, in order to develop its local organisation, but its percentage of the vote in Upper House single-member constituencies is usually very small. In the 1974 House of Councillors elections the Kōmeitō put up candidates in sixteen single-member constituencies, but all of them did badly, and the experiment was not repeated. The DSP (and in 1977 the NLC) have on occasion put forward one or two candidates, but never

Table 3 House of Representatives election results 1958–1980

Election 22 May 1958

LDP

JSP

21 Nov. 1963

29 Jan. 1967

27 Dec. 1969

10 Dec. 1972

5 Dec. 1976

JCP

NLC SDL Others Indep. Total

287 (61.5)

166 (35.5)

1 (0.2)

22,977 (57.8)

13,094 (32.9)

1,012 (2.6)

288 (0.7)

JSP 20 Nov. 1960

KP

1 (0.2) 12 (2.6)

467

2,381 39.752 (6.0)

DSP

296 (63.4)

145 (31.0)

17 (3.7)

3 (0.6)

1 (0.2)

22,740 (57.6)

10,887 (27.6)

3,464 (8.8)

1,157 (2.9)

142 (0.3)

283 (60.7)

144 (30.8)

23 (4.9)

5 (1.1)

0 (0)

22,424 (54.7)

11,907 (29.0)

3,023 (7.4)

1,646 (4.0)

60 (0.1)

277 (57.0)

140 (28.8)

30 (6.2)

25 (5.1)

5 (1.0)

0 (0)

22,448 (48.8)

12,826 (27.9)

3,404 2,472 (7.4) (5.4)

2,191 (4.8)

101 (0.2)

288 (59.2)

90 (18.5)

47 (9.7)

14 (2.9)

0 (0)

22,382 (47.9)

10,074 (21.4)

3,637 5,125 (7.7) (10.9)

3,199 (6.8)

81 (0.2)

271 (55.2)

118 (24.0)

24,563 (46.8)

31 (6.4)

19 (3.9)

29 (5.9)

38 (7.7)

11,479 (21.9)

3,661 4,437 (7.0) (8.5)

5,497 (10.5)

249 (48.7)

123 (24.1)

29 55 (5.7) (10.8)

17 (3.3)

17 (3.3)

0 (0)

23,654

11,713

3,554 6,177

5,878

2,364

45

5 (1.9)

1,119 39,509 (2.8) 12 (2.6)

467

1,956 41,017 (4.8) 9 (1.9)

486

2,554 45,997 (5.5) 16 (3.3)

486

2,493 46,990 (5.3)

2 (0.4) 14 (2.9) 143 (0.3)

467

491

2,646 52,425 (5.0) 21 (4.1)

511

3,227 56,613

Democracy and elections: Japan

7 Oct. 1979

22 June 1980

(41.8)

(20.7)

(6.3) (10.9)

(10.4)

(4.2)

248 (48.6)

107 (20.9)

35 57 (6.8) (11.2)

39 (7.6)

4 (0.7)

24,084 (44.6)

10,643 (19.7)

3,664 5,283 (6.8) (9.8)

5,626 (10.4)

284 (55.6)

107 (20.9)

33 (6.5)

28,262 (47.9)

11,401 (19.3)

3,897 5,330 (6.6) (9.0)

32 (6.3)

43 (0.1)

(5.7)

2 (0.4)

0 (0)

19 (3.7)

1,632 (3.0)

368 (0.7)

69 (0.1)

29 (5.7)

12 (2.3)

3 (0.5)

0 (0)

5,804 (9.8)

1,766 (3.0)

402 (0.7)

109 (0.2)

511

2,641 54,522 (4.9) 11 (2.1)

511

2,057 59,029 (3.5)

Notes: 1. For each entry: number of seats (% of total seats); number of votes, in thousands (% of total votes). 2. Party name abbreviations DSP: Democratic Socialist Party (Minshatō) JCP: Japan Communist Party (Nihon Kyōsantō) JSP: Japan Socialist Party (Nihon Shakaitō) KP: Kōmei Party (Kōmeitō) LDP: Liberal Democratic Party (Jiyūminshutō, Jimintō) NLC: New Liberal Club (Shin Jiyū Club) SDL: Social Democratic League (Shakaiminshurengō, Shaminren). Sources: Asahi Nenkan (Asahi Yearbook), 1977 (Tokyo, 1977), p. 323; Asahi Shimbun (9 Oct. 1979); Asahi Nenkan, 1981, pp. 232–3.

Table 4 House of Councillors election results 1971–1980

Prefectural constituencies Seats No.

National constituency

Votes %

%

Seats No.

%

Votes

Total seats

%

%

LDP 1971

41

54.6

43.9

21

42.0

44.4

62

1974

43

56.6

39.5

19

35.2

44.3

62

1977

45

59.2

39.5

18

36.0

35.8

63

1980

48

63.2

43.3

21

42.0

42.5

69

1971

28

37.3

31.2

11

22.0

21.3

39

1974

18

23.7

26.0

10

18.5

15.2

28

1977

17

22.4

25.9

10

20.0

17.4

27

1980

13

17.1

22.4

9

18.0

13.1

22

JSP

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44

Kōmeitō 1971

2

2.7

3.5

8

16.0

14.1

10

1974

5

6.6

12.6

9

16.7

12.1

14

1977

5

6.6

6.2

9

18.0

14.2

14

1980

3

3.9

5.0

9

18.0

11.9

12

1971

2

2.7

4.8

4

8.0

8.0

6

1974

1

1.3

4.4

4

7.4

5.9

5

1977

2

2.6

9.9

4

8.0

6.7

6

1980

2

2.6

5.2

4

8.0

6.0

6

1971

1

1.3

12.1

5

10.0

8.1

6

1974

5

6.6

12.0

8

14.8

9.4

13

1977

2

2.6

9.9

3

6.0

8.4

5

1980

4

5.3

11.7

3

6.0

7.3

7

1971

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

1974

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

1977

2

2.6

5.7

1

2.0

3.9

3

1978

0

0

0.6

0

0

0.6

0

DSP

JCP

NLC

Minor parties (incl. SDL) and Inds. 1971

1

1.3

4.4

1

2.0

6.0

2

1974

4

5.2

5.5

4

7.4

13.1

8

1977

3

3.9

8.3

5

10.0

13.6

8

1980

6

7.9

11.8

4

8.0

18.6

10

75

100.0

100.0

50

100.0

100.0

125

100.0

100.0

130

Total 1971 1974

76

100.0

100.0

54a

1977

76

100.0

100.0

50

100.0

100.0

126

1980

76

100.0

100.0

50

100.0

100.0

126

a In 1974

four candidates were elected to the national consituency for three-year terms to fill vacancies in seats filled in 1972. Source: Asahi Nenkan (Asahi Yearbook), 1972 (Tokyo, 1972); ibid., 1975; ibid., 1978; ibid., 1981.

Democracy and elections: Japan

45

to any effect. For all intents and purposes, then, the Upper House single-member constituencies involve contests between the LDP and JSP, or sometimes between the LDP and a conservative independent. They do not reward opposition fragmentation. It should be noted, however, that multi-member constituencies are merely permissive towards the emergence of small parties; their existence does not explain why the fragmentation has taken place in the ranks of the opposition, but not in the LDP (except for the minor defection of the NLC in 1976). Several factors may be advanced to explain this difference, though which is the most important is not entirely clear. Up to the time of the formation of the LDP in 1955 the conservative camp was at least as prone to fragmentation as the socialist camp, but since 1955 the conservative side of politics has been far better at staying together in one party than have its opponents. 20 Probably the key explanation is simply that the LDP has been in power, and no doubt the prospect of losing power as a result of forming splinter groups is more of a stimulus to stay together than the prospect of perhaps gaining power in a more or less remote future is a stimulus to remain united when power has never, or almost never, been tasted. In addition., the LDP is under pressure from business to keep its house in order, and ideological disputation is more of a habit on the Left than on the Right. But even in recent circumstances, where the ideological temperature has been substantially reduced, the opposition has found it almost impossible to merge into a smaller number of parties, let alone a single party. This leads us to a third effect of the electoral system, which is that it appears to encourage both factionalism and candidate-centred, rather than party-centred, mobilisation of the vote. This effect is confined to those parties which put up more than one candidate in a substantial number of constituencies. This is overwhelmingly true for the LDP, and true now to a rather minor extent for the JSP, 21 but not true for any of the other parties. What this means in effect is that whereas candidates of the smaller parties are competing only with candidates of other parties, candidates of the LDP (and to a much lesser extent the JSP) are not only competing with candidates of other parties but are also in the bulk of cases competing with each other. Since there is no possibility of transferring a vote from a candidate of one party to another candidate of the same party (or for that matter, to a candidate of another party), intra-party competition is an absolutely crucial problem for a big party. The LDP copes with this problem by combining strict central control of candidate endorsement with decentralisation of candidate campaigns. In the Lower House electoral system it is crucial not to split the vote between too many candidates, and in recent elections the LDP has been extraordinarily successful in keeping down the number of candidates to a bare minimum that are capable of being elected. Indeed, in the 1980 Lower House elections, votes for successful candidates as a percentage of total votes cast for all LDP candidates amounted to 94.9%. 22 Since, however, in the bulk of cases there are two or more LDP candidates competing against each other in the same constituency, they rely not only on the party for backing, but also on intraparty factions. It is unusual for two LDP candidates for the same constituency to belong to the same faction, because of this competitive element. The faction, which is not in the LDP primarily a policyoriented body, performs certain functions for its members, such as backing them for cabinet office and other positions., and in relation to their election campaigns it provides

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them with funds. The funds are used to ‘service’ a personal support organisation run by the candidate himself in his constituency. Many of the activities of this organisation are in fact of a rather innocuous social nature, but the candidate’s kōenkai (as it is called) is an invaluable means of establishing and maintaining connections and thus creating a network of support. 23 Curtis refers to the ‘hard vote’ of those who will vote for the candidate through thick and thin, essentially because of involvement in such a network of connections. 24 Although this pattern is more typical of rural and small town Japan than of the big cities, the kōenkai may be met with in one form or another in most parts of the nation, where electioneering is in progress or in prospect. It should be noted that the ‘hard vote’ is directed towards a candidate rather than a party. The difference ‘between urban and rural patterns of electoral behaviour is well indicated by the at first sight surprising fact that voting turnout is substantially higher in rural areas than in the cities. This is a reflection of community solidarity, in that a village or rural community normally backs a particular candidate and failure to vote on the part of an individual would be regarded as letting the local community down. Whereas turnout rates in big cities are often in the 50% or 60% range, those in the remoter parts of the countryside are sometimes over 80%. It is clear from this description that social patterns, as well as the electoral system as such, are responsible for the high level of personality, rather than party, voting. Nevertheless, the electoral system serves to reinforce rather than to counteract indigenous social patterns, and to retard change rather than promote it. A fourth effect of the electoral system relates to the regulation of electioneering practices. In Japan these regulations are unusually severe, and include a total ban on door-to-door canvassing, restrictions on expenditure, numbers of posters, numbers of campaign vehicles, numbers of speech meetings, use of the media, the period of permitted campaigning, the giving of presents to supporters and so on. 25 Although many of these restrictions are unrealistic and are not widely observed (especially the regulations regarding campaign expenditure), they have the general effect of deterring a programmatic campaign effort, and giving substantial advantage to the sitting member whose political machine is well oiled through long use. It is much harder to break in from the outside. 26 It remains to discuss the national constituency of the House of Councillors. It will be recalled that of the 126 Upper House seats renewed at each three-yearly election, 50 are elected in a constituency which encompasses the whole nation from Hokkaidō to Okinawa. Whereas elections for two-, or three- and four-member constituencies in the House of Councillors follow much the same logic as the three-, four- and five-member Lower House constituencies, the national constituency of the Upper House operates in a different fashion. Obviously with an electorate of some eighty million, the network approach adopted by many candidates for the House of Representatives would be utterly impracticable. In recent elections the minimum vote required to be elected for the national constituency is over 600,000 votes. To reach such a total, a candidate requires either broad-based organisation or nationwide fame. The latter approach has led to the election in most Upper House elections of a number of ‘talent candidates’, who are mainly television stars, sportsmen or the like. Ironically, many of them after six years in the House of Councillors have been forgotten by the electorate, and are defeated the

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second time round. Organisation may be that of a political party or of some nationwide interest group, such as the Japan Dental Association, the Bereaved Families Association, the Japan Teachers Union, or various religions. Usually both party and interest groups are involved. 27 In the 1974 elections, for instance, Tanaka Tadao, a right-wing conservative backed by the nationalist religion, Seichō no ie (House of Light) ‘stood for the national constituency on the LDP ticket, and narrowly failed to be elected (he won 550,689 votes). The House of Councillors national constituency is the only constituency of either House to be unaffected by the gross imbalance in the value of the vote between rural and urban areas, mentioned above. It is also the most unpredictable of all constituencies, in which incumbency conveys less of an advantage than elsewhere. Tight organisation, such as that centrally exercised over its members and supporters by the Kōmeitō, is, on the other hand, an advantage. The Kōmeitō is able to estimate accurately the level of its support, and carves the nation up into regions, instructing its supporters to vote for one of its candidates in region A, for another candidate in region B, and so on. The success of this method of avoiding wasted votes is attested to by the results of the 1980 Upper House elections in the national constituency, where nine Kōmeitō candidates stood for election, and all were elected, their placings ranging between numbers twenty-seven and forty-six. 28 By contrast, the twenty-three LDP candidates were placed between number three and number fifty-eight. In 1980 only two candidates out of the LDP field of twentythree were placed lower than fifty and so failed to be elected, but this was an election where the LDP in general did rather better than expected. In 1974, when the LDP fared slightly worse than had presumably been anticipated by the party’s electoral strategists, it suffered the humiliation of finding that the seven candidates whose voting performance placed them immediately below the line dividing victory from defeat were from its own ranks. The cost of campaigning in the national constituency is the most frequent reason advanced in criticism of the system used. The LDP has long been unhappy with it, and arguably it does less well in proportion to its percentage of the vote in the national constituency than in either the House of Representatives or the prefectural constituencies of the House of Councillors. The Suzuki government, 1982, introduced legislation to change the national constituency system to a system of proportional representation by list, with votes being distributed among candidates on different party lists according to the d’Hondt formula. A voter, therefore, will still have two votes when voting for the House of Councillors, but will vote for a candidate in his prefectual constituency and for a party list in the national constituency. The reform is controversial, and is opposed particularly strongly by the smaller parties. This is no doubt partly because they appear to have done rather better out of the previous system than the LDP. There is, however, a more complicated reason why they oppose it. Hitherto much of the energy of the smaller parties in Upper House elections was taken up with the national constituency, and, as we have seen, they do not (except for the Communists) normally contest the numerous single-member prefectural constituencies. Under proportional representation for the national constituency, presumably there will be no real need for individuals to campaign since it will be a contest between parties. This— so it is argued—will mean that the parties will concentrate much more than previously on

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the prefectural constituencies. The failure, however, to present a candidate in a prefectural constituency will be likely to have an adverse ‘spillover’ effect on that party’s vote in that prefecture for the national constituency. If this argument is correct, it is because of the extent to which a candidate’s campaign is a crucial factor in generating enthusiasm for his party. 29 A number of other arguments are used against the proposal. These include the view that the Upper House ought to be readily distinguishable from the Lower House, and that parties ought not to dominate it as they do the Lower. 30 The ‘listing’ of Independents, a few of whom at present win large vote totals, is seen as another problem, as is the question of how far factionalism will intrude into the choice and order of candidates by the LDP. More seriously, perhaps, the change is vulnerable to the accusation that it fails to institute reform of those Lower and Upper House constituencies which suffer from acute inequality of vote values, favouring the LDP, while seeking to tamper with the one constituency where the LDP appears somewhat disadvantaged. It should be noted, however, that the LDP almost proved capable of turning even the previous national constituency voting system to its advantage. Whereas in 1974 the LDP was severely disadvantaged under the existing system, in 1980 it secured 42% of the seats with 42.5% of the vote. In evaluating the political effects of the Japanese electoral system it is of course important not to overstate the case that the electoral system as such has shaped important aspects of postwar Japanese politics. Obviously much more importance attaches to the broader political institutions that emerged, first from the institution-building experiences of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, second from the period of mobilisation for war from the early 1930s until 1945, 31 and third out of the American Occupation. We have argued elsewhere 32 that in essence the Japanese political system today is closer to the Westminster model than to any other, particularly since a government commanding a secure parliamentary majority is in a position to exercise firm authority, though the political arena is notably pluralistic. The second set of variables apart from the electoral system which any consideration of Japanese politics as a whole needs to take into account is that stemming from the norms and practices of Japanese society. Habits of deference to authority, a tendency towards voting for individuals rather than parties, political factionalism and a general weakness of grass-roots party organisation all plainly reflect aspects of Japanese social behaviour, even though the features we have just listed should not be regarded as static or unchanging. The electoral system, nevertheless, can be seen as a not insignificant independent variable which in recent years has tended to consolidate and reinforce some of the more ‘conservative’ features of the system. The failure to rectify gross electoral imbalance of population is the most obvious example. More subtly, however, the system of multimember constituencies without provision for vote transfer has facilitated the fragmenting of the opposition as well as factionalism within the ruling party. Perhaps most significantly of all in terms of its long-term effects, the fact that the system is readily compatible with personal political machines at the constituency level serves to reinforce the conservatism of the political atmosphere in three principal ways. First, it gives a big advantage to sitting members who merely have to service an existing machine rather than

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build one from scratch, which is both inordinately expensive and also time-consuming. Second, it tends to give the edge to those candidates able to command, either through factional connections with monied interest groups or by means of actual membership of an organisation with substantial resources, the very large sums of money needed to be elected. And third, in a more general sense it has the effect of continuously importing into the political arena the values of a rather traditional rural and small town environment. The more freewheeling liberal values of the big cities, where parties, together with their policies and images, appear to count more now than the voter’s personal feeling for the candidate, are correspondingly not allowed to exert the kind of influence that one might expect given the ultra-modernity of many aspects of contemporary Japanese life. Given, therefore, the conservative bias of the electoral system reflected in the ways just outlined, it is hardly surprising that the LDP should be reluctant to embark upon wholesale reform. Indeed, its promotion of reform of the national constituency of the House of Councillors is consistent with its general anti-reform position, since the national constituency is the one part of the system which has failed to conform to the norms of the system as a whole.

NOTES 1. See R.H.P.Mason, Japan’s First General Election 1890 (Cambridge, 1968); and Ben-Ami Shillony, Politics and Culture in Wartime Japan (Oxford, 1981). 2. The Meiji Constitution of 1889 provided for a bicameral Parliament (the ‘Imperial Diet’) consisting of two Houses of approximately equal powers, the House of Peers and the House of Representatives. Only the latter was elective, and the constitution in general gave a very limited role to elected representatives while enshrining the principle of an executive with little responsibility to the electorate. 3. In order to take care of fears that universal male suffrage would open the floodgates of radicalism, a Peace Preservation Law, giving enhanced powers to the police, was brought down in the same year. 4. For further details, see J.A.A.Stockwin, Japan: Divided Politics in a Growth Economy, 2nd edn (London, 1982). It should be noted that nobody can be a candidate for the House of Representatives before the age of twenty-five and for the House of Councillors before the age of thirty. 5. Factions in Japanese parties and other organisations tend to involve strong bonds between the leader and at least his core followers. They also tend to be semipermanent, rather than ephemeral. 6. A radical revision of the electoral system, substituting single-member for multimember constituencies and including also a number of seats (in the Lower House) to be filled by proportional representation, was proposed by the then Prime Minister, Tanaka Kakuei, in 1973. It failed to be adopted. A recent decision to revise the electoral procedures for the national constituency of the House of Councillors, will be discussed later in the chapter. 7. For details, see Stockwin, Japan, pp. 88–97. 8. Because of the complexities of the Japanese writing system, it is often possible to

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write a particular name in several different ways, even though each person will have only one way of writing his name. The possibilities of writing a name incorrectly are, therefore, considerable, but it is the understanding of the writer that the election authorities are lenient towards incorrect writing of names, provided that there is no ambiguity between different candidates. Informal voting rates are low. 9. The present Lower House constituency system is known in Japan as a ‘medium’ constituency system, to distinguish it from a ‘small’ (i.e., single-member) system and from a ‘large’ (i.e., more than five-member) system. All postwar elections for the Lower House have involved ‘medium’ constituencies, except for the elections of 1946, in which they were ‘large’. ‘Small’, ‘medium’ and ‘large’ constituency arrangements were all used at various times in elections before 1945. 10. D.C.S.Sissons, ‘Dissolution of the Japanese Lower House’, in D.C.S.Sissons, ed., Papers on Modern Japan 1968, (Australian National University, Canberra, 1968), pp. 91–137. 11. The postwar constitution has been a major issue in Japanese politics, in part because of the ‘no-war’ clause (Article 9), which the Socialists in particular have championed. See Stockwin, Japan, pp. 196–218. 12. The trend of voting for elections for the Upper was roughly similar. 13. Margaret A.McKean, Environmental Protest and Citizen Politics in Japan (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1981). 14. Most of the decline in LDP support in the 1976 Lower House elections is probably to be explained by the recent defection of several LDP members who then formed the New Liberal Club. 15. See Stockwin, Japan, tables 12 and 19–24, (pp. 118 and 193–5), and first edition (1975) of the same book, tables 11 and 17–21 (pp. 100 and 167–71). 16. This is also sometimes known in English as the United Social Democratic Party (USDP). 17. The Kōmeitō and the JCP pursue quite different strategies on the number of candidates they put forward. The Kōmeitō only puts up candidates in winnable seats, whereas the JCP has a candidate in nearly every constituency in order to build up its local organisation throughout the country. 18. In addition five Lower House and two Upper House seats were added with the reversion to Japan of Okinawa in 1972. 19. For the basis of this calculation, see Stockwin, Japan, pp. 108–11. 20. There was, however, a serious crisis within the LDP in May–June 1980. For details, see J.A.A.Stockwin, ‘Japan’s Political Crisis of 1980’, Australian Outlook, 35, 1 (April 1981), pp. 19–32. 21. At the 1980 House of Representatives elections the JSP put up three candidates for only one constituency. and two candidates for a further seventeen constituencies. The total number of constituencies is 130. By contrast the LDP failed to endorse more than one candidate in only twenty-four constituencies. 22. See Stockwin, Japan, table 9 (p. 108). 23. See Gerald L.Curtis, Election Campaigning Japanese Style (New York and London, 1971), passim. 24. Ibid., pp. 38ff.

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25. For details, see Stockwin, Japan, pp. 103–5. 26. Ibid., table 7 (p. 106). 27. Michael K.Blaker, ed., Japan at the Polls: The House of Councillors Election of 1974 (Washington, DC, 1976), pp. 32–3. 28. Their placings were nos. 27, 30, 33, 37, 39, 40, 41, 42, 46, and their vote totals ranged between 689,042 and 814,953. Vote totals for all the fifty candidates elected in the national constituency ranged from 642,554 to 2,784,998. 29. The argument is put by Kiyoaki Murata in Japan Times (13 March 1982). 30. The number of Independents in the House of Councillors has in any case greatly declined since the 1950s. 31. One of the key legacies of this period was the network of close connections between government and large firms. 32. J.A.A.Stockwin, ‘Understanding Japanese Politics’, Social Analysis (Adelaide), no. 5/6 (December 1980), pp. 144–53.

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING For an overview of the Japanese political system, see J.A.A.Stockwin, Japan: Divided Politics in a Growth Economy , 2nd edn (London, 1982). For scholarly writing in English on Japanese elections, see Gerald L.Curtis, Election Campaigning Japanese Style (New York and London, 1971); Bradley M.Richardson, The Political Culture of Japan , (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1974); Michael K. Blaker, ed., Japan at the Polls: The House of Councillors Election of 1974 (Washington, DC, 1976); Herbert Passin, ed., A Season of Voting: The Japanese Elections of 1976 and 1977 (Washington, DC, 1979); John C.Campbell, ed., Parties, Candidates and Voters in Japan: Six Quantitative Studies (University of Michigan, Center for Japanese Studies, 1981); Ronald J.Hrebenar, ‘The Politics of Electoral Reform in Japan’, Asian Survey , 17,10 (October 1977), pp. 978–96.

4 Electoral Pressures for Change: The Effect of Political Reform First published in Toward Reform and Transparency in Japanese Policymaking Processes, Pacific Economic Papers No. 301, March 2000, Australia-Japan Research Centre

INTRODUCTION A CARTOON in the Asahi Shinbun dated 11 August 1993 shows the leaders of the seven political parties participating in the Hosokawa coalition government formed two days before. They are wielding samurai swords and standing triumphant on the inert body of a dinosaur labelled ‘single party control’. One of the leaders is holding a banner that reads: ‘Next is political reform’, and the caption to the cartoon expresses the following sentiment: ‘By launching [the new Cabinet], ‘One Great Task’ has been completed’ (Asahi Shinbun, 11 August 1993). At the time it was easy to regard the formation of the first non-Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) Cabinet for nearly 38 years as a heroic event. A party mired in corruption, preferring backstage deals to open government and massively influenced by irresponsible bureaucrats and self-serving interest groups had been vanquished by a coalition of farsighted reformers. These reformers were proposing a coherent programme to democratize and modernize the political, economic and social systems and practices of Japan. As happens following most revolutions, however, what ensued was far more messy and confusing, the politics more murky and the achievements more ambiguous than the initial mood of euphoria would have predicted. Indeed, within a mere nine months of losing office, the LDP dinosaur had revived, and though much less powerful than before, was taking its first steps on the road to regaining its dominant political position. The Hosokawa Cabinet adumbrated a reform agenda whose principal elements were deregulation, decentralisation, economic reforms and a radical change to the electoral system for the House of Representatives. In the event, partly because the tenure of office of his government was so brief, Hosokawa’s only solid achievement in the area of political reform was a wholesale rewriting of the electoral law for the Lower House. 1 Although, however, this was arguably the one really major political change that took place in the 1990s, to gauge its effects is far more problematic. Indeed, it is a central argument of this paper that the effects of changing the Lower House electoral system have been quite limited, and that the causes of the most crucial political changes of the 1990s must be sought largely elsewhere. (It is possible, of course, that the new electoral system may produce more substantial effects in the future, but in any case we cannot

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assume that the new system will not be further revised in the next few years.)

CONCEPTUALIZING THE POLITICS OF THE 1990s For many observers, the predominant impression of Japanese politics in the 1990s has been one of utter confusion. Political parties have split, amalgamated, changed their names, switched coalitions, appeared, disappeared, reappeared—with barely discernible rhyme or reason. Politicians who were sworn enemies become bosom friends, and bosom friends become sworn enemies. Ideological difference or similarity seems to have little predictive value in relation to coalition behaviour. Political leaders whose images are strong show little leadership when given the opportunity, whereas apparently weak leaders demonstrate an unexpected capacity to lead (or at least to lead more than was expected of them). Bureaucrats control politicians, but politicians control bureaucrats, and pressure groups of all kinds both manipulate and are manipulated by both bureaucrats and politicians. Superficially at least, Japan’s political system is a vast amorphous organism, pulsating and constantly changing shape, but lacking clear direction or internal distinctions that can be readily grasped. Rules exist, but rarely seem to determine outcomes. There is, however, a pattern that informs the political events of the 1990s. The fact that this pattern has been difficult to discern may well relate to the way the problem has been expressed by various participants and observers of the political process in the 1990s. In the opinion of Ozawa Ichirō, the most high profile reformer of the decade, the political choice is between a continuation of single-party dominance (essentially the system up to 1993), and a two-party alternation. The great advantage of two-party alternation, according to this argument, is that the electorate is given a genuine choice between two alternative sets of politicians having different political philosophies and programs. This is democratically desirable, in that it gives a genuine choice to the electorate. It is also desirable in terms of getting things done, since with a single party permanently dominant, vested interests make it exceedingly difficult to change entrenched policies. Such a system has a tendency toward corruption, toward economic policies distorted by the influence of narrow groups occupying a strategic position and, in a pithy phrase, ‘crony capitalism. Ozawa did his best to bring into being an alternative party that would be capable of challenging the LDP. His most impressive effort in this regard was the formation of the Shinshintō (New Frontier Party), an amalgamation of several pre-existing parties that was launched in December 1994 but ignominiously collapsed a mere three years later, in December 1997. It reached the height of its popularity at the House of Councillors elections of July 1995, 2 but subsequently suffered a steady trickle of defections and was beset by increasingly difficult problems of internal cohesion. The reasons for all this need not detain us. Whether, given somewhat different circumstances, the Shinshintō might have developed into an alternative government to the LDP is academic. The hard fact is that it did not. Just before the general elections for the House of Representatives held in October 1996, another serious opposition party, the Minshutō (Democratic Party of Japan: DPJ)

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was formed, with aspirations to be an alternative party of government. It too was an amalgamation of different groups, having a more left-of-centre orientation than the Shinshintō, but most contemporary observers would probably agree that its chances of forming an alternative government are substantially slimmer than those of the Shinshintō in its heyday. On the other hand, an important political innovation of the 1990s (though not entirely. without precedent) is coalition government. We shall examine below the varieties of coalition government, and the electoral and other conditions that have led to them. But at this point we need to advance the most important proposition of the paper, namely that the politics of the 1990s may be conceptualized as a clash between two opposing principles. The first is the principle of single-party dominance, in which the LDP has far more parliamentary seats than any other party, and other parties, rather than acting as an opposition, operate without power in a role supportive of the dominant party. A partial example would be the Hashimoto government between October 1996 and the early months of 1998, when the Social Democratic Party (SDP, formerly Japan Socialist Party, or JSP) and Sakigake—both very weak following the October 1996 general elections— lent their support to the LDP without participating in government. But more broadly, this principle means that power rests essentially within one political organisation (party), and other parties either act as satellites round the LDP sun, or maintain a position of impotent opposition (for instance the Japan Communist Party, or JCP). The opposing principle is that of a coalition government: that is to say, where different parties join together in a coalition arrangement, and there is a genuine sharing of political power between them. Such an arrangement will only take place where the LDP (or, theoretically, another dominant party) lacks a parliamentary majority. An example from the middle of the decade is provided by the LDP-JSP-Sakigake coalition under Prime Minister Murayama between June 1994 and January 1996. Although from various perspectives this was not the most impressive of governments, it was one where a variety of political perspectives were allowed free play, and political debate within government about contentious policy issues became important. 3 It is true, of course, that the experience of the Murayama and subsequent Hashimoto coalition governments was electorally catastrophic for the Socialists, 4 but at the time the style of government was notably different from what had normally prevailed under LDP single-party rule. Our contention is that it is an understanding of the complex process of interaction between these competing principles that can bring conceptual order into the admittedly highly confused politics of the 1990s. On the one hand, the LDP, having lost its parliamentary majority in 1993–94 (as the result of large-scale defections), and having gone into opposition, set out to re-establish its dominant political position. To a remarkable extent, the party has been successful in this ambition. By June 1994 it was back in government, as part of a coalition government; in January 1996 it regained the prime ministership; in the Lower House elections of October 1996 it won about 30 new seats, while remaining short of a majority; in September 1997 it found itself once again with a Lower House majority in its own right; and by 1999 the LDP had a fairly comfortable Lower House majority. The one prize that remained elusive was the regaining of a majority in the House of Councillors, and indeed in the elections to that

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House, held in July 1998, the LDP lost seats. Consequently, the LDP can only continue in office in what the Japanese press describes as a situation of ‘stable government’ (Asahi Shinbun, 10 September 1999), that is if it enters into coalition arrangements with other parties that may be quite different from it in core constituency, organisational structure and policy preference. 5 How then does the present situation differ from that which prevailed between 1955 and 1993, a period which is generally regarded one of single-party dominance? First of all, we have to enter the caveat that the political system during those years was not unchanging; in particular, from 1989 the LDP lacked an Upper House majority. But secondly and more importantly, the 1990s have seen some important developments that have effected major changes in the way Japanese politics operates. Arguably the change that has been the most far-reaching in its effects has been the near demise of the Japan Socialist Party (now Social Democratic Party). In January 1993 the JSP had 141 (out of 512) seats in the House of Representatives and 73 (out of 252) seats in the House of Councillors. By 1999 the corresponding figures for the SDP (same party under a new name) were 14 and 14. Even though the JSP had enjoyed varying fortunes during the period of LDP dominance up to the early 1990s, it had always been the leading party of opposition, with sufficient parliamentary numbers to block constitutional revision (when it teamed with other smaller parties). More broadly, nobody expected the Socialists to become popular enough to take power (at least, not on their own). Nevertheless, their presence as a constant veto block, backed by public sector unions, intellectuals, teachers and others, acted as a balancing force against the ambitions of right-wing LDP politicians desirous of reversing certain aspects of the Occupation settlement of the late 1940s and early 1950s. Issues of peace and war were most prominent, and a kind of tacit agreement ensured the integrity of the Japan-US security relationship., but maintained strict limitations on Japan’s use of military force. In essence, this was an agreement premised on the continuance of the Cold War. When the Cold War ended, the rationale for such a balance to continue was weakened. By ironic circumstances, the Socialists, riding high in the polls at the outset of the 1990s, were rapidly declining in electoral strength just as the opportunity came to participate in a series of coalition governments with varying partners. This in turn accelerated the process of decline. Many of their votes plainly went to the Communists, who continued to act like an opposition and have been gaining in electoral strength from a low base. The main point for our argument, however, is that a party that for years had represented a limited but effective veto force, had by the late 1990s almost disappeared. As a result of the near-demise of the Socialist Party and the return to strength of the LDP, there has been a distinct but subtle shift in the nature of political debate across a range of issues. The trend that has been accorded the largest amount of publicity—and occasioned disquiet in some quarters—is a perceptible shift to the right of the balance of opinion in the political class. One telling example is the recent decision of the parliament (July 1999) to conduct a debate on the 1946 Constitution for the first time in its history. 6 On the other hand, there is evidence of an opening up of debate on a range of issues where outcomes are difficult to classify as ‘right wing’. For instance, the Freedom of Information Act passed through Parliament in its 145th session that ended on 13 August 1999. That session proved one of the most varied, as well as active, parliamentary

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sessions of recent years, and included, among others, an ambitious bill to cut back the number of government ministries from 23 to 13. 7 It is beyond the scope of this paper to develop a full analysis of why the most recent parliamentary session should have been so

Table 1 Checklist of coalition governments in the 1990s Lower House elections, July 1993 Hosokawa

JSP

Aug. 93–April 94

Shinseitō Komeitō JNP DSP Sakigake Shaminren Minkairen (Rengo) Hata

The above parties, minus: JSP and Sakigake

April–June 1994

Murayama

LDP

July 95–Jan. 96

JSP Sakigake Upper House elections, July 1995 Murayama

LDP

July 95–Jan. 96

JSP Sakigake Hashimoto

LDP

Jan.–Oct. 96

JSP Sakigake Lower House elections, October 1996 Hashimoto

LDP [JSP and Sakigake]—supporting gov’t but not in it

Oct. 96–98

Upper House elections, July 1998 Obuchi

Obuchi

LDP Liberal Party (Jiyōtō)

Jan. 99—

Above parties+Kōmeitō

Sept.–Oct. 99—

active. To explain it would involve considering the narrower spectrum of opinion within

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57

the political class, as well as the substantial rewriting of the political agenda that began with the Hosokawa Cabinet in 1993 (although it is possible to trace the changes to an earlier time than that). The pressures caused by the Asian economic crisis and various foreign policy problems would also need to be taken into account.

COALITION GOVERNMENT IN THE 1990s We now need, however, to enter into a discussion of the second principle of Japanese politics in the 1990s, that of coalition government. There have been a variety of coalition arrangements since 1993, but what is significant is that despite the LDP’s successes in clawing back dominant political power since 1994, it has remained dependent upon entering into coalition with other parties in order to secure passage through parliament of its legislative programme. Up until September 1997 this was because it lacked a majority in the House of Representatives, and the Lower House is of course the more important of the two. But crucially, the LDP has lacked a majority in the House of Councillors ever since its defeat in the Upper House elections of July 1989, in the aftermath of the Recruit Scandal. Until the upheaval of 1989, it had been widely assumed that the House of Councillors was of little significance for either government or opposition. Indeed, with the LDP in control of both houses, as it was between 1955 and 1989, this was largely the case. In law, however, the Upper House has the power to reject legislation sent to it from the Lower House (except for the budget, treaties and the designation of a new prime minister). While the House of Representatives may override an Upper House rejection if it does so by a two-thirds majority, governments do not normally have a Lower House majority as large as that. 8 ‘Stable government’ relies on a majority in both houses of parliament, and this dictates the need to create coalition regimes. Apart from the minority Hata government, which lasted a mere nine weeks between April and June 1994, every government of the 1990s has enjoyed a Lower House majority (although some have been more comfortable than others). On the other hand, several governments have lacked an Upper House majority. This was an embarrassingly difficult problem for the Kaifu (LDP) government at the time of the Gulf crisis and war in 1990–91. At that time the LDP Secretary-General, Ozawa Ichirō, attempted to make deals with certain parties in opposition (especially the Kōmeitō) in order to secure Upper House approval of a peacekeeping operations bill. This did not succeed at the time, although it led to an agreement after the war was over, in 1992. It is instructive to examine the degree to which the variously composed governments from 1993 were ‘secure’ in terms of their majority (of lack of it) in the two houses. This can be seen from the tables attached as appendices to this paper, but the following is a brief summary. The figures throw considerable light on the rationale for the formation of various kinds of coalition. The Miyazawa (LDP) government as of January 1993 controlled 53.5 per cent of Lower House seats, but only 42.1 per cent of Upper House seats (Table 2). Following substantial defections from the LDP in June 1993 and the defeat in the House of

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Representatives elections in July, a coalition government was formed under Hosokawa Morihiro, consisting of seven parties and one Upper House grouping, but excluding the LDP. The Hosokawa government had a bare majority (50.7 per cent) of Lower House seats, and 52.0 per cent of seats in the Upper House (Table 3). Even though it could control both houses, its majority was so thin in both that legislative success was premised on the maintenance of greater parliamentary discipline among its own often squabbling ranks than it was readily able to command.

Table 2 Parliamentary seat breakdown by party, 20 January 1993 [Miyazawa Kiichi, prime minister]

House of Representatives

House of Councillors

LDP

274

106

JSP

141

73

Kōmeitō

46

24

JCP

16

11

DSP

13

11

Rengō

–

11

Niin Club

–

5

JNP

–

4

Independent

7

7

15

0

Total seats

512

252

Total gov’t seats

274

106

Vacant

Note: Parties in bold=government parties Source: Asahi Nenkan, 1994, p. 116

Table 3 Parliamentary seat breakdown by party, 6 August 1993 [Hosokawa Morihiro, prime minister from 9 August]

House of Representatives

House of Councillors

LDP

227

99

JSP

76

73

Shinseitō

60

8

Kōmeitō

52

24

JNP

35

4

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DSP

19

11

Sakigake

13

–

Shaminren

4

–

Minkairen (Rengo)

–

11

Niin Club

–

5

JCP

15

11

Independent

10

6

Total seats

511

252

Total gov’t seats

259

131

Note: Parties in bold=government parties Source: Asahi Nenkan, 1994, p. 118

The next government, headed by Hata Tsutomu, was, as we have seen, in a minority in both houses (35.6 per cent of seats in the House of Representatives) (Table 4). It was tolerated for some nine weeks essentially because a government was required in order to pass the budget, which had been delayed. Many observers expressed astonishment at the formation, and

Table 4 Parliamentary seat breakdown by party, 26 April 1994 [Hata Tsutomu, prime minister]

House of Representatives LDP

206

Kaishin*

130

JSP

74

Kōmeitō

52

Sakigate

15

JCP

15

Mirai

5

Seiun

3

Independent

9

Vacancy

2

Total seats

511

Total gov’t seats

182

Note: * An amalgam of Shinseito, Kaikaku, DSP, Shinto Club, Liberal Party, and Kaikaku no kai.

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The JSP and Sakigake defected from the coalition as a result of the formation of Kaishin, which excluded them. Parties in bold=government parties. Source: Asahi Shinbun, 26 April 1994

subsequent ability to survive, of the three-party coalition governments (LDP, JSP and Sakigake), led successively by Murayama Tomiichi (JSP) and Hashimoto Ryūtarō (LDP), between June 1994 and the first Lower House elections under a reformed electoral system in October 1996. The LDP and JSP were ancient enemies, so that an alliance between them appeared to go against nature. When, however, we inspect the parliamentary arithmetic of these governments, we see that their formation and maintenance made a great deal of sense from the perspective of the participants. A month after the formation of the Murayama government (July 1994), it commanded 57.8 per cent of seats in the House of Representatives, and approximately 63.5 per cent of House of Councillors seats (see Table 5). 9 The figures changed little over 18 months of that government (58.5 per cent and 63.9 per cent in January 1995 (Table 6); 56.9 per cent and 60.7 per cent in August 1995 (Table 7)). When the prime ministership was taken over by Hashimoto (and thus the LDP) in January 1996, the figures initially remained much the same (57.3 per cent and 59.5 per cent) (see Table A1.8). The general elections for the House of Representatives held in October 1996, under the new election system, produced, on the other hand, a more complicated situation. The JSP (now the SDP), split shortly before the elections, leading to the formation of the Minshuto (Democratic Party of Japan, or DPJ). As a result, the Socialists were reduced to a mere rump of 15 seats. Moreover the Sakigake party was almost wiped out as a result of the election, ending up with only two Lower House seats. The upshot was that the SDP and Sakigake remained in alliance with the LDP but did not participate in government. The LDP gained seats in the election but not enough to form a government in its own right. It could only survive provided it was able to rely on the parliamentary support of the two parties that had now left the government. Thus the Hashimoto government, as

Table 5 Parliamentary seat breakdown, 18 July 1994 [Murayama Tomiichi, prime minister]

House of Representatives

House of Councillors

LDP

200

Kaishin

126

95

JSP

74

68

Komeito

52

24

Sakigake

21

JCP

15

11

Electoral pressures for change: the effect of political reform Kōshikai

6

Mirai

5

61

Shinryokufūkai

38

Niin Club

5

Liberal

5

Independent

10

Vacancy

6

2

Total seats

511

252

Total gov’t seats

295

160 [+?]

Note: Parties in bold=government parties Source: Asahi Nenkan, 1995, p. 248

Table 6 Parliamentary seat breakdown, 30 January 1995 [Murayama Tomiichi, prime minister]

House of Representatives

House of Councillors

LDP

208

Shinshintō

176

Heiseikai* JSP

47 70

Shinryokufukai

66 15

JCP

15

Sakigake

21

Minshu Shintō Club

95

11

3

Niin Club

5

Liberal

5

Independent Vacancies

14

8

4

Total seats

511

252

Total gov’t seats

299

161

Notes: * An alliance of Shinshinto and Komeito-derived members in the Upper House; parties in bold=government parties Source: Asahi Nenkan, 1996, p. 241

of November 1996, now commanded only 46.6 per cent of Lower House seats, although

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with Socialist and Sakigake seats added, the figure rose to a bare majority: 51.0 percent. In the House of Councillors, the government as such

Table 7 Parliamentary seat breakdown, 4 August 1995 [Murayama Tomiichi, prime minister]

House of Representatives

House of Councillors

LDP

207

Shinshintō

169

111

Heiseikai

68

JSP

64

39

Sakigake

20

3

15

14

Shinryokufūkai

5

JCP Minshu no kai

5

Niin Club

4

Minshu Shintō Club

3

Mushozoku Club

3

Heiwa Shimin

2

Independent

14

6

Vacancies

11

Total seats

511

252

Total gov’t seats

291

153

Note: Parties in bold=government parties Source: Asahi Nenkan, 1996, p. 244

Table 8 Parliamentary seat breakdown, 20 January 1996 [Hashimoto Ryutaro, prime minister]

House of Representatives

House of Councillors

LDP

207

Shinshintō

170

Heiseikai

111

68

SDP (JSP)

63

36

Sakigake

23

3

Electoral pressures for change: the effect of political reform Shinryokufūkai JCP

63 4

15

14

Shimin Forum

8

4

Shin Shakaitō

2

3

Niin Club

4

Mushozoku no kai

2

Jiyū Rengō

2

2

Independent

5

2

Vacancy

14

Total seats

511

252

Total gov’t seats

293

150

Note: Parties in bold=government parties Source: Asahi Nenkan, 1997, p. 175

was now short of a majority (44.0 per cent), but was much better off when the votes of the two parties supporting it were added (56.7 per cent) (Table A1.9). Over the next year and a half the position of the Hashimoto government in the House of Representatives gradually improved, largely as a result of defections to the LDP from other parties on the principle of ‘getting with the strength’. By the end of September 1997, Japan’s largest political party had just 50 per cent of the seats in the Lower House, and when the support of the SDP and Sakigake is added, the total rises to 53.4 per cent. A majority still eluded it in the Upper House, where on its own it commanded 44.4 per cent of the seats. With the seats of the two supporting parties, it held 54.0 per cent of the Upper House (Table A1.10). What is evident from these figures is that even though the parliamentary position of the LDP was improving, the Hashimoto government was in a substantially less comfortable parliamentary position for the year following the October 1996 general elections than in the months preceding it. The LDP continued to attract a trickle of defectors from other parties, and by January 1998 the picture looked rosier. The LDP controlled 51.8 per cent of Lower House seats in 1998 (55.2 per cent when adding the seats belonging to its two supporting parties), and 47.2 per cent of Upper House seats (56.7 per cent when we include SDP and Sakigake seats) (Table A1. 11). These defections were severely disrupted by the results of the July 1998 elections for half the seats in the House of Councillors when the Hashimoto government suffered the blame for the banking indebtedness crisis, the economic recession and rising levels of unemployment.

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Table 9 Parliamentary seat breakdown, 29 November 1996 [Hashimoto Ryutaro, prime minister]

House of Representatives

House of Councillors

LDP

238

Shinshintō

152

111

Heiseikai

65

DPJ (Minshuto)

52

(DPJ/Shinryokufukai) 14

SDP (JSP)

15

29

JCP

26

14

21 seiki

5

Niin Club Sakigake

4 2

3

Mushozoku Club

4

Shin Shakaitō

3

Independent

10

5

Total seats

500

252

Total gov’t seats

238

111

Total 3-party alliance seats

255

143

Note: Parties in bold=government parties; parties underlined=parties supporting the government, but not taking office Source: Asahi Nenkan, 1997, p. 180

Table 10 Parliamentary seat breakdown, 29 September 1997 [Hashimoto Ryūtarō, prime minister]

House of Representatives

House of Councillors

LDP

250

Shinshintō

129

Heiseikai DPJ

112

59 52

23

SDP (ISP)

15

21

JCP

26

14

Taiyōtō (Sun Party)

10

3

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Niin Club

4

Mushozoku no kai

5

Jiyū no kai

4 2

3

Independent

11

6

Total seats

500

252

Total gov’t seats

250

112

Total 3-party alliance seats

267

136

Sakigake Shin Shakaitō

3

Note: Parties in bold=government parties; parties underlined=parties supporting the government, but not taking office Source: Asahi Nenkan, 1998, p. 179

Table 11 Parliamentary seat breakdown, 12 January 1998 [Hashimoto Ryūtarō, prime minister]

House of Representatives

House of Councillors

259

119

Minyūren

98

41

Heiwa Keikaku

46

LDP

Kōmei

25

Jiyūtō

42

12

JCP

26

14

SDP (JSP)

15

21

Sakigake

2

3

Mushozoku no kai

2

Niin Club

4

Shin Shakaitō

3

Kaikaku Club

3

Independent

9

Vacancy

1

7

Total seats

500

252

Total gov’t seats

259

119

Total 3-party alliance seats

276

143

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66

Note: Parties in bold=government parties; parties underlined=parties supporting the government, but not taking office Source: Asahi Nenkan, 1999, p. 171

With the consequent resignation of Hashimoto as prime minister, his successor, Obuchi Keizō, began his government controlling a slightly improved majority in the House of Representatives (52.6 per cent of total seats), but a very poor position in the House of Councillors (42.1 per cent) (Table 12). The SDP and Sakigake had abandoned their support for the LDP government before the elections, so that the LDP was now once more on its own in government. The period of coalition arrangements crossing the LeftRight divide appeared to be over. The Obuchi government thus started out with an unsustainable parliamentary position. It was likely to be severely frustrated in attempts to realize its legislative program, being so far short of a majority in the Upper House. Such a situation, especially for a government facing an economic crisis, called for the forging of a new coalition alliance. This was, in part at least, accomplished with the signing in November 1998 of a coalition agreement with Ozawa’s Jiyūtō (Liberal Party). The Jiyūtō had been formed by a small group of Ozawa loyalists following the collapse of the Shinshintō, and advocated relatively radical policies of political reform. The new coalition gave to the Obuchi government a cast iron majority in the House of Representatives (59.6 per cent)— although this was still not large enough to override obstruction by the House of Councillors. The Jiyūtō, however, was weak in the Upper House, and the two parties together accounted for only 46.0 per cent of seats there (Table 13). This situation explained the negotiations that took place in August and September 1999, with a view to forming a three-party coalition government

Table 12 Parliamentary seat breakdown, 30 July 1998 [Obuchi Keizō, prime minister]

House of Representatives

House of Councillors

LDP

263

106

DPJ

92

55

Heiwa Kaikaku

47

Kōmei

24

Jiyūtō

40

12

JCP

26

23

SDP

14

14

Mushozoku no kai

5

Sakigake

2

Niin Club

3 4

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Kaikaku Club

3

Independent

9

Vacancy

2

8

Total seats

500

252

Total gov’t seats

263

106

Note: Seats in bold=government seats Source: Asahi Nenkan, 1999, p. 174

Table 13 Parliamentary seat breakdown, 27 November 1998 [Obuchi Keizō, prime minister]

House of Representatives

House of Councillors

LDP

263

104

DPJ

93

55

Kōmeitō

52

24

Jiyūtō

35

12

JCP

26

23

SDP

14

14

Mushozoku no kai

5

Sakigake

2

Niin Club

4

3

Independent

10

5

Total seats

500

252

Total gov’t seats

298

116

Note: Seats in bold=government seats Source: Asahi Nenkan, 1999, p. 177

including the Kōmeitō as well as the LDP and Jiyūtō. If this coalition materializes, the Obuchi government will enjoy a comfortable majority in the House of Councillors, and a massive majority (for the first time more than the two thirds required to revise the Constitution) 10 in the House of Representatives. On the other hand, other parties have found the Kōmeitō (with its monolithic and cohesive organisation closely linked with the Sōka Gakkai Buddhist sect) difficult to work with in the past. 11 It appears that the negotiations have been proving difficult, with the Kōmeitō and Jiyūtō taking opposed positions on the question of reducing the number of Lower House members, among other issues. This suggests that while progress with re-establishing the fact of the LDP’s dominance

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has been substantial, it can only be achieved through the construction of coalitions with other parties, which may well prove awkward partners. The 1990s have given politicians a good deal of experience with coalition government, including its requirement for compromise in relation to both policy and the structure of policymaking. In terms of the two principles proposed earlier in this paper, while aspiring to single-party dominance, LDP politicians are facing the practical reality of having to adjust to the much more demanding reality of coalition arrangements. This has begun to create a more dynamic and less stereotyped policymaking environment than that which prevailed under the 1955 political system with its Cold War dichotomies.

THE IMPACT OF ELECTORAL REFORM What part, then, has electoral reform played in the political process of the 1990s? It has seemed necessary to analyse in some detail the political dynamics of the decade before dealing with the effects of electoral reform, simply in order to distinguish changes caused by reforming the electoral system from changes whose causes lie elsewhere. As suggested earlier in the paper, the principal concrete achievement of the Hosokawa government was reform of the electoral system for the House of Representatives, and associated tightening of the laws related to political corruption. Even though the relevant laws did not come onto the statute book until late in 1994 when the Murayama Cabinet was in office, the shape of the reforms were basically decided, at times through difficult negotiation and compromise between contending interests, by the Hosokawa Cabinet itself. It needs to be stressed, however, that the new system was in a fundamental way the product of compromise, and turned out to be far less radical in its impact that some reformers expected and hoped. In order to explain the rationale for this last assertion, we need first to give a brief description of the former system, followed by a short examination of the new system, including the way it worked in the elections of October 1996. The former electoral system for the House of Representatives was used in every election between 1947 and 1993 (a total of 18 general elections). A rather similar system operated between the 1920s and the war. Although some details were changed from time to time, the essence of it was that each elector had a single, nontransferable vote, but each constituency elected several members. For most of the period of the system’s validity, there were roughly equal numbers of three-, four- and five-member constituencies, though latterly a small number of two- and six-member constituencies were created. It was a system based on SNTV in MMCs (single nontransferable vote in multi-member constituencies). Broadly speaking, the system resulted in certain political consequences. 12 First, although this was not a system of proportional representation, by comparison with either the British or Australian Lower House electoral systems, it contained a strong proportional element. This was because since a candidate might well be elected with a mere 15 or 20 per cent of the total vote in a constituency, minority parties commanding approximately that proportion of the vote across a number of constituencies might expect to maintain a significant parliamentary representation. 13

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Second, in the case of a large party such as the LDP, which might expect to win several seats in particular constituencies, different candidates of the same party in the same constituency were competing with each other as much as they were competing with candidates of other parties. In the particular case of the LDP this accentuated (although it probably did not cause) factional divisions within the party. It also led to a situation where each candidate maintained a personal support group (kōenkai) of constituency electors for the purpose of promoting his (or her) campaign, but had weak or nonexistent links with the party as such. 14 The central party organisation had an important role in ensuring that not too many candidates bearing the LDP label stood in any particular constituency. In this, it was generally effective. Third, competition between different candidates of the same party seems to have encouraged what in Japan is delicately called ‘money politics’, or in stronger words, corruption. In part because of the electoral system and in part because of lax anticorruption laws, astonishing amounts of money were spent on elections. Fourth, however, it is arguable that the often intense intraparty competition stimulated by the electoral system acted to increase the LDP vote. Candidates for smaller parties (including the Socialists), mainly standing as sole candidates for their party in their constituencies, would in many cases scarcely need to campaign, since they could rely on their organisational backers (e.g. labour unions) to deliver a sufficient proportion of the vote to get elected. This, together with the fact that the various opposition parties were incapable of combining into a single party, greatly favoured the LDP. Fifth, the former electoral system was marred by severe problems of malapportionment. Migration of people from the countryside to the cities was inadequately reflected in constituency boundary correction. Although palliative corrections were made from time to time, there were periods when the discrepancy in the value of a vote between the most favoured and least favoured constituency was more than four to one. By favouring the rural areas, this malapportionment (the ‘negative gerrymander’) was advantageous to the LDP. The advertised purposes of abandoning SNTV in MMCs and moving to a new system were to get rid of money politics, shift the emphasis of electoral campaigning from personality-based appeals to appeals based on policy choices, and create a politics that should be genuinely competitive between parties. Some advocates, notably Ozawa, consciously wished to move to a system of two-party alternating politics (Ozawa 1994:66). What actually emerged, however, was the hybrid product of intense bargaining and compromise between different political interests and principles. Parties on the conservative side of the spectrum in the main wished for a system predominantly based on single-member constituencies and first-past-the-post voting, whereas the smaller parties of the centre and left wished to maximize the number of seats that should be determined by proportional representation. The result was a compromise between the two, with the weighting, however, toward the former. The total seat number was reduced from 511 to 500, of which 300 were to be elected from single-member constituencies, and the remaining 200 from 11 regional blocs by the d’Hondt system of proportional representation. Each elector was to have two votes, one for each type of seat. The same candidate could stand for both constituencies. If elected in both, he or she would take the seat won in a single-member constituency, so

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that the regional bloc seats came to be seen as a kind of second best. The regional bloc seats, however, constituted a crucial second chance for candidates unable to muster the plurality required to win a single-member seat. Moreover, in a peculiar arrangement, parties could distribute of seats among their candidates in the regional PR blocs depending on the candidates’ relative margins of defeat in the single-member constituencies that are located in the same area as the regional bloc. 15 The effect of this arrangement, even though not all parties took advantage of it, was to bring back an important characteristic of the former (SNTV in MMCs) electoral system for the Lower House. Under the old system, a candidate commanding a relatively minor proportion of votes in a given constituency was often able to be elected, given that the first three, four, or five candidates in terms of their proportion of the vote, were declared elected. The ‘margin of defeat’ rule in the new electoral system in effect made it possible once again for a candidate who failed to win a seat in a single-member constituency to win a seat in a regional bloc depending on how well the candidate had performed in the single-member constituency. This was neither a true first-past-the-post, nor a true proportional representation system, but an underhand way of resuscitating one of the key elements of the former system. Ozawa had been trenchant in his criticism of this aspect of the old electoral arrangements. In his words: In the present electoral system, each district throughout the country elects from three to five representatives. Invariably, at least one opposition candidate wins a seat even if he never appears in public… Extraordinarily, it is the opposition parties that enjoy the greatest security in this setup. The largest, the Socialist Party, seems convinced that there is no need to go through the struggle of actually campaigning to win an election. The Socialists will never rule, left as they are. What is more, they seem content with that. It makes one wonder why they are a party at all. It is the multi-seat district system that has so indulged the opposition parties, particularly the Socialists. As a consequence of their weakness, the LDP has been assured of its semi-permanent rule so that it, too, has become immobilized. (Ozawa 1994:64)

CONCLUSION Since this was written, the Socialists have been more or less eliminated from the political picture. Nevertheless, it seems evident that the much-heralded electoral reforms of 1993– 94 have been much less radical in their effect than appeared at first sight. Apart from the technical factors outlined above, the tightening of the anti-corruption laws does not seem to have had a great effect of eliminating money politics, even though the State now provides a proportion of electoral funding to parties. The kōenkai system still reigns supreme, and indeed the need in single-member constituencies to win a plurality (not just 20 per cent of the vote) has led to ever bigger koenkai. The alternative opposition parties formed since the change in the system have either collapsed (Shinshintō), or failed to take off (DPJ)

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In the absence of a single viable opposition party, the single-member constituencies are extremely advantageous to the LDP, and in this sense privilege the single-party dominance principle that this paper discussed earlier. The less numerous regional PR blocs are where smaller parties are able to carve out a niche for themselves, but elements in the ruling establishment would like to reduce their number still further. On their own, these regional blocs are incapable of privileging the alternative principle that we advanced earlier, that of coalition government. Indeed, if the Japanese parliament were a single-chamber parliament, the LDP would have re-established its political dominance fair and square. The House of Councillors, however, has proved to be a very significant actor in the politics of Japan after the LDP defeat in the Upper House elections of 1989. A decade later, moreover, it remains the principal institution compelling the Obuchi government to enter into coalition arrangements. This is ironic, since the electoral system for the House of Councillors is even less reconstructed than that of the House of Representatives. But the electorate is sophisticated enough to be adept at using Upper House elections as a means of checking governmental power without actually removing the LDP from power. Moreover, given that only half of the Upper House members are renewed at each election, regaining control of it cannot happen quickly. 16 The 1990s have not led, as reformers earlier in the decade hoped, to a system based on two-party alternation, and it seems unlikely that this can be achieved in Japan. It has led, however, to coalition governments and a challenging of the dominance of a single party. Even though there is absolutely no guarantee of the future success of this challenge, it seems currently the best guarantee of a healthier political system. Faced with economic crisis in the late 1990s, as well as difficult issues to resolve in the areas of foreign policy, the future of social welfare and the structure of government, the record of successive governments has been mixed. Nevertheless, the role of parliament in the promotion of reform across a range of areas has become more lively and vigorous, and legislative innovation makes it, not before time, an institution to watch. The continuance of such a healthy trend is not guaranteed. Neither is the continuance of political balance guaranteed, since the dangers of a radical shift of the centre of gravity to the nationalist Right are real. Given the weakening of the traditional Left, right-wing politicians are showing signs of flexing their ideological muscles with greater freedom than before. Electoral reform has had only a limited impact on these issues. But even though the electoral system remains to a very large extent unreconstructed, the electorate holds in its hands the one possibility of enforcing a democratic system of checks and balances against excesses of political power and ambition: that of forcing governments to enter into coalitions and thus take other views into account.

NOTES 1. The relevant laws, including a revision of laws relating to corrupt practices in electoral campaigns, did not come onto the statute books until late in 1994, well after the demise of the Hosokawa government, but it was that government that negotiated the basic agreement to change the system. 2. The Shinshinto polled 30.75 per cent of the vote in the national constituency and

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26.47 per cent of the vote in the prefectural constituencies. This surpassed the LDP vote percentages, which were 27.29 per cent in the national constituency, and 25.40 per cent in the prefectural constituencies. The LDP still ended up with substantially more seats (107 as against 56 for the Shinshinto) because only half the seats were being renewed (Asahi Nenkan, 1996, pp. 255–6). 3. For only the second time in Japanese political history, the prime minister was a Socialist, and the deputy prime minister, Kono Yohei, was the only president of the LDP not to become prime minister. 4. Murayama notoriously abandoned long-held Socialist rejection of the Self-Defence Forces, the Japan-US Security Treaty, the national anthem and national flag. This, in all probability, was the primary cause for the later loss of much of his party’s core constituency. 5. In September 1999 Prime Minister Obuchi was actively negotiating with the Kōmeitō to form a three-party coalition of LDP, Jiyuto (Ozawa’s Liberal Party) and Kōmeitō. 6. Other important examples are the legalisation of the flag and anthem (both having right-wing connotations) in August 1999, and the passage of a wire-tapping bill in the same month. It is debatable how far a move to the right among the political class is reflected in the electorate as a whole. Much has been made of the election of Ishihara Shintaro—a celebrated right winger—as governor of Tokyo prefecture in April 1999. But Ishihara only won 30.6 per cent of the total vote in 1999 (1,646,549) against five significant opponents who split the vote between them, as against 43.9 per cent of the total vote (2,336,359) in 1975, when he came second (Asahi Nenkan, 1976, p. 259; Asahi Shinbun, 12 April 1999). (The figures for the 1999 election are provisional, with 97 per cent of the vote counted at the time of writing.) 7. For a comprehensive list of the bills passed in the 145th session of parliament, see Asahi Shinbun 13 and 14 August 1999. The success rate of government bills was 87 per cent. 8. Constitution, Article 59, paragraph 2. In paragraph 3 of the same article, there is a provision for the calling of a joint committee of both houses, but this is not a failsafe method of ensuring the passage of legislation from a government’s point of view. For a fuller discussion, see Stockwin (1999:113–16). 9. Loyalties in the Upper House were fluid at the time, so the figure is approximate. 10. Article 96 of the 1946 Constitution requires a concurring majority of two-thirds of the members of each house of parliament voting separately, followed by a simple majority in a referendum of the people. 11. One important cause for the collapse of the Shinshinto in December 1996 was the failure of the Komeito elements to assimilate fully into that artificially created party. 12. This is not to argue that such consequences were inevitable, but rather that in the particular political circumstances of Japan between 1947 and 1993 these consequences were observable. 13. By contrast the Democratic Labor Party maintained a little under 20 per cent of the vote in several constituencies for the House of Representatives in Victoria, Australia, between the late 1950s and the early 1970s, but never won a single Lower House seat.

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14. This need not necessarily be seen as an inevitable consequence of SNTV in MMCs. It is possible to imagine a situation where the central party organisation coordinated the campaigns of its several candidates in the same constituency, dividing up the constituency into districts in such a way as to optimise the effectiveness of the party vote and avoid vote wastage. The fact is, however, that this did not happen in Japan. 15. For details of how this worked, see Stockwin (1999:130–1). 16. The remarkable significance of the House of Councillors during the Obuchi government was stressed by Sarah Hyde in the ‘Survey of Domestic Politics, 1998– 99’, delivered at the seventh annual Japanese Politics Colloquium, University of Birmingham, 7–9 September 1999.

REFERENCES Asahi Nenkan (various years), Asahi Shimbunsha, Tokyo. Ozawa, Ichiro (1994) Blueprint for a New Japan , Kodansha International, Tokyo, New York and London. Stockwin, J.A.A. (1999) Governing Japan: Divided Politics in a Major Economy Blackwell, Oxford.

5 Japan’s General Elections of June 2000: Revolution or Ripple? First published in Anne Holzhausen (ed.), Studies on Japan’s Changing Political Economy and the Process of Globalization in Honour of Sung-Jo Park, Heidelberg and New York: Physica Verlag, 2001

INTRODUCTION A LEADING British newspaper recently commented on the Mexican presidential elections that ended the dominance of the PRI—a political party that had ruled Mexico continuously since the era of silent films: Corruption feeds on political monopoly, but then eats away at governments’ legitimacy, (…). Corruption led in 1993 to a momentary defeat of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party; it was a factor in the downfall of India’s Congress Party in 1996; and it is a source of something close to outrage in China. (…)The one-party state was one of the salient features of the 20th century; the 21st should, with luck, see its disappearance. (Financial Times, 4th July 2000) Perhaps the greatest puzzle about the politics of Japan is continuity of rule by a single political party over four and a half decades, in a political system where free elections are institutionalized. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)—a party of broadly conservative persuasion—was founded in November 1955, and has formed every national government since then, except for the period between August 1993 and June 1994, when it was out of office. This is not as long as the PRI in Mexico, but still, an exceptionally long period. It ruled on its own, as a single-party administration, for all of the period between 1955 and 1993, except that, between 1983 and 1986, it was in coalition with a tiny splinter group called the New Liberal Club. The NLC had defected from the LDP in 1976 following the Lockheed aircraft purchase scandal, and in 1986 returned to the LDP fold. In any case, the LDP/NLC coalition was not strictly speaking necessary for the LDP to preserve its grip on government. Other indicators of its phenomenal success are that the LDP held an absolute majority in the House of Representatives between 1955 and July 1993, and again between September 1997 and June 2000. Even in those periods where it lacked a Lower House majority, it was overwhelmingly the largest party in terms of its representation in the House of Representatives. And that is true even of the nine-month period in 1993–1994 when it was out of office entirely. With only one exception, every President of the LDP

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since its foundation has become Prime Minister. The exception was Kōno Yōhei between 1993 and 1995. During the first few months of Kōno’s LDP presidency, his party was out of office, and in the second few months, the LDP had allowed a Socialist to become Prime Minister as the price of forming a coalition with the Socialists and one other small party. But from January 1996, when Hashimoto Ryūtarō took over the prime ministership, this post has once again become an LDP monopoly. To these indicators should be added the fact that local administrations have been (with the partial exception of the 1970s) overwhelmingly in the hands of local politicians who are either members of, or favourable to, the LDP. Moreover, and crucially, the LDP is linked in with powerful interest groups and government ministries through a spider’s web of networks that no other political party can remotely match. Despite such a formidable record, however, the last decade has been a difficult one for the LDP. This is partly for reasons of electoral politics, but also because of much broader issues of economic stagnation, international pressure and popular reaction against corrupt practice. A much-underestimated cause of difficulty for the LDP is that it has ceased to enjoy an absolute majority in the House of Councillors in the Upper House elections of July 1989., and has never regained a majority since. Even though the Upper House has powers much inferior to those of the House of Representatives, it is able to block bills sent to it from the Lower House, which requires a two-thirds majority to overturn the Upper House veto. It is true that the budget, treaties and designation of a prime minister are exempt from these provisions, but in matters requiring ordinary legislation, the House of Councillors has been able to cause considerable embarrassment to the LDP. That party has then been forced to seek agreements—or actual coalition arrangements—with other parties in order to keep its legislative programme on track. The proximate cause of the fall from office of the LDP in 1993 was not so much an electoral reaction against it as the defection of two separate groups, which soon formed the Shinseitō and Sakigake parties respectively. Both these parties participated in the nonLDP coalition government of seven parties (and one Upper House grouping), led by the popular but untried Prime Minister Hosokawa Morihiro in August 1993 The Hosokawa Government did not last long, its achievements did not live up to expectations, but it established an agenda of reform—both in political and economic areas—that was to be used as a benchmark by the governments that succeeded it. Japanese politics since the fall of Hosokawa can be interpreted in retrospect as a process whereby the LDP has gradually clawed its way back to political dominance. This has been achieved through a series of coalition, quasi-coalition and patron-client arrangements in which other parties and interest groups (including, incidentally, many labour unions) have taken on the character of semi-dependence on largesse dispensed by the LDP. Indeed, while Japan’s ruling party has always been a ‘broad church’, in the recent period more and more previous outsiders have been welcomed into association with it. This has been essentially a traditional LDP method of coping with difficulties and with opposition. If opposition cannot be marginalized,, then it must be bought off. There is no doubt that the LDP has achieved notable successes with such a time-honoured approach. Since the early 1990s, however, a key advantage underlying LDP electoral successes to that point has been in virtual abeyance. Until then, the party could point to the spectacular

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successes of the Japanese economy to persuade electors that the economy was safe in its hands. It could argue convincingly that the ‘Japanese model’ of managing the economy was superior to those overseas models based on the primacy of free competitive markets and small government. Since the early 1990s it has become more difficult to make this case. The lustre of the Japanese model has been tarnished by slow or negative growth, special treatment for failing enterprises, poor control of the banking sector, further government indebtedness fueled by successive stimulation packages, and all-too-evident corruption. Thus the reputation for efficiency and effectiveness of governments headed by the LDP has also tended to fade. What is indeed surprising in these circumstances is that the LDP has continued to hold its own—more or less—in successive elections. Part of the explanation for this may no doubt be found in the effectiveness of LDP networking, with its clientelist overtones, and part also in the innate conservatism of the electorate. But it is difficult to imagine a European country where, if a government dominated by a particular political party had for ten years so badly mismanaged the economy as the government of Japan since the late 1980s, that party would be returned to office. Why then has this happened? We may best understand it, perhaps, if we focus our attention on successive attempts to form viable parties of opposition. These attempts, so far, have enjoyed surprising lack of success. In the years of single-party dominance from 1955 until the late 1980s, the principal party of Opposition was the Japan Socialist Party. This party, however, after making substantial progress up to the early 1960s, became prisoner of obsolescent ideologies, and allowed itself to become overly dependent on narrowly based labour union organisations. By the 1970s it was widely regarded as a party uninterested in government, preferring the relative luxury of opposing the LDP and satisfying its faithful followers. Then in 1986, by chance it elected a charismatic woman, Doi Takako, as its leader, and profiting from LDP corruption scandals and unpopular policies, unexpectedly won the 1989 elections for half the seats in the House of Councillors, depriving the LDP of its majority in that House. For a short while, the JSP seemed to be the wave of the future, but since it had not sufficiently reformed itself, its star soon faded, and it split disastrously in 1996. The next attempt to form a viable opposition party capable of replacing the LDP in office occurred in December 1994, with the formation of the Shinshintō (New Frontier Party) out of most of the parties that had participated in the Hosokawa coalition government of 1993–1994. The prime mover in its formation was the right-of-centre reformist politician Ozawa Ichirō. For a while, the enterprise looked as if it might succeed, but eventually it proved unable to overcome its numerous internal contradictions, and disbanded in December 1997. The most recent attempt—still continuing—is the Minshutō (Democratic Party), founded in September 1996 and much expanded in the early months of 1998 following the collapse of the Shinshintō. Its core consists of the former right-of-centre factions of the pre-1996 JSP, but it also contains a variety of conservative elements. It attacks LDP corruption, wishes to reform the political system and embark on substantial measures of economic deregulation. But it has faced substantial difficulties over leadership, and has shown a good deal of uncertainty about how far it ought to oppose the LDP government, and how far to cooperate with it.

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As we can see from these principal attempts to form a viable opposition (Johnson 2000), success has so far been limited, and there appear to be structural reasons for this. Not the least of these is the power of the LDP-centred structure of networks, with their tendency to buy off and absorb potentially or actually challenging elements. Having lost power in 1993, the LDP was able to form a coalition government less than a year later with its former political enemy the JSP and the small Sakigake party. Some time after both those coalition partners had suffered grievously at the 1996 general elections, the LDP decided to change allies. It took on board first Ozawa’s Liberal Party (late 1998) and then the Kōmeitō (late 1999) to form a grand coalition. Surveying these developments, and with perhaps a little exaggeration, we may compare the LDPGovernment structure to a plantation of pine trees that do not permit the growth of other vegetation below their branches.

THE GENERAL ELECTIONS OF 25 JUNE 2090 Elections for the House of Representatives in June 2000 were preceded by a change of prime minister. Obuchi Keizō, who had taken over from Hashimoto after a poor LDP showing in Upper House elections in July 1998, suffered a severe stroke in April, and died a few weeks later. His prime ministership was noted for modest measures of deregulation and for successive stimulation packages, whereby massive quantities of public money were pumped into the economy in order to stimulate growth (or stem decline). His successor was Mori Yoshirō, a faction leader with little charisma and an aptitude for making off-the-cuff remarks that would cause adverse reactions from articulate opinion. In particular, his statement that Japan was ‘a country of the gods (kami no kuni), 1 centred on the tennō’ stirred a hornets nest, both nationally and overseas, though this and other ‘reactionary’ statements may well have been carefully calculated to appeal to the core LDP constituency outside the big cities. The general elections held on 25th June 2000 for the House of Representatives were only the second such elections to be held under the new system instituted in 1994. Electoral reform was in effect the only major substantive achievement of the Hosokawa coalition Government in 1993–1994, and even that was only finalised some months after it had fallen from office. 2 The first election under the new system had been held in October 1996, and resulted in some improvement in the position of the LDP, though it was still short of an absolute majority. Defections, however, from other parties into LDP ranks had gradually improved the LDP position., so that by the time of the June 2000 elections it controlled 271 out of a total of 500 seats. The total number of seats, however, had now been reduced from 500 to 480, so that a party winning 241 seats would hold an absolute majority. The LDP went into the election campaign heading a three party coalition government, including the Kōmeitō (a party backed by the lay Buddhist organisation Sōka Gakkai) and the Conservative Party (Hoshutō). The latter were a group of parliamentarians who had previously belonged to Ozawa’s Liberal Party (Jiyūtō), but wishing to remain in the coalition, had split from the Liberal Party when that party left the coalition early in 2000. A matter for concern among (principally urban) sections of the electorate was that the

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three parties of coalition together commanded a greater than two-thirds majority in the Lower House, and close to that in the Upper House. During the parliamentary session held in the summer of 1999, several highly contentious bills, which tenacious opposition forces would previously have blocked, were passed with ease, using the Government’s massive majority. 3 It did not escape the attention of critics that a two-thirds majority of each House of Parliament is required (as well as a simple majority in a referendum of the people) in order to revise the 1946 Constitution. 4 The results of the 2000 elections are given in Table 1. Several aspects of the electoral results deserve comment. First of all, the LDP was reduced from a comfortable majority to a position where it was seven seats short of an absolute majority. This was a blow to the party’s pride, but hardly a disaster, since there would, on previous form, be a number of Independents who could be tempted to side with the party or formally join its ranks. Its coalition partners, however, had done badly, the Kōmeitō losing 11 seats out of 42 and the Conservative Party losing 11 seats out of a previous total of 18. At the declaration of the final results, therefore, the total number of seats controlled by the coalition was 271, or the same as the LDP alone had controlled on the eve of the elections. The biggest victor in the elections was the Democratic Party (Minshutō), which gained a 25 per cent increase in its representation. This party had campaigned on a platform of deregulation and reform of the political system,

Table 1 Results of Elections for the House of Representatives, 25th June 2000

Party

Pre-election

Liberal Democrat (LDP)*

June 2000 election

271

233

Democratic Party (DPJ)

95

127

Kōmeitō (KP)*

42

31

Liberal Party (LP)

18

22

Japan Communist Party (JCP)

26

20

Social Democratic Party (SDP—former JSP

14

19

Conservative Party (CP)*

18

7

5

0

Reform Club Sakigake

1

0

Independent**

9

21

Vacancy

1

–

Total

500

480

Coalition Total

331

271

* Coalition members ** Includes Independent Group, Liberal League and Independents

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Source: Asahi Shinbun, June 26th 2000.

but since many of its candidates had previously belonged to parties of the moderate left, it could hardly be identified as a party of radical free market economics. Moreover, the reputation of the party had suffered from disputes over its leadership, and the current leader, Hatoyama Yukio, was a politician who appeared to lack the acuity of political judgement needed for top political office. What the Democratic Party had in fact achieved was a proportion of the total seats in the Lower House approximately equal to that won by the former JSP—a ‘perpetual’ opposition party—for much of the postwar period. Considering the inability over a long period of successive LDP-led cabinets to restore the economy to health or bring about effective reform of the politico-economic system, it is surprising, not that the Democratic Party did so well, but that it did not perform a great deal better. Two other parties somewhat improved their position, though from a low base. One was the Liberal Party, created by Ozawa as a right-of-centre party of small government, after the break-up of the New Frontier Party (Shinshintō) at the end of 1997. It joined the Obuchi Government late in 1998, but pulled out early in 2000, in dispute with the Government over the slow pace of implementing its reform agenda. As a result, it lost about half of its parliamentary representatives, who wished to stay with the coalition government, and formed the Conservative Party. The fact that the Liberals gained a few seats, whereas the Conservatives lost most of theirs, suggests that support for Ozawa’s brand of deregulatory reform commanded significant, and perhaps growing, support. More surprising, perhaps, was the fact that the Social Democratic Party (SDP), led by Ms Doi Takako, also gained a few seats. This party, heir to the left wing factions of the former JSP, campaigned on a clear and unambiguous platform of pacifism and feminism. The modest success of these two very different parties may be seen as indicating that in a political landscape where the major parties had become difficult to distinguish from each other in policy terms, there was a market for parties that appeared to present clear alternative visions of Japan’s future. Finally, two parties—Kōmeitō and the JCP—did surprisingly badly in the elections, possibly for reasons not entirely dissimilar. By comparison with all other parties, these two have always been by far the most centrally and tightly organized, with an extensive core of highly committed followers and ample funding, controlled from the party centre. Both of them are careful to suppress, or drive underground, the factional divisions that affect nearly all other parties. Both until the 1990s had depended on electoral clienteles that, though significantly different, felt disadvantaged and were critical of current government policies. In the case of the Kōmeitō, electoral pacts in its favour by the LDP in a number of constituencies had not worked well. 5 There may well have also been an electoral reaction against it since it had abandoned its role of government critic in favour of entry into government. In the case of the JCP, indications of a more compromising stance towards government in the months preceding the elections seem to have alienated some electors.

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REGIONAL BLOCS Some light may be thrown on the election if we break down the results according to regional bloc (see Table 2). This of course only relates to results

Table 2 Percentage of the Total Vote by Party, in the 11 Regional Blocs

Name of bloc

LDP

DPJ

KP

LP

JCP

SDP

Others

Hokkaidō

25.6

31.2

12.8

8.2

12.7

8.9

0.6

Tōhoku

32.0

21.2

9.8

16.3

8.1

10.7

2.0

Kita Kantō

30.6

24.7

12.6

12.4

10.7

8.3

0.6

Tokyo

19.5

29.0

12.7

13.6

14.3

6.6

4.2

Minami Kantō

24.7

27.7

12.4

12.0

11.5

9.6

2.1

Hokuriku Shinetsu

35.0

25.3

8.8

11.1

9.2

10.4

0.3

Tōkai

28.6

30.6

11.7

9.7

10.0

7.4

2.0

Kinki

23.7

23.3

16.1

9.5

15.8

9.1

2.5

Chūgoku

35.6

21.7

15.3

8.9

8.9

9.2

0.4

Shikoku

36.0

20.7

13.7

8.4

11.0

10.1

0.3

Kyūshū

31.4

20.3

14.4

9.3

8.2

13.2

3.2

Average

29.3

25.1

12.7

10.8

10.9

9.4

1.6

Source: Asahi Shinbun, June 26th 2000.

in the 11 regional blocs, where candidates are elected by proportional representation. It is not relevant for votes cast in single-member districts. Two points emerge clearly from this table. The first is that the Democratic Party actually polled more votes than the LDP in four of the 11 regional blocs: Hokkaidō, Tokyo, Minami Kantō (centred on Yokohama) and Tōkai (centred on Nagoya), and was close to parity with the LDP in one: Kinki (centred on Osaka). These (with the exception of Hokkaidō, where unusual circumstances prevailed) 6 were the metropolitan areas, where population was most heavily concentrated. In Tokyo, the most urban of all the 11 blocs, the Democrats had a 9.5 per cent margin over the LDP. By contrast in regions with strong rural traditions and interests, the LDP was well ahead. The average percentage advantage of the LDP over the DPJ in Tōhoku, Hokuriku-Shinetsu, Chūgoku, Shikoku and Kyūshū was 12.2 per cent. The LDP had a much smaller advantage in Kita Kantō, which combines rural areas in its northern part with a highly urbanized sector bordering Tokyo. Thus, the electoral results appeared to show a sharp—indeed sharpened -divide between urban/metropolitan parts of the country and those based on rural and small town areas that had been the most significant beneficiaries of government subsidies and

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protection. The other point is that a remarkably high proportion of the vote in the regional blocs was tied up in votes for the four ‘minor’ parties: Kōmeitō, Liberal Party, JCP and SDP. Across the country, no less than 43.8 per cent of the electorate had cast its vote in the regional blocs for one of these four parties. Indeed, in the Kinki region the figure was a clear majority of 50.5 per cent, forcing down each of the two ‘major’ parties into the region of 23–24 per cent. Here it is important to remember that the regional blocs only accounted for 180 out of a total of 480 seats. Nevertheless., the multi-party character of Japanese politics has become strikingly apparent, and with it the necessity for coalition formation.

WOMEN IN POLITICS The number of female parliamentarians is some indication of political change in Japan, where politics has traditionally been a male bastion. From Table 3 we may observe a modest increase in the proportion of women who are members of the House of Representatives. Whereas in August 1999, the number was 24, following the elections of June 2000, that had increased to 34, or 7.1 per cent of the total. This indicates the continuation of a rising trend, but is still far below the proportion of women in many European legislatures. It was particularly striking that the Social Democrats had now overtaken the Communists as the most female-friendly of the political parties. Consistent with the markedly feminist SDP agenda, women now actually formed a majority (10 out of 19) of its Lower House representation. At the other end of the power spectrum, the number of women who were LDP MHRs had indeed increased, but remained a pathetic 3.0 per cent of the party’s total. The Democrats were not much better with 4.7 per cent, even though they now had twice as many women as before. For the most part, therefore, women in the House of Representatives remain a minority-party phenomenon, with little access to power.

TOKYO UNIVERSITY GRADUATES The prevalence of graduates of Tokyo University among Japanese parliamentarians has often been regarded as an indicator of elite bias in representation, much like the dominance of ‘Oxbridge’ graduates in the British House of Commons? Whatever the rights and wrongs of it, our statistics indicate that this phenomenon is alive and well in Japan. As shown in Tables 4 and 5, a fifth of those elected to the House of Representatives in June 2000 had graduated from this single tertiary institu

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82

Table 3 Number and Percentage of Women in the House of Representatives, in August 1999, and following the General Election of 25 June 2000

Single member Party

Aug 99

PR blocs

June 00

Aug 99

Overall

June 00

Aug 99

June 00

LDP

3

4

2

3

5

7

DPJ

0

3

3

3

3

6

KP

1

0

2

3

3

3

LP

1

0

1

1

2

1

JCP

0

0

5

4

5

4

SDP

1

3

3

7

4

10

CP

0

1

0

0

0

1

Kaikaku

0

0

1

0

1

0

Independent

1

2

0

0

1

2

Total

7

13

17

21

24

34

Source: Nihon Seikei Shinbunsha (1999), Kokkai Binran [Parliamentary Handbook] 102nd edition, Asahi Shinbun, June 26th 2000.

Table 4 Tokyo University Graduates in HR, June 2000 General Election

Single member 68

Total seats

PR blocs

Total seats

Total

Percentage

300

30

180

98

20.4%

Source: Calculated from Asahi Shinbun, June 26th 2000.

Table 5 Tokyo University Graduates, by Party, June 2000 General Election

Party

Seats

% of Tokyo U. graduates

LDP

54

55.1

DPJ

21

21.4

KP

3

3.1

LP

4

4.1

JCP

5

5.1

SDP

1

1.0

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CP

2

2.0

Independent

8

8.2

98

20.4

Total/Average

Source: Calculated from Asahi Shinbun, June 26th 2000.

tion, with its long traditions of patronage by the State. Of those, more than half (55.1 per cent) were affiliated with the LDP, and a little over a fifth (21.4 per cent) with the DPJ. Very few of them belonged to the smaller parties, though several were Independents. In the next table, we give a breakdown of the universities from which MHRs graduated from in selected prefectures (single member districts only). What appears to be indicated here (though a fuller analysis is needed to establish it conclusively), is that the predominance of Tokyo University graduates is much higher in the remoter prefectures than in the metropolitan areas. In the four prefectures of Shikoku, not only did Tokyo University dominate, but also universities within Tokyo were almost in a monopoly position. The same was true to a slightly lesser extent in Hokkaidō, where even the prestigious Hokkaidō University was very poorly represented. By contrast, in Osaka, MHRs had attended a wide range of universities, some local and some outside the area, but there was not a single graduate of Tokyo University, and only four from other major Tokyo Universities. Even in Tokyo itself, there were more than twice as many Waseda University graduates as graduates of Tokyo University., though the large majority of Tokyo parliamentarians had attended one or other local university. We may tentatively conclude from this that the dominance of Tokyo University is connected, not only with the dominance of the LDP, but also with the rural and small town regions of the country, where the system of LDP-centred kickbacks and subsidies is concentrated.

Table 6 University (and other Educational) Background of Members Elected from Single-member Districts in Selected Prefectures, June 2000 General Election

(a) Hokkaidō University

Number having graduated

Tokyo University

5

Waseda University (Tokyo)

2

Keiō University (Tokyo)

1

Chūō University (Tokyo)

1

Nihon University (Tokyo)

1

Hokkaidō University

1

Takasaki Economics University

1

Rakunō Gakuen University (Hokkaidō)

1

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(b) Tokyo University

Number having graduated

Waseda University (Tokyo)

7

Tokyo University

3

Keiō University (Tokyo)

3

Meiji University (Tokyo)

1

Chūō University (Tokyo)

1

Nihon University (Tokyo)

1

Jōchi (Sophia) University (Tokyo)

1

Hōsei University (Tokyo)

1

Tokyo University of Engineering

1

Tokyo University of Education

1

Ritsumeikan University (Kyoto)

1

Utsunomiya University

1

Princeton University

1

George Washington University

1

High school

1

(c) Osaka University

Number having graduated

Kansai University (Osaka)

2

Kyoto University

2

Osaka University

1

Dōshisha University (Kyoto)

1

Osaka Prefectural University

1

Hiroshima University

1

Fukui University

1

Waseda University (Tokyo)

1

Chūō University (Tokyo)

1

Nihon University (Tokyo)

1

Keiō University (Tokyo)

1

Sōka University

1

Gakushūin short course University

1

Japan’s general elections of June 2000: revolution or ripple? George Washington University

1

Osaka Higher Medical School

1

85

(d) Shikoku (four prefectures) University

Number having graduated

Tokyo University

6

Keiō University (Tokyo)

2

Jōchi (Sophia) University (Tokyo)

1

Chūō University (Tokyo)

1

Aoyama Gakuin University (Tokyo)

1

Waseda University (Tokyo)

1

Defence University (Tokyo)

1

Source: Calculated from Asahi Shinbun, June 26th 2000.

PARTY BREAKDOWN IN SINGLE-MEMBER DISTRICTS Again taking a selection of regions and prefectures, we examine party breakdown among those elected from single-member districts. The purpose of the exercise involved in constructing this table is to elucidate the prospects for development of a two-party system, broadly along rural/urban lines of division. One of the most formidable obstacles to the formation of a two-party system having the possibility of some alternation in office has been the fact that in most electoral districts the LDP has enjoyed a built-in majority. Under the electoral system that operated up to 1994 other parties were able to obtain representation since each district elected several members (typically three, four or five) without any vote transferability. That electoral arrangement was able to sustain what has been called a ‘one-and-a-half party system’ for many years, though it was tending to become a system based on one government party and several parties of opposition. 4 Under the new arrangements, as we have seen, the 11 regional blocs from which candidates are elected by proportional representation saw a challenging performance by the DPJ, and by four minor parties. The 300 single-member constituencies, however, strongly favour LDP candidates, with their indomitable personal support machines, practically eliminate the minor parties, and generally disfavour the DPJ. The question is, how far might this situation change with increasing polarisation between big cities and non-metropolitan areas. In table 6 we have selected two broadly rural/smaller city and town regions (Hokuriku-Shinetsu and Kyūshū), and three urban/metropolitan prefectures (Tokyo, Aichi and Osaka), and provided a breakdown of seats won by the various parties in each. Predictably, in the former, the LDP was overwhelmingly successful. In Tokyo and in Aichi, the DPJ was comfortably ahead of the LDP, while in Osaka the LDP was ahead of the DPJ on its own, but behind a

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combination of all other parties (though the coalition had a clear majority). One conclusion that may be drawn from this is that the DPJ may need itself to enter into electoral pacts—and thus potentially into coalition arrangements—with other parties in order to come within sight of a joint majority in the House of Representatives. It seems clear that the prospects for winning an election based principally on urban/metropolitan votes alone are rather slim.

Table 7 Party Breakdown in Selected Regions, Single-member Districts only, House of Representatives, following the June 2000 General Election

(a) Hokuriku-Shinetsu (Niigata, Toyama, Ishikawa, Fukui and Nagano prefectures) Party

Number of MPs in single-member districts

LDP

16

DPJ

3

Independent

1

(b) Kyūshū (Fukuoka, Saga, Nagasaki, Kumamoto, Oita, Miyazaki, Kagoshima and Okinawa prefectures) Party

Number of MPs in single-member districts

LDP

25

DPJ

5

KP

1

SDP

2

Independent

4

(c) Tokyo Party

Number of MPs in single-member districts

LDP

9

DPJ

13

Independent

3

(d) Aichi Prefecture (includes City of Nagoya) Party

Number of MPs in single-member districts

LDP

5

DPJ

9

CP

1

(e) Osaka Prefecture

Japan’s general elections of June 2000: revolution or ripple? Party

87

Number of MIPs in single-member districts

LDP

8

DPJ

5

KP

4

SDP

1

CP

1

Source: Calculated from Asahi Shinbun, June 26th 2000.

THE MATSUSHITA SCHOOL OF POLITICS AND MANAGEMENT The Matsushita Seikei Juku (Matsushita School of Politics and Management)— henceforth MSKJ—was inaugurated in the 1980s by the founder of Panasonic, the late Matsushita Kōnosuke, as a tertiary educational establishment to train politicians and managers, promoting reformist ideas. Its graduates were numerous and active in Hosokawa’s Japan New Party, started in 1992 and central to his reformist administration in 1993–1994. The success of its graduates in successive elections, therefore, is a significant indicator of the progress of a reformist mind-set within Japanese politics. In the June 2000 elections graduates of the MSKJ election to the Lower House of Parliament increased from 15 to 20, that increase being entirely accounted for by an additional five elected on the DPJ ticket. An additional 12 MSKJ graduates stood for election unsuccessfully, making an overall success rate of 62.5 per cent. It is also worth noting that 15 of the 20 successful candidates were elected from districts that may be considered as urban/metropolitan. Of the 32 MSKJ graduates running for election, only one (unsuccessful) candidate stood for a party (the Liberal Party) other than the LDP and DPJ, though two stood as Independents. We thus have a picture of body of relatively young, highly motivated, politicians or political aspirants largely cultivating urban or metropolitan districts. They are almost exclusively affiliated with the two major parties (especially the major party of opposition), trained according to an intensive common programme likely to incline them towards political reform, and enjoy a high electoral success rate. Known originally for their formative role in Hosokawa’s Japan New Party in the early 1990s, they continue to constitute a dynamic and potentially reformist force in Japanese politics.

Table 8 Members of the House of Representatives Who are Graduates of the Matsushita School of Politics and Management (MSKJ)

As of August 1999

Following June 2000 election

DPJ

8

13

LDP

6

6

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Independent

1

1

Other parties

0

0

Average age

39

40

1

1

Year first elected: 1986 Year first elected: 1990

0

0

Year first elected: 1993

10

9

Year first elected: 1996

3

2

Year first elected: 1997*

1

0

Year first elected: 2000

–

8

Not re-elected, 2000

–

3

15

20

Total

* By-election. Source: Nihon Seikei Shinbunsha, Kokkai Binran [Parliamentary Handbook], various editions. For the June 2000 elections, personal communication from the MSKJ.

CONCLUSIONS The high hopes for reform of the political system raised by the events of the early 1990s have been slow to come to fruition. A substantial reform of the government administration is due to be implemented at the beginning of 2001, and the financial system is also undergoing substantial changes. Nevertheless, the spider’s web of special interests centred on the LDP and linking in the government bureaucracy, local authorities and a plethora of interest groups remains more or less intact. We may speculate that had the LDP been excluded from office for substantially longer than the nine months it was left floundering in the political wilderness in 1993–1994, it would have atrophied to the point of no return. In the event, however, it was able to claw its way back to power via a series of opportunistic coalition arrangements with other parties only too willing to be ‘bought’ in return for some access to central power. Rather than a model of two-party alternation in power (or the variants on this, involving alternative groups of parties, that may be found in Europe), Japanese party politics bears resemblance to a model contrasting ‘mainstream’ with ‘periphery’. To vary the metaphor, the system is akin to the solar system, in which some planets are close to the sun and warmed by it, while others are very distant and remain cold. The general elections of June 2000 recorded a modest advance in the direction of a more balanced system, with the notable advances made by the Democratic Party. That party, however, has merely reached a level of success obtained at various stages in its history by the former Japan Socialist party, which was regarded as a party of perpetual opposition. The LDP is weaker than it was—and suffered a clear though limited reverse in these elections—in that it no longer controls the Upper House., and needs to form coalitions with other parties in order to stay fully in control of the legislative agenda. But it is still

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remarkably skilful in making sure that the principal levers of power remain largely in its own hands. One thing that has been changing is the axes of division in party politics. 9 The old Japanese-style division between a conservative, somewhat nationalist, right wing, and a pacifist-inclined left wing is not entirely dead, but is less salient than it used to be. To a very considerable extent it has come to be replaced by a division between traditionalists and modernizers. To vary the terms somewhat, we may describe these two schools as consisting of those who wish to retain a system protecting myriad vested interests and those who favour reform. The latter want deregulation, reduction in the power of the government bureaucracy and reduction in restrictions on market forces. It may be remarked that the merits of the arguments do not necessarily lie entirely with the modernist camp. For instance, a strong case may be made for increased regulation of a certain kind, in areas such as protection of the environment. Nevertheless, the long period of economic stagnation since the early 1990s—and the feeble attempts by government to reverse it—strongly suggest that a more open economy would be beneficial. The division between traditionalists and modernizers is not simply a division between different political parties. There are traditionalists and modernizers in nearly all the parties, including the LDP. To some extent, though not entirely, the distinction between these two schools coincides with differences of interest and outlook between generations. In the June 2000 general elections, the traditionalists have done rather badly in the cities, but their strategies have largely succeeded outside the main metropolitan areas. Thus the traditionalist-modernizer split is increasingly coincident with a rural-urban division, though there have been elements of this in evidence for a long time. The party system remains fluid, with a number of minor parties able to dispute the aspirations of the major parties to control the political world altogether. Electoral arithmetic makes coalition government a necessity for the LDP, and the only real chance for the DPJ to come to power seems likely to be through some sort of coalition arrangement. We should not assume, however, that the present party political landscape is immutable. The Democratic Party is of recent origin and cannot be said to have entirely established its credentials as a permanent part of the political landscape. Certainly, its performance in these elections will have given a boost to its confidence. As for the LDP, it is, as ever, divided between various distinct groupings, some based on personal support (habatsu) and some on policy interest (zoku). It is, as we have emphasized, at the centre of a vast network of special interests stretching throughout the economy and throughout the administration. If an earthquake is to strike the Japanese political system and lay the way open to genuine modernising reshaping of that system, that earthquake may well need to take the form of a split in the LDP. Such a split would need to be, not the kind of splintering at the edges that took place in 1976 and in 1993. It should be a split down the middle, between modernists and traditionalists, urban-based and rural based, younger dynamic politicians and older ones mired in the corruption of the existing system. It would be foolhardy to attempt to assess the chances of such a development in the next few years, but without something as radical as this, it will be difficult indeed for the Japanese system to lift itself out of the quagmire into which it has become embedded. Japan’s millennial election has produced more of a ripple than a revolution, but chaos

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theory teaches us that the flapping of a butterfly’s wing in one continent may produce a hurricane in another. Small events may create big events, and an accumulation of ripples may eventually create revolution. It is the pattern of these ripples that we should be following in the months and years to come.

NOTES 1. ‘Country of the gods’ is a much more appropriate than ‘divine country’, favoured by most of the foreign English-language press. 2 The House of Representatives electoral system since 1994 (with modifications): 1. There are 300 single-member, first-past-the-post seeats, and 180 (previously 200) seats allocated by the D’Hondt system of proportional representation in 11 regional blocs. 2. Each elector has two votes, one for the local single-member district, and one for the local regional bloc of which it is a part. 3. Candidates may contest a regional bloc only as part of a party list. 4. Candidates may, if they wish, stand (run) for election in both types of constituency. 5. Parties may order their lists for a PR regional bloc either by sequential numbering (1,2,3,4,5…), by equal numbering (1,1,1,1,1….) or by a combination of the two (e.g. 1,2,3,4,4,4,4,4.) 6. Where a candidate fails to be elected in a single-member district, and is part of a party list that is equally numbered (see 5) in the relevant regional bloc, the result is determined on the principle of sekihairitsu (margin of defeat). Thus if a candidate polls 90,000 votes in a single-member district where the winning candidate polls 100,000 votes, that candidate will be elected in the regional bloc ahead of a candidate in another single-member district polling 80,000 votes against 100,000 for the winning candidate. In the first case the sekihairitsu is 90% and in the second case 80%. The regional blocs are a ‘second chance’ for candidates standing in both types of constituency. 3. This was a few weeks before the Kōmeitō formally entered the coalition government, but the Obuchi Government could already count on its parliamentary support for most purposes. 4. For a view highly critical of this situation, see Yamaguchi (1999). 5. Yamaguchi (1999:31) argues that the prospect of forming electoral pacts with the LDP was a principal reason why the Kōmeitō entered into a coalition government with the LDP. 6. In Hokkaidō the Democratic Party had inherited virtually the whole of the JSP/SDP organisational machine when that party split in 1996. Hokkaidō, in any case, partly because of the historical strength of the mining industry there, had a longstanding left wing tradition. 7. With poetic license, Karel van Wolferen (1989:432) concluded that the abolition of Tokyo University would be the most positive step towards reforming the Japanese political system. 8. The ‘one party’ was of course the LDP, the ‘half party’ was the JSP/SDP, while inroads into the constituency of the latter (and, to a lesser extent, the former) were made by a number of minor parties.

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9. For a most insightful analysis, see Otake (1999).

REFERENCES Johnson, S. (2000), Opposition politics In Japan: Strategies under a One-Party Dominant Regime , London & New York: Routledge. Otake, H. (1999), Nihon Seiji no Tairitsu Jiku [The Axes of Division in Japanese Politics], Tokyo: Chūkō Shinsho. van Wolferen, K. (1989), The Enigma of Japanese Power: People and Politics in a Stateless Nation , London: Macmillan. Yamaguchi, J. (1999), Kiki no Nihon seiji (Japanese Politics in Crisis). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.

Part II Japanese Political Parties and Political Activism

6 ‘Positive Neutrality’—The Foreign Policy of the Japanese Socialist Party First published in Asian Survey, Vol. II, No. 9, November 1962 (Institute of International Studies, University of California) THE SOCIALIST PARTY of Japan has proclaimed ‘positive neutrality’ as the basis of its foreign policy. The Party Congress of January 1962 defined this term as follows: Positive neutrality is the party’s fundamental standpoint in its struggle for peace and the relaxation of tension. It means nonalignment, that is, non-participation in the military blocs of East or West, with the aim of eventually dissolving these blocs; thus it is neutrality on a military plane. In our case such a position is backed up by our Constitution, which prohibits armaments or war, and is supported by the people’s desire for peace. We who aim at socialism for Japan face the unfortunate fact that Japan has concluded a military alliance with America, based on the new Security Treaty, and that thus the Soviet Union and Communist China are hostile to her. For us, the only way to achieve Japan’s peace, security and independence, is to end the military alliance with America, and to restore stable and normal relations with the Soviet Union and Communist China; this is also a precondition for the achievement of socialism. 1 The nature of neutrality as a principle of foreign policy has changed radically since World War II. A prewar ‘neutral’ was a country strictly concerned with its own security which, for certain reasons of geography and international relations, might best be preserved by keeping out of alliances. Sometimes such a policy was successful (e.g. Switzerland), sometimes unsuccessful (e.g. Belgium). The more recent rise of a new type of neutrality (sometimes called ‘neutralism’ or ‘non-alignment’) coincides with a great increase in the number of independent nations and, at the same time, with an overwhelming concentration of military force in two ideologically opposed powers, each seeking to add to the number of its allies and sympathizers. In this new situation, neutrality has been a response to three main problems: how to guarantee national security, how to maximize national advantage, and how to achieve world peace. The conditions for national security have greatly changed since World War II. The armed forces that can be deployed by a country not in the first rank as an industrial nation do not constitute a deterrent to nuclear attack, whereas before the war they at least had to be taken seriously in a calculation of profit and loss by a potential aggressor. Moreover, many countries feel that their participation in a defensive alliance with America or the

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Soviet Union would increase the danger of nuclear war and of their involvement in it if it broke out (although neutrality is not necessarily a guarantee against some form of ‘involvement’ in nuclear war). Attempts to maximize national advantage by means of a neutral foreign policy are again a product of the East-West rivalry, since both sides compete for allegiances not only by building military alliances, but also by offering trade and aid. Thus, from the point of view of a newly independent nation, unrestricted economic relations with both sides ‘with no strings attached’ may seem more advantageous than dependence on one side to the exclusion or depreciation of the other. The ‘positive’ aspect of neutrality lies in the moral force which neutral nations seek to exert on the two conflicting camps. This is generally aimed at disarmament and relaxation of tension, with the final goal one of stable peace. The arguments of the Japanese Socialists are similar to these points, but they are naturally influenced by peculiarities in the economic, geographical and political position of Japan. 2 An important difference between Japan and the neutral nations is that Japan is undeniably an advanced industrial society with considerable military potential if its development were desired. 3 Socialists, however, do not see this as a major obstacle to their point of view. They fear a militarily strong Japan largely because of the legacy of militarism 4 and argue that Japan could never create a really effective deterrent power herself. 5 Since Japan does not have a common frontier with other countries (unlike India), they maintain that the present Self-Defense Force, besides being a potential danger to democratic government and a waste of money, is worthless in security terms. They deny the security value of the alliance with America on the grounds that it heightens tension in the Far East, and that the presence of military bases invites nuclear attack upon Japan’s crowded islands. Japanese Socialists also insist that neutrality has important national advantages. In their view, Japanese independence is not complete. It is compromised both by the presence of American troops and bases and by the excessive economic dependence on the United States. Neutrality, therefore, is designed as a policy to end the Mutual Security Treaty and to promote increased trade with the communist countries. The party also associates neutrality with the return to Japan of the Kuriles from the Soviet Union and the Ryukyu and Bonin islands from the United States. In all of these respects, the emphasis is placed upon a radical alteration of Japan’s relations with the United States. According to a party policy statement of October 9, 1961: The only policy to stabilize Japan-Soviet relations, and thus to relax tension in the Far East, is to work first of all for the conclusion of a Japan-Soviet peace treaty conditional upon the return of Habomai and Shikotan [small islands administered before the Second World War as part of Hokkaido and not traditionally part of the Kuriles]; subsequently to negotiate with the Soviet Union for the return of the Kuriles…in the midst of continuing efforts to abolish the Japan-US Security Treaty. 6 The return of the Ryukyus and Bonins, and the removal of U.S. bases on Okinawa, have

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been linked in party statements with the withdrawal of American bases from Japan proper, both being considered necessary for Japanese neutrality. The Socialist Pary has not always developed its positions on neutralism with objectivity and care, but this should hardly be surprising. Among other problems, socialism embraces an ideological range from Fabianism to near-Communism. Ideological divisions, moreover, are reinforced and made more complex by the personal factionalism common to all organizations in Japanese society. 7 Unity is therefore sometimes maintained only by clever verbal compromises which obscure rather than illuminate policy. For much of the post-war period, indeed, even verbal compromises have failed to secure unity. The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 precipitated an intense debate on foreign policy in the party, which had previously been engrossed in ideological and factional problems. The war caused a shock to the Socialists, whose initial reaction was one of qualified support for the U.N. action. On July 4, 1950, the party Central Executive Committee issued a statement giving ‘moral support’ to the U.N, but insisting that Japan should not be involved. 8 The fear of involvement increased, however, as the Korean situation grew worse, and particularly with the entry of Communist Chinese troops into the war in November 1950. At the Party Congress of January 1951, the right wing put forward a resolution stressing the necessity for self-defense and collective security against the danger of communist aggression. This was defeated and in its place the party adopted a left-wing resolution which set forth ‘three principles for a peace treaty.’ 9 These principles were: total peace treaty, i.e., a treaty signed by all nations that had been in the war against Japan; opposition to the granting of military bases; and perpetual neutrality. In reaction against American pressure for Japan to rearm (particularly General MacArthur’s speech of December 31, 1950), a fourth principle was added, that of opposition to rearmament. As the settlement between Japan and her former enemies drew near, prospects for a compromise between right and left Socialists receded. The conclusion of a ‘partial’ peace treaty (neither Communist nor Nationalist China was invited to the Peace Conference, and of those invited, the USSR, India and Burma refused to sign) was made clearly inseparable from the simultaneous conclusion of a Security Treaty with America. The left Socialists opposed both treaties because, whatever the attractions of getting nominal independence by a peace treaty, they considered that the nucleus of the settlement was the Security Treaty under which US troops would be stationed in Japan indefinitely for use throughout the Far East in such manner as accorded with American interests. Independence would therefore be only nominal, and a settlement with the USSR and Communist China would be made impossible. The right and center factions (which later formed the right wing party) were prepared to accept the Peace Treaty because, however imperfect, it would bring about Japan’s immediate independence. The right faction, whose chief spokesman on foreign affairs was Sone Eki, was willing to accept even the Security Treaty in the interests of collective security. 10 One influential member of the same faction, Nishimura Eiichi, believed that America should guarantee Japan’s security for three years, after which she should withdraw all her troops and bases. This period should be used by Japan to build up a strong independent defense force. 11 The center faction, although agreeing in principle

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with the necessity for collective security, opposed the Security Treaty because it was ‘imposed’ upon Japan while she was still under the Occupation, instead of being concluded after independence as between two sovereign countries. 12 The party split on October 22, 1951, soon after the Treaty was signed. when it became clear that the course of the October Party Congress gave no hope for compromise. After the Peace Treaty, the Left Socialists, now an independent party. formulated a foreign policy based on the idea of a ‘third force.’ This position was influenced by the non-alignment position of certain Asian countries, notably India. The action policy endorsed by the Party Congress of January 1952 declared: What we call a third force consists of all forces which are working to avoid the occurrence of a third World War. Third forces in this sense exist in America and the Soviet Union, but generally speaking. it is safe to designate as the sphere of a third force the whole world outside these two countries. The center of the third force is the working class and socialist forces in advanced capitalist countries. In relation to the Soviet Union, they represent the forces of democracy, and in relation to America, they present the forces of socialism—thus they are the main strength of the third force in the world…. As a result of the second World War. many countries won their independence. Their sense of national independence has become very strong and their ruling class is not ultra-reactionary. Thus these countries as a whole have become part of the third force. Genuine democrats and peace-lovers in any area are elements in the third force. 13 As significant examples of actions taken by the ‘third force,’ they listed the intercession of the British Labor Government to prevent the use of atomic weapons after Chinese entry into the Korean War; the dismissal of General MacArthur from his post as Supreme Commander; left-wing opposition to rearmament in West Germany and Japan; refusal of the Arab countries to grant military bases to the major powers; and the efforts of ‘small’ countries in the United Nations to bring about a disarmament conference. The Right Socialists were quick to point out that the phrase ‘third force’ was a misnomer as an appellation for the Left Socialist policy. Their criticism was expressed in the following terms: It is correct to say that democratic socialism is a third road between capitalism and communism. But it is not correct to say that it is a third force as a force in international politics. The idea of an Asian third force…is understandable in terms of the aspirations of countries which had long been oppressed by colonialism and feel strongly that they should be anti-European, yet oppose communism because of its violence…; but such an argument used in relation to Japan does not take account of her geographical position and the fact that she is unarmed. 14 With the Soviet ‘peace offensive’ following the death of Stalin in February 1953, a serious challenge to the third force argument arose within the Left Socialist Party. This

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was the so-called ‘forces of peace argument. It originated in the powerful nationwide trade union federation, Sohyo, which was closely linked with the Left Socialist Party. The argument developed as an aspect of a struggle between different unions, and came to a head at the annual congress of Sohyo in July 1953. The group supporting SecretaryGeneral Takano argued that Japan should align herself with the ‘forces of peace’ instead of the hitherto advocated ‘third force.’ The exact nature of the ‘forces of peace’ was left obscure in the policy statement submitted to (but neither adopted nor rejected by) the congress. but in replies to criticism, Takano made it fairly clear that he meant the communist countries. On one occasion he said: No country is a priori a peace force. Peace forces are those elements which at a particular time make efforts towards peace…. In this sense I think that it is good to regard Soviet appeals for peace fairly highly…. 15 The controversy over this issue in Sohyo had immediate repercussions in the Left Socialist Party. At first, the reaction was to claim that ‘there is no substantial difference between the Sohyo action policy and that of the party.’ In November, however, the Central Executive Committee of the party issued a directive to party members that they should ‘support unwaveringly the “third force” argument.’ 16 Pressure for unification of the two parties grew steadily from their respective congresses in January 1954, until unification was achieved in October 1955. Foreign policy had been the occasion for the split, and the adjustment of views on foreign policy was a prerequisite for reconciliation. The most important idea which enabled the parties to come together was the development of a thesis advocating that America, the Soviet Union, and Communist China jointly guarantee Japan’s security. This was originally adopted by the Central Executive Committee of the Left Socialist Party on 23 September 1953. 17 The advantage of this idea was that it could be interpreted by both sides as satisfying their own policy requirements. The right wing, with its insistence on collective security, took it in the sense that Japan would not be left unprotected, while the left saw it as ‘…a way of making the party’s policy of independent neutrality effective.’ In the final agreement on unification, both interpretations were left open by skillful phraseology. On this point, the agreement reads thus: The security envisaged for Japan shall be as follows: a) We shall attempt to obtain non-aggression agreements with all the countries concerned in the area around Japan, especially Communist China and USSR, and to conclude a collective treaty of non-aggression and security, in which the main participants would be the USA, USSR, and Communist China. b) In consideration of a collective security treaty in which both camps would participate, the US-Japan Security Treaty and Administrative Agreement should be dissolved, and simultaneously the Sino-Soviet Friendship Agreement should be dissolved. 18 The use of the term ‘dissolved’ enabled the Left to maintain its emphasis on the abolition of the Japan-US Security Treaty, whether or not a new over-all treaty were concluded.

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The Right, on the other hand, could make the dissolution of the Security Treaty dependent upon the conclusion of a new treaty between the countries concerned. It is to be noted that the terms ‘third force’ and ‘neutrality’ were not used in the unified platform. Whereas the term ‘self-reliant neutrality’ (jishu churitsu) had been used in the former Left Socialist platform, the platform of the Right had made use of the term ‘selfreliant independence’ (jishu dokuritsu), and it was this term, again capable of wide interpretation. which was used in the unified platform. 19 For the next three years, the Right and Left Socialists coexisted on the basis of this uneasy compromise. The compromise, however, had its origins in the hope of forming a government owing to disunity in conservative ranks. This hope gradually faded, and at the end of 1958 controversy was at its height over the ‘Sakisaka Thesis,’ 20 a left-wing challenge to the very basis of unity. It was in this atmosphere that on January 19, 1959, the Central Committee of the party for the first time inserted the words ‘positive neutrality’ into its official action policy. In this. it was also influenced by appeals for neutrality made by the leaders of the Soviet Union and Communist China. On November 19, 1958, Chen Yi. the Chinese Foreign Minister, made a statement calling for an end to the Japanese-American alliance, saying: The Chinese people unanimously support the fight of the Japanese people for independence, peace and democracy, and hope from the heart that Japan will become a country of peaceful neutrality. 21 This was followed up by a similar statement of Mr. Gromyko on December 2, 1958. These remarks may be seen as the beginning of a propaganda (Irive by the communist countries against revision of the Japan-US Security Treaty. formal talks concerning which began in October 1958. Not only the Socialist Party, but also the Japan Communist Party responded to this call, and its Central Committee announced the party’s conversion to neutrality for Japan on January 18, 1959. The connection between Socialist Party policy changes and Communist Party moves was greatly disturbing to the right wing of the party. This development, together with the party’s leftward drift on other issues. led to the defection of the right wing Nishio faction and part of the moderate Kawakami faction in October 1959. and the establishment of the Democratic Socialist Party. This party has now definitely rejected neutrality. It accepts the Security Treaty and self-defense forces as a necessary evil pending establishment of a collective security system under the United Nations. The Socialist Party, shorn of right wing elements which had never gone along willingly with the idea of neutrality, has found it easier to formulate a clear policy. The experience of the Security Treaty struggle in the first half of 1960 gave the party confidence to fight an uncompromising campaign for the general election of November 1960, laying great weight on its platform of ‘positive neutrality.’ Nevertheless, the party cannot be said now to be unified in its views on this subject. Leaving aside minor details of emphasis, the main difference relates to the question whether there should be neutrality between the ideologies of Eastern and Western Blocs. The right wing of the party, as it is presently constituted (the Wada faction and the remnant of the Kawakami faction) tends to emphasize the ‘positive’ aspects of neutrality

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and aims at the dissolution of military blocs without attempting to make a judgment between them. 22 On the left, considerable ideological influence is wielded by Sato Noboru who joined the party after seceding from the Communist Party with a dissident group in July 1961. He argues that there are three aspects to the East-West struggle. 23 Firstly, the difference in the American and Soviet systems, which he defines respectively as ‘imperialist’ and ‘socialist.’ secondly the difference between the ‘peace policy’ of the Soviet Union and Communist China, and the war policy’ of America. In these categories, there can be no neutrality. The East-West struggle, however, is also an armed struggle between military blocs, which is pregnant with the possibility of nuclear war. In this third aspect, he insists, there must be neutrality to save the human race. This way of thinking is currently strong among the leaders of the structural reform group now dominant in the party. 24 Sato is one of the leading theorists of this group. Although the group attracts support from a cross-section of factions, on foreign policy it is ideologically committed to what may be called a ‘pro-communist’ neutrality. The Socialist Party has given considerable thought to the question of how neutrality could be implemented. drawing upon the experience of other neutral nations. Most Japanese Socialists genuinely believe that neutrality would contribute much to the cause of world peace and avoidance of nuclear war. As their policy has been formulated, however, it involves not merely Japanese neutrality, but also the elimination of any means of defending that neutrality apart from an international guarantee which, if achieved, would depend upon the goodwill of the Soviet Union and Communist China. Such an extreme form of neutrality, which goes beyond what any country has thus far attempted, is a result of the predominance of political-ideological influences upon policy making in the Socialist Party of Japan.

NOTES 1. Japan Socialist Party, ‘62 nen no shinro. dai 21 kai taikai kettei-shu (The New Road of 1962: Collection of the Resolutions of the 21st Congress), March 1962, p. 24. 2. See for instance Japan Socialist Party, Sosenkyo koryo oyobi seisaku (Election Platform and Policy), October 1960. 3. In 1961 Japan’s Self-Defense Forces amounted to 171,500 men and included an Air Self-Defense Force of 3,200 aircraft and a Naval Self-Defense Force totalling 1,250,000 tons. (Boei nenkan [Defense Yearbook], 1962, p. 1.) India, on the other hand, had armed forces of 530,000 men with a further 630,000 in reserve, but her airforce amounted to only 300 aircraft and her navy to only 79,000 tons. (Op. cit., p. 445.) 4. See for instance ‘62 nen no shinro, op. cit., pp. 17–20. 5. See for instance Asahi Shimbun, 8 November 1960 (morning edition). 6. Asahi Shimbun, 10 October 1961 (morning edition). Khrushchev had informed Suzuki Mosaburo, a former chairman of the Socialist Party, on a visit to Moscow in August 1960, that there was no point in demanding the return of the Kuriles while the Japan-US Security Treaty was still in existence. (Asahi Shimbun, 31 August 1960 [morning edition].)

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7. For an analysis of the role played by factions in Japanese politics, see Robert A. Scalapino and Masumi Junnosuke, Parties and Politics in Contemporary Japan, (Berkeley, 1962), especially pp. 18–19 and 79–80. 8. ‘Chosen no jitai ni taisuru to no taido’ (The Party’s Attitude toward the Korean Situation), quoted in Jiji Shimbun, 5 July 1950. 9. See Asahi Shimbun, 6 December 1949 (morning edition), for the statement issued by the party’s Foreign Policy Committee which first formulated the three principles. 10. See Kowa mondai ni kanshi doshi shokun ni uttaeru (An Appeal to Comrades concerning the Peace Treaty Question), a statement by Sone, member of the Socialist Party Central Executive Committee, in 1951, probably June. 11. See Nishimura Eiichi, Tai-Nichi kowa to waga to no rekishiteki shimei (The Peace Treaty with Japan and the Historic Destiny of our Party), Tokyo, 1951. 12. Dai 8 kai (rinji) taikai hokoku-sho (Report to the 8th [Extraordinary] Congress), 3 October 1951, 1st section pp. 1–40, 2nd section pp. 1–11. 13. 1952 undo hoshin an (1952 Proposed Action Policy), given in Nihon rodo nenkan (Japan Labor Yearbook), Ohara Institute for Social Research, 1954, p. 679. 14. Joho tsushin (organ of the Right Socialist Party), No. 48, 1 July 1952, p. 1. See also party pamphlet, Dokuritsu Nihon no dohyo (Milestone of Japanese independence), August 1952, pp. 20–38. 15. Mainichi Shimbun, 10 July 1953 (morning edition). 16. Asahi Shimbun, 9 November 1953 (morning edition). 17. Shakai Taimusu (Social Times), 23 September 1953. 18. Yakushin suru Nihon Shakaito (The Advancing Japan Socialist Party [Right Socialist Party]), p. 71. 19. Ibid., p. 70. Under the heading ‘Aims of Foreign Policy,’ it is stated: ‘The aims of foreign policy are to achieve Japan’s total independence, guarantee international peace and security in the area around Japan, and as a means of establishing Japan’s economic independence, build friendly relations with all countries from a position of self-reliant independence with regard to either camp. 20. Shakaishugi (Socialism), No. 88, November 1958, pp. 46–52. 21. Asahi Shimbun, 20 November 1958 (morning edition). 22. See for instance Uezumi Minoru, ‘Sekkyoku churitsu no gensoku’ (The Principles of Positive Neutrality), Gekkan Shakaito (The Socialist Party Monthly [organ of the Japan Socialist Party]), No. 45, March 1961, pp. 111–116. 23. Sato Noboru, ‘Shakaishugi to churitsu’ (Socialism and Neutrality). Shiso, December 1961, pp. 34–43. 24. For the group’s thinking on neutrality, see ‘Sekkyoku churitsu no riron’ (The Theory of Positive Neutrality), Gekkan Shakaito, October 1961, pp. 4–15; also see a recent pamphlet, Sekkyoku churitsu to heiwa undo (Positive Neutrality and the Peace Movement), March 1962. pp. 1–14 (section by Eda Saburo).

7 The Japan Communist Party in the Sino-Soviet Dispute—From Neutrality to Alignment? First published in J.D.B.Miller and T.H.Rigby (eds), The Disintegrating Monolith, Canberra: Australia National University Press, 1965 THE ALIGNMENT of the Japan Communist Party (JCP) between Moscow and Peking is a subject that exercised the minds of scholars even during the period when the two Communist centres worked together in apparent harmony. 1 There have always been good a priori reasons for supposing that the JCP might find it difficult to decide its allegiance if ever there were a showdown between the two. With a number of Communist regimes and parties it would have been easy to predict which side they would take in the dispute. North Vietnam, for instance, by geographical propinquity, traditional cultural and political dependence, her weakness in comparison with her Chinese neighbour, and her low level of industrialization, was an obvious candidate for the position of Chinese satellite. Japan, however, was not so simply placed. An Asian country with a European level of economic development, within short flying range of Vladivostock as well as of Peking, her world status that of a power potentially able to influence others as much as to receive influence—she hardly provided her Communists with the theoretical or practical basis on which to make an easy choice of loyalty. Once the Sino-Soviet dispute began they were faced with three possibilities—alignment with one or other of the two disputants, and ‘independence’ or ‘neutrality’. The current split in the JCP (that of May 1964) once more brings the problem into sharp focus. An acute analyst of the party’s chequered fortunes, writing in 1962, argued that at that time the party was trying to be neutral in the dispute, with the aim of maintaining independence from either centre. 2 He further posed the question of whether this did not indicate that the leaders of the JCP were taking advantage of increased pluralism in the Communist world to create a Japanese type of communism. Recent trends, however, appear to show a retreat from independence and increasing alignment with Communist China. This seems to the present writer to throw some doubt on the above-mentioned view, even as an analysis of events up to 1962. This paper will argue that the apparently increasing identification of the party line with that of Communist China is to be explained by three factors: 1. The existence of ideological and factional divisions, indicating that ‘neutrality’ was but the product of a transitional stage in a factional struggle for control of the party. 2. The consolidation in the much more powerful Japan Socialist Party (JSP) of a leadership group more or less favourable to the ideological stand of the Soviet Union. 3. Assiduous pursuit of the JCP’s allegiance by Communist China, upon which recent organizational and electoral successes by the party may to some extent depend. On 15 May 1964 Shiga Yoshio, 3 one of the five Communist members of the Lower

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House of the Diet (Parliament), broke party discipline by recording an affirmative vote in a Diet debate on a motion supporting the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Shiga, a nationally-known figure and one of the top three men in the JCP, 4 was supported in his stand by one of the four Communist members of the Upper House, Suzuki Ichizo. Six days later a plenum of the party’s Central Committee (to attend which the SecretaryGeneral, Miyamoto Kenji, had returned home post-haste from a protracted ‘rest’ in Communist China), formally expelled Shiga and Suzuki from the party. In statements and interviews made after his action, 5 Shiga was most careful to avoid connecting the issue on which he had quarrelled with the party with the broader question of the party’s alignment in the Sino-Soviet dispute. The reasons he gave for his stand were, firstly, a justification for his breaking party discipline and, secondly, a justification for opposing the party’s attitude to the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. On the first, he maintained that the party leaders had in the past year come to deviate from Communist orthodoxy on the desirability of such a treaty, as stated in the 1957 Moscow Declaration and the 1960 Moscow Statement. Since the JCP had earlier supported these views, he argued, his expulsion for ‘breaking party discipline’ was unjust. On the second, he attacked the arguments used by a party spokesman against the treaty in the Diet. The arguments were three: that the treaty, in failing to ban underground nuclear tests, would enable the United States to gain a dangerous advantage; that concern about the danger of fallout rather than about the danger of nuclear war due to Communist weakness was a failure ‘to see the wood for the trees’; and that the treaty was designed by the United States to prevent Communist China from obtaining nuclear weapons. Against these views Shiga argued that they exaggerated the strength of the Western camp relative to the Communist camp. Once again he cited the 1960 Moscow Statement to the effect that it was the Communist camp that was now coming to call the tune to the capitalists. It was, he held, the Soviet Union which had taken the initiative in negotiations for a testban treaty (first by stopping testing in 1958, and then by pushing the negotiations from 1962). Therefore, since the Soviet leaders clearly knew where the balance of advantage lay, there was no danger of the Americans taking advantage of the treaty for their own ends. On the question of fallout, he argued that the Japanese people, being citizens of the first and only nation to have suffered the effects of nuclear bombing, were well able to judge for themselves whether testing should or should not continue. 6 On the effect of the treaty on Communist China, Shiga held that although at present China might regard the treaty as an American stratagem to deny her nuclear weapons, a long-term view should be taken. The treaty should be regarded as a step in the direction of an agreement for the total banning of nuclear armaments. A horrifying and possible outcome of the lack of such an agreement would be a West German nuclear arsenal. Therefore it was imperative to strive for a nuclear-free world in which China would be able and willing to forge nuclear weapons. Despite the fact that Shiga, interviewed by a well-known author and commentator, 7 excused himself from commenting on the Sino-Soviet dispute, and was extremely evasive in reply to repeated prodding, it is obvious that his views were close to those of the Soviet Union, while those who had expelled him supported Communist China. Journalists, moreover, now had no hesitation in pronouncing Shiga the leader of a ‘Soviet’ faction,

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dissatisfied by the leading role in the party played by a ‘Chinese’ faction. 8 A change had come over the party since late 1962. The party press at that time had maintained a sort of neutrality in the Sino-Soviet dispute, criticizing the views of both sides if it criticized the views of either. 9 Little mention was made of the dispute itself, except by implication. Through 1963, however, a gradual pro-Chinese shift was evident in the views expressed in the party press. 10 This was accelerated after the signature of the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in July. At a plenum of the Central Committee in October the leadership took a strong line against the treaty, and it was later reported that at about this time there was a purge of ‘pro-Soviet’ executives. 11 After this, articles supporting the international attitudes of Communist China appeared in the party press with increasing frequency, although explicit partisanship was not expressed. These culminated in an article in Akahata for 10 March 1964, criticizing the ‘whitewashing’ of the late J.F.Kennedy’s Presidency, exposing the ‘realities’ of American imperialism under his leadership, and attacking the doctrine of peaceful coexistence. 12 It was clearly in response to this trend towards ‘alignment’ that Shiga (who has been opposed to a pro-Chinese line for some considerable time) was prepared to take his opposition to the point of provoking his own expulsion, after more than forty years of sacrifice and devotion on behalf of the party. The pro-China faction was apparently in an overwhelming position on the executive, since only one or two executives supported Shiga at the Central Committee plenum of May 1964. 13 One newspaper, however, quoted a government security report to the effect that about a third of the rank-and-file party members supported the Soviet line. 14 The development of an open cleavage within the party was thus of quite recent origin, and was probably connected with the sharpening of the Sino-Soviet dispute on the international stage in 1963 and 1964. Nevertheless, the origins of the controversy went back further, and in order to understand them fully it is essential to examine the ideological and factional history of the party. The world-wide tendency of doctrinaire left-wing parties to engage in bitter feuds on matters of ideological moment is reinforced in Japan by the facility with which parties and groups of all shades divide on factional lines, with the members of each faction owing close personal allegiance to its leader. Japanese left-wing parties are no strangers to the purely personal type of factional alle-giance or to ideological divisions which are rife among them (although the one generally reinforces the other). 15 The post-war history of the JCP has been markedly different from the pre-war experiences of Japanese Communists, but the continuity of personnel and ideas is striking. Although the first Communist Party in Japan was founded in 1922, circumstances were such that before 1945 the Communist movement was never more than a tiny group of sect-ridden intellectuals, harried by the police and with little opportunity for practical organization. Police action was indeed so effective and the environment so unfavourable that Communism had almost ceased to exist in Japan by the mid-1930s. The intellectual nature of the movement, and its lack of practical opportunity, may have contributed to the theoretical and dogmatic character of much Communist argumentation in Japan. From the 1920s on, Japanese Marxists have been preoccupied with analysing the ‘stage’ of Japanese society, and thus the strategy of revolution. Before World War II the persistence of ‘feudal’ forms of government, despite the undoubted progress of

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industrialization and a capitalist economy, led some Marxists (including most of those in the diminutive and often proscribed Communist Party) to hold that the ‘bourgeoisdemocratic’ revolution had still to be accomplished before the society would be ready for a ‘proletarian-socialist’ revolution. Others, however, thought that the bourgeoisie was in effective control of the organs of government, and that consequently a proletariansocialist revolution could be embarked upon in the existing stage of society. 16 In a sense, as pointed out by Scalapino, 17 it was scarcely in the Communists’ interests to preach ‘bourgeois’ revolution, since an ‘open’ society (such as pre-war Japan was not) would be likely to make the task of ‘socialist’ revolution more difficult than would a society with an apparatus of rigid state controls (provided the latter could be made to fall into their hands). Nevertheless, the authoritarian system worked against them in two ways: firstly, it was used to suppress Communist activities almost out of existence, and, secondly, it was the focus for a violently anti-Communist nationalism which the Communists were in no sense able to capture. From 1945, the Allied occupation indirectly gave to Japanese Communism its period of greatest opportunity. The situation in the aftermath of defeat was potentially revolutionary and the Americans running the occupation were engaged in what might well be termed a revolutionary programme. Communists were for the first time perfectly free to organize, and being the only political group which had never compromised with Japan’s now discredited militarist leadership, 18 the party enjoyed a certain vogue. The image it sought to convey was one of moderation, symbolized by the slogan ‘a lovable Communist Party’. It sought the support not only of the working class but also of such underprivileged sections of the community as the proprietors of small businesses. A united front with the Socialists, which the Communists initially proposed, never materialized, but Communist penetration of the rapidly expanding trade union movement reached an advanced stage. As a reaction to this, however, strong anti-Communist groups formed within most of the Communist-dominated trade unions, and many unions split. The industrial influence of the party was further reduced by deflationary measures adopted by the Japanese government on American orders from 1948, and by increasing fear of Communism in the first years of the Cold War. Despite setbacks in the trade unions, the disastrous showing of the 1947–8 coalition governments (in which the Socialists participated) caused many Socialist supporters to vote Communist in the 1949 election. In this election the party attracted almost three million votes (9.7 per cent of the total vote), which gave it thirty-five seats in the Lower House. This was a ‘once only’ success (see table below).

Japanese Communist Party Election Results in the Lower House of the Diet since 1945

Votes (m.)

Percent of total vote

Seats*

1946

2.14

3.8

5

1947

1.00

3.7

4

1949

2.98

9.7

35

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1952

0.90

2.6

0

1953

0.66

1.9

1

1955

0.73

2.0

2

1958

1.01

2.6

1

1960

1.16

2.9

3

1963

1.65

4.0

5

* The total number of seats ranged between 464 and 467.

On 6 January 1950 an article in the official organ of the Cominform strongly criticized the leaders of the JCP for their gradualism and called for resolute action against the ‘American imperialists’. The article apparently caught the leaders by surprise, but once the view of the Cominform had been independently confirmed by the Soviet Union and Communist China, they duly concurred and apologized. The doctrine of gradual revolution against a domestic ‘enemy’ gave way to one of violent revolution for ‘national liberation’. Where previously connections with the Soviet Union had been played down, now they were emphasized. Without analysing the reasons for the Cominform criticism, it is probably true to say that it was connected with the coming offensive in Korea and motivated by the desire to tie up American forces in Japan by a series of domestic disturbances. If this was the motive, however, it misfired. The Americans directed the Japanese government to take strong action against the JCP, which was driven underground. The party’s attempts to create domestic chaos had little result, except to alienate three-quarters of those who had voted for it in 1949. A further important effect of the Cominform criticism was to bring about an era of bitter factional strife within the party. Without rejecting the views of the Cominform, the ‘main stream’ faction led by Tokuda Kyuichi (a veteran party leader, who died in Peking in 1953) and Nozaka Sanzo wanted moderation in their implementation, thus retaining some of the psychological advantages which the JCP had when it was a ‘lovable’ party. It also wished to minimize provocation of the Americans, thus giving the party sufficient time to create an underground organization. This faction was opposed by an ‘Internationalist’ faction, which called for the full application of the Cominform programme regardless of the consequences. The struggle between the ‘main stream’ and the ‘Internationalists’ practically paralysed the party during 1950 and into 1951. The issue was finally resolved in favour of party control by the main stream, but the party line moved well to the left of what it had been up to 1950. The shift in party line in 1950 reflected the fact that the Cominform (presumably with Soviet backing) had adopted an essentially Chinese strategy of revolution for Japan. According to the JCP strategy between 1945 and 1950, the pre-war doctrine of a twostage revolution was to be followed. The first task was to destroy the emperor system and the feudal militaristic order on which it was based (this, of course, was being accomplished by the Americans). From its ashes was to rise a bourgeois-capitalist order, which in turn would give way to a socialist state in a later, proletarian-socialist, revolution. The process was to be gradual and progressive, with violence avoided if

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possible. From 1950, however, the two-stage revolution remained the party’s goal, but the identity of the first ‘enemy’ changed from Japanese ‘feudalism’ to American imperialism. Japan was now (according to a party thesis written in 1951 when the party was underground) a ‘semi-colonial dependent country’. The JCP now proposed to form a ‘united, democratic front of national liberation’, composed of ‘all progressive elements which oppose American imperialism~. The 1951 thesis quoted Stalin to the effect that only in colonial or dependent areas was it possible to utilize the bourgeoisie ‘at a certain stage and for a certain period’ in support of the revolutionary movement of its country ‘against imperialism and for emancipation’. 19 Here, despite the fact that it was Stalin who was quoted, the analogy with the Chinese Communist path of revolution was evident. After the death of Stalin, and in harmony with trends in the Communist world, the JCP gradually modified its violent and clandestine tactics and reasserted more moderate and flexible policies. Nevertheless, the essential features of its ‘strategy of revolution’ were not greatly changed. Throughout the 1950s and until the Moscow-Peking split became obvious, the JCP maintained equal and harmonious contacts with both. The adoption of a ‘Chinese’ strategy of revolution for the JCP should probably be explained in terms of an agreed division of influence between the two Communist centres. On the face of it, however, this choice was highly inapposite. Although Japan and China might be said to share a common ‘Asian-ness’, the conditions for revolution in each were very different. 20 A ‘united liberation front’ against the American presence in Japan had far less chance of success than a comparable liberation movement guided by the Communists had had in China. This was the kind of criticism levelled against the party strategy by a dissident faction (the Kasuga faction) which was formed about 1958 and was finally expelled from the party just before its congress of July 1961. The Kasuga faction supported the ‘Structural Reform’ theories of the Italian Communist leader Togliatti—a form of modified strategy of revolution designed to suit the conditions of an advanced industrial country. By its nature (and by the evidence of deteriorating Chinese-Italian Communist relations), the theory was far removed from the Chinese line, so that by expelling the Kasuga faction the JCP leaders were implicitly giving notice of an intention to support Chinese rather than more moderate versions of Communist strategy. The origins of Shiga’s deviation are far from clear. As leader of the ‘Internationalists’ in 1950–1 he wanted to implement the new (Chinese) strategy to the full. But Kasuga—now strongly anti-Chinese— and Miyamoto—now pro-Chinese—were also leading ‘Internationalists’, so this proves little. At that time, however, the issue was not between the application of a Chinese strategy and that of some other strategy, but about the degree of flexibility or intransigence in the implementation of a strategy agreed between Moscow and Peking but which happened to derive from Chinese experience. In view of the depth of factional strife at this period, however, it would not be contrary to Japanese experience if a legacy of personal bitterness remained between Shiga and Nozaka (leader of the ‘main stream’). There is strong reason for supposing that Nozaka was basically pro-Chinese. He spent the years 1940–6 with Mao Tse-tung’s forces in Yenan, a period which is said to have influenced him much more than his previous nine years of exile (1931–40) spent in Moscow as a member of the Presidium of the Comintern. 21 Shiga, on the other hand,

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lacked such a background, and there is some evidence that his views as an orthodox Marxist had generally tended towards the Soviet Union rather that China. 22 The question arises: if Shiga was in fact pro-Soviet rather than pro-Chinese before the outbreak of the Sino-Soviet dispute, why did he not associate himself with the Kasuga faction in opposition to the Chinese-inspired official ideology in 1961? In 1964 Shiga himself publicly declared that his stand was related only to the question of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, but as we have seen this is most difficult to accept. A more plausible explanation is that although there existed a latent ideological difference between Shiga and the other leaders in 1961, circumstances were such that superficial unity could still be preserved within the party. The revolutionary strategy agreed upon at the 1961 congress was closely modelled on the 1960 Moscow Statement of eighty-one communist parties. This statement distinguished Japan from Western Europe by calling her a ‘semi-occupied dependent country’. The main enemy was therefore the United States, in her military and economic domination of Japan, while the secondary ‘enemy’ was Japanese monopoly capital. In other words the party’s previous basic strategy was endorsed in essence by high and united authority. It is reasonable to suppose that Shiga was happy to support a position while it was still backed by the weight of both Moscow and Peking, and thus in 1961 was not prepared to support Kasuga in a position which at that time was confined to Togliatti and perhaps Tito. With worsemng relations between the Soviet Union and Communist China, however, a choice had to be faced. The way Shiga faced it must have depended on a number of factors which can only be guessed at. The period, up to 1962, of what appeared to be an increasingly independent attitude of the JCP to the Sino-Soviet dispute seems to have been the result of an attempt to reconcile differences between supporters of Moscow and supporters of Peking in the party. On this interpretation the worsening of the Sino-Soviet dispute during 1963 persuaded the dominant pro-Chinese faction to show its hand and force the pro-Soviet faction into an impossible position where it would have to declare its allegiance in clear terms. Two other circumstances, however, seem to have been important: the party’s relations with the J.S.P. over the period in question and the activities of Communist China. It seems probable that one important factor contributing to the present triumph of a pro-Chinese faction in the JCP was the consolidation within the more powerful Socialist Party of leadership favouring the Soviet Union. Since 1960 the main stream of the J.S.P. has adopted ‘Structural Reform’, a doctrine declared heretical by the JCP leaders when they expelled the Kasuga faction in 1961. Since the war relations between Communists and Socialists in Japan have fluctuated between mutual attraction and mutual repulsion, but in no period has genuine cooperation lasted for long. This may seem surprising in view of the left-wing character of the J.S.P. itself. Yet with the exception of one small pro-Communist group in the J.S.P. there have always been important differences between the two parties about the nature of revolution and the appropriate method of attaining it. Although both parties are revolutionary in intent, the Socialists have generally been somewhat reluctant to countenance the idea of violence (although their actions have sometimes belied this), nor have they ever accepted the tight party discipline which the JCP, according to Leninist principles, considers essential. Also most Socialists—both those who support and those who oppose the current doctrine of Structural Reform—while strongly opposed to the

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American presence in Japan, have denied the necessity for a ‘revolution of national liberation’ before a socialist revolution could take place. Another factor is that the J.S.P. contains many genuine pacifists, for whom the recent Chinese intransigence on the subject of nuclear weapons must have been very distasteful. Once the nature of the SinoSoviet dispute became evident, therefore, the J.S.P. (or its main stream at least; elements in the opposing group of factions have expressed their affinity with Chinese points of view) quickly sided with the Soviet Union in her greater moderation. Since the campaign against the revision of the Security Treaty in 1960 (during which Socialists and Communists worked together), relations between the two parties have been distant and suspicious. This has been seen most clearly in the peace movement, and especially in Gensuikyo (The Japan Council against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs)— certainly the most impressive and potentially a very important popular pressure group in Japan. 23 The annual congress of this organization has in recent years become the scene of bitter and sometimes violent struggles for control between Socialist and Communist delegates, the latter reinforced by delegates from foreign Communist parties. The Soviet resumption of nuclear testing in September 1961 made the division between the two parties in Gensuikyo virtually unbridgeable. The Communists were prepared to condone the Soviet action as inevitable in the face of American imperialist duplicity, while the Socialists, true to their foreign policy of ‘positive neutrality’, wanted Gensuikyo to condemn testing by ‘any country or bloc whatsoever’. At this period relations between the Soviet Union and Communist China were hardly involved, and it was a Chinese delegate to the 1962 congress who most strongly backed up the Soviet stand. A year later, however, the situation had changed. The Gensuikyo congress of August 1963 was held only a few days after the signature in Moscow of the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. It seems certain that if there was the remotest hope of compromise between Socialists and Communists at the congress, this was dashed by the mutual vituperation of Soviet and Chinese delegates. The Russians had to defend the treaty against Chinese accusations that it was a ‘sell-out’. Thus an episode in the Sino-Soviet dispute was enacted on Japanese soil, and it was plain for all to see that the two left-wing parties in Japan were ranged on each side of this same dispute. After the high point of co-operation between Japanese Socialists and Communists in 1960, the positions of the two parties on important issues thus became increasingly polarized. Since the J.S.P. was much the more powerful party, and therefore had no absolute need of Communist support (while there was also much innate resistance to the Communist Party within the J.S.P.), little was to be gained for the JCP by trying to resemble the Socialists. If progress was to be made at all, it was to be made by putting forward an ideology sharply opposed to that of its larger rival. As the Sino-Soviet dispute developed, the obvious alienation of the J.S.P. from China may well have persuaded Communist leaders that as the unique left-wing champion of China the JCP might hope to gain friends among the many Japanese who thought in terms of close Sino-Soviet cooperation (even if by so doing they forfeited the allegiance of some pacifists). As it turned out, the adoption of a pro-Soviet line by the main stream of the J.S.P. proved as divisive as the Communist adherence to China has proved for the JCP Opposition on the part of left-wing Socialist factions to main stream ‘revisionism’ has led to an interest in China on the part even of factions to whose traditional ideological position the Chinese

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line is fundamentally opposed. The J.S.P. recently (June-July 1964) sent two delegations, one to the Soviet Union and one to Communist China. The interesting thing about them is that they were rival delegations; that to the Soviet Union was composed mainly of ‘main stream’ members, while that to China was predominantly made up of the ‘opposition’. Those who visited China were told by the Chinese that the South Kurile islands (under Soviet administration since 1945, but claimed by Japan) ought to be returned to their rightful owner, Japan. If this Chinese démarche—obviously an attempt to influence the power struggle in the J.S.P. in favour of its left wing (and perhaps even to split the party)—has any success, it will probably be accepted by the leaders of the JCP as a vindication of their strategy. As we have seen, during the 1950s, relations between Japanese Socialists and Communists were conditioned by the Socialists’ overwhelming electoral superiority. Since 1960, however, the fortunes of the Communists have been steadily improving, even though the party remains electorally negligible in comparison with the Socialists. At the 1963 general election, the number of Communists elected to the Lower House rose from three to five. The number of votes gained by the party increased from 1,156,723 to 1,646,477. There is strong evidence that this electoral advance (which has occurred despite the fact that the recent policies of the party must have offended the nuclear susceptibilities of many Japanese voters) is the direct result of a concerted and intelligent organizational drive. Estimates of individual party membership now range between 105,000 and 130,000 (for much of the 1950s the party did not have more than 50,000 members). 24 It is probable, moreover, that most of these members take an active part in party work, whereas of the much smaller number (60,000) of Socialist members it is estimated that only 10 to 20 per cent are really active. Perhaps this is evidence of Socialist neglect of grass-roots organization rather than evidence of Communist strength. Since, however, a rising membership has been accompanied by increasing support at the polls, it seems that the party’s efforts at organization have been paying dividends. Perhaps the most impressive piece of evidence of the party’s current success is the circulation of its official publications. It is estimated that the daily Akahata now has a circulation of 150,000 (where before 1960 it had been only 50,000), while its popular Sunday edition sells over half a million copies. 25 This contrasts with the recent disastrous failure of the Socialist-leaning trade union federation Sohyo, in its attempt to bring out a ‘popular’ magazine. Casual observation in Tokyo in 1962–3 quite commonly revealed people in public transport reading Akahata, but it was very rare indeed to see anyone reading the Socialist Shakai Shimpo (Socialist News). The JCP has also scored successes in local government (where it is reported to be pursuing a policy of being all things to all men) 26 and in the recruitment of members for its youth group Minseido. Minseido in particular seems to have had remarkable success in channelling the discontent and idealism of Japanese urban youth into Communist activities. To a degree the Communist leaders seem to have recently discovered a secret which the Socialists have long missed (or at least not fully put in practice), namely, that the careful cultivation of a grass-roots following dedicated to the party’s cause is possible, given sufficient drive and foresight. One pre-requisite seems to be a simple and easily-comprehended policy which appears to be geared to the actual welfare of the discontented. On the question of simplicity it may perhaps be doubted whether the uncomplicated anti-Americanism of the

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JCP is not of greater potential appeal to ‘alienated’ elements of the population than the Socialists’ more equivocal ‘positive neutrality’ (even though it has an anti-American tinge). Minseido, with its earnest and not so serious group activities and its messianic group appeal, has expanded its influence in somewhat the same way as has a proselytizing neo-Buddhist sect recently active on the political scene, Soka Gakkai. It is difficult to say where the limit will eventually be found to the discontent which can be exploited. Nevertheless, it is to be expected that for some time to come the JCP will continue to erode some of the traditional sources of Socialist support. One of the essentials of successful political organization is the possession of an adequate source of funds. This may not be a sufficient condition of political success, but in most modern political systems it is certainly a necessary one. According to official party figures furnished (as required by law) to the government, the revenue of the JCP now considerably exceeds that accruing to the Socialists, and in the past three years has been rapidly rising. No concrete evidence is available about the proportion of revenue coming from foreign Communist parties, but it is reported that the Chinese Communists sent very substantial sums to the party for use in the local and general elections of 1963. 27 If this is true (and the evidence is not conclusive), it is not difficult to see a connection between this and its pro-Chinese orientation of the past year. As one writer has shown, Japan is relatively a much more important factor in the foreign policy of Communist China than in that of the Soviet Union. 28 It would be very reasonable to suppose that to use the JCP as a mouthpiece for their own views would seem to the Chinese Communists an objective worth the expenditure of considerable funds. Conversely, it would hardly be surprising if the JCP leaders responded to Chinese financial help with support for the Chinese position in the Sino-Soviet dispute. It should not be assumed, however, that because the present JCP leadership has twice purged the party of significant opposition to its views, no further opposition will arise. Left-wing politics in Japan is a kaleidoscopic affair, in which the innate Japanese willingness to create a faction often triumphs over monolithic unity.

NOTES 1. See, for instance, A.R.Swearingen, ‘Japanese Communism and the Moscow-Peking Axis’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, November 1956, pp. 63–75. The most recent treatment of the question is in P.F.Langer, Independence or Subordination?—The Japanese Communist Party between Moscow and Peking (Rand Corporation monograph, September 1962); also reproduced in A.D. Barnet (ed.), Communist Strategies in Asia (New York, 1963), pp. 63–100. For a comparative treatment of Chinese and Soviet foreign policies towards Japan at various times, see J.W.Morley, Soviet and Chinese Policies toward Japan, 1950– 1957, a Comparison (New York, 1958), and P.F.Langer, ‘Moscow, Peking and Tokyo: Views and Approaches’, in K.L.London (ed.), Unity and Contradiction (New York, 1962), pp. 207–32. For general works in English on Japanese Communism, see Swearingen and Langer, Red Flag in Japan (Cambridge, Mass., 1952); T.G.Tsukahira, The Postwar Evolution of Communist Strategy in Japan

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(M.I.T., 1954); P.F.Langer, ‘Communism in Independent Japan’, in H.Borton (ed.), Japan between East and West (New York, 1957). For a bibliography of Japanese language materials relevant to Communism in Japan in pre-war and early post-war periods, see Langer and Swearingen, Japanese Communism, an Annotated Bibliography of Works in the Japanese Language with a Chronology, 1921–52 (New York, 1953). Much relevant bibliographic material is also contained in C.H.Uyehara, Leftwing Social Movements in Japan, an Annotated Bibliography (Tokyo, 1959). 2. Langer, Independence or Subordination?—The Japanese Communist Party between Moscow and Peking. 3. Japanese names are here given in their original order, with the surname first. 4. Shiga, a brilliant writer and Marxist theoretician, joined the party in the early 1920s and spent seventeen years (1928–45) in prison. A dramatic account of his views and personality shortly after his release is given in M.Gayn, Japan Diary (New York, 1958), pp. 9–13. 5. See especially Shiga Yoshio, ‘Nihon Kyosanto to watakushi no shinnen’ [The JCP and my Belief], Chuo Koron, July 1964, pp. 160–76; and Shiga Yoshio, Oe Kenzaburo (taidan), ‘Nihon Kyosanto ni uttaeru’ (An Appeal to the JCP], Bungei Shunju, July 1964, pp. 94–100. For a recent analysis of the Shiga episode see ‘Shiga-Suzuki joniei mondai to Kyosanto’ [The Expulsion of Shiga and Suzuki, and the JCP], Asahi Janaru, 31 May 1964, pp. 12–18. 6. Public opinion polls over the period from 1954 (the year of the Lucky Dragon scare, when a Japanese fishing boat was showered with radioactive ash from an American nuclear test) have consistently shown an overwhelming majority opposed to nuclear testing by any country. 7. Shiga Yoshio, Oe Kenzaburo, loc. cit. 8. For instance ‘Shiga-Suzuki jomei mondai to Kyosanto’, loc. cit. 9. One Akahata (Red Flag) leader for instance, in its first half put forward an implicitly anti-Soviet line on American imperialism, and in its second half implicitly criticized Chinese doctrines by attacking those ‘within the JCP’ who called for ‘quality’ rather than ‘quantity’ in membership: ‘Marukusu-Reninshugi no kakumeiteki tachiba wo kenji shiyo’ [Let us Support the Revolutionary Position of Marx-Leninismj, Akahata, 4 December 1962. Another leader called for the unity of the Communist world on the basis of the 1957 Moscow Declaration and the 1960 Moscow Statement, and found it necessary to deny that the attitude of the JCP was vague and equivocal because of divi-sions of opinion among its leadership about the SinoSoviet dispute: ‘Kokusai kyosan-shugi undo no mondai wo meguru hando seiryoku to han to shuseishugisha no sakudo’ (The Machinations of Reactionary Forces and Anti-Party Revisionists concerning Problems of the International Communist Movement], Akahata, 24 January 1964. 10. Compare, for instance, the report of the fifth plenum of the Central Committee of the JCP—‘Zen sekai no Kyosanto, rodosha to wa kataku danketsu shiyo’ (Let all Communist Parties and Workers Parties of the World Unite], full text given in Akahata, 19 February 1963—with that of the seventh plenum—‘Tomen suru josei to sashisemaru sosenkyo wo chushin to suru to no sho-nimmu’ [The Present Situation

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and the Tasks of the Party in the Coming Election], Akahata, 22 October 1963. Another article showing the change of line at the end of 1963 is ‘Kokusai kyosanshugi undo no shin no danketsu to zenshin no tame ni’ [For the True Unity and Progress of the International Communist Movement], Akahata, 10 November 1963. 11. ‘Shiga-Suzuki jomei mondai to Kyosanto’, loc cit. 12. ‘Kenedei to Amerika teikokushugi’ [Kennedy and American Imperialism], Akahata, 10 March 1964; also reproduced in Zenei [Vanguard], May 1964, pp. 2– 34. 13. ‘Shiga-Suzuki jomei mondai to Kyosanto’, loc. cit. 14. Tokyo Shimbun, 2 June 1964 (as reproduced in Shimbun Geppo [Newspaper Monthly], 15 July 1964, pp. 56–7. 15. See the writer’s Faction and Ideology in Postwar Japanese Socialism (Australian Political Science Association paper, 1964). 16. For an account of this controversy as it was fought out between rival Marxist groups, see R.A.Scalapino, Democracy and the Party Movement in Prewar Japan (Berkeley, 1953), pp. 294–345. 17. Ibid., p. 344. 18. Most of the Communist leaders had languished in prison for incredibly long periods before the war. The police authorities had made persistent efforts to show them the error of their ways, and many suffered ‘conversions’ (some genuine, a few feigned). For an account of some of these see Shiso no Kagaku Kenkyukai (ed.), Tenko [Conversion] (Tokyo, 1959–62), 3 vols. 19. Swearingen, ‘Japanese Communism and the Moscow-Peking Axis’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, p. 66. 20. For a schematic comparison of the conditions for revolution in China in 1948 and Japan in 1962 see Langer, Independence or Subordination?—The Japanese Communist Party between Moscow and Peking, pp. 25–6. 21. For elaboration of this point see Langer, Independence or Subordination, pp. 28– 32. 22. As early as 1956 for instance one writer held, on the basis of a comparison of articles written by Nozaka and Shiga, that the former was pro-Chinese and the latter more pro-Soviet (Swearingen, op. cit., p. 73). 23. For an analysis of the background to and recent trends in the Japanese peace movement, see G.O.Totten and T.Kawakami, ‘Gensuikyo and the Peace Movement in Japan’, Asian Survey, May 1964, pp. 833–41. 24. For an analysis of membership and organizational trends in the JCP (based on government agency sources) see K. Murata, ‘The State of the JCP’, The Japan Times Weekly, 15 February 1964. 25. Ibid. 26. See K.Murata, ‘JCP and Local Governments’, The Japan Times Weekly, 12 October 1963. 27. See K.Murata, ‘The JCP’s Finances’, The Japan Times Weekly, 14 March 1964. 28. Langer, ‘Moscow, Peking and Tokyo: Views and Approaches’, pp. 207–32.

8 The Japanese Socialist Party under New Leadership First published in Asian Survey, Vol. VI, No. 4, April 1966 (Institute of International Studies, University of California.) IN MAY 1965 Sasaki Kōzō, 1 widely regarded as a pro-Chinese extremist, was elected Chairman of the Japanese Socialist Party (JSP), at present the backbone of opposition to Japan’s conservative Government. 2 He was re-elected for a further term at the party’s Annual Convention in January 1966. This can be interpreted as a setback to moderating—and modernizing—influences predominant in the party for about five years. It may also be held to indicate a triumph for Peking. The analysis contained in this article will expose the weaknesses—while extracting the grain of truth—inherent in this view. First, the background to recent events must be sketched in. 3 The JSP was founded in 1945, but by 1948 had gained sufficient votes to lead a government for a few months in coalition with two non-socialist parties. At the same time, serious weaknesses appeared: first, electoral strength was not matched by local organization; socialism, largely proscribed before the Occupation, was a tree with shallow roots. Second, the party in 1945 was little more than a coalition of weak factions dating from the 1920’s. These ranged from democratic socialists to near-Communists. The JSP split four times between 1948 and 1951, because of ideological and personal dissension. Third, the Socialist-led coalition Government could accomplish nothing, and discredited the Socialist Party in the eyes of the electorate. Within the party it lowered the stock of democratic-socialists who had advocated and led the coalition. Perhaps more serious, it disillusioned many party members about parliamentary government. In October 1951 the party split into a Left Socialist Party (LSP) and a Right Socialist Party (RSP), which existed until their reunification in 1955. The issue was foreign policy: the Left opposed and the Right supported in part the Allied peace settlement with Japan. The LSP subsequently developed a foreign policy of unarmed neutralism and opposed the American presence in Japan, while the RSP committed itself wholeheartedly neither to the American presence nor to neutralism. When the two parties reunited in 1955 the Left had already overtaken the Right electorally, and this was reflected in their agreed platform which adopted neutralism in all but name. Further, the main trade union federation, Sōhyō, had backed the LSP, with the result that a few unions left Sōhyō in 1954. Between 1955 and 1960 the JSP was led by Suzuki Mosaburō from the Left and Asanuma Inejirō from the Right. Under their leadership the party became increasingly radical. It led huge street demonstrations against objectionable legislation and its foreign policy became more and more pro-Communist. When Asanuma, the former Right Socialist, led a party delegation to Peking in March 1959 he made an impromptu remark,

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seized upon by the press, that ‘American imperialism is the common enemy of the peoples of Japan and China.’ This was never repudiated by the JSP. The reasons for this trend seem to have been two: first, the party was increasingly dependent on Sōhyō, many of whose member unions were composed of workers in Government utilities and the public service. Faced with oppressive restrictions on their right to conventional industrial action these unions (and others) resorted to total opposition to all Government policy, using the JSP for this political purpose. Second, although the JSP prospered electorally until 1958, thenceforth it could progress no further. 4 This was widely attributed 5 to weak organization and lack of appeal beyond industrial workers. Late in 1959 Nishio Suehiro, a faction leader of the right wing, seceded and formed the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP). Nishio argued that the ‘class party’ advocated by the left would merely stagnate, and that the JSP should become a ‘people’s party’ with a broader image. These radical trends culminated in the violent campaign against revision (criticized on the left as perpetuation) of the Japan-US Security Treaty in May and June 1960. Yet this was also an opportunity for reassessment and change in the party. The JSP had had behind it a genuinely popular movement, vitally if temporarily concerned with alleged dangers to democracy and national security posed by the Kishi Government. Furthermore, paid party officials as a group resented the supremacy of factions led by Diet Members, and were willing to back change. In these circumstances the doctrine of ‘Structural Reform’ was introduced in late 1960. This was a reformist Marxism of the type advocated by Togliatti in Italy. It rejected as inapplicable to modern industrial societies with powerful trade unions Marx’s view that a socialist revolution could only occur when capitalism was in grave crisis. It is perhaps fruitless to argue whether Structural Reform was introduced primarily as an ideology or as a means of gaining and consolidating control of the party. Nevertheless, a significant result was the development of a personal struggle for power between Eda Saburō, leader of the Structural Reform faction, and Sasaki Kōzō, his chief factional rival. Significantly both men belonged to the same faction, but Eda unexpectedly achieved promotion ahead of his ‘senior’ Sasaki, when their faction leader, Suzuki Mosaburō, retired in 1960. 6 Eda then consolidated his position and successfully contested the post of Secretary-General against Sasaki at a party Convention in March 1961. 7 Eda derived his power from the backing of party functionaries, control of party publications and from the qualified support of two factions, those led by Wada Hiroo and Kawakami Jōtarō. Only gradually did he build up a personal faction among Diet Members. He faced, however, widespread criticism for the trend of his pronouncements, 8 and had to resign the Secretary-Generalship at the November 1962 Convention. This, however, was not a defeat for the Structural Reform group as a whole. Eda was succeeded by his closest associate, Narita Tomomi, who had pioneered Structural Reform with him. The struggle for power between the Structural Reform coalition and the group of factions led by Sasaki 9 continued and in February 1964 Sasaki’s group withdrew from all executive positions in the party. In order to avoid the dangers of a widening party rift, later in the same year two vice-Chairmanships were created in addition to the two top posts of ‘Chairman’ and ‘Secretary-General.’ The vice-Chairmen were to be Sasaki and Wada (another potential rival for the Chairmanship). At the party Convention of

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December 1964, the top executive posts remained in the hands of Kawakami and Narita (and the vice-Chairmen were elected as planned), but the Sasaki ‘opposition’ captured a majority of junior executive positions. This substantially weakened the hold of the Structural Reform leadership. When, three months later, the aging Kawakami announced his desire to resign the Chairmanship because of ill health, Narita proposed postponing the election of a new chairman, in order to avoid factional conflict. Pressure from the provincial party secretaries, however, and fear of being leaderless in the July Upper House elections, forced the leadership to call a Convention to elect a new Chairman. A complicated series of maneuvers, in which the role of mediator was played by Narita, led to Sasaki being elected unopposed. Before examining the party Convention of January 1966, which resulted in a narrow victory for Sasaki against Eda, it is desirable to state two possible theories about the nature and motivations of the Sasaki leadership. According to the first theory Sasaki and his faction really have close ties with Peking and the Japanese Communist Party (which has been Peking-oriented since at least 1964). They plan ultimately to form a pro-Communist government which would align Japan with Peking. The second theory would have it that the Sasaki group, despite its pretensions to radicalism, is in fact hardly more radical than its Structural Reform opponents. It is motivated by considerations of factional advantage and now that it is in control of the party does not act very differently from its rivals. Much evidence can be gathered in favor of both these propositions, which have been put in a rather stark form to bring out the contrast between them. Let us state the case for the first. Many of Sasaki’s speeches since becoming Chairman have been extreme. In his inaugural speech in May 1965 he bitterly attacked the United States for its Vietnam policy and the Satō Government for its support of that policy. He referred to the British Labor Government’s position on Vietnam as ‘shameful.’ He was also quoted as saying that he felt himself heir to the spirit of the ‘Asanuma statement’ (see above), but that now American imperialism was the common enemy not only of the peoples of Japan and China, but of the whole of mankind. 10 In policy implementation the new leadership adopted radical measures in two fields. The first was on the question of ‘joint struggles’ with the Communists against ratification of the treaty between Japan and South Korea and in opposition to the Satō Government’s support of the Vietnam war. Since the breakdown of proposals for a popular front between Communists and Socialists in the first two years following World War II, most members of the JSP had been somewhat wary of entering into arrangements with Communists, despite the similarity of their aims on a number of issues. Cooperation had for instance been tried for a period in 1959 and 1960 during the campaign against revision of the Security Treaty, but the organization so formed, though it continued to exist in name, had not remained operational after 1960. In 1964 the Communists called for the resuscitation of this organization (known as Ampo Kyōtō), 11 in order to coordinate demonstrations against American nuclearpowered submarines calling at Japanese ports, but the proposal was not acceptable to the JSP or Sōhyō, although some negotiations were held early in 1964. Sōhyō leaders became particularly resentful of Communist attitudes when the latter publicly opposed a strike of

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Government workers planned by Sōhyō as part of its annual ‘spring struggle.’ 12 In 1965 the Communists renewed the call to revive the Ampo Kyōtō to fight against ratification of the treaty with the Republic of Korea. Without accepting the Communist proposal, Sasaki drew up his own, namely that the two parties, and organizations under their respective control, should agree to coordinate the time and place of their demonstrations, while nominally acting as separate bodies. This proposal was initially resisted by the leaders of Sōhyō, 13 who later, however, accepted it. Several joint struggles’ of this kind were held during the Diet deliberations on the treaty. A further indication of Sasaki’ attitudes was a speech shortly after his election discussing the possibility of the Japanese two-party system turning into a ‘multi-party’ system. Sasaki declared that the JSP should be prepared to form a’Socialist Front Cabinet’ together with the Kōmeitō, 14 the JCP and the DSP. 15 It could readily be inferred from this that Sasaki was preparing the party for a popular front with the Communists. 16 The second area where Sasaki changed the emphasis of party policy was the peace movement. The Congress against Atomic and Hydrogen Weapons (Gensuikyō) had been the largest mass movement in post-war Japan, and one in which all left-wing parties were vitally interested. The interpretation of its purposes, however, was a subject of bitter contention between Socialists and Communists. The original issue was nuclear testing: when the Soviet Union, in September 1961 broke the nuclear test moratorium the Socialists took the view that testing by any country was objectionable, both because of the danger of fallout (to which Japan was particularly vulnerable) and because of the risk of nuclear war. The JCP on the other hand reacted with statements to the effect that ‘since the Soviet Union is a peace force, nuclear tests are a natural defensive measure…. The main danger is not fallout, but that nuclear war will be unleashed by American imperialism.’ 17 From then on the cohesion of the movement rapidly disintegrated. With the signing in 1963 of the partial nuclear test-ban treaty, the movement soon split completely into groups controlled by the JSP and JCP respectively. By now, however, a new factor had emerged as it was the Chinese rejection of the treaty which the Communists championed. The JCP, soon to be fully aligned with Peking, now said that China should be encouraged to develop nuclear weapons. On the other hand, relations between the JSP and China became distinctly cool, while a close alignment developed between the JSP (especially the Eda faction) and the Soviet position in the Sino-Soviet dispute. The picture, however, began to change within the JSP in late 1964. There had always been a small pro-Communist faction on the far left of the party, known as Heiwa Dōshikai, which had tended to favor the Chinese line in the Sino-Soviet dispute and the anti-nuclear movement. More important, the powerful Sasaki faction had gradually become more pro-Chinese as the Structural Reform group had espoused the Soviet cause. Thus in August 1964 the party had sent two delegations, one consisting mainly of ‘Structural Reformers’ to the Soviet Union, and the other made up principally from the Sasaki faction and Heiwa Dōshikai, to China. This, as will be recalled, was at a period when the Sasaki faction and its supporters were boycotting executive positions. Over this period it seems that the Chinese concentrated chiefly on gaining control over the JCP, while the Soviet Union cultivated the Socialists. With the fall of Khrushchev,

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however, the new Soviet leaders reduced their political contacts with the JSP, perhaps in order to avoid the impression that they were working against the JCP. 18 This happened to coincide with increased Chinese contacts with the left wing of the JSP, which may be dated from the visit of a Socialist delegation to Peking in October 1964. This delegation, whose visit coincided with the first Chinese nuclear test, signed a declaration which, while not expressing support for the Chinese nuclear program, went a long way towards agreement with basic Chinese policy objectives. 19 Once Sasaki became Chairman his policy towards the Conventions of the Socialist and Communist wings of the anti-nuclear movement scheduled for August 1965 was an obvious indicator of the true nature of his leadership. Although cautious on this issue and making no overt attempt to resolve differences with the JCP, Sasaki was strongly criticized by the Structural Reform group for the statement which he was reported to have made at a party Convention held in August: The phrase ‘opposition to nuclear testing by any country’ discriminates unfairly between those countries which have nuclear weapons and those which intend to have them. 20 The implications of this statement were clearly opposed to previous party policy aiming at immediate and total nuclear disarmament, and approximated rather to the Chinese stand. Having argued that Sasaki’s leadership was ideologically motivated by pro-Communist and pro-Chinese sentiments, let us put the opposite case—that it has been scarcely less radical than the preceding regime, but has acted principally according to considerations of factional advantage. Sasaki’s ‘joint struggles’ with the JCP fell far short of Communist proposals for joint action. Moreover the type of de facto coordination advocated by Sasaki had been practiced on several occasions before, at any rate at the local level. Further, Sasaki’s remarks about a coalition Government were made during the campaign for the Upper House elections, and were thus susceptible to the interpretation that Sasaki merely intended to boost his image with a vision of Socialist participation in office in the not distant future. Sasaki’s attitude to the peace movement, again, fell far short of capitulation to Communist views. The Communist and Socialist anti-nuclear congresses remained quite separate, and the latter continued to oppose the holding or testing of nuclear weapons by any country ‘in order to break the vicious circle of nuclear dispersal.’ 21 Moreover, if one compares the views of Sasaki and his faction with those of the Structural Reform group, the similarities of position, especially on foreign policy, far outweigh the differences. Although the JSP has been officially committed for some years to a foreign policy of ‘positive neutrality’ and ‘peaceful coexistence/ the interpretation put on that policy by the Structural Reform group has positively favored the Communist countries. There has been virtual unanimity upon the following propositions: that the United States, in alliance with Japanese monopoly capital, is seeking to contain Communism in Asia, and in this process both endangers and exploits Japan. The JapanUS Security Treaty, American occupation of Okinawa, her support for Nationalist China

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and the Republic of Korea and pressure on Japan not to trade with Peking, add up to the creation of a de facto ‘North-East Asia Treaty Organization’ directed against Communist China. Most recently the treaty between Japan and South Korea, American nuclear submarines calling in at Japanese ports, and especially the bombing of North Vietnam and the use of the Okinawa base for that purpose, imperil the peace of Asia and increase the danger of Japan becoming involved in a nuclear war. Furthermore, if we examine the careers of Narita and Sasaki, it seems evident that the dividing line between the two sides is hard to draw. Narita, the close associate of Eda in the Structural Reform group, has had little difficulty in sharing the top executive posts with Sasaki and has put forward almost identical policies. Sasaki himself can point to a staunchly anti-Communist past, and exercized firm discipline against alleged fellowtravellers in the early 1950’s. Finally, and perhaps most important, the ideological tradition to which Sasaki is heir is one of the oldest in the Japanese Socialist movement, and Sasaki has been loyal to it all his active life. This tradition, though basically Marxist, can be distinguished from that of the Communist Party on two grounds. The first is organization: the JCP has favored a cell-type organization emphasizing the activities of a dedicated elite group rather than the diffuse organization favored by most Socialists. The second is the question of objectives. The Communists have tended to develop a revolutionary strategy of struggle for national liberation appropriate, in Marxist terms, to backward countries, and thus have fallen rather easily into the Chinese orbit. Left Socialists, on the other hand, have favored strategies appropriate to ‘advanced’ areas, implying the existence of a powerful proletariat potentially able to seize power in its own right against the domestic bourgeoisie. They have therefore been less (if only slightly) ideologically committed to the various slogans about ‘American imperialism’ which are the common currency of the Japanese left wing. The annual Convention of the JSP held in January 1966 provides an interesting case study with which to evaluate the two interpretations outlined above. It may seem enlightening to analyze the Convention in some detail before advancing some general conclusions. At the Convention Sasaki and Eda confronted each other over the Chairmanship and over aspects of policy. 22 The most publicized aspect of the Convention was the attack by Eda and his followers on the foreign policy line in the Action Policy put forward for approval by the Convention. The relevant passage of the document read as follows: The crisis of Asia, which is the focal point of the world’s contradictions and confrontations, is no longer governed by the confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union, but rather by that between the United States and China. The intensification of the national liberation struggles in Asia and Africa, centred on China, and the war policies of American imperialism, are unleashing a fierce storm in Asia in the form of the sharp conflict caused by aggression in Vietnam…. In Japan—which with Okinawa included is the pivot of American imperialism in Asia—our struggle is the way to control the war of aggression in Vietnam and to gain the true friendship of the peoples of Asia and Africa whose

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wish is for peaceful coexistence and prosperity based on national liberation and the five principles of peace. 23 The passage evoked the following criticism from the Eda faction: The draft Policy’s international line is entirely anti-Imperialist, and does not contain the concept of peaceful coexistence. It is thus opposed to the party’s policy of peaceful coexistence, non-alignment and neutralism. It closes its eyes to the process whereby the Cold War structure has been breaking down since the partial nuclear test-ban treaty, and sees Vietnam, not as a local contradiction in that process, but as a basic contradiction in the international situation. 24 The dispute was seen in the press as indicating that Sasaki had aligned himself with Peking while Eda was taking a pro-Soviet stand. Reality was, however, more complex than this. It indeed appears that Sasaki made some extreme statements in the committee charged with drafting the Action Policy before the Convention. These were to the effect that the Vietnam war was an inevitable stage in the process of transition from capitalism to socialism, and that it would evolve into a third World War. It was wishful thinking to expect that such a war would be limited in area and the formation of a Socialist government in Japan by 1970 depended upon such an eventuality. 25 Nevertheless there are strong indications that the Sasaki faction itself was divided on these issues and that Sasaki (together with his second-in-command Yamamoto Kōichi) 26 belonged to its more moderate wing. Apparently Sasaki had been in direct contact with the Chinese authorities since a visit he made to Peking in 1964, at which he seems to have given an undertaking to work for the reamalgamation of the Communist and Socialist wings of the movement against nuclear weapons, presumably on the basis of a platform which included support for Chinese nuclear testing. By August 1965, however, it became clear to the Chinese that Sasaki was not devoting himself wholeheartedly to this aim, and as we have seen, the anti-nuclear movement remained divided as before. Thenceforth the Chinese, apparently preferring the total commitment of a small minority band to the halfhearted allegiance of a majority, began to cultivate a small group within the Sasaki faction, rather than its leadership. 27 The most ardent supporter of the Chinese line with the JSP had for some time been Okada Haruo, a member of the ultra-leftist Heiwa Dōskikai, now virtually merged with the Sasaki faction. Okada visited China shortly before the January 1966 Convention, and seems to have played the leading role in drafting the Action Policy. The split within the Sasaki faction was emphasized by a deliberate endorsement of Soviet ideological positions made by a group of academics which had long been the doctrinal fountainhead of the Sasaki faction, and which controlled the party’s youth group. 28 On the other hand the Eda faction and its allies were not simply ‘pro Soviet’ as is often thought. This can be seen from an examination of their criticisms of the draft Action Policy. 29 Part of their criticism was that the Policy only spoke of one ‘contradiction’ in the international situation—that between imperialism and national liberation struggles— whereas there were at least three more of equal importance: between socialist and capitalist regimes in power, between the capitalist and working classes, and within

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capitalism itself. This indeed was an orthodox Soviet approach, but the view which followed it was not: namely that improved relations between the United States and the Soviet Union were a result of the increased influence of ‘Socialist regimes, labour movements in capitalist countries, national liberation movements, the non-aligned and neutralist policies of newly emerging nations, the international peace movement and world opinion for peace’. These criticisms clearly reflect the neutralist strand of thinking prevalent in the party since the early 1950’s. Indeed the passage quoted above was almost identical in wording to the neutralist declaration contained in the JSP’s 1952 Action Policy. 31 Furthermore a party delegation to Indonesia, the U.A.R., and Algeria in September 1965, headed by the then Foreign Policy Bureau Chairman Katsumata, was clearly an attempt to reassert the status of neutralism within the party and to cement contacts with nonaligned nations. The delegation also successfully coped with the perennial problem of the Socialist International, within which discontent with the JSP’s apparent pro-Chinese line had developed into demands for the party’s expulsion. 32 There was little doubt of the Eda faction’s general alignment with Moscow in the period before the removal of Khrushchev. Since then, as mentioned above, the Soviet Union has retreated from its radical Khrushchevian policy of cultivating Socialist parties. The Eda faction sends its members quite often to Moscow and Eastern Europe, but its pro-Soviet orientation has not only diminished but is opposed by the Wada and Kawakami factions (whose influence, however, is rapidly declining). Thus just as the Sasaki faction cannot be described simply as ‘pro-Peking,’ so the anti-Sasaki factional alliance cannot be called without qualification ‘pro-Soviet.’ Any attempt to work out the dynamics of the situation must probe, however superficially, the factional issues involved. The clash between the two sides was especially bitter, creating a stormy and spectacular convention. In the event Sasaki was reelected Chairman against Eda by only 19 votes. Narita beat Eda’s running-mate Katsumata (Wada faction) by a wider margin. The subsequent voting for junior executive positions, however, favored the opposition by eleven to eight. 33 In view of the fierceness of the contest it is remarkable that a plan to achieve consensus (and avoid a contested election) by having as Sasaki’s running-mate his indefatigable critic Eda, apparently came close to succeeding. This was a plan devised by Narita (whose earlier mediating activities have been noted above) and backed by the Sōhyō leaders Ota and Iwai. On the second day of the Convention Narita offered to resign as Secretary-General in favor of Eda and began a vigorous mission of reconciliation among the various factions. It seems that the consent of both the Sasaki and Eda factions was grudgingly attained but Sasaki made it a condition that Narita himself should take the post of Vice-Chairman (from which Wada had announced his resignation), in order to be in a position to smooth things out between Sasaki and Eda. This arrangement, however, met the adamant opposition of the Wada faction, which would have been excluded by it from any share in top executive posts, and the plan thus failed at the final hurdle. 34 Over the past three years the role of Narita in the party has been a remarkable one, Since taking over from Eda as the party’s second-in-command in November 1962, he has apparently come close to adopting Sasaki’s policies rather as the ‘moderate’ Asanuma adopted Suzuki’s leftist policies in the late fifties. A favorable interpretation of his role

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would be that he has disinterestedly sought to mediate in an essentially personal struggle for power between Eda and Sasaki, in the belief that the two men are not divided by any really deep commitment to different policies. His activities in December 1964, May 1965 and January 1966 appear consistent with this interpretation, but his continued close association with Sasaki must now make the task of mediation increasingly difficult for him. All this suggests a number of conclusions. First among these is that too much emphasis should not be placed on major policy differences per se. Such differences often seem more like pawns in a series of games of chess played between (and even within) the party factions. This contrasts with the condition of the party in the 1940s and 1950s, when it was divided along clear-cut ideological lines. Since then most convinced right-wing Socialists have departed, leaving a party whose internal struggles seem to lack the conviction of passionate belief. There is a recurrent tendency for the JSP’s policies to drift to the left, partly because of the low number of party members, and partly because the pull of militants within the rank and file is not adequately counteracted by a unified central organization. Personal factionalism prevails at every level. Party leaders thus are tempted to making extreme policy statements as a form of intra-party electioneering. Extremism among the rank and file may also be regarded as a form of frustration with remoteness from power. One aspect of this phenomenon is the way in which China and the Soviet Union have been able repeatedly to influence and sometimes even control sections of the JSP. For party militants both (but now especially China) have an obvious appeal as embodiments of successful Socialist revolution. For factions they have been sources of moral support, ideological guidance, foreign travel and perhaps funds. The possibility afforded of enhancing the party prestige in foreign parts is also probably a factor. It may be asked why the party has tended to retreat from its traditional neutralism. This seems to be a result of the difficulty of formulating a policy of non-alignment attractive to Marxist Socialists whose main preoccupation has been with the iniquity of American imperialism in East Asia. This difficulty has been greatly increased by the American bombing of North Vietnam. Also the kind of ‘patronage’ suggested above is less easily available from non-aligned nations than from Communist ones. Recent attempts to reassert neutralism within the party have, as already mentioned., embraced efforts to forge contacts with nonaligned governments which might conceivably bring such ‘patronage.’ 35 On the issue of relations with the JCP, the extreme weaknesses of Socialist local organization makes it superficially attractive to enter into arrangements with the better organized units of the Communist Party. What are the prospects for the future? The immedate outlook is for a further decline in the strength and influence of the Wada and Kawakami factions, because of the death of Kawakami and the virtual retirement (for health reasons) of Wada. Eda, having nearly toppled Sasaki at this election, would seem to stand an excellent chance of doing so at the Convention scheduled for November 1966, especially if Sasaki stands again. There is, however, no lack of possible contenders for the Chairmanship, and a bid by one of them might result in renewed factional fragmentation. At the recent Convention for the first time three executive posts were filled by non Diet Members, thus helping to reduce dominance of the parliamentary party over the executive. This is an important

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development likely to improve the long-term prospects of the Eda faction which derives much support from party officials. In foreign policy the appointment of Yamamoto (Sasaki faction) as Chairman of the party’s Foreign Policy Bureau breaks the long monopoly of that position by the Wada faction. Indications are, however, that Yamamoto will not introduce policies radically different from those of his predecessor. The longer-term foreign policy prospects center on what has come to be termed on the Left the ‘1970 Security Treaty crisis.’ This refers to the fact that revision (or abolition) of the Japan-US Security Treaty becomes possible at one year’s notice from 1970 if requested by either side. Unless such a request is made (which at present seems highly unlikely), the Socialists would be in the psychologically weak position, compared with 1960, of demanding abolition of an existing treaty with which neither Government concerned saw any reason to tamper. If, however, Japanese manufacture or acquisition of nuclear weapons were to become a reality, the Left would have a far more emotive campaign issue than presented by American nuclear-powered submarines, the Japan-Korea Treaty or other recent objects of Socialist and Communist protest. Much obviously depends on the development of the Vietnam war, Chinese nuclear progress, and the general international situation in the Far East. What of electoral prospects? The results of the 1965 elections for the House of Councillors and the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly cannot be regarded as unequivocal successes for the JSP, although its position was improved. Their significance lies in the great increase—especially in Tokyo—in the anti-Government protest vote. But the Socialist Party can take little comfort from the results of recent opinion polls showing that a majority of voters in their twenties—previously the only age-group in which JSP supporters predominated—now support the LDP. 36 There has been talk in recent months of the development of a multi-party system (‘multiparty Opposition’ might be more accurate). If the protest vote continues to rise (as seems not unlikely in the period of socio-economic change with attendant dislocations), the question remains how it will be apportioned. Western democratically-conditioned observers tend to assume that the JSP would improve its electoral fortunes if it abandoned its ideological extremism over foreign policy. The sad plight of the DSP does not really bear this out. The real failure of the JSP seems to have been its lack of adaptability in exploiting and organizing discontent, and its general neglect of domestic issues. This is obviously a result of lack of independent organization and over-dependence on trade unions for parliamentary candidates, funds and electoral backing. The Structural Reform movement, which has enhanced the role of paid officials and organizers, still seems to provide the best hope of improving the party’s organization. The rise in recent years of Kōmeitō and the improved fortunes of the JCP appear to have been achieved by a vigorous exploitation of discontents, and by totalitarian organization. 37 Despite widespread belief to the contrary, Kōmeitō seems likely to remain well to the left, and has not been averse to joint arrangements with the Communists. 38 It is probable that the JSP will be increasingly challenged as leading element in the opposition. On the other hand the Government will have to take the opposition as a whole increasingly into account. The most interesting question is whether the open-structured Socialist Party will prove capable of adapting to such a situation.

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NOTES 1. Japanese names are here given in their original order, that is, with the surname first. 2. At the most recent Lower House general election (Nov. 1963) the JSP gained 144 seats out of a total of 467. The ministerial Liberal-Democratic Party won 283 (plus 11 Independents who later joined it). The Democratic Socialist Party (a rightsocialist breakaway group from the JSP) won 23 and the Communist Party 5. 3. The reader is referred to Journal of Social and Political Ideas in Japan, III:1 (April 1965), which consists of translations of writings concerning the Socialist, Communist and trade union movements in Japan since 1945, together with a long explanatory introduction. 4. At the 1958 Lower House election the JSP for the first time as a united party won more than one-third of the total seats and was thus able to block any attempt at constitutional revision. On the important issue of the Constitution, see R.E.Ward, ‘The Commission on the Constitution and Prospects for Constitutional Change,’ Journal of Asian Studies, XXIV:3 (May 1965), pp. 401–430. 5. See for instance Taguchi Fukuji, Nihon no kakushin seiryoku (Japan’s Progressive Forces), Tokyo, Kōbundō, 1961. 6. For amplification, see the present writer’s chapter, ‘Faction and Ideology in Postwar Japanese Socialism,’ in D.C.S.Sissons (ed.), Papers on Modern Japan, 1965 (Canberra: Australian National Univ. 1965), pp 34–49. 7. The Chairmanship went to Kawakami Jōtarō, a moderate right-wing leader, whose faction split at the time of the Nishio defection. Kawakami, always something of a figurehead, remained Chairman until his retirement through ill health in May 1965, when he was succeeded by Sasaki. He died in Dec. 1965. 8. He had put forward a ‘vision’ of the future socialist society, whose elements were: the high living standards of the US, Soviet social security, British parliamentary democracy and the Japanese ‘peace’ Constitution. This was widely regarded in the party as dangerous eclecticism. 9. Of these by far the most important was Sasaki’s own faction, led until 1960 by Suzuki Mosaburō. Eda and Narita had also belonged to this faction until after the Structural Reform controversy began. Supporting the Sasaki faction was also the small agricultural faction of Nomizo Masaru and the overtly pro-Communist Heiwa Dōshikai (Association of the Friends of Peace). Both these factions appear to have faded out in the past two years as effective separate entities. 10. Quoted in Asahi Shimbun, 7 May 1965, p. 133/1. 11. ‘Security Treaty Joint Struggle’: its full name is Ampo Hantai, Heiwa to Minshushugi wo Mamoru Kokumin Kaigi (People’s Congress to Oppose the Security Treaty and to Defend Peace and Democracy). The JCP only sent observers to meetings of its executive council, at which the JSP, Sōhyo, and peace committees of various kinds participated. 12. See Asahi Shimbun, 12 April 1964, p. 294/4. 13. Ibid., 7 Sept. 1965, p. 146/1. 14. ‘Clean Government Party,’ the political arm of the neo-Buddhist sect Sōka Gakkai.

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15. Asahi Shimbun (evening edition), 22 May 1965, p. 545/1. 16. For criticism along these lines from the Structural Reform faction, see ibid., 18 Aug. 1965, p. 412/1. 17. Akahata (Red Flag), 1 and 8 Sept. 1961. 18. This would be consistent with the general foreign policy of the new Soviet leaders, but the recent detente in relations between the Japanese Government and Moscow marked by the visit of the Foreign Minister, Shiina to the Soviet Union in Jan. 1966, suggests that a further motive for Soviet reduction of ties with the JSP may have been the desire to cultivate more easily the Japanese Government. This in turn may well be connected with current Soviet attempts to detach North Korea from the Chinese orbit. 19. For the text of the declaration, see Nihon Keizai Shimbun, 30 Oct. 1964, p. 738/1. 20. Asahi Shimbun, 18 Aug. 1965, p. 412/1. 21. Ibid., 7 Aug. 1965, p. 144/9. The Soviet Union, following its new policy of muting its support for the JSP, sent only an ‘unofficial’ delegation to the Socialist-controlled congress (none to that controlled by the Communists). The Socialist congress generally followed the Soviet line of criticizing US action in Vietnam but opposing nuclear dispersal and advocating general disarmament. Apart, however, from a speech by an Indian delegate, there was no particular overt criticism of the Chinese position. Ibid., 12 Aug. 1965, p 264/4 and 14 Aug. 1965, p. 316/1. 22. Some of the information presented here on the Convention and events leading up to it is derived from correspondence with participants and observers, to whom, however, direct attribution cannot be made. 23. Quoted in Ekonomisuto (Economist), 8 Feb. 1966, pp. 36–39 at p. 38. See also Yomiuri Shimbun, 10 Jan. 1966, p. 2/1. 24. Quoted in Ekonomisuto, loc. cit. 25. Yet Sasaki apparently took a more moderate line at the Convention itself. He was quoted as reaffirming the party’s opposition to all and any nuclear testing, as denying withdrawal of party support from the partial nuclear test-ban treaty and as disclaiming any identification of his position with that of China. Yomiuri Shimbun, 20 Jan. 1966, p. 2/1. 26. Elected Chairman of the International Bureau of the JSP at the Jan. 1966 Convention. 27. Indications are that despite their attempts to influence the Sasaki faction, the main Chinese aim remained to keep the absolute allegiance of the JCP. 28. See Ekonomisuto, op. cit. The group was Professor Sakisaka’s Shakaishugi Kyōkai (Socialist Association). The same group had advocated great caution in joint struggles with the Communists. See Shimakazi Yuzuru, ‘“Ampo kyōtō saikai ron” hihan’ (Criticism of the Argument for Reopening the Security Treaty Joint Struggle), Shakaishugi (Socialism), No. 168 (Oct. 1965), pp. 20–28. 29. Quoted in Shakai Shimpō (Socialist News), 26 Jan. 1966, p. 6/1. 30. Loc. cit. 31. What was there termed a ‘third force’ was defined as the working class in advanced capitalist countries, the regimes in newly independent countries such as India, Burma and Indonesia, and genuine democrats and peace-lovers anywhere.

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Given in Nihon Rōdō Nenkan (Japan Labor Yearbook), 1954, p. 679. 32. See Asahi Shimbun, 17 Sept. 1965, p. 398/7, and 5 Oct. 1965, p. 122/1. 33. This was almost certainly because delegates, knowing already the result of the election for Chairman and Secretary-General, wished to maintain a balance by weighting the executive as a whole against the Sasaki faction. Exactly the reverse had occurred at the Convention held thirteen months earlier. 34. See Shūkan Asahi (Weekly Asahi), 4 Feb. 1966, pp. 16–21, at p. 19, and Ekonomisuto, op. cit. 35. It should be noted that it was the more ‘left-wing’ non-aligned nations, such as Algeria, Indonesia (before the coup) and the U.A.R., with whom contacts have chiefly been sought. Yugoslavia has frequently been a stopping place for JSP delegations for some years. 36. See Asahi Shimbun, 30 Nov. 1964, p. 787/8. 37. The latter has proved especially valuable in minimizing wastage of votes in multimember constituencies. 38. See Ekonomisuto (Economist), 10 Aug. 1965, pp. 14–18, at p. 16.

9 The Communist Party of Japan First published in Problems of Communism, vol. XVI, Jan–Feb 1967 (US Information Agency) WRITING AS RECENTLY as five years ago, an American scholar of Japan’s political institutions dismissed the Japanese Communist Party (JCP) as no more effective than its counterpart in the United States’ 1 —that is to say, as an insignificant force in Japanese politics. Today, such a belittling assessment no longer appears possible. Recent statistics measuring the party’s progress are quite impressive, indicating that on several counts it has already overtaken the Japanese Socialist Party (JSP), the major leftist political organization. Although the JSP still remains well ahead in terms of votes, 2 its personal membership has long remained stagnant at around 50,000, while that of the JCP has jumped from about 40,000 in 1960 to a little more than 150,000 in 1965. Between 1962 and 1965, circulation of the Communist daily newspaper Akahata (Red Flag) rose from 120,000 to between 200,000 and 250,000, and of its Sunday edition from 260,000 to over 700,000. The party’s officially-declared revenues in 1964 were ¥990 million as against only ¥150 million for the JSP and ¥1,569 million for the governing Liberal-Democratic Party (LDP). 3 This was especially remarkable since it indicated that JCP revenues, in money terms, had multiplied 90 times between 1952 and 1964—a period of only mild inflation. In the past few years, membership of organizations under the JCP’s control (notably its Youth League, Minseidō) has also risen rapidly. 4 More importantly, the improvement in the party’s fortunes is beginning to be reflected in election balloting, especially in the main cities. In the July 1965 elections to the House of Councillors (the upper house of the bicameral National Diet), the votes cast for Communist candidates in the Tokyo constituency exceeded those cast, respectively, for the Socialists, the Kōmeitō, 5 and the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP). 6 A similar pattern was evident in the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly election held the same month, in which charges of corruption greatly reduced the share of the vote received by the conservative LDP. The JCP on this occasion polled 10.1 percent of the vote, as compared with only 4.3 percent in the previous Assembly election of 1963.

VARIOUS PERSPECTIVES An analysis of the Japanese Communist Party needs to be conducted at three levels: first, intraparty factional disputes; second, the party’s position in Japanese politics; and, finally, its international orientation, especially in relation to other Communist parties. Factionalism is a fundamental consideration in the study of any Japanese political party (or, for that matter, of other types of organization in Japan) because of the traditional Japanese tendency to form cohesive groups around particular leaders, with strong

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reciprocal obligations and loyalties between the leader and his followers. Ideological factionalism is, of course, a well-known characteristic of left-wing parties throughout the world, although in Communist parties it has usually been curbed by a rigid chain of command designed to prevent independent horizontal contacts. This is as true of the JCP as of its fellow parties abroad, but in spite of its efforts to maintain strong discipline, including repeated use of the ultimate weapon of expulsion, the Japanese party has not been conspicuously successful in suppressing factionalism in its ranks, reinforced as this factionalism is by deeply-ingrained social characteristics. The effectiveness of the JCP in Japanese politics has generally depended on its relationship with the JSP—in particular, on whether the two parties are able to cooperate, and on their relative strengths. Cooperation has usually reflected the presence of common issues on which both parties temporarily agree, and a simultaneous lack of serious points of friction. Opposition to American ‘imperialism’ has long been common to both the JCP and JSP, but mutual suspicion and ideological differences have inhibited cooperation except where some particularly ‘iniquitous’ action or policy on the part of the United States or the Japanese government has impelled the two parties to launch a common campaign. Such was the case in 1960 in connection with the revision of the US-Japan Mutual Security Treaty. Such has again been the case in 1965–66 as a result of antagonism to US policy in Viet-Nam. The question of Japanese policy towards China has also provided a common ground of JCP-JSP agreement, as both parties have consistently advocated normalization of Sino-Japanese relations. The Sino-Soviet split, however, forced them apart, with the Socialists inclined towards the Soviet position and the JCP—until very recently—squarely backing the Chinese. The relative strengths of the JCP and JSP at any particular time are also important. When the Communists have been weak and discredited, as in the mid-1950’s, the Socialists could ignore them if they wished. On the other hand, the recent improvement in Communist organization and support has meant that the Socialists, weak at the local level, have an incentive to cooperate with JCP-controlled bodies in order to stage protest demonstrations. (Within the Diet the Communists are still too weak to matter.) Against this must be set Communist weakness in the trade union movement. Most unions still owe allegiance either to the JSP or to the right-wing Socialist DSP. The Socialistcontrolled General Council of Trade Unions (Sohyo) has recently been markedly less willing to cooperate with the Communists than the leadership of the JSP itself has been. The international orientation of the JCP is the third level at which the party has to be studied. Here, ideological questions are most evident. Although differences reflecting the divergent revolutionary strategies of Moscow and Peking were noticeable in the party during the 1950’s, a choice of loyalties did not have to be made until the early 1960’s. After a period of internal dissension which ended in the expulsion of a pro-Soviet faction in 1964, the JCP closely aligned itself with the Chinese party and continued on this course until just a short time ago. As recently as last March, the JCP acted in concert with the Communist parties of China, Albania, and New Zealand in declining to send a delegation to the 23rd Soviet Party Congress in Moscow. As will be pointed out later, however, the party has since veered back towards a more neutral and independent stand. At first sight, it appears strange that the JCP should ever have committed itself to the Chinese side inasmuch as the connection would appear unattractive on the following

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general counts: 1. The appropriate strategy of revolution: Japan and China are at completely different levels of economic development, Japan being an already advanced industrial country while China’s is an agrarian economy in the early stages of industrialization and urbanization. From this it might be expected that the JCP would favor the strategies of European Communist parties rather than of the Chinese. The JCP is indeed unique in being the only Communist party in a country with an ‘advanced’ economy to have aligned itself with Peking. 2. The relative power positions of Japan and China: A strong case exists for arguing that the two countries are likely to become economically and politically competitive rather than complementary. It is difficult to conceive of even a Communist Japan permitting itself to become a Chinese ‘satellite.’ 3. Geography: Japan, while geographically close to China, is equally close to large tracts of Soviet territory. 4. Nuclear policy: The Japanese left wing, responding to a large and genuine body of opinion in the country at large, has a very strong tradition of nuclear pacifism and nonalignment, to which Chinese nuclear testing and belligerence in foreign policy would seem to be opposed. On the other hand, alignment with China seems a more reasonable proposition for the JCP if certain other factors are taken into consideration, namely: 1. The appeal of China to Japanese public opinion: Japan’s cultural debt to China, the factor of racial similarity, the prewar economic interdependence of the two countries, and a sense of guilt arising from Japan’s aggression against China—all these have combined to produce a large body of Japanese opinion in favor of restoring normal relations with the Peking regime. This has been advocated in recent years by all the left-wing Japanese parties and has also found support among conservative businessmen and within the LDP Successive Japanese governments have traded with China ‘unofficially’ while refusing political recognition. One of the main policy planks which the JCP and JSP have in common is opposition to American ‘containment’ of China. 2. The ‘weakness’ of Soviet policy: Since termination of the Mutual Security Treaty with the United States is the most important immediate aim of JCP policy, Peking’s tough anti-American stand is more appealing to the party than the more cautious and restrained Soviet attitude. 3. Japanese nationalism: The last two or three years have seen a marked revival of selfconfidence and national assertiveness among the Japanese people. From the viewpoint of those who believe that Japan’s future lies in Asia, the importance of relations with China tends to loom larger than that of relations with the Soviet Union. The writer has argued elsewhere 7 that, apart from these general considerations, the JCP’s decision in 1964 to align itself with the Chinese Communists resulted from three contingent factors: first, the triumph within the party of a ‘Chinese’ faction over a ‘Soviet’ faction; second, the consolidation within the JSP—the JCP’s chief rival for the allegiance of working-class voters—of a ‘pro-Soviet’ leadership group; and third,

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vigorous Chinese lobbying for JCP support and a converse lack of Soviet interest in the Japanese party. Since 1964, the political kaleidoscope has been shaken a number of times, and the present picture needs careful reappraisal. First, however, a brief review of the party’s history seems in order. 8

A LOOK BACKWARD Prewar conditions in Japan were extremely unfavorable to the development of an articulate Communist movement. Despite sporadic attempts after 1922 to organize an underground party, little headway was made until 1945 because of constant police repression. The ‘party’ thus remained little more than a small band of theoreticians, most of them in prison. They were, however, the men who founded the JCP after the postsurrender release of political prisoners, and it is therefore important to note, if only briefly, the gist of their pre-1945 doctrinal thinking. Generally speaking, they had obediently followed most of the prewar shifts of Kremlin policy. They had also held more or less consistently to two basic views: first, that the party should be a disciplined, elite group rather than a broad party of the masses; and second, that Japan was not yet ripe for a proletarian-socialist revolution since this must first be preceded by a bourgeoisdemocratic revolution. During the first three postwar years, the Allied occupation authorities set out to implement a drastic policy of democratization, and the Communists to a large extent cooperated with this policy on the ground that it served in effect to further the bourgeoisdemocratic revolution they hoped for. Able to operate openly and freely for the first time, the party decided to abandon its earlier elitist principles and instead, under the slogan of ‘a lovable Communist Party/ sought to project a moderate image and thereby win broad mass support. This was a chaotic and potentially revolutionary period which gave Japan’s Communists the best chance they have had, before or since, of coming to power. For success, two things were essential—control of the trade unions and a united front with the JSP. Attempts to dominate the rapidly expanding trade union movement led, however, to an anti-Communist reaction, and proposals for a united front with the Socialists likewise failed. The JCP nevertheless won an unprecedented total of 35 seats in the January 1949 elections to the House of Representatives, though their success was mainly due to the fact that the rival Socialists had discredited themselves by participating in a highly unsuccessful coalition government in 1947–48. Meanwhile, the aims of occupation policy were shifting toward grooming Japan for the role of a Western ally in the gathering storms of the Cold War. This involved stabilizing the economy with a strong dose of deflation, cracking down on the newly-won trade-union freedoms, and restrengthening the positions of industrial managers and conservative politicians. With the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, General MacArthur encouraged the revival of Japanese military forces on a moderate scale, although the legality of such forces was in doubt under the ‘anti-war’ proviso (Art. 9) of the 1946 Constitution. This situation gave the Japanese Communists, along with other left-wing groups, a

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weapon which they had never before possessed: the chance to pose as champions of nationalism. Before the war, those who had set the pace for nationalism had been members of the ultra-right wing. Although a substantial proportion of Japanese Socialists had gone along with the militaristic ideas of the 1930’s, some in the forlorn hope of capturing the leadership of the nationalist movement themselves, the Communists had remained firmly anti-nationalist. This was, in fact, one of the reasons—apart from police repression—why the party had made such little headway before the war. Now, however, the situation was reversed. Conservative Japanese governments were open to charges by both Communists and Socialists of subordinating Japan’s interests to those of the United States, and the Left could preach not only peace and socialism, but also nationalist struggle against American ‘imperialism.’ The JCP, however, soon compromised its own chances of success by submitting to foreign dictation. In January 1950 the party was subjected to sweeping criticism in the official organ of the Cominform, which urged it to switch to militant methods of struggle aimed at eliminating American influence from Japan. With patent surprise and reluctance, the JCP leaders concurred. The image of a ‘lovable’ Communist Party was shed, and violent methods of overthrowing the government were advocated and, to a minor extent, practiced. US ‘imperialism’ replaced the Japanese ‘feudal’ order as the main enemy. Japan was claimed to be a ‘semi-colonial dependent nation,’ suggesting that it was Chinese Communist revolutionary doctrine which the party had been ordered to take as its model. 9 As a result of this switch in tactics, the occupation authorities’ purge edict was extended to the leaders of the JCP, and the party temporarily went underground (though it was never actually banned). Moreover, its leaders immediately became embroiled in factional strife. A ‘mainstream’ faction led by Kyuichi Tokuda (who died in 1953) and Sanzo Nozaka (the present party Chairman) wanted to go slowly in implementing the new policy so as not to destroy the moderate image painfully built up since 1945. Ranged against them was the so-called ‘internationalist’ faction led by Yoshio Shiga (later expelled) and Kenji Miyamoto (new Secretary-General), who wanted to apply the new militant line to the full. These two men had shared the experience of long periods of detention in Japanese prisons before 1945. On the other hand, Nozaka, who still rates as Japan’s best known and most widely respected Communist, 10 was exceptional in having spent the pre-1945 period abroad. From 1931 to 1940, he had served as a member of the Comintern Presidium in Moscow, and from 1940 to 1946 had worked with Mao Tse-tung in the caves of Yenan. His writings show that his Chinese experiences influenced him more profoundly than his years in the Soviet Union. The factional disputes of 1950–51 disrupted the party, but the issue was finally resolved by a compromise which left the ‘mainstream’ faction in control while making some concessions to the ‘internationalist’ strategy. Somewhat chastened, the JCP resumed open activity from about 1954 and gradually moderated its line, especially after destalinization gathered momentum in the Soviet Union. Despite this, the party’s electoral support, which had largely evaporated in 1950, was slow to recover, and although the late 1950’s saw Miyamoto’s rise to a position of real power in the JCP leadership, factional differences continued to disturb party unity. The party’s national convention in 1958 witnessed the emergence of a new opposition grouping which

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advocated an ‘advanced country’ strategy derived from the Italian party leader, Palmiro Togliatti. The leader of this new faction, Shojiro Kasuga, though himself a former internationalist,’ attacked Miyamoto for putting forward strategies which, he claimed, were irrelevant to an advanced industrial country with a strong labor movement. Subsequently the JCP leadership also came under fire from radical student organizations on charges of ‘bureaucratism,’ which the party leaders countered by calling the students ‘Trotskyites’. Consequently, it was no surprise that during the spectacular but ultimately unsuccessful demonstrations against revision of the Mutual Security Treaty in mid-1960 the JCP proved itself quite incapable of controlling the activities of the students as a whole. In the aftermath of this episode, the Kasuga faction momentarily gained some ground but was finally expelled from the party in 1961. A party convention held the same year confirmed the ‘internationalist’ strategy of a two-stage revolution, the first and most vital stage aimed at freeing Japan from domination by ‘US imperialism,’ and the second at overthrowing the hegemony of domestic monopoly capital. 11 With the expulsion of Kasuga, the JCP appeared to be united at last under the Miyamoto leadership, but the deepening rift between China and the Soviet Union soon brought fresh problems. Internally divided over the position it should take toward the dispute, the party managed for a time to maintain a precarious facade of neutrality. This facade, however, was shattered in May 1964 when Shiga, one of the five Communist members of the House of Representatives, voted in favor of a Diet motion supporting the partial nuclear test-ban treaty, which Peking had violently denounced. As a consequence of this action, Shiga and a Communist member of the upper house (House of Councillors’) who had supported him were expelled shortly afterward from the party, which now came out openly on the Chinese side. 12 Shiga’s defection seems to have stemmed partly from his habitual loyalty to the Soviet Communist line, and partly from personal rivalry with Miyamoto. 13 After leaving the JCP, Shiga founded a new Communist splinter party calling itself the ‘Voice of Japan’ (Nihon no koe), which immediately attracted substantial Soviet support. This and two other Communist splinter groups which had already formed after the 1961 expulsion of Kasuga and his faction have since joined forces in organizing a ‘Preparatory Committee for a New Party,’ but the fact that the committee’s efforts have not yet produced any concrete result suggests that the dissident groups have found little common ground other than their opposition to the present leadership of the JCP. 14

JCP-JSP RELATIONS As previously pointed out, relations between the JCP and JSP have always been a vital factor in the politics of both parties. It is therefore necessary to examine more closely the record of these relations and the impact thereon of various factors, including the SinoSoviet dispute. As mentioned earlier, a serious attempt was made in Japan soon after the war to bring about a Communist-Socialist united front. This initial effort proved abortive, in large part because of the heterogeneous nature of the JSP, but during the 1950’s the center of gravity in the Socialist Party gradually shifted to the left, with the result that the

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Communists and Socialists were able to achieve a substantial degree of cooperation during the 1960 demonstrations against the Mutual Security Treaty. The JSP is generally regarded as standing well to the left of most Social-Democratic parties in Europe and in the older countries of the British Commonwealth, especially in matters of foreign policy. Like the JCP, it campaigns for termination of the Mutual Security Treaty, for much closer Japanese relations with the Communist and nonaligned countries, and for a type of neutralism not backed by armed force. Ideologically, many members of the JSP lean quite heavily on Marxist thought and terminology. Even so, few of them would qualify as Marxist-Leninists, and their views have consistently differed from those of the JCP in at least two important respects. First, the Socialists have never sought to impose in their own party the tight discipline which is a feature of the JCP. Although postwar Japanese Communist leaders have generally leaned more toward the concept of a ‘broad, mass party’ than toward the prewar idea of a ‘disciplined elite,’ the JCP still demands of its members a far greater degree of discipline than does the JSP. Secondly, the Socialists have generally denied the necessity of a ‘revolution of national liberation’ preceding the achievement of power by the proletariat. This is not to say that they have been laggard in fighting against ‘imperialism,’ but for them the struggle does not have quite the ideological importance that it has for the JCP. Both pacifist and neutralist in its foreign outlook, the JSP has put much of its energies into campaigns against Japanese rearmament, the maintenance of US military bases in Japan and Okinawa, and alleged American plans to introduce nuclear weapons into Japan. At the same time, it has consistently opposed nuclear testing by any country, whether capitalist or Communist. Significantly enough, it is this last issue which has provoked the bitterest exchanges between the JCP and the JSP. Ever since 1961, Gensuikyō (The Japanese Council Against Atomic and Hydrogen Weapons) has been a battleground between the two parties, the Socialists demanding a blanket condemnation of nuclear testing while the Communists supported first Soviet and later Chinese testing as having a ‘different character’ from tests carried out by the ‘imperialists.’ In 1964, after several years of mutual recrimination at its annual congresses, the Gensuikyō movement finally split over the issue of the nuclear test-ban treaty. Its JCP adherents followed the Chinese Communist line in rejecting the treaty, while the Socialists backed the Soviet position. For a time, it looked as if Peking and Moscow were playing out their quarrel on Japanese soil with the JCP and the JSP, where Soviet influence had made considerable gains, as their respective tools. With the fall of Khrushchev, however, Moscow shifted its tactics in Japan and scaled down its cultivation of the JSP in favor of strengthening its ties with Shiga’s dissident Communist group. At the same time, while consolidating their influence in the JCP, the Chinese sought to gain a foothold in the JSP by backing an opposition faction led by Kozo Sasaki. Statements emanating from this faction took on a distinctly ‘Chinese’ coloring, and the group gained sufficient strength to enable Sasaki to capture the top position in the JSP leadership in May 1965. Since becoming JSP Chairman, Sasaki has evidently proven less susceptible to Chinese influences than Peking had hoped. There is no doubt, however, that the JSP under his leadership has moved closer to the Communists than at any time since the two parties coordinated their activities in the 1960 demonstrations against the Security Treaty. One

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evidence of this was the achievement in 1965 of a certain degree of cooperation between the two parties in their efforts to block ratification of the treaty of friendship between Japan and South Korea. Also, while neither side has initiated any real move to reunite the anti-nuclear movement (Gensuikyō), the Socialist leaders have recently drawn somewhat nearer to the Communists in opposing American moves to prevent nuclear proliferation on the ground that these moves are designed to keep the world balance of power tipped in favor of the advanced countries. 15 The tendency toward closer JSP-JCP cooperation despite all the historical, ideological and personal factors which have inhibited close relations in the past reflects the fact that events in the past two years or so have exerted powerful pressures toward a consolidation of effort by the Japanese left wing as a whole. The most important stimulus in this direction has been the escalation of the war in Viet-Nam, which has coincided with a spontaneous movement towards greater national self-assertion in many sectors of Japanese opinion. These developments have led to increased popular questioning of the American alliance and have consequently enhanced the prestige of the left-wing parties, which have always opposed Japan’s American connection. The continuation of US military rule over Okinawa has become a particularly sensitive issue, especially since the use of American bases in the western Pacific for the bombing of North Viet-Nam. There is little question that the present tense international situation centered on the Viet-Nam conflict has created greater common ground between the Socialists and Communists than has hitherto existed, although it would nevertheless be unrealistic to expect any kind of permanent alliance to result. Domestic political factors have also played a part in spurring the JSP to seek Communist cooperation. Even though the Socialists still poll a much larger (though stagnant) vote in national elections, the party’s grass-roots organization is extremely weak, whereas the JCP organization has been rapidly gaining strength. Consequently, the Socialists now have an increased incentive to try to obtain Communist support in mobilizing popular opposition to government measures. Furthermore, the politicoreligious Kōmeitō has advanced steadily in recent years to become an important factor in the electoral calculations of all other Japanese parties, and at present there appears to be some common political ground between it and the left-wing parties. At the same time, recent elec-toral trends have suggested that while the JSP has no prospect of coming to power independently in the foreseeable future, the governing Liberal-Democratic Party might lose its overall parliamentary majority within, say, six or seven years. Because of this, the possibility of forming a coalition government in some kind of combination with other opposition parties has begun to exercise the minds of the JSP leaders. 16 Today they are obliged to take the JCP into serious consideration as a possible partner, whereas some years ago they could afford to disregard it.

NEW JCP ORIENTATION In this context, it is significant that the JCP has recently been moving perceptibly away from its strong pro-Chinese commitment. The first hint of a shift was a report published in the Japanese press late in 1965 to the effect that disagreement had arisen within the

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party over the interpretation of the abortive Communist coup of September 30, 1965, in Indonesia. 17 According to this report, the majority faction of the JCP led by SecretaryGeneral Miyamoto held that the Indonesian Communists had succumbed to ‘left-wing adventurism’ and launched their attempted revolution prematurely and without adequate preparation. Their fault, it was argued, lay in having followed the Chinese revolutionary line too slavishly. Ranged against Miyamoto’s faction, according to the report, was an opposition group led by Yojiro Konno, a lesser figure in the party hierarchy. This group, committed to dogmatic support of Peking, rejected the charge that adherence to Chinese revolutionary doctrine had caused the Indonesian debacle, attributing it rather to the fact that the Indonesian Communists, instead of developing a small, disciplined and resolute elite party, had concentrated on building up a broad mass following, which at the moment of crisis proved lacking in discipline and determination. Further indication of a change in the party’s attitude toward China was given in a fourpage unsigned article which appeared in the JCP daily organ Akahata on February 4, 1966. 18 The article followed existing party policy in attacking American ‘imperialism’ and criticizing Soviet ‘revisionists’ for believing in the possibility of peaceful coexistence with the United States. It went on to strike a different note, however, in arguing that it was a mistake to regard socialist regimes collectively as the only anti-imperialist force, or underdeveloped areas ripe for revolution as the only regions in which the anti-imperialist struggle should be fought. There were, the article maintained, three basic revolutionary forces: the socialist (i.e., Communist-bloc) regimes; revolutionary movements in capitalist countries; and national liberation movements in nations subject to foreign oppression. (One commentator in a non-Communist Japanese weekly suggested that this was a roundabout way of asserting the party’s independence from Peking by saying that the JCP, as a revolutionary movement in a capitalist country, was in a different category from the Chinese Communist Party. 19 ) The most significant point in the article, however, was a proposal for immediate joint action to combat US ‘aggression’ in VietNam through an international Communist united front including both China and the Soviet Union. Such action, the article declared, should not be postponed until the settling of the Sino-Soviet ideological controversy. Shortly after the publication of this article, Miyamoto left at the head of a JCP delegation, reportedly composed exclusively of members of his own faction, for a visit to Communist China, North Viet-Nam and North Korea. At Shanghai the delegation had preliminary talks with the since-purged Mayor of Peking, P’eng Chen, who apparently rejected out of hand the JCP’s idea of a united front. On the same day, moreover, the Chinese Communist Party organ Hung Ch’i (Red Flag) came out with an attack on the Akahata article of February 4. 20 Following this cool reception, the Japanese delegation did not proceed immediately from Shanghai to Peking, as had been expected, but instead went on to Hanoi for a two-week visit culminating on February 27 in the signing of a joint statement by the Japanese Communist and North Vietnamese leaders. A speech made by Miyamoto in Hanoi was reprinted in the Chinese Communist central newspaper Jen-min jih-pao (People’s Daily) on February 21, but the Chinese version conspicuously omitted a passage in which Miyamoto had said, ‘We shall continue to strive for SinoSoviet cooperation in extending aid to Viet-Nam.’ 21 From Hanoi, the Japanese returned to China, this time making a rather brief stopover in

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Peking, where they had further conferences with Chinese Communist leaders. These meetings, however, evidently proved no more fruitful than the earlier exchanges in Shanghai, and Miyamoto’s party went on to Pyongyang on March 11 to meet with a much warmer reception. There they signed a joint communique with the North Korean leaders stressing the equality and independence of all Communist parties, and affirming the principle that no individual Communist party should attempt to exert pressure on the internal affairs of another. 22 On March 21, the JCP envoys returned once more to Peking for another round of discussions with the Chinese. At this point, the Japanese press was confidently predicting that the delegation would defy Peking by proceeding on to Moscow to attend the 23rd Congress of the CPSU. 23 This forecast, however, proved wrong. While both the North Korean and North Vietnamese parties decided to attend the Congress, the JCP leaders agreed to follow Peking’s lead in boycotting it. 24 In view of the Miyamoto leadership’s previous moves to reassert the JCP’s independence from Peking, this decision seems surprising. It is of course impossible to say for certain what prompted the decision, but very likely the following factors all played a part. First, in view of the numerous setbacks China had recently sustained in various parts of the world, the Peking leaders must have been particularly anxious to retain the Japanese party’s loyalty and no doubt exerted strong pressure on the JCP delegation. Second, the Soviet Union was still actively supporting Shiga’s Communist splinter group, causing considerable annoyance and embarrassment to the JCP. Third, the pro-Chinese ‘tough’ faction within the JCP was conducting a vigorous campaign against Miyamoto ‘s attempts to gain greater independence from Peking. 25 It may be surmised that the Chinese made it clear to the JCP delegates that attendance at the impending Moscow Congress would mean a complete break between the Japanese and Chinese parties—an eventuality which Miyamoto obviously was anxious to avoid. The Japanese Communist leader’s real intention, at least at this stage, appears to have been to place the JCP in a more independent footing vis-à-vis Peking, at the same time preserving its basically pro-Chinese orientation. Since last spring, in any event, the JCP has progressively asserted its autonomy—though not without some conflict within its own ranks. At the same time, the party has sought to resume a cautious dialogue with Moscow after two years of complete estrangement. According to Japanese press reports, a visiting Soviet trade union official was permitted to break the ice by calling at JCP headquarters in Tokyo last summer, but his meeting with party officials did not go beyond an exchange of courtesies. 26 Clearly, independence from both sides—though perhaps in differing degrees- is the essence of Miyamoto’s new policies. Autonomy vis-à-vis Peking in particular would seem to be a logical consequence of the party’s drive to expand its membership and electoral strength: a ‘broad mass party is hardly consistent with contemporary Chinese Communist revolutionary strategy. More important, perhaps, the party’s new posture of independence reflects its increasing financial affluence, which seems to come mainly from publications sales and other domestic sources rather than from outside the country.

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THE PARTY TODAY The major weaknesses of the JCP in the past have been factionalism, susceptibility to foreign Communist pressure, and an uncongenial political environment. Factionalism is endemic in all Japanese political parties and has recurred constantly in the JCP no matter what disciplinary measures were taken against dissidents. The present leadership seems purposeful, determined, and perhaps more capable of imposing unity on the party than its predecessors. Nevertheless, as we have seen, it is not without its opponents. Susceptibility to foreign Communist pressure also seems to die hard. Although the party is unlikely to repeat the catastrophe of 1950, its recent steps towards autonomy have an appearance of timidity, as though too much independence from Peking, and consequently from Chinese backing, would carry the risk of a dangerous isolation. As for the party’s third major handicap, it is true (although by now a truism) that Japan’s burgeoning economic growth, in combination with postwar institutional and social reforms, has tended to create political conditions unfavorable to the JCP. Nevertheless, economic and social strains can still be strong even in an advanced industrial country with a high basic level of prosperity, especially where economic growth has been extremely swift and traditional influences have been rapidly undermined. In Japan, it is a conspicuous fact that the political parties giving their members a sense of total commitment (the JCP and the Kōmeitō) have been making progress in recent years, while the ‘open’ parties relying on a generalized appeal and seeking to gain votes through personal connections and influence (the LDP and JSP) have been falling back or stagnating. It is not easy to say just how far foreign policy issues have helped the JCP, but it is hard to escape the conclusion that the party is profiting somewhat from the reactivation, due to the Viet-Nam war, of a latent Japanese antiAmericanism, which happens to coincide with a reawakening sense of national identity.

POSTSCRIPT Since this article was written, the 10th Congress of the JCP took place in Tokyo from October 24 to 30, 1966, and produced a clear-cut reaffirmation of the Miyamoto leadership’s new line of independence from both Peking and Moscow. The Congress reelected Miyamoto as party Secretary-General and Nozaka as Chairman, but the latter’s position is now essentially honorary, with real power resting in the hands of Miyamoto. Party membership was claimed to have reached a figure in excess of 200,000, representing a continuing advance. In their addresses to the Congress, both Nozaka and Miyamoto made clear the party’s determination to pursue an independent course opposed not only to Khrushchev-style ‘modern revisionism’ but also to the ‘dogmatism and sectarianism’ characteristic of the present Peking leadership. The Congress endorsed this line without open dissent, amending the party rules so as to add ‘dogmatism and sectarianism’ to ‘revisionism’ as deviations against which party members are pledged to fight. The Congress also endorsed the leadership’s renewed call for the formation of an international Communist united

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front to aid North Viet-Nam—a proposal thus far rebuffed by Peking. In spite of the Congress’ approval of the independent’ line, there have been numerous indications of opposition to it on the part of pro-Chinese elements within the party, although the exact extent of this opposition is hard to judge. A report in the Japanese weekly Ekonomisuto (Economist) on October 25, 1966, estimated that 22 out of the 67 members of the pre-Congress Central Committee could be considered pro-China.’ Significantly enough, the Congress enlarged the membership of this body to 88, no doubt with a view to swamping the dissidents, and in the Congress elections to the Central Committee, at least one prominent ‘pro-China’ figure was dropped from membership, while a number of Miyamoto supporters were added. The presence of considerable pro-Chinese opposition within the party has also been attested to by a steadily mounting number of expulsions of party members accused of ‘flunkeying’ to a ‘foreign party.’ According to a Japanese Police Agency report published in Asahi Shimbun (December 18, 1966), the JCP had so far purged during 1966 a total of 98 pro-Peking party members. The most prominent of these was Ryuji Nishizawa, a member of the Central Committee and a son-in-law of the late veteran party leader, Kyuichi Tokuda. Nishizawa was expelled in October on charges of preparing to publish a magazine entitled ‘Study of Mao Tse-tung’s Thought’ and aimed at criticism of the party leadership. Also expelled prior to the 10th Congress were almost all the members of the Yamagata Prefectural party committee (the so-called Choshu Shimbun group), who rebelled against the ‘independent line’ vis-à-vis Peking, as well as a number of Japanese Communists residing in Peking. The party’s moves to discipline the pro-Chinese dissidents in its ranks has caused a conspicuous deterioration of JCP-CCP relations which, should it continue, might even lead to an eventual open break. The question for the future is whether the JCP will continue its present independent line or, in view of its worsening relations with Peking, turn once more to Moscow for moral support—a prospect which apparently is causing the ‘Voice of Japan’ and related right-wing Communist opposition groups serious concern since it would remove their raison d’être.

NOTES 1. A.W.Burks, The Government of Japan, New York, Thomas Crowell & Co., 1961, p. 91. The party’s potential was similarly underestimated by P.F.Langer. (‘Independence or Subordination?—the Japanese Communist Party between Moscow and Peking’), in A.D.Barnett (ed.), Communist Strategies in Asia, New York, Praeger, 1963, pp. 63–100. 2. In the most recent elections to the House of Representatives (November 1963), the JSP polled 11,907,000 votes (29.03 percent of the total vote); and the JCP, 1,646,000 (4.01 percent of the total). 3. The figure given for the LDP, however, is misleadingly low because of the fact that individual factions within this party attract additional large-scale funds. 4. The information in this paragraph is compiled from the following sources: Kyosuke Hirotsu, ‘Kyosanto buryoku kakumei e no michi’ (The Communist Party’s Road to

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Violent Revolution), Jiyū, April 1966, pp. 89–95; articles by K.Murata in the Japan Times (English), July 15, Aug. 12, and Oct. 15, 1965, and Jan. 18, 1966; Report of the Public Security Investigation Agency cited in the Asahi Shimbun (Tokyo) Dec. 21, 1965, p. 2. 5. A political-religious party backed by the neo-Buddhist sect Soka Gakkai. 6. The distribution of votes was: Conservatives, 21.8 percent; JCP, 18.7 percent; Independents, 18.7 percent; JSP, 17.3 percent; Kōmeitō, 16.2 percent; and DSP, 9.9 percent. 7. ‘The Japan Communist Party in the Sino-Soviet Dispute—From Neutrality to Alignment?’ in J.D.B.Miller and T.H.Rigby (eds.), The Disintegrating Monolith: Pluralist Trends in the Communist World, Canberra, Australian National University, 1965, pp. 137–48. 8. The only full-scale study of the JCP in English is now very much out of date but still a useful source: R.Swearingen and P.F.Langer, Red Flag in Japan Cambridge, Mass., 1952. For further material see T.G.Tsukahira, The Postwar Evolution of Communist Strategy in Japan, Cambridge, Mass., Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1954; P.F.Langer, ‘Independence or Subordination?—The Japanese Communist Party between Moscow and Peking,’ loc. cit.; F.Noda (ed.) ‘The Left-Wing Movement in Japan: 1945–1964,’ Journal of Social and Political Ideas in Japan, April 1965, passim. 9. For elaboration of this point, see the present writer’s ‘The Japan Communist Party in the Sino-Soviet Dispute—From Neutrality to Alignment?’, loc. cit., pp. 141–43. 10. Nozaka’s personal popularity is seen from the following comparisons: in the July 1965 upper house elections, Nozaka topped the poll in the Tokyo constituency with 619,893 votes. In addition to voting in local constituencies, 100 seats are contested with the whole country forming one constituency. In this ‘national’ constituency, the JCP ran two candidates, who between them received only 379,011 votes from electors resident in Tokyo. In the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly elections the same month, JCP candidates polled a similar figure of 384,589 votes. 11. For the draft resolutions of the 1961 Convention, see Zenei (Tokyo), No. 182 (June 1961), supplement. 12. The party’s shift away from the Soviet Union and towards China is evident from the following table of visits by JCP delegations to the two countries (see Asahi Shimbun. (Tokyo), Feb. 9, 1963, p. 3):

1962 China Soviet Union

1963

1964

1965

7

6

16

8

11

7

4

0

13. For a fuller analysis of the 1964 split in the JCP. see the author’s previously cited paper in Miller and Rigby, op. cit. (footnote 7), pp. 138–40. 14. See Asahi Shimbun, March 25, 1966, p. 1. The dissidents expelled from the JCP in 1961 subsequently divided into Kasuga’s own group, the Tōitsu Shakaishugi Dōmei

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(United Socialist League), which formed links with the JSP and apparently sought to reform all Japanese left-wing parties along ‘Italian’ lines, and the Shakaishugi Kakushin Undō (Socialist Reform Movement), which from the start wanted to form a separate Communist Party. Neither group was of much significance in terms of numbers. 15. See Yomiuri Shimbun (Tokyo), March 7, 1966, p. 2/8. 16. For speculation on the possible courses which Japanese politics might take over the next ten years, see H.Passin, ‘The Future,’ in H.Passin (ed.), The United States and Japan, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice Hall, 1966, pp. 141–61. 17. The report, which emanated from the Japanese Police Department, appeared in Asahi Shimbun, Dec. 22, 1965, p. 2/8. See also ibid., Jan. 14, 1966, p. 2/8. Official JCP publications avoided any discussion of the Indonesian Communists’ strategy and confined themselves to attacking anti-Communist reprisals in Indonesia. E.g., see leading article in Akahata, (Tokyo), Oct. 23, 1965. p. 1/1. 18. The article was entitled ‘Amerika teikokushugi ni hantai suru kokusai tōitsu kōdō to tōitsu sensen wo kyōka suru tame ni’ (Strengthen International United Action and a United Front in Opposition to American Imperialism). Daily Summary of the Japanese Press, US Embassy, Tokyo, Feb. 18, 1966, pp. 1–38. 19. ‘Nikkyo kambu hō-Chu to sono rosen’ (The JCP Executives’ Visit to China and Their Line) Asahi Janaru, (Tokyo), Vol. 8, No. 8 (Feb. 20, 1966), pp. 7–8. 20. Hung Ch’i (Peking), Feb. 10, 1966. See also Asahi Shimbun, Feb. 12, 1966, p. 2/3. 21. On this discrepancy, see ‘Nikkyō, Miyamoto rosen no yuku e’ (The JCP and the Direction of the Miyamoto Line), in Asahi Janaru, Vol. 8, No. 15, (April 10, 1966), pp. 8–9. For a further account of the delegation’s tour, see Asahi Shimbun, March 25, 1966, p. 1/7. 22. Text of communique in Akahata, March 22, 1966, p. 1/7. 23. E.g., see Asahi Shimbun, March 25, 1966, p. 1/7. 24. This decision was apparently reached while the Japanese delegation was in Peking for the second time. According to a Japanese report, it was not until then that the Chinese finally staged an official reception for the delegation. See ‘Nikkyo, Miyamoto rosen…,’ loc. cit. (Footnote 21). 25. See Asahi Shimbun, March 26, 1966, p. 1/3. 26. Mainichi Shimbun, (Tokyo) June 29, 1966, p. 2/1, and Asahi Shimbun, July 11, 1966, p. 2/1.

10 Japan First published in Dissent (Melbourne), Spring 1968 IN APRIL of this year the Americans opened a hospital for service casualties from Vietnam at one of their military establishments, which happened to be situated in Oji, a densely populated inner suburb of Tokyo. The purpose of the hospital perturbed many local residents, some of whom feared a whole range of possible consequences, including the introduction of cholera, the noise of helicopters bringing in patients, the prospect of school children at several schools in the vicinity being affected by the sight of maimed war victims, and the danger that an influx of footloose GIs would encourage the reemergence of local prostitution. A number of protests were made, at local and national level, shortly after the plan became known, but the issue did not attract much attention until organised groups of students converged on the building with the intention of forcing an entry, coming into direct and violent conflict with the police as a result. The violence used by the students, who wielded baulks of timber and pieces of steel against the police, seems to have distressed local residents almost as much as the prospect of having to put up with the hospital (which, as one local put it, ‘brings the blood of Vietnam into our midst’), especially as the demonstrations had caused not inconsiderable damage, and some students had burst into private houses with their shoes on. The local reaction, therefore, was to redouble efforts to organise independent local opposition to the hospital (the support of Tokyo’s radical Governor, Minobe, was assured), and to try to make sure that the students did not get another chance to create havoc. Paradoxically, the student violence had served to increase local awareness and participation, but at the expense of their own alienation from it. The students involved were members of the Sampa Zengakuren (‘Sampa’ means ‘Three faction’; ‘Zengakuren’ is an abbreviation for ‘National Federation of Students’ Self-Government Associations’). This is the most anarchistic and violent of the many strands of the Zengakuren at the present time. The Sampa roundly condemns the Japan Communist Party (JCP) for its stuffiness and bureaucracy, and attacks most Communist countries on the same grounds. In recent months it has been at the van of the following strug-gles: an attempt late last year to prevent the Prime Minister from leaving Haneda airport for talks with President Johnson in Washington; riots against the calling of the Enterprise at the port of Sasebo (January 1968), resulting in a spectacular pitched battle with police which the nation watched on television as it would a baseball game; protests against the construction of a new international airport at Narita (on the grounds that it might be used by the Americans as a base for aggression in South-East Asia—in fact the help of the Sampa students had apparently been called in by local farmers, hardly a radical group—seeking to avoid sequestration of their land); agitation for the return of

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Okinawa to Japan; protests against the crash of an American plane from Itazuke Airbase in Kyushu into a partly constructed university building (allegedly close to a laboratory containing radio-active material). There have also been many very serious and longdrawn-out struggles about university fees and conditions, such as that which paralysed Waseda University in Tokyo for several months. The Zengakuren was founded in 1948 and was under the control of the Communist Party for the next ten years. Nothing was easier than to make students into potential revolutionaries in the immediate postwar conditions. Quite apart from appalling living conditions and political turmoil, the Japanese Communist Party was the shining example of the only political party to have kept its hands clean from the taint of fascism. Moreover the growth of the social sciences had been stunted by the previous regime and its political police, so that Marxism—the ideology of protest—was the only tool of social analysis that had any wide appeal to academics and intellectuals.

US-JAPAN SECURITY TREATY In 1958, in the aftermath of the anti-Stalin criticism and in a much more prosperous and apparently more stable Japan, a dissident faction wrested control of the Zengakuren executive from the hands of the JCP and became the new Zengakuren ‘mainstream’. It is estimated that in 1959–60 the proportions of ‘mainstream’ to ‘anti-mainstream’ (that is, mostly Communist-controlled) members of the Zengakuren were sixty-forty. The ‘mainstream’ (from which the Sampa is descended) was dubbed ‘Trotskyist’ by the Communists and ‘anarchist’ by many outside the movement, but it was not without ideological consistency of purpose. Moreover, the ideology was soon to be put to the test, for in 1960 Japan faced its greatest political crisis since the war, over the revision of the Japan-US Security Treaty. Those student groups controlled by the Communists played a less important and certainly a less violent part in the demonstrations against the Treaty than the students of the ‘mainstream’. The ‘anti-mainstream’, following the current JCP platform, directed its attacks against the Treaty itself, as a manifestation of ‘American imperialism’. Their most spectacular effort was to besiege the car carrying President Eisenhower’s Press Secretary, so that he had to be rescued by helicopter. The ‘mainstream’, on the other hand, was much more concerned about the domestic political aspect of the crisis, on the grounds that domestic ‘monopoly capital’ was the main enemy and that Prime Minister Kishi was its leading representative. In directing its main fire against Kishi, the leaders of the Zengakuren ‘mainstream’ had the good judgment (or good fortune) to touch upon a chord of widespread popular apprehension against Kishi’s unparliamentary tactics in bringing in police to dislodge left wing MPs from the Diet when they were trying to obstruct the passage of the Treaty. Popular interest in the Treaty as such was considerable but limited. Interest in ‘democratic government’, on the other hand went far beyond the ranks of professional leftists, and in the later stages of the crisis the demonstrations involved many normally apolitical people. Nevertheless, the violent methods used by the students did them little good in terms of popular goodwill.

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After 1960 the Zengakuren began to disintegrate to such an extent that many observers thought that the days of mass student violence were past. Factions and splits proliferated and student interest in the movement diminished. At the same time the JCP gradually regained much of the power that it had lost within the Zengakuren, mainly through the influence of its highly successful youth movement, Minsei (The Japan Democratic Youth League). The JCP at this time was rapidly expanding its organisation and recovering much of the support lost in the bleak years of the 1950s. Minsei has become one of the most popular youth organisations in Japan, largely because it has deliberately deemphasised its political nature and has concentrated instead on social activities, rather in the manner of the Young Liberals in Australia. It is the policy of the present JCP leaders to cultivate a mass membership even at the expense of ‘quality’. In 1968 it has been estimated that of 1,390,000 students at 820 universities and colleges throughout the country, 71% are members (mostly by default rather than by conscious decision) of self-government organisations affiliated to the Zengakuren. JCPcontrolled groups are thought to represent 69 per cent of the total membership, while the Sampa accounts for most of the rest. It is a characteristic of virtually all sections of the movement that group solidarity prevails over individualism (dissidents form a new group which then maintains its group solidarity) and decision-making is based on the principles of ‘democratic centralism’. Nearly all groups proclaim some form of Marxism. Conservative opinion in Japan attributes student radicalism to the spiritual Vacuum’ of the post-war scene and advocates more and better ethics courses in schools and other measures to inculcate ‘responsibility’. The absence of clear national goals is probably part of the story, as is the extremely acute ‘generation gap’, but there are more important factors involved than these. For many students in Japan, university is an interlude between a home environment that is a good deal more sheltered than would be the case in Australia, and employment by a firm or other organisation which acts for its employees as a welfare state in miniature, while demanding a degree of loyalty that few Australians would be prepared to accept. This in-between period is one of reorientation to a much freer environment, which, however, except for the student movement, provides a singular lack of psychological supports from group membership such as the student has been used to at home. Moreover natural rebels face the frustrating prospect that after a few years of freedom they will have to return to a kind of group-centered life that will involve a considerable sacrifice of individuality. The two types complement each other as the leadable and the leaders respectively. (Hence also the post-graduate conservatism of the bulk of Zengakuren members.) Another point is that students have to overcome incredibly fierce competi-tion to enter the better universities. The ‘examination hell’ has become so ‘hellish’ that a majority of entrants to some prestige institutions have had to endure (and their parents to pay for) one or two years at cram school after finishing high school. Once the university entrance examination is passed, however, the pressure relaxes and a good career is virtually assured by the rigid Japanese system of career ‘streaming’. Students therefore recognize themselves as an elite, and indeed their Marxism sometimes has strong elitist overtones. If one adds the multiversity phenomenon, which is at least as acute in Japan as elsewhere, together with bad teaching, financial stringency of students from poorer families and genuine political apprehensions about the distinctly uninspiring character of

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Japanese government, the Zengakuren is not difficult to understand. It faces, however, the basic revolutionary dilemma of whether it is good tactics to follow, or to shock, public opinion. To shock may have limited success in particular compaigns, but Japanese society in 1968 seems too conservative and too fragmented to respond with the kind of chain reaction that has occurred in France. The Japanese student movement has been looked to as an inspiring example by some student radicals in Australia and elsewhere. It may indeed be able to teach such practical things as the use of snake dances and of crash helmets. But its results in terms of practical politics have so far (except, perhaps, for 1960) been comparatively meagre.

11 Political Parties in Postwar Japan First published in World Review, Vol. 8, No. 2, July 1969 (University of Queensland Press) POLITICAL PARTIES are nothing new in Japan. Organized political clubs, designed to secure for their members participation in the political process, sprang up in the 1870s, shortly after the Meiji Restoration of 1868. 1 Nevertheless, their progress was fitful and their successes qualified. The Meiji Constitution of 1890 left the door open to further development of political parties, but also included powerful safeguards against their ‘excessive’ development. Sovereignty rested, not with the people (through their elected representatives in Parliament), but with an emperor who, though the object of a cult of reverence and patriotism, had no more personal power than a British monarch of the same period. This device, though it undoubtedly produced national unity and discipline at a time when nation-building and modernization were the first priority, had the effect of obscuring lines of responsibility and perpetuating political intrigue among an inner coterie of leaders. The leaders of the main political parties had an often precarious claim to membership of this coterie, and were constantly forced to compete and compromise with others (such as the genro, or ‘elders’ and the Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces) who were in a position of considerable irresponsibility. Although the political parties succeeded in expanding their base of support (universal manhood suffrage was introduced in 1925) and, for a time at least, ensured that cabinets were answerable to the Diet (Parliament), their own uncertain position and the forces of nationalism proved to be their undoing. In 1940 all parties were dissolved into the monolithic Imperial Rule Assistance Association. This background is important in order to put the postwar parties into perspective. The parties which were formed with such rapidity in 1945 inherited much of the structure, problems, attitudes and leadership of their prewar counterparts, despite their changed role in the political system. The continuity is striking despite the revolutionary break with the past implied by many reforms of the Allied Occupation of 1945–52. As in the prewar period, parties of a more or less conservative persuasion have, with one very short break, maintained a parliamentary majority since the end of the war. The Socialists, on the other hand, greatly increased their strength between 1945 and 1960, but have never won a majority of the seats of the Lower House, 2 and are now in decline. Two ‘conservative’ parties were founded at the end of 1945, both of them able to trace their origins to parties which had existed over a long period before the war. The Liberal Party, founded in November 1945, was really the successor of the Seiyukai, which had been started in 1900 by Prince Ito Hirobumi, 3 chief architect of the Meiji Constitution of 1890. The Progressive Party, founded in the same month, similarly derived from the prewar Minseito, principal rival of the Seiyukai.

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In the ten years from November 1945 to November 1955, the conservative camp remained badly fragmented. The Liberals attained an early success by winning a clear majority (264 out of 466) 4 of the seats in the Lower House in the general election of January 1949, but thereafter declined. The Progressive Party underwent four changes of name during the period and finally became the Democratic Party. It was generally less successful than the Liberals, but reached a high point of 185 seats in the general election of February 1955. A number of other splinter groups existed for short periods as they broke away from, or amalgamated with, one or other of the two major conservative parties. The struggle for power among the conservatives in this first postwar decade was greatly affected by the application of General MacArthur’s purge edict to many political figures who had been involved in prewar and wartime politics. The Progressives suffered particularly badly from it with 238 out of their 270 Diet Members being forced out of public life. The Liberals, on the other hand, similarly lost their leader, Hatoyama Ichiro, who in 1946 had to hand over the leadership of the party on a ‘temporary’ basis to a former foreign office official, Yoshida Shigeru. Yoshida (Prime Minister 1946–7 and 1948–1954) proved an exceptionally strong leader who was able to dominate Japanese politics in the later part of the Occupation. Once, however, the Occupation was over and the purge was lifted, his power and that of the Liberal Party began to wane. Much of the significance of the faction fighting among conservatives between 1950 and 1955 lay in a clash between Yoshida and his followers (many of them ex-bureaucrats) and those who had been purged but were now able to return to political life. Yoshida refused to honour his pledge to step down from the party leadership in favour of Hatoyama when the latter returned to politics, so that Hatoyama became the focus for much of the opposition to Yoshida. Hatoyama and his followers eventually joined the Democratic Party and he replaced Yoshida as Prime Minister early in 1955. In November 1955 the Liberal Party and the Democratic Party joined forces to create the Liberal-Democratic Party in the face of a similar merger by the hitherto divided Socialists. This party, despite serious internal divisions, has avoided defections from its ranks and has retained the reins of government, with a clear (though gradually declining) majority of the seats in both Houses of the National Diet. The seemingly impregnable position of the Liberal-Democratic Party (LDP) has led some writers to talk of the Japanese political system as a ‘one-and-a-half’ party system, thus signifying that there is no swing of the pendulum, capable of putting the Opposition into office. Yet much of the real opposition to the Government’s policies comes from within the LDP itself. A change of Prime Minister, usually signalling a change of factional balance within the party, has generally been accompanied by significant changes, not only in the style of leadership, but also in policies. Thus, over policy towards Communist China—always a sensitive barometer of a government’s political colour—a conciliatory line was adopted by the governments of Hatoyama (1955–6), Ishibashi (1956–7), and Ikeda (1960–4), while a tougher line, emphasising anti-communism rather than trade possibilities, was adopted by Kishi (1957–60) and his brother Sato (1964–). 5 The influence of factional rivalries within the LDP was also evident in the political crisis of 1960 over revision of the Japan-US Security Treaty. The reason for the resignation of the Prime Minister, Kishi Nobusuke, in the aftermath of this crisis, was a

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factional rebellion against him in his own party. 6 The party itself went ahead to win a general election later in the year. It seems that the party, though internally fluid, is well able both to maintain its position of power and produce dynamic policies in many fields. Part of the reason why the LDP has been able to govern without the paralysis one might perhaps expect from an examination of its factions and their rivalries is that it has developed the very closest links with the bureaucracy and the most influential sections of business. About a quarter of the Lower House Diet Members are men who have resigned from senior positions in the bureaucracy to take up a political career. The relative influence of these ex-bureaucrats in the LDP, moreover, far exceeds their numbers, and with their connections in government ministries and with the cooperation also of top business leaders, they are able to maintain a sensitive and powerful mechanism of control over the economy. Nevertheless, the pervasiveness of intra-party factionalism together with frequent allegations of corruption and venality involving party members, undoubtedly gives the party a bad press, and various attempts have been made to reform its organisation and way of doing things. These, however, have always come up against the problem of vested interests, particularly of the factions. Some success has been achieved ‘in channelling funds through the central party organisation, rather than through the individual faction leaders, but attempts to cultivate a genuine mass membership have fallen foul of the institution of personal support organisations, at the local level, for individual politicians. In the long term it seems probable that changes in the character of the electorate, together with a secular decline in the party’s vote, will render inevitable a much more determined attempt than any hitherto to reform the party’s structure. The left wing in Japanese politics was also not new in 1945. A socialist movement had been active in politics since universal manhood suffrage was introduced in 1925, although it had found the preservation of ideological and organisational unity very difficult. The Japan Socialist Party (JSP), founded in 1945, was little more than a loose coalition of the leaders of the various prewar Socialist factions, together with their respective followings. Despite this, the JSP did well in the 1947 general election, becoming the largest single party, with 143 seats. As a result, it was able to form a coalition government together with the Democratic Party and the small Cooperative Party. This government lasted, first under a Socialist Prime Minister, then under a Democratic Prime Minister, for less than two years, and was unable either to achieve much of significance or even to retain its own cohesion. The general election of January 1949, following the fall of this coalition government, reduced the number of Socialist seats from 143 to 48. Many of the lost Socialist votes clearly went to the Japan Communist Party (JCP), which won 35 seats as against 4 at the previous election. Following this disaster, the JSP, in October 1951, split into a Left Socialist Party and a Right Socialist Party—the occasion of the split being disagreement over the peace settlement, and especially, the Security Treaty with the United States. 7 Nevertheless, the two Socialist Parties both improved their electoral situations throughout the 1950s. The improvement was especially marked in the case of the Left, which was able to use the organisation and support of the principal trade union federation, Sohyo. The two parties were able to resolve their difficulties through a series of long and tortuous negotiations and were reunited in one party in October 1955 (one month before

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the formation of the LDP). (A further small party of the extreme left, the Labour-Farmer Party, rejoined the fold in 1957). The immediate promise of participation in power, which had speeded the negotiations for unity, was frustrated by the subsequent merger of the conservatives. Nevertheless, the Party assumed that the favourable electoral trend would continue and would put it into power in the foreseeable future. This hope was to be frustrated. From the late 1950s the rate of increase in votes and Diet seats hitherto achieved by the JSP slackened. More recently, the Party has actually begun to lose both seats and votes. There are several reasons for this, although observers differ in their estimates of the relative importance of the various factors. Probably the most important, however, is the sustained, ultra-rapid rate of growth attained by the Japanese economy since the late 1950’s. Nearly all sections of the Japanese population have benefited economically from the general prosperity and rise in living standards, although social frustrations and discontent naturally still remain. In part, these are a result of relative deprivation, with certain categories of people failing to increase their satisfactions as rapidly as others. In part, again, they stem from the social changes implicit in the very speed of economic growth. For instance, the rapid transfer of population from the country areas to the big cities has brought about extreme pressure on urban housing and social services, psychological and social problems for those up-rooted from their traditional environment, and agricultural depopulation which leaves many peasant holdings to be farmed by the old and the unenterprising. The JSP, however, has signally failed to make electoral capital out of these very real discontents. One reason for this would seem to be a question of leadership. The party’s leaders, having established their ‘base’ in the trade union movement (especially Sohyo), have been content to leave much of the task of electoral organisation to the trade unions themselves. Many Socialist M.Ps. are ex-trade union officials who owe their election to electoral campaigns mounted by their own trade unions, and hardly at all to the JSP. The individual membership of their party has long been static at about 50,000, a considerable proportion of which is believed to be more or less inactive. This also places the party in a very difficult situation financially. In these circumstances, much of the energy of the party leadership has to be expended on factional infighting and jockeying for power within the quite narrow confines of the leadership structure. Diet Members, party bureaucrats and local activists tend to have different interests in these struggles, but the most important and divisive unit within the party is the faction. JSP factions usually have some sort of ideological cohesion but this is by no means always their sole raison d’être. To a very considerable extent they function as personal support groups designed to secure for their members a share in the power structure of the party. Conflict between them is constant, and has proved very disruptive at a time when the influence of the party itself has been declining. This situation has made it very difficult for the party leaders to conduct rational reviews of party policy, which continues to be expressed in highly ideological language which appeals more to narrow groups of activists than to uncommitted voters. Given the extent and nature of intra-party divisions it is easier to agree on policy that is timehonoured, abstract and inflammatory than on policy that is flexible, concrete and moderate. Hence extreme statements on foreign policy, combining Marxism, pacifism

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and nationalism, have long been the party’s stock-in-trade. Thus the JSP has not responded to the opportunities which have undoubtedly been present, both because of a failure to organize, and on account of a related unwillingness to revamp its policies. The party’s decline, however, has hitherto been only gradual, and this must probably be attributed to the conservatism of the Japanese electorate, whose preference is still to a considerable extent for a personal (if usually indirect) nexus between the voter and the parliamentary candidate, over impersonal support of one party rather than another. There have recently been signs, however, that the JSP decline may be accelerating, partly because of a fluid situation within the Sohyo-affiliated trade unions, which have hitherto been the chief bastion of its support. 8 Electoral support lost in recent years by the JSP has not resulted in a net gain for the LDP, whose support is also, though more slowly, being eroded. 9 Three smaller parties have, in varying degrees, been beneficiaries of the progressive alienation of voters from candidates affiliated with the two major parties, thus giving rise to a ‘multi-party’ trend in Japanese politics. The first of these parties, the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP), was formed in 1960 after breaking away from the JSP in protest against the dominance of the party leadership by Marxists. This it alleged had taken place in the five years since reunification of the Left and Right Socialists. By no means all the former Right Socialists defected from the JSP in 1960 and the DSP did badly in the general election later the same year. It has gained a number of seats since, though its percentage of the total vote remains constant at about eight per cent. The DSP gets organized support from the smaller of the two main national federations of trade unions, Domei, and is heir to a tradition of ‘labourmanagement cooperation’ which is strongly repudiated by Sohyo and the JSP. It advocates, in domestic policy, the creation of a welfare state, and in foreign policy, negotiations with the United States for the conversion of the Japan-US Security Treaty into a pact whereby American troops would be stationed on Japanese soil only in times of emergency. It is strongly anti-Communist and tends to side with the LDP on foreign policy issues at least as often as it backs the JSP. The second ‘minor’ party, the Japan Communist Party (JCP) has had a chequered history but is now gaining some ground under able leadership. Having been banned before the war, it was allowed to function during the Occupation, but although cultivating a moderate image, failed in its attempts to take over the trade union movement. The 1949 election was the height of its electoral success. In 1950, shortly before the Korean War, it was ordered by the Cominform to abandon its moderate line and engage in a ‘national liberation struggle’ against the presence of American troops in Japan. As a result, most of the party leaders were banned from political life by the Government, its electoral support dwindled to almost nothing, and the party itself was wracked by internal dissensions between different factions. It took ten years for the party to extricate itself from these difficulties, but since 1960 it has made a notable and surprising recovery, although in electoral terms it is still not very significant. The secret of its success-seems to be a careful attention to the organisation of a mass following, and comparatively moderate, ‘nationalist’ policies. Since the beginning of the Sino-Soviet dispute it has successfully purged a pro-Moscow and a pro-Peking faction, and now holds to a position of independence from either centre, although it has reasonably good relations with the

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Soviet Union and particularly close links with the Government of North Korea. No doubt it has profited from the current travail of the JSP. Finally, vigorous organisation and a reputation for honesty seem to have been major factors in the remarkable successes of a relatively new party, the Komeito (Clean Government Party). Based on the Buddhist sect Soka Gakkai, one of Japan’s ‘new religions’ which have made so much ground in the hectic and personally unsettling atmosphere of postwar Japan, it is mounting a direct challenge to the JSP’s position as the major opposition party. Possessing the inestimable advantage of being able to command the votes of most of the several million members of Soka Gakkai, it made increasing inroads into the Upper House at successive elections before contesting the Lower House for the first time in January 1967. At this election it won twenty-five seats, with 5.4 per cent of the vote. The membership of Soka Gakkai, on which the Komeito’s success is based, is drawn to a large extent from the ranks of ‘small’ people, such as temporary. workers in firms, owners of small businesses, small shopkeepers and the like. This corresponds closely to the people who, as mentioned above, have tended to be passed by in the general social and economic changes. It is so far largely an urban party, but significantly enough, many of its supporters are recent arrivals from the countryside. Large blocks of flats in the suburbs of the big cities are said to be a particularly fruitful source of recruits. Given the socio-economic nature of its support, one might have expected the Komeito to steer clear of the ideological issues of foreign policy which have exercised the Left for so long. In the early 1960s this seemed likely to be the case, but since about 1967 the party has taken a very left wing line on foreign policy, in an attempt, it seems, to steal the ideological clothes of the JSP. How long these clothes are likely to fit is a matter for speculation. The other two questions for the future are whether the Komeito will continue to attract extra support at the present rate, and whether it will continue to maintain the present exclusiveness of its links with Soka Gakkai. This brief sketch of the individual political parties will have indicated a number of characteristics of Japanese party politics. First of all it is clear that in Japan the political party often has to come to terms with the political faction, whose roots lie deep in the Japanese political culture. Mutual support groups, owing allegiance to an individual leader, and analogous in certain ways to the traditional Japanese family, are still common in many types of social organisation. Relations between different groups within the same organisation are often acrimonious, and the struggle for leadership is never finally settled. It is the task of the current leader to attempt to accommodate the various groups concerned, always remembering that his own position depends on the extent to which he retains the goodwill of at least a majority of the various groups. Thus formal leadership is relatively weak, while informal leadership (of sub-groups) is relatively strong. The major Japanese political parties exhibit factionalism to a high degree. In part it has been perpetuated by the electoral system, which forces individuals from the same party to fight each other in the same constituency. 10 For this purpose they need the support (particularly financial support, since elections are expensive) of intra-party factions. Even if this aspect of the electoral system were to be abolished, however, it is unlikely that factions would disappear. This is because they are the ‘natural’ units for achieving

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political positions within the party (and in the case of the LDP, in Cabinet also). Factions in the LDP are particularly well organized (the press has dubbed them the ‘divisions’ of the LDP ‘army’), since the LDP presidency (and thus, in present circumstances, the prime ministership) is contested every two years in a vote of LDP Diet Members and local delegates. Policy differences between LDP factions do exist, but are secondary, while cross-factional policy groups exist on certain issues (e.g. China). In the JSP, the ideological differences between factions are much more marked, but personal factors (and particularly the contest for political jobs) are also extremely important. For instance, the bitter dispute in the JSP in recent years between Eda Saburo and Sasaki Kozo may well be described in ideological ‘right-versus-left’ terms, but at the same time has deep roots in personal and organisational factors. Factionalism in the smaller parties has been less marked (though not in the JCP, where in any case attempts are made to suppress it), but it seems doubtful whether the Komeito, which boasts that it contains no factions, will be able to avoid them if it continues to expand. Lack of a mass base is another problem for the older, larger parties, but what this means is that there is little mass support owing generalized allegiance to the party. Support, however, is channelled indirectly, through personal support organisations affiliated with factions (in the case of the LDP) and through trade unions (in the case of the JSP). As a result of their lack of autonomous organisation, the major parties come to rely on outside bodies. Thus some observers regard the LDP and the bureaucracy (together with some business leaders) as a continuum, while it is difficult to disentangle the JSP organisation from that of the Sohyo trade unions. In terms of Western political theory, the autonomy of the party suffers as a result. Finally, what of the system as a whole? The two-party system, which some observers thought had been established on a permanent basis in 1955, proved temporary. The trend since then has been towards a reassertion of pluralism which is more in tune with the Japanese political tradition. At the same time the LDP manages to maintain its political dominance and many of the significant policy debates are fought out within the LDP itself. The left wing parties

Table of Lower House election results, 1946–67

Apr. Apr. Jan. Oct. Apr. Feb. May. Nov. Nov. Jan. 1946 1947 1949 1952 1953 1955 1958 1960 1963 1967 Seats Seats Seats Seats Seats Seats Seats Seats Seats Seats Conservative aggregate

248

281

347

325

310

297

Liberal Democratic Party

287

296

283

277

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Japan Socialist Party

92

143

48

166

Right Socialists

57

66

67

Left Socialists

54

72

89

4

5

4

LabourFarmer

7

145

144

140

17

23

30

3

5

Democratic Socialist Party Japan Communist Party

5

4

35

0

1

2

1

Komeito

5 25

Other Parties

38

25

17

7

1

2

1

1

0

0

Independents

81

13

12

19

11

6

12

5

12

9

464

466

466

466

466

467

467

467

467

486

Total

have comparatively little influence on legislation, and the intransigently ideological positions which they have tended to take on a variety of issues may be connected with their long-term separation from the discipline of responsibility for government. At the same time, they are able to exert influence in the negative sense of blocking revision of the Constitution. 11 Moreover, they have been able on occasion to force the Government to heed their views by invoking the traditional doctrine of consensus, whereby the majority accommodates the views of the minority and a decision is then arrived at with unanimous assent. Interestingly enough, however, the Left has tended to try to force the Government to observe the rule of consensus by extra-parliamentary means such as mass demonstrations, or by activities within the Diet such as filibusters. One of the main problems for the future of the Japanese party system is whether it will be possible to devise a form of pluralism which incorporates a reasonable degree of consensus without the resort to the confrontation of extremes. The best hope for such a solution seems to lie in a government of centre-moderates, but the prospects of such a government materialising in the immediate future seem slim.

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NOTES 1. The revolutionary event which marked the ending of rule by the Shogun and symbolises the opening of Japan to Western influences after two and a half centuries of national seclusion and ‘feudal’ decentralization. 2. The Lower House (House of Representatives) currently consists of 486 seats. Members are elected according to the unusual system of a single non-transferable vote in multi-member constituencies. That is, each constituency elects between three and five candidates, while each voter casts a single, non-transferable vote, as in the first-past-the-post system. The Upper House (House of Councillors) consists of 250 members, whose term is six years, with half the total membership renewable every three years. 150 seats are for multi-member constituencies whose boundaries coincide with the prefectures, while the remaining 100 seats are contested in a national constituency’, with the whole nation being treated as a single constituency. Voters have a single, non-transferable vote in each case. 3. Japanese names are given in their original order, with the surname preceding the personal name. 4. See table of Lower House election-results, on p. 49. 5. See Frank C.Langdon, ‘The Japanese Liberal Democratic Factional Discord on China Policy’, Pacific Affairs, vol. XLI, no. 3 (Fall 1968) pp. 403–15. 6. For an interesting dissection of this crisis, see George R.Packard III, Protest in Tokyo: The Security Treaty Crisis of 1960, Princeton University Press, 1966. 7. The Left Socialists opposed both the Peace Treaty (on the ground that a number of belligerent powers, including those from the Communist bloc, had refused to sign) and the Security Treaty (which it ascribed to ‘American imperialism’) while the Right Socialists acquiesced in the Peace Treaty while opposing the Security Treaty. 8. The most detailed treatment of the JSP is Allen B.Cole, George O.Totten, and Cecil B.Uyehara, Socialist Parties in Postwar Japan, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1966. A shorter account is J.A.A.Stockwin, The Japanese Socialist Party and Neutralism, Melbourne University Press, 1968. 9. Electoral boundaries are still drawn in a way that favours the countryside, where the LDP is strongest, over the towns. 10. See note 2. 11. Revision of the 1947 Constitution requires a two-thirds majority in both Houses of the Diet followed by a simple majority in a referendum of the people. For several years the opposition parties, which oppose revision of the Constitution, particularly Article 9 (which is known as the ‘Pacifist Clause’) have been in a position to defeat such a motion in the Lower House. For insights into this and other aspects of the recent Japanese political scene, see D.C.S.Sissons (ed.), Papers on Modern Japan, 1965, and Papers on Modern Japan, 1968, Australian National University Press, 1965–8.

12 The Japanese Opposition: Political Irrelevance or Wave of the Future? First published in Australian Outlook, Vol. 25, No. 2, Aug. 1971 (Australian Institute of International Affairs) JAPAN IN THE postwar period has not belonged to that small handful of nations throughout the world where the roles of Government and Opposition are exchanged fairly regularly as a result of free electoral processes. Indeed, if alternating government is to be regarded as a criterion of democracy, the Japanese record is just slightly worse than that of Australia. While the Australian Labor Party last participated in office at the federal level in 1949, none of the four opposition parties now represented in the Lower House (the House of Representatives) of the Japanese Diet have been in power since 1948. In that year a shaky coalition government of both Socialists and Conservatives, led first by a Socialist and later by a Conservative Prime Minister, fell from office. Since then the Japanese Government has been firmly in the hands of politicians who, however much their personalities, policies and even ideologies may differ, have all carried a Conservative label. From 1955 they have succeeded in coexisting within one somewhat amorphous and quite broadly based political party, the Liberal Democratic Party, or LDP. It must be admitted that the Japanese ‘Left’ has looked rather less credible as an alternative government since 1948 than has the ALP since 1949. Like the latter, it has been prone to ideological and personal factionalism (though not to any great extent regional factionalism), but its electoral performance has been much worse. Thus once the possibility of participation with Conservatives in coalition governments was foreclosed by a merging of Conservative groups, the prospect of power has seemed distant. Voting habits have been remarkably stable since the mid-fifties, as may be seen from Table 1. Grouped roughly from right to left, the present Opposition parties are: The Democratic Socialist Party (DSP), with 31 seats in the Lower House; the Komeito (sometimes translated ‘Clean Government Party’), with 47 seats; the Japan Socialist Party (JSP), with 91 seats; and the Japan Communist Party (JCP), with 14 seats. The DSP broke with the JSP in 1959–60, alleging pro-Communist tendencies in the latter. The Komeito is backed by the most successful of Japan’s ‘new religions’, the Soka Gakkai, although in the past year

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Table 1 Lower House election results 1953–69

19.4.53 27.2.55 22.5.58 20.11.60 12.11.63 29.1.67 27.12.69 Seats Votesa

LDPb

% of vote

310

297

287

296

283

277

288

22,717

23,386

22,977

22,740

22,424

22,448

22,381

65.6

63.2

57.8

Seats Votes

DSP

% of vote

57.6

54.7

48.8

47.6

17

23

30

31

2,464

3,023

3,404

3,636

8.8

7.4

7.4

7.7

25

47

2,472

5,124

5.4

10.9

Seats Votes

Komeito

% of vote Seats

143

160

166

145

144

140

90

9,851

11,168

13,094

10,887

11,907

12,826

10,074

% of vote

27.6

30.2

32.9

27.6

29.0

27.9

21.5

Seats

1

2

1

3

5

5

14

656

733

1,012

1,157

1,646

2,191

3,199

% of vote

1.9

2.0

2.5

2.9

4.0

4.8

6.8

Seats

11

6

12

5

12

9

16

1,524

1,229

2,381

1,119

1,956

2,554

2,492

% of vote

4.4

3.3

6.0

2.8

4.8

5.5

5.3

Seats

1

2

1

1

0

0

0

152

497

288

142

60

101

81

% of vote

0.4

1.3

0.7

0.3

0.1

0.2

0.2

Seats

466

467

467

467

467

486

486

34,900

37,013

39,752

38,509

41,016

45,996

47,007

100

100

100

100

100

100

100

Votes

Votes

Votes

Votes

Votes % of vote

JSPc

JCP

Indep.d

Others

Totale

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Notes: (a) All figures for votes in thousands, (b) Various Conservative parties in 1953 and 1955 elections, (c) Various Socialist parties in 1953 and 1955 elections, (d) Most Independents affiliate with the LDP after their election. (e) Figures for the total vote are slightly inaccurate due to rounding.

an attempt has been made to disengage the two organisations from each other. At the Lower House general election of December 1969, the JSP, which in the late 1950s had held unchallenged sway over the ranks of the Opposition., suffered a catastrophic loss of fifty seats, some of which were picked up by the Komeito and the JCP. From Table 1 it can be seen that the LDP vote has remained static at just over 22 million votes, whereas the party’s proportion of the total vote has declined to less than fifty per cent (although some votes for Independents must be added to this figure). The number of seats gained by the party has scarcely fluctuated. On the Opposition side, the situation is more fluid, mainly because of the trend towards a multi-party, and away from a single-party, Opposition. It is true that Table 1 disguises the extent of Socialist divisions in the early 1950s. Until their amalgamation late in 1955, there were strictly speaking three Socialist Parties—Right Socialist, Left Socialist and Labour-Farmer (the last named, a minor splinter group, did not rejoin the united Socialist Party until 1957). Thus 1958 was the only election where the Socialists have gone to the poils as a single party since the end of the Occupation. Nevertheless, what is new about recent trends is the inroads being made into traditional Socialist support by the Komeito and the JCP, both of which are (compared with other parties) dynamic, united, wellorganized and skilful in the manner and direction of their appeal. This, however, has tended to fragment the impact of the Opposition as a whole, and there seems as yet little likelihood of any single party being able to reunite the anti-LDP forces under its banner. As can readily be imagined, this apparently unpromising situation has given rise to much soul-searching, especially among intellectuals and the mass media, which tend to be critical of the Conservative Government and its long tenure of office. Whatever the truth of the matter, the view is often expressed that in the absence of effective opposition the Government has become irresponsible and corrupt, inattentive to the needs of the people, and a prey to vested interests.’ In Australian Federal politics, the effects of the ALP’s long years in the wilderness have been tempered, for some at least, by an intermittent feeling that ‘one more heave’ 2 would put the Party into office. In Japan, on the other hand, the figures quoted above show how unreal such a belief would be. Thus, the whole question of the opportunities for genuinely effective opposition has come into prominence. Clearly it can be argued that a broad definition of ‘opposition’ would include some of the so-called ‘anti-mainstream’ factions within the LDP. Insofar as shifting coalitions of intra-Party factions have resulted in Governments of different hue, it is arguable that alternation of power takes place in an arena to which the ‘official’ Opposition parties have no access. Under the prime-ministership of Sato Eisaku, 3 however, those factions considered to be ‘anti-mainstream’ 4 have tended to be further removed from power than was the case at periods in the past. With Sato widely expected to step down from office in 1972, the possibility of alternation once more becomes realistic. 5

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On the other hand there seems to be something inherently unsatisfactory, from the point of view of many Japanese observers, in the concept of Government alternating between rival sets of personal cliques within a single ruling party. 6 The relevance or irrelevance of the Opposition is therefore a matter of prime concern to them. Recently there have been signs of what might be a revival in the fortunes of the Opposition. In local elections held in April, left wing candidates have had notable success in Japan’s largest and most populous cities. In particular, the massive victory of the sitting Governor of Tokyo, Minobe Ryokichi, backed by an alliance of Socialists and Communists, against a Conservative candidate supported by the full weight of the Government’s prestige, was heard as a clarion call in anti-Government circles. 7 The overall victory should not be exaggerated: its impact was largely confined to crowded urban areas where the problems of environmental pollution, rising prices, housing and transport have become acute. Nevertheless, its psychological effect could be considerable. The fact that left wing prefectural governors and city mayors have been elected in the mammoth urban complexes of Tokyo-Kawasaki-Yokohama and Kyoto-Osaka, appears to throw doubt on the proposition that a governor or mayor must have connections with the ruling party in order to be able to administer effectively. It may not be entirely a coincidence that when a Cabinet Minister bluntly put forward this thesis, he was immediately dropped from the Cabinet like the proverbial hot cake.

THE KOBAYASHI INCIDENT This particular incident is instructive. On 18 January 1971 the Justice Minister., Kobayashi Takeji, made an election speech in support of the LDP candidate for the governorship of Shizuoka Prefecture, Takeyama Yutaro. Somebody had brought a tape recorder into the meeting, and a tape of Kobayashi’s speech found its way into the hands of a Socialist MP, who used it against the Minister at the Budget Committee of the House of Representatives on 9 February. The speech is worth quoting at some length: Now let me tell you why you should vote for Mr Takeyama from a slightly different angle from those of the previous speakers. As you know, the Government finalized the 1971 budget on 31 December last year. For LDP members October, November and December are the busiest season. We receive from you many demands and petitions, and it is the responsibility of us, the members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, to have these wishes of yours incorporated into the budget… We work without sleep and without rest. But what are the Gentlemen of the Opposition parties doing meanwhile? Presumably they are staying at home to keep their feet warm… The Gentlemen of the Opposition have nothing whatever to do with budget preparation… In this regard an Opposition party serves no purpose at all. (After the budget is submitted to the Diet] for deliberation in February and March, the Gentlemen of the Opposition loudly abuse and criticize it, and the newspapers use big type to highlight the fact that somebody or other said this or that. But during the two

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months of debate, the budget is never revised by a single sen or a single rin. 8 So you see the Diet is a place where people make a lot of noise, but it is powerless in budget-making. The present Constitution says the budget must go through the Diet, so as a formality, it has to be submitted to the Diet. While it is before the Diet, LDP Members…merely present themselves because a quorum is necessary… The budget is automatically approved on 31 March. Kobayashi went on to say that the constituents ought to vote for Takeyama because he had once been a Minister of State (he was Construction Minister in the Hatoyama Cabinet in 1954) and thus would have access to important people in Government Ministries in a way that a ‘new man’ would not. Finally he concluded: Democracy, in plain language, is a kind of levelling movement. It is the central Government that must, of necessity, divert taxation revenue from rich areas to poor areas. Therefore every prefecture, city, town and village must count on the central Government. This cannot be helped. It follows that the Government, run by us, the Liberal Democratic Party, will be willing to accommodate the wishes of mayors and governors if they are affiliated to our party. It is, however, quite impossible for us to give aid to the strengthening of an Opposition party, by helping an Opposition mayor or governor. 9 The ‘exposure’ of this speech in the House of Representatives Budget Committee forced Kobayashi’s resignation despite his protestations that what he had said in a campaign speech ought not to be taken too seriously. The crucial factor seems to have been the Prime Minister’s unwillingness to face the controversy that would be certain to drag on over Kobayashi’s derogatory references to the role of the Diet in budget-making. He was no doubt determined to avoid a repetition of the lengthy disruption of Government business caused by the ‘Kuraishi incident’ in February 1968, when some forthrightly critical remarks about the Constitution by his Minister of Agriculture and Forestry were taken up by the Opposition in order to embarrass the Government. Kuraishi was forced to resign, but only after protracted and acrimonious negotiations with the Opposition, which brought the business of the Diet virtually to a halt. 10 The Kobayashi affair poses two questions: how far did the resignation of the Justice Minister represent a victory for the Opposition, and to what extent was Kobayashi right in what he actually said? To the first it may be answered that the Opposition’s victory was limited and local. The position of justice minister in Japan is not regarded as being of the first rank, and the Government’s armour remained essentially undented. Nevertheless, the fact, if true, that Sato preferred to let Kobayashi resign forthwith, rather than risk a repetition of the unseemly events of February 1968, suggests that the Opposition, despite its electoral weakness, does have a degree of leverage in these things. The second question, whether the Justice Minister was accurate in his remarks, as distinct from merely persuasive, is central to the problem of the relevance or otherwise of the political Opposition in Japan. Certainly, the general purport of Kobayashi’s remarks appears to be widely accepted, whether the situation is approved of or deplored. 11 Kurt Steiner, in his meticulously

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researched book on Japanese local government, quotes a former Vice-President of the LDP (recently deceased), Kawashima Shojiro, from a statement he made in 1959. The statement bears a remarkable resemblance to the views expressed by Kobayashi. Kawashima spoke as follows: It profits (the prefecture) if the governor belongs to the government party. If I may speak out of my experience as chief of the Autonomy Board, we did not look much after the needs of places with Socialist governors. At present the work of the prefecture is largely work on behalf of the state. If there were no state subsidies the prefecture could actually not carry out its work. That is to say, under a governor who does not have a direct connection with the government, the work cannot be carried out. 12 Steiner quotes a progressive Governor who contested this view on three main grounds. First, that there are only rather limited provisions for what is termed ‘Special Distribution Tax’, in the Local Distribution Tax Law. Second, that administrators within ministries are more inclined to think in terms of needed projects than in party political terms. And third, that many contacts with the central Government are handled by higher-ranking officials of prefectural bureaucracies, who even in a prefecture with a progressive governor, are likely to be former central Government officials and thus to have their own connections with the central Government bureaucracy. 13 Clearly, moreover, the electoral capital that can be made out of persuading the voters that the Government only treats with its own kind makes it attrac-tive to Conservative candidates at the local level. On the other hand Steiner argues that progressive candidates have a parallel interest in denying it, and he concludes that ‘all things being equal and funds being limited, conservative governors are probably given a certain preference’. 14 It would in any case probably be difficult to demonstrate that prefectures with progressive governors had been relatively disadvantaged, because for the most part they are big industrial areas which require vast quantities of funds in the normal course of events. The political consequences for the Government of attempting to ‘starve out’ a progressive governor in such crucial ‘megalopolitan’ cities as Tokyo or Osaka would obviously be unacceptable. It is therefore hardly surprising that while the LDP candidate for the governorship of Tokyo in 1971, Hatano Akira, made free use of the argument that he, as a Party member and former chief of the metropolitan police, would have much better access to the present Government than his left wing rival Dr Minobe, the electors should have preferred Dr Minobe by an overwhelming margin of votes. 15

OPPOSITION STRATEGIES What has been implicit in the preceding argument is that opposition parties may be in certain senses politically ‘relevant’ even where they do not constitute a credible alternative government. It is therefore desirable to examine the ways in which this might be so. Robert Dahl, in his book Political Oppositions in Western Democracies, does not use the term ‘relevance’, but speaks of the ‘controlling goals’ of a political opposition— the objectives that the opposition seeks to achieve by changing the conduct of

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government; and its strategies—the means it chooses to attain those goals. The controlling goals may involve change in the personnel of government, specific government policies, the structure of the political system or the socio-economic structure. Political oppositions may, in Dahl’s view, pursue one of six basic types of strategy: (1) Aim to win a majority of seats in the legislature and form a government. (2) Aim to take part in a coalition government. (3) (If (1) and (2) are impracticable), seek to achieve some of its goals by bargaining among major associations, through a type of ‘democratic corporativism’. (Some Scandinavian countries and Holland.) (4) Concentrate on a number of areas at once, such as pressure group activities, intraparty bargaining, obtaining favourable judicial decisions, action at state and local levels, winning elections or any combination of these. (The United States and to an extent West Germany.) (5) Close ranks in the face of an external crisis such as war. (6) Act as a revolutionary opposition dedicated to the destruction of the existing system. 16

How does the Japanese political Opposition fit this pattern? Presumably ‘relevance’ is related to success or at least the prospect of success in relation to some such criteria, although one has to admit that some of the strategies outlined by Dahl would tend to make an opposition more relevant to the politics of the country concerned than others. ‘Relevance’ depends not only on the success or failure of the chosen strategy, but on a range of other factors as well. Thus the Australian Labor Party in the past twenty years has sought, among other things, to become the government party (Strategy 1). Its failure to realize this strategy does not make it politically irrelevant, but it is less relevant than the British Labour Party, where the same strategy has on occasion succeeded. The Japanese Opposition parties are not at present in a position seriously to pursue Strategy (1). Strategy (2) is officially pursued by many elements among the Opposition parties, but in the current electoral climate would require a perhaps unattainable degree of cooperation between the various parties concerned, as well as substantial defections from the ranks of the LDP, in order to succeed. A substantial shift in national voting patterns away from the LDP and in favour of the Opposition might make it much more feasible. Strategy (3) is probably quite unrealistic in the Japanese context, because of the relative absence of channels of access between the opposition parties and such major economic organisations as Keidanren (The Federation of Economic Organisations) and Nikkeiren (The Japan Federation of Employers Associations), contrasted with the parties’ very close links with labour union federations such as Sohyo and Domei. Strategy (4) is certainly closer to the reality, although the present Japanese Opposition has only limited opportunities for success in any of these areas, both because of its electoral weakness hitherto and because of the ‘in-groups versus ‘out-group’ character of relations between Government and Opposition. This is singularly unlike the American pattern. Strategy (5) is now inapplicable, while Strategy (6) has been part of the rhetoric (and at times no doubt the intention) of left wing Socialists and Communists. Much of the chronic tension between left and right wings of the JSP relates to fundamental disagreements about the strategy of revolution.

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Dahl’s catalogue of opposition strategies, however, by no means exhausts the possibilities. In current Japanese conditions three further strategies are met with: Strategy (7) Concentrate on operating a political machine, and look only secondarily to the pursuit of power at the government level (or reconcile oneself to its unobtainability). This strategy implies involvement in political activity for its own sake, thus providing a degree of moral satisfaction for political activists and career satisfaction (of a limited kind) for political professionals. It tends to be typical of a long-term opposition party lacking the prospect of attaining power, once the rhetoric has been stripped away. Since, in effect, this is a defeatist strategy, it tends ultimately to demoralize all concerned, and may well lead to declining support. This, in essence, is what has happened to the JSP in recent years. Paradoxically enough, this condition tends to be associated both with bitter faction fighting (competition for diminishing patronage) and with dogged conservatism of outdated policies and ideologies. Strategy (8) Use parliamentary institutions in a fundamentally negative way, with the aim of obstructing Government business. This strategy has been frequently and consistently used by the Japanese Opposition (especially the JSP and JCP), utilising certain techniques of filibustering in the Diet in order to delay or prevent the passage of contentious legislation. This is not a total or invariable policy. Much routine legislation is processed without significant obstruction. Nevertheless, on some issues obstruction is taken to the point where parliamentary procedures virtually break down. This has the effect of increasing the limited bargaining power of the Opposition, since the Government may have to make concessions in order to get things moving again. This strategy, justified in part by genuine disapproval of certain types of legislation, and in part by reference to the ‘tyranny of the majority’, does limit the Government’s freedom of action to a marked extent, although the Government in its turn has developed techniques of dealing with it. 17 Strategy (9) Seek to build a base of power at the local level, and become entrenched in local administrations. This strategy has been pursued over a long period by the Italian Communists, who have long administered Bologna and other cities. The object of this strategy could be twofold: first, by gaining control of significant sections of the administrative machine, to force changes in Government policy and generally make one’s presence felt in Government circles; and second, to use local administrations as a base for further electoral advances at the national level, with the ultimate aim of achieving power at the centre. This can be done by providing patronage, demonstrating political effectiveness, giving practical experience to party personnel, and so on. The recent local elections in Japan suggest that perhaps Strategy (9) might develop as a viable one for the Japanese Opposition. It must be agreed that if this is so, the development is at an early stage, and its future is problematical. Nevertheless, it is clear that the LDP received a considerable shock by the extent of its defeat in Tokyo and by the fact that the sitting LDP Governor in Osaka prefecture, despite several terms in office during which he had built up a powerful political machine, was defeated (though narrowly) by a relatively unknown law professor, Kuroda Ryoichi. 18

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THE 1971 LOCAL ELECTIONS In order to explain the significance of these developments, a word is first necessary about the rather complex electoral situation in Japanese local government. There are several levels at which elections are held. The first is that of prefectural governor. 19 In gubernatorial elections, as in some lower level elections, a high proportion of candidates stand as Independents. Of these the majority are regarded as conservative and may have LDP backing, some have the support of opposition parties and thus are regarded as progressive, while a few have the backing of both the LDP and some left wing parties. 20 As a result of the current gubernatorial elections, 21 the following were elected: LDPaffiliated 22; Conservative Independents 18; Progressive Independents 3; ‘Other’ Independents 2; Minor-party affiliated 1. No candidate sponsored by a major Opposition party or parties and running under a party label was elected. The prefectural assembly results were as follows:

Table 2 Prefectural Assembly results 1971 22

Seats

Votes

Seats prior to election

LDP

1,417

18,770,204

1,557

DSP

96

1,995,301

93

Komeito

94

1,538,254

78

JSP

471

7,740,375

504

JCP

105

2,987,622

35

Independents

347

6,312,045

128

26

462,353

Others Vacant

29 129

It can be seen from this table that the Opposition parties have only 766 seats, as against 1,417 for the LDP, to which approximately 255 of the 347 Independents should be added. At the same time the voting difference is by no means so great. The biggest changes brought about by the election are the increase in the number of Independents, and in the number of Communists. The next level of election is that of city mayors. Here again the overall pattern remains very heavily in favour of the Government. The totals are as follows (only 161 of the 597 city mayoralties were being contested on 25 April):

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Table 3 Affiliation of City Mayors 23 Post-25 April 1971

Seats LDP

105

Conservative Independents

354

JSP

22

Progressive Independents

61

Others ‘Other’ Independents Total

1 54 597

There is not space to give the results for the other levels of local representation (town and village mayoralties, city, town and village assemblies); at the lowest levels there is no change in the pattern whereby Independents preponderate and Opposition party representation is minimal. It is obvious from these figures that in overall terms the Opposition parties are weak at the local level. How significant, then, are their recent (and admittedly localized) advances? Much attention has been paid in the Japanese press to the cooperation of the Socialist and Communist parties in some constituencies in the recent local elections. This is a new (though not entirely unprecedented) development, which largely cuts across parallel moves during the past year to form a grouping or alliance (or new party) based on centre left elements such as the DSP, Komeito and the right wing factions of the JSP. The fact that the Socialist-Communist electoral alliance has had a measure of success in metropolitan areas has tended to damp the spirits of those working for a centre-left alliance, an enterprise fraught in any case with manifold difficulties of its own. 24 The Socialist-Communist alliance operated in five gubernatorial constituencies on 11 April 1971—Hokkaido, Tokyo, Kanagawa, Osaka and Fukuoka. It was successful in Tokyo and Osaka and failed by only a small margin of votes in Hokkaido. (It also succeeded in Kyoto in 1970, where the sitting Progressive Governor, Ninagawa Torazo, began his sixth term in office. In Aichi, which includes the big industrial city of Nagoya, and where the gubernatorial election was held in February 1971, the alliance narrowly missed defeating a well entrenched Conservative Governor.) In Kanagawa and Fukuoka, however, LDP cadidates won by unexpectedly wide margins, possibly because in neither case was the JSP-JCP alliance entirely harmonious. 25 In the elections for city mayors held on 25 April 1971, the alliance operated in 31 cities, and was successful in 10. The press tended to regard this result as disappointing after the promise shown on 11 April. 26 Nevertheless the successes included three cities on the western outskirts of Tokyo, one some way to the north (Omiya), and most significantly of all, the heavily polluted, smogridden city of Kawasaki, midway between,

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and contiguous with, Tokyo and Yokohama. It was pointed out that there was now a vast ‘progressive megalopolis’ stretching from the northern and western outskirts of Tokyo, down the western side of the bay to Yokohama and beyond. 27 In terms of population rather than number of separate administrative units, it was clear that the Opposition camp had made impressive inroads into the conservative near-monopoly of local administration. It is widely accepted in Japan that left wing gains in urban constituencies must be intimately related to the severe and highly publicized problems of environmental pollution, commodity price inflation, housing shortage (and expense) and transport congestion. That these are problems of great and pressing seriousness nobody who has visited Tokyo/Yokohama, Nagoya or the Kansai area (Kyoto/Osaka/Kobe) will deny. It is also true that these problems have become more acute (and gained more publicity) during the past two or three years. The view is often met with that the Government is unwilling (or unable) to cope adequately with such issues because it is too closely beholden to big business. The fate of the Government’s anti-pollution bill late in 1970 appeared to give some substance to this, although business has become more sensitive to pollution issues. 28

At the same time, there is evidence that urbanisation and affluence in the big cities are bringing about important changes in voting behaviour. Traditionally the most effective way to influence votes in Japan has been by utilising networks of social and occupational connections. Most candidates have their own koenkai or personal support group, which operates through local ‘influentials’ who are able, in their turn to influence votes. 29 This has been possible because of the intensity of group consciousness, with each group (whether it be firm, office, school, family or whatever) bound together by emotive ties of loyalty which go well beyond any purely contractual relationship, and are more important than any occupational similarities between people in different groups. 30 Moreover, the work group has been of supreme importance, and has tended, by and large, to reinforce conservative attitudes, or at least, loyalty to conservative candidates. (Paradoxically, however, it has also reinforced the appeal of Marxism to certain sections of the workforce, 31 while much of the attractiveness of the Soka Gakkai to the newly-urbanized elements in big cities rests with its provision of synthetic warm-hearted groups. 32 ) The Japanese sociologist Miss Nakane Chie implies that little has changed in this regard in the big cities. She writes: New suburban communities do not provide the essentials for friendship …; a man is too deeply involved in the affairs of his place of work to have time or inclination to make friends in his neighbourhood, and home for him is a place of rest, not the centre of social activities. 33 On the other hand, a political scientist, Okubo Sadayoshi, presents evidence which suggests that home and leisure as distinct from work activities are coming to be regarded by the individual, at least in cities such as Tokyo, as far more important than used to be the case, or than is still the case in the country taken as a whole. He argues that as a consequence the personal communications network in relation to voting behaviour is to a large extent breaking down, while the effect on voting of the mass media is increasing. A

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personal communications system works well where the individual submerges his personality in the group, since by influencing the group leader, the candidate may realistically hope to obtain the votes of all or nearly all of the members. The economic cost, however, of swaying individuals who think as individuals is far higher, and imposes upon candidates a quite different, and necessarily more programmatic, approach to the problem of winning elections. 34 The contrast between the programmes of the two main candidates in the Tokyo gubernatorial election is instructive. The Conservative Hatano proposed a radical and grandiose plan for urban renewal, which would presumably have been backed by a massive infusion of Government funds. The left wing Minobe, on the other hand, appealed on the basis of his record as Governor, on the need to improve social services, housing, and the ‘quality of life’, 35 in other words on those very things which the mass media had been hammering home consistently for months. He attacked the Government’s subservience to ‘the great God GNP’, and coined the slogan sutoppu za Sato (stop Sato)—a reference to the Sato Government’s alleged determination to link continued high economic growth with rising military spending, and so bring about a revival of Japanese militarism. Much has now been written in Japan about Minobe’s personal charm, his allegedly enigmatic smile, and especially his appeal to women. Women are now a majority of those who go to the polls in Tokyo, and it appears that an overwhelming majority of them voted for Minobe. There seems little doubt that Hatano himself was an exceptionally good candidate, but he simply did not have the means to stem the tide of sentiment running in Minobe’s favour. In conclusion, how likely is it that the Opposition parties will be able to consolidate the current favourable trends in cities such as Tokyo? One problem, as we have seen, is their lack of unity, and their essential diversity. The JSP remains the major Opposition party, but it has an old-fashioned image and probably a declining base of support. The DSP neither advances nor declines. The Komeito has tarnished its ‘clean’ image by a freedom of speech scandal in 1969–70, and its pool of potential new supporters seems to be running out. This leaves the Japan Communist Party, the party that has been referred to by some Government leaders as the major threat to the Government for the 1980s. It is clear that the JCP provided the main organisational impetus for the Socialist-Communist joint front in the recent local elections, a fact that causes anxiety for some Socialists. Over the past ten years the JCP has demonstrated a resilience and a capacity to attract votes that demands close analysis. At the same time it has a long way to go, and is still a minor force in purely electoral terms. 36 The saying that ‘what Tokyo does today, the rest of Japan does tomorrow ‘is probably applicable to electoral trends only in the very long term, if at all. It seems highly unlikely that the LDP would be forced to relinquish the reins of government during this decade. Nevertheless, the recent local elections have brought about a noticeable change in the way the Opposition is regarded, and even conceivably (pace Kobayashi Takeji) in the extent to which it will have political relevance, in the various senses of that term.

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NOTES 1. See for instance this comment by a Japanese academic, who happens to specialise in British politics: ‘For a long time in Japan, the corrupt relationship between government and capital has spawned a network of vested interests… [W]hat has happened is that these vague interest group relationships have become fixed as a result of a constant exchange of favours and special privileges between the Government and various interest groups and in this process there has developed [a] system of governmental irresponsibility…’. Kawai Hidekazu, ‘Parliamentary Democracy in Crisis: An Analysis of the Weaknesses of the Socialist Party’, The Japan Interpreter, vol. 6, no. 3 (Autumn 1970), pp. 266–79, at p. 274. 2. Churchill’s phrase after the narrow Conservative failure to dislodge Labour at the 1950 election in Britain. 3. Japanese names are here written in the original order, with the surname first. 4. ‘Mainstream’ factions in the LDP are those which support the current Party President (especially at Party presidential elections, held every two years). ‘Antimainstream’ factions oppose him, or support an alternate leader. In addition, there are said to be ‘non-mainstream’ factions, which, as it were, keep their options open. Policy issues play a limited, though at times significant, role in this power play. 5. An important contemporary focus for opposition is the Diet Members’ League for the Restoration of Relations with China, set up in December 1970, and including about ninety LDP MPs, as well as MPs from all four Opposition parties. The China issue reflects a deep and complex division within the Japanese polity, which the Government has to handle with great care. The best study of the LDP, which includes a case study of China policy, is H.Fukui, Party in Power: the Liberal Democrats and Policy Making, Canberra, Australian National University Press, 1970. 6. See J.A.A.Stockwin, ‘A Comparison of Political Factionalism in Japan and India’, The Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol. XVI, no. 3 (December 1970), pp. 361–74. 7. In the Tokyo Gubernatorial election held on 11 April 1971, Minobe scored 3,615,299 votes, while his opponent Hatano Akira, a former metropolitan police chief, only got 1,935,694. Minobe, who was first elected, by a much narrower margin, in 1967, is said to have polled more votes in 1971 than any other candidate in any election in Japan. The turnout, 72.36 per cent, was the highest on record for any Tokyo Gubernatorial election, going against an observed trend towards urban voter apathy. 8. At current rates of exchange one sen approximately 0.0025 Australian cents, while one rin=approximately 0.00025 Australian cents. 9. A text (in English) of Kobayashi’s speech is given in The Japan Times, 12 February 1971. 10. The fact that Kuraishi reappeared in his old job as a result of a Cabinet reshuffle in January 1970 did not appear to worry the Opposition unduly.

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11. For a view which agrees with the factual basis of Kobayashi’s remarks, see K. Murata, in The Japan Times, 12 February 1971. 12. Kurt Steiner, Local Government in Japan. Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1965, p. 447, quoting Shukan Asahi, 1 March 1959. The Prime Minister, Kishi Nobusuke, spoke to similar effect during the same electoral campaign. 13. Steiner, op. cit., p. 447. 14. Loc. cit. 15. For comment, see Yomiuri Shimbun, Mainichi Shimbun and Asahi Shimbun, for 12 April (evening) and 13 April 1971. 16. Robert E.Dahl, Political Opposition in Western Democracies, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1966, pp. 341–7. 17. See Hans Baerwald, ‘An Aspect of Japanese Parliamentary Politics’, The Japan Interpreter, vol. 6, no. 2 (Summer 1970), pp. 196–205. 18. Kuroda obtained 1,558,170 votes as against 1,533,263 votes for his LDP opponent, Sato Gisen. 19. Of the 46 prefectures (roughly equivalent in size to English counties) the vast majority are called ken, but Tokyo Prefecture (which includes the outer suburban areas as well as some distant offshore islands) is called to (metropolis), the large northern island of Hokkaido is treated as one administrative unit and is termed do (district), while the Kyoto and Osaka prefectures are called fu (municipality). The composite word to-do-fu-ken is translatable simply as ‘prefecture’. 20. This can lead to curious results. Thus while Kuroda, with JSP-JCP backing, was elected Governor of Osaka prefecture, in the Osaka City Mayoral election held simultaneously, a candidate sponsored jointly by the LPD, DSP, Komeito and JSP, triumphed by a 5–1 margin over a candidate backed by the Communists alone. 21. The local elections were held in two waves, on 11 and 25 April 1971, though some governorships had been decided at various times over the previous several months. 22. Mainichi Shimbun, 13 April 1971. Yomiuri Shimbun, 13 April 1971. 23. Yomiuri Shimbun (evening), 26 April 1971. In this election the Communists lost the single city mayoralty (Shiojiri City, Nagano Prefecture) which they had won at the previous election. 24. The greatest difficulty is that the left wing of the JSP is implacably opposed to any such move, and the JSP right wing factions (led by the veteran moderate Eda Saburo) would have to defect from the party in order to achieve anything. The death of the DSP Chairman, Nishimura Eiichi, in April 1971, may have damped DSP enthusiasm for such an alliance, while the Komeito with its religious organisational base would be hard to assimilate. Unless it could tempt left wing LDP factions to join it, a new centre left party would be electorally weak. In the Lower House it might account for, say, 30 ex-DSP, 50 ex-Komeito and 30 ex-JSP MPs, totalling only 110. Its success, moreover, depends on favourable trade union realignment. The resignation of the Transport Workers’ Chairman, Takaragi, in March 1971, would seem to be a blow to the hopes of Eda, whom he strongly backed. 25. Yomiuri Shimbun, 13 April 1971 26. Asahi Shimbun, 26 April 1971. Yomiuri Shimbun, 26 April 1971 27. ‘Keihin kakushin megaroporisu’, Mainichi Shimbun (evening), 26 April 1971.

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28. ‘Kogai kokkai de tamesareru zaikai’ (‘Financial Circles Tested by the Pollution Diet’), Chuo Koron, January 1971, pp. 38–9. 29. For an account of koenkai see Gerald Curtis, ‘The Koenkai and the Liberal Democratic Party’, The Japan Interpreter, vol. 6, no. 2 (Summer 1970), pp. 206–19. 30. See C.Nakane, Japanese Society. London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970, pp. 1– 22. 31. See Robert E.Cole, ‘Japanese Workers, Unions and the Marxist Appeal’, The Japan Interpreter, vol. 6, no. 2 (Summer 1970), pp. 114–34. 32. See James W.White, The Sokagakkai and Mass Society. Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1970. 33. Nakane, op. cit., p. 126. 34. Okubo Sadayoshi, ‘Tomin no kohyo kodo to seiji ishiki (‘The Voting Behaviour and Political Consciousness of City Dwellers’), Senkyo (Elections), September 1970, pp. 10–18, and October 1970, pp. 10–20. 35. See his remark in a newspaper interview given just after his election: ‘I want to make roads, not for the sake of the motor car, but for people to walk on’. Yomiuri Shimbun, 13 April 1971. 36. It is also the second most disliked party (the Komeito being the first), according to a poll of city voters quoted by Okubo, op. cit., October 1970, pp. 16–17.

13 The Ultra-Right Wing in Japanese Politics First published in World Review (Brisbane), Vol. II, No. 2, July 1972 THE ULTRA-RIGHT wing has been a constant, if weak and ineffective element in Japanese politics since the American Occupation ended in 1952. Despite its roots in the nationalist aspects of Japanese tradition, and despite the crucial role which ultra-rightists societies played in Japan’s slide into militarism during the 1920s and 1930s, its actual influence in the postwar period has been slight. The almost ludicrous failure hitherto of the rightists (as we shall call the ultra-rightists groups) has been the result of a number of factors inherent in the postwar political situation. Foremost among these is the fact that in the past twenty years Japan has been undergoing rapid economic, social and political change. The economically depressed, politically unstable and socially rigid nation that was Japan in the 1930s took refuge in chauvinistic doctrines based on the subordination of the individual to the state, ordained that subjects should unquestioningly revere their Emperor (who nevertheless reigned but did not rule) and exalted the ‘way of the warrior’ (bushido). Today in contrast, Japan can boast a prosperous and dynamic economy, a much more individualistic social system and a political system which, despite its obvious defects, has proved quite stable and effective and to a surprising extent democratic. The revulsion against war which followed the 1945 defeat and the subsequent popularity of semi-pacifist views has been a real factor in postwar Japanese politics, even though the situation is now changing to a certain extent. Until recently (and to an extent still now) Japan’s relative isolation from the storms and stresses of international power politics has meant that it has been possible to observe at least some of the spirit, if not the letter, of article 9 (the ‘pacifist clause’) of the 1947 Constitution. The changing balance of the great powers, and the emergence of Japan as a major economic force in her own right, together with the strategic retreat of the United States in Asia are tending to break down Japan’s postwar isolationism. What direction Japan will take in the next few years is problematical, but there seems little reason to believe that it will have much to do with the bitter road she trod between thirty and forty years ago. Nationalism, nevertheless, remains a significant, though not the only, theme in Japanese politics. The degree of importance attained by ultra-nationalist groups is likely to depend on the way in which nationalist themes are expressed and utilized by the Government and other political groups. A government that was seen as dangerously antinationalist, or left wing parties that were uncomfortably strong, would probably produce increased rightist activism. Whether rightist groups were able to gain much sympathy either from the electorate 1 or from members of the political and economic Establishment, would depend on the climate of politics at the particular time. All the evidence seems to

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indicate that even in circumstances apparently favourable, its impact would be far less significant than it was before the war. Japanese rightists have been the focus of heightened attention both in Japan and overseas since the sensational suicide of the writer Mishima Yukio on 25 November 1970. Mishima, however, and his paramilitary group the Tate no kai (Shield Society) was highly idiosyncratic and not typical of the traditional rightist groups, even though they used somewhat similar themes. Mention will be made of Mishima later in this article, but first of all we shall concentrate on the more ‘conventional’ rightists. Extremist and fringe groups in Japanese politics tend to fragment into a multiplicity of small bands of devotees, each distinguished from the next by differences of personality and nuances of ideology. The radical left wing student movement has fragmented in this way since the late 1950s. So has the rightist movement. A recent survey of rightist groups gives details about 20 ‘federations and liaison groups’, 109 ‘general purpose unit groups’, 13 ‘cultural and discussion groups’ and 30 ‘student groups’. 2 This, however, is clearly far from a complete list. The National Police Agency lists a total of 450 organisations, accounting for 115,000 individuals, which it has under surveillance. Of these, rather more than 30 are regarded as hard core organisations, accounting for some 15,000 people. 3 Something can be learned about the nature and direction of Japanese rightism if one examines the various incidents in which rightist groups have been involved since the end of the war. The Uyoku jiten lists 69 such incidents between 1945 and 1969. Although again, the list can hardly be considered complete, it appears to contain a fairly full list of those in which arrests were made by the police. A breakdown of the targets against which the rightist attacks were directed is given in Table 1. The motivations for the incidents (specified, or in some cases inferred) are broken down in Table 2. A number of significant points emerge from these tables. The first is that while the left wing movement in general and the representatives of foreign communist powers have been the main target for attacks, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), especially that party’s leaders, have by no means been immune. This is partly explained by the motivations listed in Table 2, where corruption, weakness, anti-nationalism and proCommunism are listed as Government failings demanding retribution. It is also interesting that the Soviet Union has been the target of more attacks that the PRC, reflecting the peculiar nationalist loathing with which

Table 1 Targets of Rightist Incidents

Target

Number of Remarks incidents

Japan Communist Party

7

Teachers Union

7

Conservative parties (including the present ruling Liberal

Includes 4 physical assaults on party leaders,

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Democratic Party

7

1 case of arson of a party leader’s house, 1 attack on a party HQ and 1 attempted coup d’etat

Prime Ministers

6

Yoshida (4 attempts), Suzuki, 1945 (1), Ikeda (1)

USSR and its representatives

6

Japan Socialist Party

6

Includes 1 assassination (Asanuma, 1960), 1 assassination plot, 4 physical assaults on party leaders and 1 attack on a Party campaign vehicle.

Self (suicide)

5

Includes 4 in August 1945

Leftist student (and other) demonstrations

4

Trade unions

3

Writers

3

Prefectural offices

2

Foreign Ministry

2

PRC and its representatives

2

‘Leftists’

1

The 1947 Constitution

1

Other rightists

1

The press

1

The judiciary

1

Democratic pressure group leader

1

South Korea and its representatives

1

Peers Association leader

1

(Smuggling)

1

(Electoral violations)

1

rightists in Japan regard their northern neighbour for violating its neutrality pact with Japan in 1945 and for its continued occupation of territories which previously belonged to Japan. A third and fundamental point is that what may perhaps be regarded as the hard core of rightist violence is normally occasioned by the activities (or imagined activities) of the extreme left. The left is accused of plotting revolution, of being in league with ‘international communism’, and of seeking to subvert the youth of Japan. The number of attacks to which the Teachers Union has been subject is certainly no accident, since that union was widely been regarded even in moderate conservative circles as dangerously

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radical and Marxist-oriented. To the ultra-rightists it, together with the Japan Communist Party (JCP),

Table 2 Motives for Rightist Incidents

Motive (listed or inferred) Number of Remarks incidents Opposition to USSR

8

Opposition to the Japan Communist Party

7

Education issues

7

Opposition to campaign against revision of the Japan-US Security Treaty

7

Includes opposition to ‘leftism’ of the Teachers Union, call for ‘moral education’, etc. 1959–60.

Opposition to surrender

6

All in 1945

Opposition to Government and ruling party corruption

5

Opposition to leftist violence

5

Opposition to trade union activism

4

Opposition to Government and ruling party (excluding corruption)

4

Includes ‘weak and servile Government’, Government ‘responsible for 1960 violence’, Government ‘anti-nationalistic and pro-Communist’.

Concerns with insults etc to the Emperor

4

Includes opposition to ‘insulting’ publications, and resentment at choice of bride for the Crown Prince.

Opposition to the PRC

3

Resentment at downgrading of the Yasukuni Shrine

2

Opposition to postwar Constitution

1

Opposition to campaigns against US military bases

1

Resentment at press criticism of rightists

1

Opposition to Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty

Includes resentment at Soviet violation of neutrality pact in 1945, objection to Japan-Soviet Agreement, 1956, opposition to Societ possession of the Kuriles, etc.

Rhee line issue

The ultra-right wing in Japanese politics To finance rightist activities

1

Motive not given or inferrable (or not applicable)

3

173

Smuggling case

Table 3 shows the chronological distribution of incidents from 1945 to 1969. The relatively small number of incidents listed for the late 1960s is partly explained no doubt by the progressive fragmentation of the movement, although the list probably understates the actual amount of rightist activity occurring during that period, when leftist campus violence was at its height.

Table 3 Chronological Distribution of Rightist Incidents

The predominant types of violence used or attempted arc clearly demonstrated in Table 4.

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Table 4 Types of violence used

Type of violence

Number of incidents

Assassination (failed)

19

Breaking up of meetings and demonstrations

12

Attacks on, and illegal entry to, buildings (excluding arson)

10

Wounding and assault

9

Arson (attempted and successful)

6

Suicide

5

Demonstrations and sit-ins

2

Assassination (successful)

1

Smuggling

1

Electoral violations

1

Illegal possession of weapons

1

Menaces and threats

1

Remarks

Includes Shimanaka incident (Feb. 1961) in which a maid was killed.

Asanuma, Oct. 1960.

radical elements of the Zengakuren student federation, 4 the left wing trade union federation Sohyo (with its heavy concentration of affiliated unions in Government instrumentalities), and the Japan Socialist Party (JSP), are anathema. Thus at times of increased left wing activism such as occurred in 1959–60 ovcr revision of the Japan-US Security Treaty, the rightists too have become more active. Thus in June 1960 a rightist failed in an attempt to assassinate the JSP leader Kawakami Jotaro, whereas in October a similar attempt on his colleague Asanuma Inejiro at an election rally succeeded, giving the world its first televised assassination. In July of the same year Kishi Nobusuke, just after he had relinquished the Prime Ministership, was stabbed by a rightist who held him responsible for the political turmoil that had clouded his last months in office. Then in February 1961 an attack was made on the house of a publisher whose magazine had published an article held to be insulting to the Emperor. The publisher’s wife was seriously injured and a maid was killed. The types of wcapons used or carried are given in Table 5. Tables 4 and 5 give evidence of a marked difference between the types of violence favoured by rightist groups and those indulged in by the left. The right is prepared to resort to the physical elimination of political leaders of whom it disapproves (although its success rate is ludicrously low), the actors in each case being small groups or individuals. Their weapons in many cases are appropriate to the task of deliberate killing or

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wounding. The left, on the other hand, prefers the organized mass demonstration, which may or may not end in a violent confrontation with the police. It is true that since the eruption of student unrest in Japanese universities and colleges in the late 1960s, the scale and audacity of the left wing (especially student) movement greatly increased, although it has now passed its peak. The hijacking of an airliner early in 1970 by members of the socalled ‘Red Army’ is a case in point. More recently a young leftist militant was shot dead by police and his two companions were wounded when they attempted the armed holdup of a police box in Tokyo (December 1970), while in September 1971 three riot policemen were killed by radical students attempting to prevent the construction of a new international airport at Narita, outside Tokyo. Nevertheless, the rightist practice of singling out leading public figures for deliberate violence and killing has no real counterpart on the left. 6 As was mentioned above, the rightist movement is now incredibly fragmented, and this undoubtedly reduces its effectiveness. At the same time certain groups are far more important than others. In fact one particular ‘party’, the Dai Nippon Aikokuto (Great Japan Patriotic Party), said to be regarded by the police as particularly radical and dangerous, is certainly the

Table 5 Types of weapons used

Type of weapon

Number of incidents

Knives

7

Fire (arson)

6

Daggers (or short swords)

5

Hand grenades

3

Dynamite

3

Rifles

3

Excrement

2

Stones

2

Smoke bombs

2

Wooden swords

2

Machine gun

1

Japanese sword

1

Liquid ammonia

1

Cup of water

1

Sandbag

1

Remarks Includes jacknife, pointed knife, fruit knife, mountaineering knife, carpenter’s knife, carving knife.

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1

Oak club

1

Flagpole

1

Not listed (or none)

34

176

most visible rightist body in Tokyo. 7 There are few lampposts in that megalopolis that are not at times plastered with the ‘party’s’ easily recognisable posters, proclaiming ‘exterminate the Socialist Party’, or, (at the time of the Test-Ban Treaty) ‘support nuclear testing’. The small, wiry and aging figure of Akao Bin is a familiar sight in central Tokyo, as he preaches from his campaign truck to anyone who will listen about the evils of communism and the virtues of Japanese patriotism. The present writer listened to him in the Ginza area in February 1971, and found his political simplifications and earthy humour entertaining enough to stop around for much of the lunch hour. Periodically Akao would brandish his rising sun flag, point it at the towering offices of the Asahi Shimbun (Japan’s leading mass circulation daily) just across the railway line, and denounce some ‘liberal delusion’ which the Asahi had just perpetrated. A large map of Asia decorated his truck, showing communist countries in blood-red and Japan (it was to be inferred) weak and vulnerable. ‘Russia and China are two red giants in league with each other’, he would shout, ‘and they threaten the security of our fatherland’. The eclectic nature of Akao’s thinking can be seen from the official platform of the Dai Nippon Aikokuto, and this also gives an idea of some of the main themes of rightist thought in contemporary Japan.

PLATFORM OF THE DAI NIPPON AIKOKUTO (1) Action Policy Defend Japan’s national essence, 8 and reject both democracy transplanted directly from America, and communism from the Soviet Union. Aim to establish a free and independent Constitution. Aim for accelerated rearmament. 9 Aim for protection of the people’s livelihood. 10 Reject communism, symbolized by the red flag, and work for patriotic revolution, symbolized by the rising sun flag. (2) Declaration Maintain a close alliance with the Free World, enhance the destiny of the fatherland, keep as our ideal the great and boundless sacred will of the world’s great saints, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, Mahommed and the Emperor Meiji, spread the spirit of Japan at home and abroad, save our fatherland from decadence and thus contribute to the welfare of the whole of mankind. 11

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Akao Bin and the Dai Nippon Aikokuto are somewhat unusual among rightist groups in adhering to a Cold War philosophy which regards the United States as Japan’s ally in the struggle against ‘international communism’. The newer groups that have arisen during the 1960s appear to be less pro-American and to concentrate more on domestic political themes with a nationalist content. Thus in 1967 the Seinen Shiso Kenkyukai, or Seishikai (Youth Thought Study Society) issued the following list of slogans: Seishikai slogans (1967) Abolish the ‘Occupation Constitution’ and replace it by a new Constitution. Confound the line of red revolution. Frustrate red-slanted education and inculcate nationalist education. Secure the return of Sakhalin, the Kuriles and Okinawa. 12 Consolidate the strength of the nationalist movement for a confrontation over the Security Treaty in 1970. 13 Unify the nationalist youth line. Carry out the Showa Restoration. 14 One of the most influential people connected with the Seishikai is a prewar nationalist called Kodama Yoshio. Kodama is particularly significant in the present day rightist movement because of his connections with prominent political and business leaders. The extent of these connections is difficult to discover, but the fact that people in positions of power in the Government and business worlds should take a man like Kodama seriously, suggests that the rightist movement may have rather more importance than an examination of its public activities might imply. As Ivan Morris points out in his comprehensive (though now dated) book on postwar Japanese nationalism, most of the prewar rightists were ‘far too crabbed or fanatic to be capable of any effective working compromise with conservative elements, of whom they more often than not strongly disapproved in principle. 15 Kodama was highly unusual in possessing the flexibility to cooperate in various ways with the Government Party. Kodama’s career is an interesting one. For his extreme nationalist activities before the war he was several times arrested, but was later sent to China, semi-officially attached to the headquarters of the Japanese Imperial Army. In China he was able to amass a fortune through the purchasing activities of his ‘Kodama Agency’. Immediately after the war he was sentenced to a prison term as a class A war criminal. After his release in 1948 his wealth and contacts enabled him to establish close relationships with a number of top politicians, former military men and rightists. 16 Subsequently he has combined the organisation of ultra-rightist groups (such as the Seishikai) with the maintenance of contacts with important men. The question naturally arises why apparently respectable and well-entrenched men of affairs should find it necessary or acceptable to hobnob with Kodama and his ilk. Does it indicate a dangerous situation that ultra-nationalists, despite their bizarre and gangsterlike activities, and despite the democratic institutions of postwar Japan, should find themselves admitted to the councils of those at the centre of national decision-making? The answer is not simple, but probably lies in three principal areas. One is that some of the older conservative politicians and business leaders undoubtedly

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have a history of personal connection with the ultra-right from the prewar period, and in Japan, where personal connections remain of great importance, it would not seem strange that these connections should be maintained, despite differences of ideological outlook. The second point is that some leaders, for instance from the right wing factions of the LDP, probably retain some sympathy for old-style nationalism, and in the comparatively tolerant atmosphere of Japanese politics see no reason to dissimulate it entirely. A third reason which may be suggested is that rightist gangs have been regarded by some conservative politicians and businessmen as a useful bulwark against the left. The fact, noted earlier, that rightist activity tends to increase along with upsurges of leftist activism appears to be regarded in some conservative circles as a useful check on the left. On the other hand the strengthening of anti-riot preparedness on the part of the police as a result of student unrest since the late 1960s may well make rightist support less necessary, and therefore also less attractive. From what has been written above, it may be inferred that the ultra-right, though picturesque, has had little more than nuisance-value in postwar Japanese politics—a great contrast to the effectiveness of its role before the war, when it commanded a great deal of public sympathy, and was able to pave the way for a gradual militarist takeover in the late 1930s. 17 Attitudes towards nationalism on the part of the contemporary Japanese public is a complex subject lying beyond the scope of this article, but it should be observed that nationalism is a term with a number of meanings, ranging from extreme chauvinism to a mere pride in nationhood. The possibility of a revival of extreme chauvinism in Japan was raised in some minds by the suicide of Mishima Yukio and one of his followers on 25 November 1970. The story is now well enough known how Mishima, a brilliant novelist who is said to have narrowly missed being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, committed suicide in the traditional fashion inside the barracks of the Self Defence Forces in Tokyo, after tying up the Commander, haranguing the troops on various themes of nationalism, notably the constitutional position of the Self Defence Forces. As Mishima put it in his ‘Appeal’, subsequently published in the Japanese press, We are angered by Japan’s overlong sleep. We believe that Japan will awaken precisely when the Self-Defense Forces awakens. We believe that unless the Self-Defence Forces itself wakes up, sleeping Japan will not awaken. And we believed that we, as Japanese, have no greater duty than to exert ourselves to the utmost for the day when, through constitutional revision, the Self-Defense Forces can stand on the principle of founding an army and in fact become a real army. 18 It is significant, however, that Mishima in his ‘Appeal’ struck a note of profound pessimism about the prospects for the Self Defence Forces becoming a’true army’. He went on to argue that the Government had now developed sufficient confidence in its ability to control left wing demonstrations by police power alone that it had no need to call out the troops, and was thus able to continue evading its responsibility to reexamine the constitutionality of the Self Defence Forces. 19 Public reactions to Mishima ranged from ‘an inspiration’ to ‘an anachronism’, but

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perhaps the most telling aspect of the affair was that people reacted in a whole variety of different ways. Professor Joyce Lebra, the only foreigner present at the Self Defence Forces Headquarters, and who listened to Mishima’s speech, stresses the ‘staged’ nature of the whole performance. Perhaps Mishima expected the Japanese to react thus variously to his ‘literary death’, as people might to a complex and artistic piece of drama on the stage. Significantly also, the soldiers present reacted with jeers and catcalls. On the other hand it would obviously be silly to ignore the nationalistic element in the Japanese tradition. The future course of Japan and Japanese nationalism, however, is likely to depend more on the success which Japan is able to attain over the next few years in solving her major social, political and economic problems, and consolidating her place in the world community, than on the fanatical activities of minuscule groups on the gangster fringe, or the glorious and quixotic gestures of a literary romantic such as Mishima. A Japanese friend of the writer quaintly but poignantly wrote on a 1971 Christmas card: ‘Japan is now adrifting on the World Ocean. We would like to make a choice of our national goals.’ ‘Goals’ versus ‘drift’ remains a basic dilemma for many Japanese, and what impact nationalism has in the future may well be found in attempts to resolve it.

NOTES 1. Electoral support for candidates affiliated with rightist groups has been negligible, although some candidates of known rightist views affiliated or associated with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party have polled well. 2. Shakai Mondai Kenkyukai (Social Issues Research Association), Uyoku jiten— minzoku ha no zenbo (Right Wing Dictionary—Outline of the Nationalist Movement). Tokyo, 1970, pp. 97–194. Henceforth cited as Uyoku jiten. 3. Quoted in Japan Times, 15 January 1971. 4. Especially (since the late 1960s) certain of the ‘anti-Yoyogi’, that is anti-JCP, student groups, which have been at the van of campus violence, in contrast to their gentler, Communist-oriented, colleagues. 5. Asanuma was especially unpopular with rightists because of his remark made in Peking the previous year that ‘American imperialism is the common enemy of the peoples of Japan and China’. 6. The harassment, however, of some senior university personnel by radical students in 1968–70, was perhaps not so far removed from the rightist stock-in-trade. 7. It has been at least in part responsible for 17 out of the 69 incidents listed in the Uyoku jiten. No other group rated more than 2. 8. ‘Kokutai’—the term used before the war in reference to the special nature of the Japanese State under the Emperor system. 9. A degree of rearmament has of course been taking place in Japan, but not at

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anything like the pace the rightists would like, and they would also remove the Constitutional prohibition (article 9) which has rendered even the present modest measures of rearmament controversial in Japan hitherto. 10. This is a slogan common to the platforms of most Japanese political parties. 11. Uyoku jiten, pp. 133–4. 12. The Japanese Government maintains a claim on the southernmost Kurile islands, overrun by Soviet troops at the end of World war II, but not on any part of Sakhalin. Okinawa is now expected to be returned to Japan in July 1972. 13. 1970 in fact came and went for the Government without too much trouble. A satisfactory arrangement with the Americans was reached whereby the Treaty should simply continue in force beyond its ten-year term, and leftist activism had ‘peaked’ too early, in 1969. 14. This means essentially that the Emperor should be restored to his rightful position in the State system, on the analogy of the restoration of the Emperor Meiji in 1868. Some of the ultra-nationalist army officers had talked about a ‘Showa Restoration’ in the 1930s, whereby the Emperor might be replaced by someone more amenable. 15. Ivan Morris, Nationalism and the Right Wing in Japan: A Study of Post-War Trends. London, Oxford University Press, 1960, p. 204. 16. This account is taken from Morris, op. cit., pp. 443–4. See also Uyoku jiten, p. 39. 17. For excellent accounts of rightism in Japan before the war, see Masao Maruyama, Thought and Behaviour in Modern Japanese Politics. London. Oxford University Press, 1963; and Richard Storry. The Double Patriots. A Study of Japanese Nationalism. New York, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1957. 18. As translated by Harris I Martin, in The Japan Interpreter, vol. 7, no. 1 (winter 1971), pp. 73–7, at p. 74. 19. Ibid., p. 75.

14 The Rights and Lefts of Japanese Politics First published in Papers of the Japanese Studies Centre, No. 7 (Melbourne), 1984 ONE OF THE most persistent metaphors used in the discussion of politics, whether in Britain, continental Europe, Australasia, Japan or elsewhere, is that of a Left-Right spectrum, whereby all political views, ideologies, policies and personalities can be placed somewhere along a single line starting at the extreme left, travelling via a notional centre, or middle (or ‘moderate’) position, and ending up at the extreme right. This metaphor is convenient and generally bears some relationship to the truth, but is rarely subjected to critical scrutiny by political scientists, who too frequently use it as a shorthand method of labelling without explaining precisely what the labels are supposed to mean. The only book known to this writer which attempts to tackle this question seriously was published in the late 1960s by the British journalist Samuel Brittan, and is entitled Left or Right: The Bogus Dilemma. Brittan believes that the Left-Right spectrum metaphor produces dangerous oversimplifications in relation to British politics, creating what he terms ‘a maximisation of spurious differences with a minimum of real conflict’. 1 Our purpose in this paper is not to discover some alternative metaphor with which we might better understand the divisions within Japanese politics, for that would be much too ambitious. We have the more limited aim of attempting to elucidate the underlying assumptions about the politics of Japan which are embedded in the notion of a Left-Right spectrum. Following on from this we shall try to define the limits of the metaphor’s usefulness, and elucidate the positive contributions to our understanding which the metaphor does provide assuming that we understand its limits. We hope thus to achieve some refinement of our way of perceiving the ways in which Japanese politics (especially party politics) is structured, and perhaps also the ways in which it is changing. There are at present seven (on certain assumptions six) parties with representation in the House of Representatives. The most usual convention in political commentary is to divide the parties into three broad groups: on the right, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) which has governed Japan without interruption since 1955; in the centre, four small parties: the Democratic Socialist party (DSP), the Kōmeitō, the New Liberal Club (NLC), and the minuscule Social Democratic League (SDL); (The NLC and the SDL in 1981 merged their forces at parliamentary level, while retaining separate organisations for the time being in the constituencies): and on the left, the Japan Socialist Party (JSP) and the Japan Communist Party (JCP). Attempts are often made also to refine this threeway division further: thus the LDP, being so big, is not surprisingly regarded as possessing a right wing, a centre and a left wing; attempts are made to group the centre parties themselves along a left-right spectrum, though different observers come out with a different ordering; on the so-called ‘left’, the JCP is generally seen as being to the left of the JSP, though in terms of their respective policies this distinction may be problematic;

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it is also accepted wisdom that the JSP is itself badly divided between a left wing and a right wing: recent reporting on the annual JSP Congress held in February 1982 portrayed the party as divided between a number of factions, described as ‘left’, ‘centre’ and ‘right’, and described the election of a Chairman and Secretaty-General both of whom were backed by the left and centre factions and opposed by the right as highly divisive. 2 The implications of this are that it ought to be possible to take all Members of Parliament (currently 511 in the House of Representatives and 252 in the House of Councillors) and spread them out along a single left-right axis from extreme right to extreme left. They should then fall in clusters approximately corresponding to the positions occupied by their parties across the same spectrum. It should be immediately obvious that this is unlikely to be a workable model if pushed to the limits, but if ‘Left’, ‘Right’ and ‘Centre’ have any real meaning, then it ought to be possible to perform such an operation in a general and approximate way. At this point, however, a significantly different approach comes into view, according to which there is only one really important divisions of the Japanese political scene, that between the Liberal Democrats permanently in power, and the parties of opposition permanently in opposition. If this view were to be accepted., then there would presumably be a bunching at the two ends of the spectrum and a large unbridgeable gap in the centre. The rights and wrongs of this point of view may be illustrated by a recent incident which, while quite unimportant in itself, makes the point rather nicely. On 21st September 1981 the NLC and the SDL (the latter known in Japanese as the Shaminren) decided to merge in the National Diet, and while falling short of amalgamation of their respective organisations outside the Diet, planned a total merger by 1983. The name adopted for the new party was in Japanese Shinjiren, which translates awkwardly into English as New Liberal Club Democratic League. (The most significant thing about the new name was that the ‘Social’ or ‘Socialist’ in the name of the Shaminren or Social Democratic League, was dropped.) Amalgamation of the two smallest parties in the Diet (NLC 10 members and SDL only 3, in the House of Representatives) made sense in terms of the Diet rules for allocation of time in debate. One of the most interesting things about the amalgamation was that the two parties originated from the opposite sides of the political fence: the NLC was a splinter group which broke away from the LDP in 1976 protesting against that party’s involvement in the Lockheed scandals. The SDL emerged as a splinter from the JSP (actually two splinters) which deserted that party in 1977 during a struggle over leadership succession. In announcing the Diet merger of their two parties, the leaders of the NLC and of the SDL, respectively Tagawa Seiichi and Den Hideo, issued a joint statement which read in part as follows: ‘[The two parties share the belief that] the ideological confrontation between conservative and progressive forces has already lost its meaning. Our objective is to bring together all political forces capable of taking the reins of government and to stamp out political corruption and reform politics serving only big interest groups. 3 They went on, however, to reveal a degree of political commitment rather than neutrality, by showing concern about the arms race, and about what they described as the ‘rightist tendency throughout the world’, and added that they would strive to maintain the nation’s three non-nuclear principles.

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On the same day that this joint statement was made the NLC Policy Affairs Committee Chairman, Kakizawa Kōji, announced that he was quitting the party in protest at its amalgamation with the Shaminren, and spoke as follows in justification of his action: ‘The ideology of the NLC and that of the Shaminren are completely different. The NLC is for conservatism and the Shaminren is for socialism. The NLC strongly supports the Self-Defence Forces and the Japan-US Security Treaty system, while Shaminren has been saying that the Self-Defence Forces are unconstitutional and that the Security Treaty system should be abolished. A coalition between such parties would cause suspicion among the voters. The NLC and the Shaminren are similar only in that both are splinter groups from large parties. Both Kōno Yōhei [the young and rather charismatic founder of the NLC] and Den Hideo are well received by the mass media and are popular with urban intellectuals. Both parties have a similar feeling and mood. But a political party cannot be founded upon feeling. 4 Kakizawa went on to argue for a conservative party that would protect and promote the interests of consumers and of residents in urban areas, and also commit the country to a greater share of defence responsibilities. The first of these aims sat well with the fact that he was Diet Member for an inner Tokyo constituency. In general there is a good case for saying that the interests of urban consumers have been neglected by a governing party protected by an electoral system which gives a disproportionate share of votes to farmers in outlying areas. Whether his defection from the NLC was mostly connected with such issues of policy, however, or more with the fact that he had good connections with such influential official or unofficial LDP politicians as Tanaka Kakuei (the former Prime Minister and controller of the party’s largest faction in 1981) and Watanabe Michio (Minister of Finance in the Suzuki Cabinet and a possible future prime minister) is hard to say. Kakizawa’s protest may be illustrative of a curious paradox about party politics in Japan recently: that whereas many participants and observers are coming to regard distinctions between right and left, conservative and progressive, as no longer of great political relevance, the divide between them remains difficult to bridge, and in particular there are many ‘conservatives’ like Kakizawa who find it hard to make their peace with what they regard as ‘socialism’. Even though since the middle seventies there have been many forecasts that the Democratic Socialist Party, with over 30 seats in the House of Representatives, might enter into a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats should the latter lose their majority of seats, the NLC-Shaminren merger is almost the only postwar example of parties from the ‘conservative’ and ‘socialist’ camps actually amalgamating in one party. Indeed, we have only been able to find one previous example of this: in July 1952 a now long-forgotten party called the Co-operative Party (Kyōdōtō) was formed out of the remnants of the wholly insignificant Social Democratic Party (Shakai Minshutō) of a maverick former Agriculture Minister called Hirano Rikizō, and the scarcely less unimportant Farmers Co-operative Party (Nōmin Kyōdōtō). The Cooperative Party could boast five out of 466 MHRs at the time of its formation, and disbanded when three of the five were defeated at the general election of October 1952, having lasted for about three months. So far we have discussed two sorts of model, one which assumes a more or less continuous spectrum of political position from extreme right to extreme left, and the other

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which presupposes a crucial barrier in the middle of the spectrum between a ‘bunched’ Left and a ‘bunched’ Right. We wish now to examine briefly the basic assumptions on which the whole notion of a Left-Right spectrum are based. Historically, its origins appear to lie in France, where in 1789 in the States-General the nobility sat in the King’s right hand, and the third estate on his left. 5 It did not come into common use in Britain until the 1920s, and its introduction at that time was influenced apparently by the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, and by the rise of the Labour Party. Lenin talked in right-left terms and was of course greatly influenced by the history of the French revolution. Is it, therefore, a culture-bound concept? Ought we to abstain from using it in relation to countries in the soil of whose political cultures it did not originate? Should we abstain from using it in the case of Japan? This is a most complex question, because of the different connotations which the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ have assumed in different political environments. We shall have more to say about their connotations in Japan later on, but here we shall confine ourselves to noting that in Japan ‘Left’ ( ), ‘Right’ ( ) and ‘Centre’ ( ) are a normal part of political discourse, and like so much else of western European origin have assimilated and adjusted to Japanese cultural needs. Let us now take a brief look at the psychology and logic of this way of talking about politics. First, the psychology, where we must acknowledge in particular an article by Sebastian De Grazia in a recent issue of Political Studies. 6 The terms ‘Right’ and ‘Left’ appear to be emotionally loaded against the Left. ‘Right’ is associated with ‘all right’, ‘right’ meaning ‘correct’, ‘righteous’, dexterity’, ‘seating on God’s right hand’. ‘Left’ associates with ‘sinister’. ‘gauche’, ‘left-handed compliment’, ‘had a good job and I left’ (to which the traditional refrain is ‘serves you jolly well right’). Moreover, ‘right and left’ rolls off the tongue rather like ‘right and wrong’ and Lord Hailsham, or was it Quentin Hogg, once coined the phrase ‘the Left is never right’. On the other hand, in some countries with a revolutionary tradition such as France, ‘Left’ is often a term of prestige. Samuel Brittan quotes Giscard d’Estaing in the 1960s before he became President as expressing a reluctance to talk to a group of Young Conservatives during a visit to UK for fear that his constituency back home would associate him with the ‘Right’. 7 It has been true among Socialists in Japan, where people one might want to describe as ‘moderate’ sometimes need to appeal very forcefully to a noble ‘left’ tradition. 8 This relates in turn to the question of political commitment, because it appears to be psychologically easier to express and sustain commitment to the ‘Left’ or the ‘Right’ than to the ‘Centre’. On the other hand those who prefer to shun commitment, sometimes use ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ as terms equivalent to ‘Extreme Left’ and ‘Extreme Right’. ‘He’s a Rightist!’ ‘He’s a Leftist!’. So far as the logic of the left-right spectrum is concerned, we wish to make several points. In its most pure form: (1) It is unidimensional, in other words a single straight line. (2) It is a straight line: there is no curving back towards the starting point. (3) It is all embracing: all issues are assumed to be divisible along the same axis. (4) Individuals are assumed to have a ‘bunching’ of views at one point on the spectrum. (5) It theoretically assumes infinite extensibility in either direction, though the length

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of the spectrum occupied in a given situation may be short or long. Perhaps we should note the expression ‘somewhat to the right of Genghis Khan’. (6) It assumes that, even if individual issues change over time, the spectrum possesses an underlying content which is fixed. (7) The spectrum is non-reversable: ‘Right’ is conservatism of right wing positions, not of established left wing positions. ‘Conservative’ in one sense, does not have this restriction. Similarly, with ‘left’ and ‘radical’. You cannot be a right wing leftist, but you can be a right wing radical. (8) The spectrum concept implies that party coalitions are non-transitive. You may enter into a coalition with the party or parties closest to you on the spectrum, but you will not exclude a party closest to you in order to enter a coalition, with a party at a greater remove from you. Specifically, if a party of the centre forms a government, parties of the ‘Right’ and of the ‘Left’ will not combine to defeat it. Plainly, in the extreme form which we have given, there are many objections to such a model. It oversimplifies and distorts reality, whether the reality of Japan or the reality of Britain. The question is, however, is it totally at variance with reality, or does it have that essential kernel of truth? Briefly, the basic objections to the model as I have presented it are: (1) Issues in practice are not unidimensional: to force them onto a single axis causes great oversimplification. (2) As has often been suggested, the extremes may have more in common with each other, than each respectively with the centre. In other words, the straight line may turn out to be a semi-circle. (3) Some issues appear to fit a left-right spectrum much better than others. Issues involving the distribution of wealth and power between social classes fit rather well; ethnic divisions, for instance, (unless class divisions are superimposed), fit rather badly. (4) The views of individuals are not necessarily ‘bunched’, though often, perhaps, they are. (5) No objection. (6) If the spectrum possesses an underlying content which is fixed, then certain very firm assumptions about the nature of politics are being made. Such assumptions are most commonly related to the salience of relations between social classes. The danger is here that an empirical argument is being dressed up as an underlying assumption about politics. (7) No objection. (8) Non-transitivity of coalitions: let us consider four party systems, those of West Germany, Australia, Britain and Japan.

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In considering these examples, it would appear that it is West Germany that is the most exceptional in having experienced all possible two-way coalitions in a three-party system. The right-left coalition, however, only lasted for a relatively short period, and in retrospect looks like a period of transition from right-centre to left-centre. Certainly of the four Japan is much the most complicated, though the salient point remains that the Liberal Democrats have monopolized power since 1955. Japan’s only experience of coalition government was in 1947 and 1948 when the JSP was in coalition with two more-or-less conservative parties, the Democrats and the People’s Cooperatives. In present circumstances coalition would only become an issue if the LDP were to lose its outright majority of seats, when, according to most observers, the LDP would seek to perpetuate its tenure of office by ‘co-opting’ one of the small ‘Centre’ parties (probably the DSP) as a coalition partner. A very different picture might emerge, however, if ever the LDP were to suffer a major split. Considering the history of Japanese ‘conservative’ parties between the 1870s and 1955, the LDP has been aston-ishingly successful in maintaining its cohesion, and indeed the defection of six MPs in 1976 to form the NLC is the only such apostacy it has experienced in the 26 years of its history. The political crisis of May-June 1980 was, however, brought about when 69 LDP MHRs abstained from voting on a non-confidence motion against the Ohira Government, and that Government fell. We do not regard a major split in the ranks of the LDP as likely except perhaps in the event of a serious election defeat, when dissident factions might make this an excuse for defecting.

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The possible consequences of such a split are, however, well worth considering. Let us assume that the LDP were to win only 250 of the 511 Lower House seats, and then split into two approximate halves of about 125 each. Let us call them ‘Liberals’ and ‘Democrats’. The only way to form a majority government would be by coalition, and the Left-Right gulf would have to be bridged. Unless the two halves of the LDP were prepared to enter into a coalition government with each other (which might be unlikely if they had just been through the trauma of breaking up the LDP) then one or other of them would have to enter a coalition with a rather large group of what are currently opposition parties. A bare majority of the House of Representatives is 256 seats, so that the ‘Liberals’ (let us say), with 125 seats of their own, would need to find coalition partners commanding at least 131 seats in order to govern as a majority government. The combined total within the House of Representatives of the seats won at the 1980 elections by the DSP, Kōmeitō, NLC and SDL was only 109, though in the 1979 elections it was 137. There is a possibility, therefore, that a coalition including on the conservative side only half the Liberal Democrats would need to look beyond the ranks of the centre parties and consider also elements on the left, presumably meaning the JSP or part of it. Plainly a fluid period of major realignment of parties would ensue, and it is most unclear whether divisions between ‘Right’ and ‘Left’ would be allowed to get in the way of business of scrambling for government office. We wish now to make two further basic points before arriving at our conclusion. The first point is that we can introduce much more sophistication into our conceptualizing of political positions if we use two or more dimensions. (We could use more than 2.) Let us take two cross-cutting axes, the vertical axis extending from ‘maximum freedom’ to ‘maximum discipline’ and the horizontal axis stretching from ‘big government’ to ‘small government’.

As a rough guide to the way we could use such a two-dimensional model, 9 we might say that its south-western area was occupied by socialists of a totalitarian disposition; the north-western area by socialist libertarians (roughly, those who want to give the government a wide area of control over the economy so as to create maximum equality, but who are generally libertarian on social and personal issues); the north-eastern quarter by conservative libertarians (those who believe that the freedom of the individual is a

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supreme value, and extend this to freedom from government interference); and the southeastern quarter, inhabited by conservative authoritarians (or totalitarians)—people who believe in suppressing individual freedom for the purpose of establishing a disciplined and hierarchical society, with a minimum of government involvement in the economy. So Brezhnev would be well to the south-west, Scandinavian social-democrats would be scattered around the north-west quarter, Milton Friedman would be a fair way out to the northeast, Lee Kwan-yew would be somewhere a little south of east, and the League of Rights would be over the south-eastern horizon. What happens to the Japanese political scene if we attempt to fit it into this model? Interestingly enough, one of the principal demands recently from the opposition parties as a whole is for a substantial cut in taxation. Presumably such a cut would result in a reduction in services and subsidies provided by the government, and would tend to make for smaller government rather than larger. Moreover nationalisation of industry has never been a theme much pursued by the parties of opposition, even the JSP and the JCP. To some Socialists the word ‘nationalisation’ (Kokuyūka) conjures up the image of the State formally controlling—and thus officially endorsing—the Yasukuni Shrine to the war dead. This is a prospect which at least for the older generation of Socialists is an unpleasant reminder of the state’s use of the Shinto religion up to 1945. More generally, the idea of the State assuming broader, rather than narrower, responsibilities is regarded with suspicion by parties which see the activities of what they call ‘monopoly capital’ as unhealthily intertwined with the activities of govemment. This in broad terms might suggest that the Opposition (or substantial parts of it) inhabit the eastern rather than the western side of our two-dimensional model. Within the Government and LDP, Mr. Nakasone’s present administrative cost cutting exercise, aimed at reducing a severe and chronic budget deficit is being pursued with vigour, but is scarcely to the liking of many of the government’s most staunch supporters, particularly farmers long dependent on subsidies. As for the axis contrasting freedom with discipline, it probably is correct to regard the LDP as in general more concerned with social discipline than are the parties in opposition. This is well reflected in education policy, where government control of textbooks and promotion of ‘ethics’ courses in schools are big issues. On the other hand the JCP sometimes takes a strong stand on social discipline, and the party is famous for the statement of its Chairman that teachers have a ‘sacred duty’ to teach—implying that they should not go on strike. Thus in attempting to fit Japanese reality into our model we find a situation which diverges quite radically from the way things appear in other political systems that are more familiar to us. Moreover, the issues which have divided government from opposition most radically since the Occupation are rather difficult in some cases to fit into this model. They include issues funda-mental to the Occupation settlement: the Constitution, decentralisation of local government, control of education and the police, and most significantly, the direction of foreign policy and defence: the rights and wrongs of the American security connection, the legality of the Self-Defence Forces, and the pace at which Japan should increase her military spending—if she should do so at all. Even here, the lines of division are by no means simple, since it is the LDP which has presided over a defence policy giving a smaller percentage of GNP to defence than any other major power, despite great American pressure for a massive increase.

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Nevertheless, the legacy of division on such issues runs deep, and contributes to the ‘usversus-them’ feeling of politicians such as Kakizawa, whom we mentioned earlier. Politics in Japan, like politics elsewhere, is not simply a matter of rational differences of opinion by politicians over issues of moment. In the Japanese case one extremely important factor serves to complicate our understanding of where politicians stand on issues. This factor is the existence of political factions, particularly in the larger parties. The factions are essentially the support groups of leading politicians, who procure essential favours (particularly money and offices) for their supporters in return for backing and support. It is not necessary here to describe the details of the factional system, but most observers, including the present writer, regard it as a crucial element in the political system as a whole. Factionalism creates problems for an analysis of political positions in terms of a left-right spectrum, or indeed in terms of a multi-dimensional model. The reason that problems are created is that policy may become essentially secondary to the logic of bargaining and power seeking. Thus an analysis of LDP internal politics over the past few years shows little or no consistency by the various factions in policy terms in their alliances and their hostilities. To take one example very briefly: before Mr. Ohira died in the middle of the election campaign in June 1980, his faction and that of his arch-rival Fukuda enjoyed a relationship of such extreme hostility that it threatened to tear the party apart. After his death his successor as both Prime Minister and as leader of his faction, Suzuki, invited Fukuda’s faction to join him as part of his ruling factional coalition. There were policy differences between Ohira and Fukuda, and no doubt also between Suzuki and Fukuda, but this was not the point. What was at issue was the logic of factional manoeuvre, and the pursuit and maintenance of political power. Even though one can spend time analyzing and categorizing variant policies and ideologies, it is the logic of power which ultimately guides politicians: a generalisation which does not, of course, need to be confined to Japan. To conclude, a Japanese political scientist working in the United States, Tsurutani Taketsugu, in his book Political Change in Japan, has argued that in policy terms Japanese politics is far less polarised than it was during the fifties and sixties, and that this reflects the transition of the country from an industrial to what he calls a ‘postindustrial’ condition. He speaks of a ‘trivialisation of issues’ in the recent period, where people complain about their loss of amenities such as the ‘right to sunlight’ lost as a result of the construction of neighbouring tall buildings, rather than concern themselves with the interests of the working class or the problems of constitutional reform or national defence. Where we disagree with Tsurutani’s analysis is that he confuses the fading of certain previously prominent issues with the demise of conflict over policy altogether. Some of the earlier issues are, incidentally still very much alive, and new ones concerning the allocation of resources, social welfare, and maintenance or cutting of sectional subsidies have gained in salience. Moreover if we are to understand how politicians are influenced by policy issues in their political behaviour—notably their alliance and their divisions—we must seek to understand not only the logic of those issues, but also the logic of the power game in which they are inextricably engaged.

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NOTES 1. Samuel Brittan, Left or Right: the Bogus Dilemma. London, Secker and Warburg, 1968, p.155. 2. Asahi Shimbun, 7 February 1982. 3. Japan Times Weekly, 26 September 1981. 4. Ibid., 17 October 1982. 5. Brittan, op. cit., p. 29. 6. Sebastian De Grazia, ‘Left-Right in Politics: The Case of Symbolic Lateral Asymmetry’, Political Studies, vol. XXIX, no. 2 (1981), pp. 254–64. See also Rodney Needham (ed.) Left and Right: Essays on Dual Symbolic Classification. Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 1973, especially the classic paper included in it by Robert Hertz, ‘The Pre-eminence ofthe Right Hand: A Study in Religious Polarity’, pp. 3–31 . In J.A.LaPonce, ‘Dieu—a Droite ou a Gauche?’ , Canadian Journal of Political Science, vol. III, No. 2 (June 1970), pp. 257–74, a sample of university students was polled to see where they would place certain concepts basic to Christianity along a left-right spectrum. ‘God’, ‘religion’ and ‘priest’ were located consistently on the right, but interestingly enough ‘Jesus Christ’ tended to be located on the left. 7. Brittan, p. 31. 8. In so far as Japan has been influenced by Chinese habits of thought, it may possibly be relevant that traditionally in China the connotations of ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ were more evenly matched, and less detrimental to the reputation of ‘Left’ than in many other parts of the world. See Marcel Grant, ‘Right and Left in China’, in Needham, op. cit., pp. 43–58. 9. Two dimensional models are explored also by Brittan, pp. 87–9, but with different components from those chosen here. See also H.J.Eysenck, The Psychology of Politics, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963. 10. Taketsugu Tsurutani, Political Change in Japan, New York, David McKay, 1977.

15 Japan: The Leader—Follower Relationship in Parties First published in Alan Ware (ed.), Political Parties: Electoral Change and Structural Response. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987 BY COMPARISON with many countries, Japan can boast a rich history of political parties. What may be called ‘parties’ were first formed during the 1870s, shortly after the opening of the country to the outside world following two and a half centuries of virtual isolation. Between the 1870s and the 1980s there is a continuous history of parties and of party competition, except for the period between 1940 and 1945, when the various parties were forced into a single officially sponsored organization. A recent count of political parties over the whole period puts the total number at more than 160. 1 These range from the ephemeral followings of particular leaders right up to the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) which has formed the government of Japan without interruption since 1955. Japanese political parties have developed greatly in range and sophistication since the first groupings made their appearance. Moreover the political role which parties were able to play up to 1945 was far more restricted than it became under the new Americaninfluenced Constitution of 1946. Even so, there is a surprising degree of continuity between pre-war and post-war parties, so that a number of broad generalizations about Japanese political parties may be put forward. These should not be taken as applying equally to all contemporary parties, but they will serve as a rough guide enabling the reader to orientate himself more easily to the discussion of particular parties. Perhaps the most striking characteristic of Japanese parties in general is the importance of the leader—follower relationship as the essential building block of political organization. The best-known manifestation of this is the intra-party faction, but some small parties are themselves difficult to distinguish in their form of organization from factions operating within large parties, except for the absence of an overarching party organization encapsulating them. It follows that party organization based on large active membership has been slow to develop, although there are exceptions. Much more typically, parties at local level are based on networks of connections, where local organization is highly personalized and only loosely connected with party organization at the centre. In its structure of decision making, such a party tends to concentrate the making of decisions in the hands of committees of party-affiliated parliamentarians, though here again not all parties are uniform. Two major consequences of this form of structure and organization are evident. One is that in the absence of strong programmatic party organization, the local-level networks that go to make up the party structure may well come under the influence or control of a particular interest group (or linked set of interest groups), with a consequent narrowing of the party’s electoral appeal. When this happens, a party notoriously finds it difficult to

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break out from the confining constraints of interest-group control. The second consequence is that certain sorts of what may be termed ‘corruption’ (though the word needs using circumspectly) tend to become endemic. Where politics is based on mutual obligations and personal connections which transcend programmatic appeals, politics is easily conducted according to the dictates of a financial nexus. That the political system as a whole is not disastrously affected by this is the result of the relative uncorruptibility of the government bureaucracy. The importance of leader-follower groupings in Japanese politics may be traced back to a characteristic of Japanese society, where authority linkages of a personal kind involving mutual obligation have long been entrenched. This tends to foster close, and often intense, group loyalties, where the group, however, is typically small enough to facilitate personal interaction between a leader and his personal followers. Since in modern conditions a political party, to be effective, must be much larger than this would permit, parties become factionalized, as the followings of rival leaders jockey with each other for control of party organization. Full control by any one faction, however, is difficult to attain. Power sharing, together with a sharing of the spoils of office, tends to be the norm, and consensual modes of decision making generally prevail. On the other hand, where parties, or intra-party factions, are excluded from power on a long-term basis, the motive to co-operate in order to achieve consensus is less, and political fragmentation tends to occur, as well as irresponsible behaviour in certain circumstances. Politics in Japan, however, is not simply and solely a reflection of entrenched social norms of behaviour. The political system, and especially the electoral system, play an important part in shaping the way parties are structured and how they behave. As in any system of politics, the formal and informal location of power is a crucial determinant of the ways parties operate. In the case of Japanese politics, a government is formed by that party or coalition of parties able to command a majority in the National Diet (parliament). The Diet actually votes on who shall be chosen prime minister, with the various parties putting forward their respective leaders as candidates. There is no separate election for a president, as in the United States, and since the Diet sustains the executive as well as being the legislature, party discipline in parliamentary voting is for the most part strictly observed. The respective electoral systems for the two houses of the national Diet have an important bearing on the way parties have developed. Elections for the Lower House (House of Representatives) are conducted according to the principle of a single nontransferable vote in a multi-member constituency. Apart from one outlying island which is a single-member constituency, 47 constituencies elect 3 members each, 41 elect 4 members, and a further 41 elect 5 members., making 511 members in all. The system for electing members of the Upper House (House of Councillors) is more complicated. Out of a total of 252 members, 152 are elected by single non-transferable vote from local constituencies contiguous with the prefecture (the basic administrative unit similar in size to the British county). A further 100 seats are elected from a constituency of the whole nation, according to the d’Hondt list system of proportional representation. (Until 1983 seats in the national constituency were allocated according to first-past-the-post.) Since half the seats in the House of Councillors are elected every three years, only 176 are renewed at each election. This means that 2 constituencies elect 4 members each, 4 elect

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3 members, 15 elect 2 members, and 26 elect 1 member at each election. The system of election for the House of Representatives has been used (with minor variations) in every election since 1925, save that of 1946. As the long-established election system for the dominant house, therefore, it has had a long-term effect on party formation and behaviour. The key point about the system is that it is permissive towards the formation of small parties, and within large parties, towards the formation of factions. At the extreme, in a 5-member constituency, there are instances of candidates being elected with as little as 10 per cent of the vote in that constituency. A small party which could win one seat in every 5-member constituency would have 41 seats. For a large party, the system makes it possible to put forward multiple candidates in many constituencies. Since, however, there is no vote-transferability, there is real competition for votes between candidates of the same party. This has led to the widespread formation of candidate-centred personal support organizations (kōenkai). For purposes of funding, they are mostly linked in with competing intra-party factions within the party’s Diet membership. A further important point is that for a large party careful control over the number of candidates endorsed is essential. Too many candidates endorsed by the same party in a given constituency could spell disaster by dispersing that party’s vote too thinly over too many candidates. Rules about campaigning methods in Japan are strict, and some would argue, overregulated. Door-to-door canvassing is expressly forbidden (in the belief that it would encourage corruption). The number of campaign posters, TV broadcasts, campaign vehicles and so on are limited by law, though a consolidated list of candidates’ policy positions is distributed to constituents at public expense. The press is not strongly partisan, though different newspapers may be distinguished from each other in terms of general political preference, and the press normally strives to appear neutral in electoral campaigns. Loudspeaker vans are an important feature of electoral campaigns, but perhaps the most crucial method of campaigning is by means of local connections established well away from the public gaze. This is the business of the candidate himself, his staff, and his kōenkai, but an important thing to realize about the kōenkai is that it tends to have more to do with socializing and the establishment of group solidarity than with consideration of national policy, which is largely left to the central party headquarters to expound. It would be wrong to see kōenkai as running in a different direction from the party as such, but their existence imparts a notably localistic colouring to elections. The impact of television is not unimportant, but clearly less central than in the United States or Europe. The Upper House election system is also rather permissive towards small parties, though less so towards intra-party factions. The introduction of proportional representation into the national constituency has further increased the number of miniparties. Finally, the election systems for both the House of Representatives and for the prefectural constituencies of the House of Councillors are severely distorted by a longstanding failure to correct electoral boundaries to take account of the massive shifts in population that have occurred since the war. The only changes that have taken place have been palliatives, and in 1985 the value of a single vote in the most over-represented constituency was 511 per cent of that in the most under-represented constituency. 2 The

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discrepancy in the Upper House prefectural constituencies was even greater. This bias generally speaking resulted in the rural areas being greatly advantaged electorally and the cities being disadvantaged—a point of considerable importance in understanding the way Japanese parties have developed since the 1950s.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Embryo political parties emerged in the 1870s but there was no national assembly for their candidates to be elected to until 1890. The House of Representatives established by the Meiji Constitution of 1889 was deliberately designed to have extremely limited powers, and was not expected to play a role in the formation of governments. Nevertheless, during the 1890s the parties—which essentially represented the elite of the countryside and the cities—proved surprisingly resilient in challenging the governments formed by the Meiji ‘oligarchs’. The first party cabinet was formed in 1898, and although it soon fell, the right of parties to be involved in government appeared to be acknowledged by the formation of the Seiyūkai party in 1900. The Seiyūkai, which remained in existence under the same name until the disbanding of all parties in 1940, was the product of a compromise between a section of the oligarchy and a section of party leaders, whereby party opposition was modified in response to some party access to the spoils of office. A rather similar development occurred with the formation of the Kenseikai in 1915 (though essentially the same grouping had existed under different names previously, and it was to continue under the name Minseitō between 1927 and 1940). Both Seiyūkai and Kenseikai comprised groups of party politicians who had each entered into ‘deals’ with separate groups within the political Establishment, membership of which the parties were actively seeking but had not securely achieved. Thus Japan between the second and fourth decades of the twentieth century possessed something which looked rather like a two-party system. The Seiyūkai and Kenseikai competed fiercely with each other and between them consistently won the bulk of seats in the House of Representatives. They both developed extensive grass-roots organization and a central bureaucracy. They were not clearly distinguishable from each other on ideological lines, and both may be described, for want for a better word, as ‘conservative’, but in general they followed the trend of the times, and their main concern seems to have been to achieve some share in the government of the country. This they succeeded in doing to a considerable extent during the 1920s era known as ‘Taishō Democracy’, when ‘transcendental cabinets’ (cabinets neither responsible to the Diet nor composed of members of it) were briefly replaced by party cabinets. At the height of party influence, however, their largely opportunistic linkages with big business concerns drew criticism that they were unduly involved in corrupt dealings. This was one of a number of factors which combined to change the political atmosphere away from the relative liberalism of the 1920s to the nationalist extravagances of the 1930s. Party campaigning by the late 1920s had in any case become a very different thing from what it had been in the 1890s. Whereas at the time of Japan’s first general election in 1890 the suffrage—based on a property franchise—extended to about one per cent of population, a law of 1925 gave the vote to males over the age of 25. This for the first time

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made it possible to direct a political appeal to members of the emerging proletariat. Between 1926 and 1940 respectable progress was made by a socialist movement divided into a bewildering number of mini-parties in the late 1920s, but consolidated into a single party, the Social Masses Party, in 1932. This was the foundation for a much enhanced socialist and social democratic movement in the changed political conditions following the end of the Pacific War in 1945. It should be noted, however, that virtually all political parties, including the Social Masses Party, had thrown in their lot with the ultranationalists by the merging of all parties into the Imperial Rule Assistance Association in 1940. Political parties were able to work in a much more favourable environment after the end of the war. Not only was their existence sanctioned by doctrines of popular sovereignty and democratic government, but many of their old rivals, and most notably the armed forces, had been eliminated from the political scene. The parties which were formed in 1945–6 showed marked continuity with pre-war parties, despite the five-year gap in party competition which had just ended. On the conservative side, the Japan Liberal Party came largely from a section of the old Seiyūkai, while the Japan Progressive Party (subsequently to go through several changes of name up to 1955) derived from the old Minseitō (earlier Kenseikai) and one section of the Seiyūkai. On the left wing, the Japan Socialist Party was heir to several socialist and social democratic traditions of the pre-war period, while the Japan Communist Party could trace its origins back to an illegal communist party founded in 1922, and to several subsequent attempts to keep the movement alive in dangerous circumstances. The Japan Co-operative Party lacked prewar roots, but although it was in vogue for a while, it had disappeared by the party realignment of 1955. Both the left and right wings of Japanese politics saw a kaleidoscope of splits and mergers during the crucial decade 1945–55. The year 1955 was a crucial one in the development of Japanese political parties. In the Lower House general elections of February, left-wing (Socialist and Communist) parties for the first time won between them more than one-third of the seats, thus becoming able to block attempts to revise the new democratic Constitution. Later in the same year, the Left and Right Socialist Parties (which had existed as separate parties since 1951) merged to form once again a single Japan Socialist Party, which accounted for all but a handful of opposition seats. With this a real prospect emerged of Socialist participation in coalition governments (as had indeed happened in 1947–8), so that the still fragmented conservative parties found themselves placed under strong pressure from business to sink their differences and form a single party capable of preventing Socialist involvement in government. Thus in November 1955 the Liberal Democratic Party was born, and has been Japan’s party of power ever since. Between 1955 and 1959 Japan apparently enjoyed a two-party system. In the general elections for the Lower House held in May 1958, the Liberal Democratic Party obtained 287 seats and the Japan Socialist Party 166 seats. Out of a total of 467 the two parties between them won 97 per cent of the seats. Two decades later, however, it was evident that the system had undergone fundamental change. Not only had the potential for alternation in office presented by a two-party system not been realized, but the number of significant parties had increased. In the 1979 Lower House general election the Liberal Democrats won 248 seats (boosted, however, following the election by the adherence of

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several Independents), and the Socialists won 107 seats. With the total number of seats now 511, this meant that the two principal parties had been able to win between them only 69.9 per cent of the seats. The rest were accounted for by five other parties, in order of Lower House strength, the Kōmeitō, the Japan Communist Party, the Democratic Socialist Party, the New Liberal Club and the Social Democratic League, as well as a small number of Independents most of whom were sympathetic to the Liberal Democrats. The figures reveal clearly that of the two main parties from the late 1950s, the Liberal Democrats had fared very much better than the Socialists. Whereas the former had lost votes and seats but succeeded in holding on to power, the latter had lost ground through defections and through general erosion of support, especially in the big cities which used to be its heartland. If Japan’s party system of the late 1950s was sometimes referred to as a ‘one-and-a-half-party system’, that of the late 1970s and the first half of the 1980s might be called a ‘one-party government and a multi-party opposition’. 3 The rest of this chapter will describe all of those parties currently having representation in the National Diet.

THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY (LDP)—JIYŪMINSHUTŌ (JIMINTŌ) The LDP has been by far the most successful political party in Japanese history, having never been out of office in more than thirty years of its existence. As a ‘party in power’ 4 it has naturally been able to forge quasi-permanent linkages both with the government bureaucracy and with significant interest groups, particularly those representing industry and agriculture. It is unlike any other party in that it is embedded in the central structure of government, to the extent that its departure from office might be expected to create an unprecedented upheaval throughout the political and governmental system. Not surprisingly, linkages with the government ministries are extremely close, but they have been cemented by the fact that a substantial proportion of LDP Diet members (generally about a quarter of those in the House of Representatives, though the percentage is slowly declining) are former civil servants who have left their ministries to seek a political career after attaining senior bureaucratic rank. A disproportionate percentage of these have become cabinet ministers, and several prime ministers spent their early careers as civil servants. Over the years, however, a subtle change has come over the relationship between the LDP and the ministries. The LDP has gradually improved its own independent sources of information and policy-making capacity, with the result that in the late 1980s it has become less dependent on bureaucratic policy making than it was previously. The LDP has also since the time of its foundation maintained intimate communication with interest groups broadly describable as those of ‘big business’, notably through Keidanren (the Federation of Economic Organizations). Although there is no substantial group of former industrial leaders who have discovered a political career within the LDP, both policy advice and financial contributions are important in consolidating linkages between the industrial and political worlds. Apart from the undoubtedly dominant influence of large industrial firms, individual LDP Diet members are lobbied by a

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bewildering variety of interest groups, from rice growers to new religions to the textile industry to doctors. In the particular case of the Agncultural Co-operative Associations (Nōkyō), a considerable number of LDP Diet members are former or present officials. 5 The LDP has not infrequently found itself subject to criticism in respect of its methods of funding. An organization currently known as the Kokumin Seiji Kyōkai (National Political Association), formally outside the LDP structure, is supposed to channel funds into the central party organization. In practice, however, much of the money finding its way into the party goes directly into the various factions of which the party is composed. Certain business firms and other organizations make it a practice to donate funds regularly to several faction leaders with a view to securing favourable treatment whichever faction is on top at a particular time. At the end of 1985 there were five factions in the LDP, each most usually known by the name of its leader: Fukuda, Kōmoto, Nakasone, Suzuki and Tanaka, though the last of these was facing the possibility of splitting because of the chronic illness of its leader. One thing that is important to understand about LDP factions is that they are not primarily policy-oriented. Although some differences of policy emphasis may be detected between different factions (or at least, between their leaders), their raison d’être lies elsewhere. For an LDP Diet member it is important to belong to a faction for two principal reasons. The first is the provision of funding for the fighting of elections. Elections in Japan are extremely expensive, and candidates, to have any chance of success, are expected to provide massive largesse to their constituents. At a trivial level this involves the provision of small gifts, food and drink, free trips to Tokyo and so on, for relatively large numbers of their constituents. The law attempts to control the extent of this, but by common consent, is not especially successful. More substantially, perhaps, a ‘good’ Diet member is one who can look after his constituents’ needs for government spending on roads, bridges and sewerage systems, while attracting industry to invest in the area. The constituency of former prime minister Tanaka in Niigata is visibly far better provided with infrastructural projects and private investment than its neighbours, which is no doubt why his constituents continue to vote for him despite the massive corruption charges which he has attracted. Elections are expensive essentially because constituents regard local Diet members as material providers for the constituency. The second reason for belonging to a faction is that each faction maintains a seniority list of its members, on the basis of which it bargains with the prime minister prior to any cabinet reshuffle. A small proportion of LDP Diet members are thought not to have any factional affiliation, and clearly their chances of cabinet office are reduced thereby. Factions are also crucial in the process of selecting the party president, who, so long as the party is in power, becomes prime minister. Before 1978, the electorate for party presidential elections consisted of all LDP Diet members from both houses of the Diet, plus one party representative from each constituency. From 1978 onwards, the system was changed, so that a primary election was first held, the voters being all those registered with a prefectural branch as party members. The second stage was a run-off election in which LDP Diet members were electors. Subsequent problems with the new system led to the imposition of two main conditions: that there should be at least four candidates, and that each should be sponsored by at least 50 Diet members. (All candidates must of course be Diet members themselves.) In any case the new system,

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which has been put into operation twice (in 1978 and 1982), far from succeeding in its proclaimed aim of reducing the impact of factionalism upon party presidential elections, resulted in the extension of factional allegiances down to the local level. Indeed, competitive recruitment of ‘party’ members for electoral purposes by different factions has been a feature of the two primary elections so far held. Factions may be regarded in some (but not all) senses as ‘parties within a party’. They have long histories, solid organization and relatively predictable behaviour. They do not, however, put up candidates for election under their own label, but use the LDP label instead; and it is doubtful how far the electorate is aware of the factional affiliation of the LDP candidates presented to it. If we consider LDP factions as ‘parties within a party’, then we must regard the LDP as a ‘multi-party’ (multi-faction) system. There has never been a case where one faction has accounted for a majority of LDP Diet members, so that every cabinet is in effect a coalition of factions. Moreover, the allocation of cabinet posts is always conducted on the principle of fair shares, so that, although the ‘mainstream’ coalition (that controlled by the party president) will take certain key cabinet and party positions, the ‘anti-mainstream’ or non-mainstream’ factions will also receive a reasonable proportion of posts. It seems likely that the party’s good record in avoiding defections owes a great deal to this pragmatic principle in the allocation of posts. To satisfy factional aspirations, however, does entail one disadvantageous condition. Cabinet reshuffles are frequent, with the average tenure of a cabinet post being little more than nine months. This has undoubtedly delayed the achievement by the LDP of policy supremacy over the bureaucracy, though, as we have seen, it has not entirely prevented progress in this direction. The formal organization of the LDP is democratic, with an annual congress being at the apex of the organizational structure. The national congress, however, is little more than a rubber stamp, and effective power resides largely in the hands of LDP-affiliated members of the national Diet. Apart from the party president (simultaneously prime minister), the main party posts are the secretary-general (kanjichō), who runs the party secretariat, the chairman of the executive council (sōmukai), and the chairman of the policy affairs research council (seimuchōsakai). It is broadly true that these four function as the central decision-making group within the party. The executive council and the policy affairs research council are the key decision-making bodies, with the latter being subdivided into a large number of subcommittees covering functional areas. Local-level organization is extensive, but prefectural branches are strictly subordinated to the centre, and party candidates in local constituencies are semi-independent because of the personal support groups or kōenkai mentioned above. Control over candidate endorsement— crucial if the party is not to split its vote by putting forward too many candidates in multimember constituencies—is conducted with reasonable efficiency by the centre. Candidates normally seek endorsement of a party before deciding to stand for election, but if endorsement is refused, the prospective candidate sometimes decides to stand as an independent. In Lower House general elections since the 1960s a handful of these (generally about 10) have been elected, and such an independent may well displace an endorsed candidate. There is little inhibition about seeking and receiving LDP endorsement after successfully contesting a seat as an independent. We lack space to discuss in much detail the policies of the LDP, but the party is in

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many ways a ‘broad church’, consisting in the main of ‘small c’ conservatives, though opinions of the far right can also be found in some parts of the party. The LDP has demonstrated a strong streak of pragmatism in adapting to new policy circumstances, and being prepared to steal the clothes of the opposition. For instance, its vigorous promotion of environmental pollution control from the early 1970s after the opposition parties had been making electoral ground with effective attacks on the government’s pollution record., is a case in point. It has been similarly pragmatic in foreign policy, as shown in the preparedness of the Tanaka cabinet in 1972 to reverse longstanding party policy on the recognition of China. On the other hand the party has been fairly consistent in the pursuit of policies seen as pillars of national viability, such as the security relationship with the United States and business-oriented economic policies. It has generally been unfriendly to labour unions, but more friendly to agriculture than the interests of an increasingly urbanized society might have suggested. Even in respect of agriculture, however, despite the large number of agricultural LDP Diet members, LDP policies have inched away from excessive agricultural support. If the LDP has a problem, it is that of political corruption. The great publicity given to former prime minister Tanaka’s alleged involvement in the Lockheed and other scandals of the early 1970s certainly harmed the party’s image, even though the electorate appears surprisingly tolerant of behaviour of this kind. To a large extent this kind of corruption is ‘structural’, and the Tanaka case is merely an extreme example of a common phenomenon. (By ‘structural corruption’ is meant mutual obligation and exchange of favours; being endemic to Japanese society, this is also entrenched in politics, so that money frequently changes hands in ways that in western Europe would be regarded as corrupt.) Another problem perhaps, is that of top leadership, with six party presidents (prime ministers) leading the party and the government between 1972 and 1985. Indeed, the party rules actually prohibit any president serving for more than two consecutive twoyear terms, which may prevent the electorally popular prime minister Nakasone serving beyond 1986. Nevertheless, the LDP behaves as though born to rule. It is the ‘party in power’ in a predominant-party system, and this seems likely to continue for at any rate the foreseeable future, even if, as happened after the 1983 elections, a minor party was invited to boost the government majority by entering into a highly unequal coalition.

THE JAPAN SOCIALIST PARTY (JSP)—NIHON SHAKAITŌ The JSP was founded in December 1945, and by June 1947 found itself participating in a coalition government alongside the Japan Democratic Party and the People’s Cooperative Party, under the prime ministership of its own leader, Katayama. The coalition government, however, only lasted a few months, was succeeded by a similarly constituted coalition headed by the leader of the Japan Democratic Party, and this in turn collapsed as the result of internal dissension, in October 1948. From that day to the present, the JSP has been out of office, and is often dismissed as a political irrelevance, although it has never since the 1950s been displaced as second largest party in Japan in terms of seats in the National Diet.

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One of the party’s problems was always the diversity of its ideological background, which in turn was compounded by personal factionalism. At the time of its foundation it consisted of four principal groups ranging from the Marxist (but non-communist) left to right-of-centre proponents of labour-management co-operation at the workplace. Some indication of the difficulties the JSP has experienced in holding itself together can be gauged from an account of its splits and defections. In January 1948 a small right-wing group broke away. This was followed by an extreme leftist defection in September 1948, and then in January 1950 the party split into three separate fragments, which reunited in April of the same year. In October 1951 the JSP split into two separate parties, the Left Socialists and the Right Socialists, as a result of differences concerning the San Francisco peace settlement, and these two parties took four years to settle their differences and merge as one party in October 1955. It was to be only another four years, however, before the bulk of the former Left Socialist Party defected from the JSP and formed the Democratic Socialist Party. The JSP was then reasonably successful in holding itself together, even though its support was declining, but in 1977 there were further defections of right-of-centre elements, who formed a mini-party called the Social Democratic League. Party organization is based on the National Congress, which unlike its equivalent in the LDP, exercises genuine influence on party policy. Between 1962 and 1977 the rules for election to the Annual Congress were such that the body of Diet members found it difficult to control, and power drifted towards party branches at local level in which an extreme left-wing group, the Socialism Association (Shakaishugi Kyōkai), was strong. Since 1977, however, the influence of Diet members has once again increased, and the Socialism Association—very powerful in the late 1970s—has declined. The National Congress elects the Central Executive Committee (CEC), the Control Commission and the Central Committee. Of these the CEC is crucial and may be regarded as the party’s governing body. The Congress also elects the chairman and secretary-general, the party’s two leading officials. The chairman is generally regarded as the JSP leader and chief spokesman. JSP organization has often been likened to an inverted pyramid, in the sense that the party’s greatest strength lies at the centre and organization progressively weakens further down the scale. Certainly this is true of electoral representation, where the JSP is extremely weak in the smallest units of local representation. During the 1970s, however, city mayors and prefectural governors backed by the JSP and the Communist Party were elected in many of the urban prefectures and big cities across the country. Strength in local government nevertheless proved a temporary phenomenon, and has not continued into the 1980s. Weakness of local-level organization has in the past meant that the JSP is heavily dependent upon the organizational resources of sympathetic labour unions, mostly those affiliated with the national federation Sōhyō (General Council of Trade Unions of Japan). This has led to a high proportion (sometimes over 50 per cent) of JSP Diet members being former officials of Sōhyō-affiliated unions, and a corresponding narrowing of the focus of the party in representational and policy terms. Personal membership, however, has risen slightly following a membership campaign, and now accounts for some 64,000 people throughout Japan. In terms of declared income, the JSP lies fourth after the Japan

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Communist Party (JCP) the LDP and the Kōmeitō. For many years the party’s basic policy document has been the platform hammered out in the early 1960s. This is a strongly Marxist-influenced document, and the reformist chairman Ishibashi, elected in 1983, has pressed forward with the writing of a modernized platform. In December 1985 the annual party congress adjourned without having resolved this issue, but the new platform was passed unanimously by a resumed congress in 1986. Apart from its Marxist platform, the party has been identified by a pacifist stand on matters of defence. Vigorously supporting Article 9 (the peace clause) of the 1946 Constitution of Japan, the JSP has been strongly opposed to the Japan-USA Mutual Security Treaty, and to Japan’s own Self Defence Forces, which it would transform into a disaster relief force. Ishibashi has been attempting to modify or play down these policy positions, but faces resistance from the party’s Marxist left. JSP policies of ‘positive neutrality’ in world affairs have been variously interpreted, but the anti-American content in the policies has usually been strong. In domestic policy, the party can actually be quite conservative, for instance in its support for protection of agriculture. The JSP faces an uphill struggle to regain electoral ground in the big cities, where it has most significantly declined since the 1950s. Despite Ishibashi’s best efforts, few were predicting a dramatic reversal of the party’s decline as the 1980s passed their midpoint.

KŌMEITŌ The Kōmeitō (sometimes translated into English as ‘Clean Government Party’, though this is not an official name), was founded in November 1964 as the political wing of Japan’s most successful postwar new religion, the Sōka Gakkai (which may be translated as ‘Value Creation Association’), derived from Nichiren Buddhism. In the first two or three general elections which the Kōmeitō contested, it created an image of invincible organization by winning virtually all the seats which it fought. By the end of the 1960s the Sōka Gakkai was counting its membership in millions of families. Kōmeitō organization was an integral part of the organization of its parent sect, and votes for Kōmeitō candidates came almost exclusively from members of the sect. This was advantageous for the party electorally, for in the House of Councillors national constituency (before its conversion to proportional representation in 1982), the party would divide the whole country into regions and instruct sect members to vote for a particular Kōmeitō candidate in each region. The astonishing success of this strategy attests to the tight control which the sect and party together were able to exercise over their members. Around 1970, the organization came under intensive criticism in the mass media and set out to separate the Kōmeitō from the Sōka Gakkai. In particular it was decreed that nobody could hold office simultaneously in both. This coincided with a dramatic slowing down in the rate of recruitment by the parent sect, so that from the beginning of the 1970s the Kōmeitō came to seem a rather less formidable competitor to its opponents, and it has never come near to overhauling the JSP in numbers of Diet members, despite the lacklustre image of the latter. Nevertheless, by the mid-1980s it is the one opposition party

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that appears to be still making ground electorally, albeit slowly. The party’s national vote total in Lower House elections understates its performance by comparison with that of the JCP, since while the Kōmeitō only contests winnable seats, the JCP puts up candidates in virtually every seat in order to sustain its local organization. Party membership is heavily biased towards lower socio-economic groups, especially those working in small and medium industry. Female support is believed to be disproportionately high, especially among older women with lower educational attainments, mirroring the high female membership of Sōka Gakkai. In a very real sense the parent sect provides an alternative promotion ladder (through examinations in Buddhist teachings and so on) for its members, many of whom have been disadvantaged in the merciless competition of mainstream society. The socio-economic composition of its membership led some critics in the early years of the Kōmeitō to expect that its policies would move far to the right. In fact, however, the party’s policies have been in general moderate or ‘middle of the road’, with a strong emphasis on the elimination of corruption from politics, together with a championing of the needs of small and medium business. Its approach is non-Marxist, but it avoids appeals which might be interpreted as excessively nationalist. Unlike the JSP or the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP), the Kōmeitō is not dependent upon backing from labour unions. The Sōka Gakkai organization, however, still remains overwhelmingly its base of support and organization. Even though a small number of non-members of the sect are sponsored for election to the Diet and local assemblies by the Kōmeitō, this seems little more than tokenism, and the vast bulk of its voters are still sect members. The party has little rural base, and has its greatest success in big city electorates. In this it is very similar to the JCP, as it is in the ‘encapsulating’ nature of its organization., which expects members to be actively and constantly involved. In both these regards it contrasts with the JSP and the DSP. The Kōmeitō has a highly

Table 2 House of Representatives election results 1958–1983

Election 22 May 1958

LDP

JSP

21 Nov. 1963

JCP

NLC SDL Others Indep. Total

287 (61.5)

166 (35.5)

1 (0.2)

22,977 (57.8)

13,094 (32.9)

1,012 (2.6)

288 (0.7)

JSP 20 Nov. 1960

KP

1 (0.2) 12 (2.6)

467

2,381 39.752 (6.0)

DSP

296 (63.4)

145 (31.0)

17 (3.7)

3 (0.6)

1 (0.2)

22,740 (57.6)

10,887 (27.6)

3,464 (8.8)

1,157 (2.9)

142 (0.3)

283 (60.7)

144 (30.8)

23 (4.9)

5 (1.1)

0 (0)

22,424

11,907

3,023

1,646

60

5 (1.9)

467

1,119 39,509 (2.8) 12 (2.6)

467

1,956 41,017

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27 Dec. 1969

10 Dec. 1972

5 Dec. 1976

7 Oct. 1979

22 June 1980

18 Dec. 1983

203

(54.7)

(29.0)

(7.4)

(4.0)

(0.1)

(4.8)

277 (57.0)

140 (28.8)

30 (6.2)

25 5 (1.0) (5.1)

0 (0)

9 (1.9)

22,448 (48.8)

12,826 (27.9)

3,404 (7.4)

2,472 (5.4)

2,191 (4.8)

101 (0.2)

288 (59.2)

90 (18.5)

31 (6.4)

47 (9.7)

14 (2.9)

0 (0)

22,382 (47.6)

10,074 (21.4)

3,637 (7.7)

5,125 (10.9)

3,199 (6.8)

81 (0.2)

271 (55.2)

118 (24.0)

19 (3.9)

29 (5.9)

38 (7.7)

24,563 (46.8)

11,479 (21.9)

3,661 (7.0)

4,437 (8.5)

5,497 (10.5)

249 (48.7)

123 (24.1)

29 (5.7)

55 (10.8)

17 (3.3)

17 (3.3)

0 (0)

23,654 (41.8)

11,713 (20.7)

3,554 (6.3)

6,177 (10.9)

5,878 (10.4)

2,364 (4.2)

45 (0.1)

248 (148.6)

107 (20.9)

35 (6.8)

57 (11.2)

24,084 (44.6)

10,643 (19.7)

3,664 (6.8)

5,283 (9.8)

5,626 (10.4)

284 (55.6)

107 (20.9)

32 (6.3)

33 (6.5)

28,262 (47.9)

11,401 (19.3)

3,897 (6.6)

5,330 (9.0)

250 (48.9)

112 (21.9)

38 (7.4)

58 (11.3)

25,983 (45.8)

11,065 (19.5)

4,130 (7.3)

5,746 (10.1)

39 4 (0.7) (7.6)

2 (0.4)

0 (0)

1,632 (3.0)

368 (0.7)

69 (0.1)

29 (5.7)

12 (2.3)

3 (0.5)

0 (0)

5,804 (9.8)

1,766 (3.0)

402 (0.7)

109 (0.2)

26 8 (1.5) (5.1)

3 (0.6)

0 (0)

381 (0.7)

62 (0.1)

5,302 (9.3)

2,554 45,997 (5.5) 16 (3.3)

1,342 (2.4)

486

2,493 46,990 (5.3)

2 (0.4) 14 (2.9) 143 (0.3)

486

491

2,646 52,425 (5.0) 21 (4.1)

511

3,227 56,613 (5.7) 19 (3.7)

511

2,641 54,322 (4.9) 11 (2.1)

511

2,057 59,029 (3.5) 16 (3.1)

511

2,769 56,780 (4.9)

Number of seats (% of total seats) Number of votes, in thousands (% of total votes). Sources: Asahi Nenkan, various issues; Asahi Shimbun, various issues

centralized organizational structure which has been generally successful in suppressing factionalism. The top two positions, those of chairman and secretary-general, have been occupied continuously since 1967 by Takeiri and Yano respectively. The party’s leadership is thus more stable than that of any other party.

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THE DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST PARTY (DSP)—MINSHATŌ The DSP was founded in January 1960 following the defection from the JSP in late 1959 of the right-of-centre Nishio faction and part of the centrist Kawakami faction. Rejecting the Marxism and much of the anti-Americanism of the JSP, the Democratic Socialists in their earlier years took their cue from the British Labour Party and argued for moderate democratic socialism through parliamentary means. Since its inception the party has polled a remarkably constant proportion of the national vote (around 6–8 per cent, though since the party only contests winnable seats, this slightly understates its real strength by comparison with that of the JCP which contests nearly all seats). It is backed by the smaller of the two main labour union federations, Dōmei (The Japan Confederation of Labour), which is also less radical. The DSP is, like the JSP, a party which can trace its origins to the early history of socialism in Japan, and notably to the late 1920s. Part of this legacy is an organizational structure which, like that of the LDP and the JSP, is founded upon personal machines at local level run in practice by candidates with a local base of support. Unlike those two parties however, the DSP is small and therefore gives the appearance of a coalition of scattered local notabilities. The cement which holds the party together, apart from its own organization, is the links with unions, which rally behind candidates at election time in constituencies where those unions are strong. Despite many similarities of policy, therefore, the DSP is organizationally very unlike the Kōmeitō. Whereas the latter is highly centralized and tightly run as a party, and is nearly symbiotic with the parent sect, the DSP is loosely organized, somewhat susceptible to factionalism, dependent on union backing but also on that of the management of some small and medium firms, as well as other organizations. Personal membership is said to be about 30,000. The DSP is generally regarded as a middle-of-the-road party, but in some areas of policy it has moved towards the right since its foundation. In defence policy, in particular, it differs rather little from policies emanating from the right wing of the LDP. The party has experienced several changes of leadership, and occasional well-publicized struggles over succession to the positions of chairman and secretary-general since 1960. Like the Kōmeitō and the New Liberal Club (NLC), the DSP is an obvious candidate for co-optation into a coalition government should the LDP lose a working majority in the House of Representatives. The party has generally given the impression that it would be happy to receive such an invitation, but not all within the party agree, and some sections of the LDP show equal reluctance to link fortunes with a party whose principal links are with organized labour, however moderate. Even so, there is evidence of considerable communication between certain faction leaders of the LDP and DSP leaders, in which coalition prospects may be presumed to have been discussed. The same is believed to occur between other LDP faction leaders and the Kōmeitō.

THE JAPAN COMMUNIST PARTY (JCP)—NIHON KYŌSANTŌ The JCP is in a sense Japan’s oldest political party. It was first founded in 1922, but was

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completely illegal and its members were hounded by the police until 1945. It enjoyed a vogue among intellectuals in the late 1940s and 1950s, and engaged in a struggle for control of the union movement during the Occupation, losing out ultimately to the noncommunist left. Its post-war high point of electoral success was when the JCP won 35 seats in the Lower House elections of January 1949. In 1950, however, it moved sharply to the left, and was driven underground by the American Occupation. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s the JCP was riven by factional dissension and electorally was a negligible force. From the mid-sixties, however, following the purging of pro-Soviet and later proChina factions, the party began to increase its electoral appeal. Under the remarkably shrewd leadership of an old Communist from the pre-war period, Miyamoto, the party’s organization was greatly strengthened, membership greatly expanded, and sales of the party newspaper and journals rapidly increased. The party found itself able to attract a substantial disaffected vote in the big cities, and won 38 seats in the Lower House general elections of 1972. During the early 1970s much of the Marxist-Leninist platform and policies of the party were modified to eliminate phrases such as ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, ruling parties of the Soviet Union and China were kept as arm’s length, and links were developed with those European parties described as ‘Eurocommunist’. It took a strongly nationalist line on such issues as the northern islands dispute with the USSR. After 1972 the JCP quickly established a reputation for effective policy research and trenchant parliamentary questioning, which showed up the relative ineffectiveness of the other opposition parties, particularly the JSP. The Liberal Democrats began to treat the JCP as a serious political threat, and an incident involving the killing of a police spy in the 1930s was brought out of the cupboard to discredit Miyamoto. By the 1980s, the momentum of JCP advance had stopped, and the party was isolated from the rest of the opposition. In a time of increasing conservatism, it saw itself as the only party capable of providing unambiguous opposition to government policies.

THE NEW LIBERAL CLUB (NLC)—SHIN JIYŪKURABU The NLC was formed by six LDP Diet members who defected in 1976 in protest against the Lockheed scandal involving former prime minister Tanaka. In the Lower House general elections of December 1976 the new party elected seventeen candidates in a wave of enthusiasm. Success was not sustained, however, and in the 1983 elections the number was down to eight. Following the election the NLC entered a coalition government with the LDP, which needed extra numbers to secure a working majority. The NLC has advocated reformist capitalism, freedom from political corruption, and maintenance of the security treaty with the United States. Where it differs from the LDP most significantly is in its opposition to revising the 1946 Constitution of Japan, with its controversial peace clause. Early in its existence the NLC found itself embroiled in an internal controversy leading to the defection back to the LDP of one of its Diet members. It was in the aftermath of this that the NLC elected no more than four Lower House members in the elections of October 1979. Although the party subsequently recovered from this debacle and found its

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way back into government through its coalition arrangement with the LDP from 1983, its biggest problem apart from credibility was the temptation many of its members felt to rejoin the LDP, with the access to power and to financial backing that that guaranteed. Life in a mini-party was not a comfortable one, and the negotiations following the 1983 elections appear to have encompassed the possibility of a mass return to the LDP fold by the NLC. It will be interesting to see what verdict the electorate passes on to the NLC now that it has entered into a coalition with the ruling LDP. The NLC occupies a special position as the only party outside the LDP to have originated on the conservative side of politics. The prospect of a second conservative party representing largely urban rather than rural interests has always been an interesting one, but the NLC is too small and too much confined to the Tokyo area, where most of its strength lies.

THE SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC LEAGUE (UNITED SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY) (SDL) The SDL (also known in English as the USDP) was formed as the result of two successive right-of-centre defections from the JSP in 1977, during a leadership succession crisis. Much of the steam was taken out of the movement by the death of Eda, the leader of the first defection and a nationally known Socialist leader, shortly after he pulled his group out of the JSP. The new party has never managed to elect more than three members of the House of Representatives. At times it has operated a joint organization with the NLC within the National Diet.

MINOR PARTIES IN THE HOUSE OF COUNCILLORS The July 1983 elections to the House of Councillors were the first to be held with the use of proportional representation for the national constituency (electing 50 members). Several minor parties stood for election, and three of them had some success. The newly formed Salaryman’s Party elected two members, the newly formed Welfare Party elected one member (who later joined the LDP), and the Second Chamber Club (a loose grouping of independents) elected one. The future of all these groupings is in doubt.

CONCLUSION Japan has one of the clearest examples of a predominant party system in the world today. The Liberal Democrats are a relatively pragmatic broad-based party of conservative stamp, strongly entrenched within the governmental structure and determined to stay in power. The opposition, though it has cut back the conservative majorities of the 1950s, is fragmented and perceived by the electorate as collectively disorganized. There is some evidence that the electorate behaves in such a way (whether consciously or not) as to keep the LDP restrained by a small majority while preventing the opposition from

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actually taking over. When, in June 1980, the media portrayed the LDP as likely to be defeated, it was returned with a thumping majority in an exceptionally high turnout. Only two alternatives appear feasible to replace an LDP near-monopoly of power: coalition between the LDP and either the DSP or Kōmeitō; or a major LDP split, followed by some quite new coalition. But continuation of LDP predominance seems more likely than either of these.

NOTES 1. J.A.A.Stockwin and Kishō Azama, section on Japan in Political Parties of Asia and the Pacific, ed. Haruhiro Fukui (2 vols, Greenwood, Westport, Conn., and London, 1985), pp. 449–631. 2. Asahi Shimbun, 13 December 1985. 3. For an analysis of the party system in the 1950s and early 1960s, see Robert A. Scalapino and Junnosuke Masumi, Parties and Politics on Contemporary Japan (University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1962). 4. See Haruhiro Fukui, Party in Power: the Japanese Liberal-Democrats and PolicyMaking (Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1970). 5. Aurelia George, The Comparative Study of Interest Groups in Japan: an Institutional Framework (Australia-Japan Research Centre Pacific Economic Papers, no. 95, Canberra, December 1982).

16 Political Parties and Political Opposition First published in Takeshi Ishida and Ellis S.Krauss (eds), Democracy in Japan. Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989)

DEMOCRACY, OPPOSITION, AND ONE-PARTY DOMINANCE THE FAILURE OF the opposition parties to take power in Japan over a very long period raises questions of fundamental importance, not only about the politics of Japan, but also about parliamentary democracy in general. 1 Between 1945 and 1955 the national government was controlled by various groups that in 1955 joined to form the Liberal Democratic party (LDP) which has monopolized national political office since that time. (For about eighteen months in 1947–48 there were two successive coalition governments which included the Japan Socialist party; and from December 1983 to July 1986 the LDP ruled in coalition with a tiny conservative fragment, the New Liberal Club.) Conservatives and conservative independents have formed a majority in every election since the war for both the lower and the upper houses of the National Diet. Japan, to borrow Giovanni Sartori’s terminology, has a predominant party system which is of unusual longevity. 2 Sweden provides a somewhat comparable example of longevity in power by a single party (the Social Democrats), but Japan is arguably the industrialized world’s only unambiguous example of conservative longevity. The most important question which this raises for the understanding of parliamentary democracy is whether it really matters. Can a predominant party system like that of Japan sit easily within the category of ‘parliamentary democracy or should it be a matter of serious complaint that the party in power does not change over several decades? If parties in opposition never take office, does this mean that the system ceases to be genuinely democratic? Two contrasting kinds of answers may be given to these questions. The first would deny that a predominant party system is necessarily undemocratic: even though the same party always takes power, this occurs on the basis of the freely expressed will of the electorate, which has the freedom to dismiss the government and replace it with the opposition should it so wish. The electorate, however, has not so chosen, and this ought to be interpreted as indicating electoral satisfaction, rather than a defect in the system. Reinforcing this argument is the suggestion that continuity in power creates continuity, and thus consistency, in administration. Government based on one-party dominance may thus plan from a long-term perspective, without having to adjust traumatically to elections which change the party or parties in power. The opposite kind of answer is that predominant party politics fails to provide access to power (or the prospect of access to power) for those parties and their supporters which

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are permanently out of office. Thus a very substantial part of the electorate, and a major segment of those who enter politics, are deprived of the opportunity to participate—or elect those who participate—in the control of government. The argument is reinforced by the more empirical consideration that predominant party politics may lack the stimulus provided by fairly regular alternation in power. Alternating politics—according to this argument—is rather like the effect of the tide on a beach: by a regular tidal process of flushing and cleansing, the beach is kept pristine, fresh, and free of detritus and jetsam. A beach not subject to tidal action needs cleansing by other mechanisms if it is to stay pure and function properly as a beach. A further related set of questions concerns the role of opposition parties in a predominant party system. To what extent, if at all, are opposition parties able to exercise influence despite having little or no possibility of taking office? Does the fact that opposition parties are effectively excluded from office impel them to seek alternative channels of influence? Is this likely to mean that they will resort, out of frustration, to such ‘extraparliamentary’ activities as the fomenting of riots and demonstrations? Will they, more broadly, seek to exercise veto power against government policies of which they particularly disapprove, or will they rather tend eventually to become clients of those in office?

COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES Before measuring a predominant party system against a model of alternation in power, we should note that the latter has rather few actual examples. The British political system is most often cited as an example of alternating ‘swing of the pendulum’ politics, but an examination of past history shows that it is an imperfect example, at best. The Conservatives won three successive general elections, each with a larger majority than the last, and formed governments continuously between 1951 and 1964, while Labour appeared to be the dominant party (despite losing the 1970 election) from 1964 to 1979. Moreover, the establishment of the Alliance between the Liberals and the Social Democratic party (formed as a Labour breakaway in 1981) has now imparted a threeparty, or even four-party, character to British politics which squares ill with the principles of alternating politics. 3 When we look at parliamentary democracies other than the British, we see a bewildering variety of possibilities, from predominant conservative parties facing occasionally successful labour party challenges, such as Australia and New Zealand, through fluid multiparty systems with a marked conservative predominance, such as Italy, to social-democratic predominance facing conservative challenge, as in parts of Scandinavia. The United States exhibits features of alternation in elections both to the presidency (restricted to two four-year terms) and to Congress, but the system is so different in operation from that of a European-style parliamentary democracy that comparison is problematic. Anything like a ‘pure’ example of alternation in power is thus extremely hard to find. Nevertheless, in most parliamentary democracies the parties in office do change from time to time. France is an interesting example of a country where a long period of

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ascendancy by center-right forces was replaced between 1981 and 1986 by a Socialist/Communist ascendancy (from which the Communists excluded themselves in July 1984). Even in Italy, where the Christian Democratic party has ruled, alone or in coalition, for nearly four decades, the composition of coalitions changes and, as in 1983– 85, it is even possible for a non-Christian Democrat (the leader of the small Socialist party) to be prime minister. Japan is close to the extreme end of a spectrum ranging from systems where no change in the party composition of governments takes place over several decades to systems where governments and oppositions have exchanged places from time to time and will possibly do so in the future. The absence of ‘pure’ alternating systems thus should not blind us to the fact that in democratic politics a situation of no change whatsoever in the party composition of cabinets is unusual, and change as an unsurprising, if irregular, expectation of political life is closer to the ‘norm.’ What then is the basis for belief in regular alternation and single party predominance respectively? The ‘classic’ justification for regular alternation on what was thought to be the British model was that it was a method of spreading effective representation to diverse sections of the society and thus binding it together. Supporters of the party currently out of power could realistically expect that in the foreseeable future their party would attain offtce, and therefore they were not disinclined to follow the parliamentary road. A further justification was that so long as defeat at the polls was a real and not just a theoretical possibility, a government was likely to be kept on its toes, would be careful to avoid so far as possible inept or grossly unpopular measures and would be constantly concerned to maintain its reputation for probity and effectiveness. In other words, responsible and representative government was likely to ensue. 4 For two-party alternating politics in a parliamentary democracy to work well, a necessary condition, in this view, is that it should be centripetal, that is, the two major parties should both compete electorally for the ‘middle ground of the electorate,’ or in other words for moderate opinion that in some way lies between the mainstream ideological positions of the two parties themselves. These ‘moderate’ electors are (according to this theory) a pragmatic, nonideological lot, so that if they hold the key to which party wins elections, governments themselves should be less ideologically committed than the activists in each party would like. In order for these conditions to obtain, however, three further conditions must be fulfilled. First, government and opposition must alternate in practice with reasonable regularity. A party cast into long-term opposition is likely to experience the kind of disillusionment that in political terms tends to create a centrifugal, rather than centripetal system. Second, and more important, the party leadership must both be committed to pursuit of power by appeal to moderate electoral opinion, and also be able to control and avoid being controlled by partisan activists in its own ranks. Third, policies must be crowned by a reasonable degree of success. If substantial sections of the electorate begin to perceive that reasonable, middle-of-the-road policies are failing to stem a drift into national economic decline, then the legitimacy of centripetal alternating politics is likely to recede. Instead of being seen as the

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Table 1 Opposition Party Performance in the House of Representatives, 1958–1983 (votes in units of one thousand)

JSP 22/5/58

20/11/60

21/11/63

29/1/67

27/12/69

10/12/72

5/12/76

7/10/79

22/6/80

18/12/83

6/7/86

DSP

Kōmeitō

JCP

Seats

166 (35.5%)

1 (0.2%)

Votes

13,094 (32.9%)

1,012 (2.6%)

Seats

145 (31.0%)

17 (3.7%)

3 (0.6%)

Votes

10,887 (27.6%)

3,464 (8.8%)

1,157 (2.9%)

Seats

144 (30.8%)

23 (4.9%)

5 (1.1%)

Votes

11,907 (29.0%)

3,023 (7.4%)

1,646 (4.0%)

Seats

140 (28.8%)

30 (6.2%)

25 (5.1%)

5 (1.0%)

Votes

12,826 (27.9%)

3,404 (7.4%)

2,472 (5.4%)

2,191 (4.8%)

Seats

90 (18.5%)

31 (6.4%)

47 (9.7%)

14 (2.9%)

Votes

10,074 (21.4%)

3,637 (7.7%)

5,125 (10.9%)

3,199 (6.8%)

Seats

118 (24.0%)

19 (3.9%)

29 (5.9%)

38 (7.7%)

Votes

11,479 (21.9%)

3,661 (7.0%)

Seats

123 (24.1%)

29 (5.7%)

Votes

11,713 (20.7%)

3,554 (6.3%)

Seats

107 (20.9%)

35 (6.3%)

Votes

10,643 (19.7%)

3,664 (6.8%)

Seats

107 (20.9%)

32 (6.3%)

33 (6.5%)

Votes

11,401 (19.3%)

3,897 (6.6%)

5,330 (9.0%)

Seats

112 (21.9%)

38 (7.4%)

58 (11.8%)

Votes

11,065 (19.5%)

4,130 (7.3%)

5,746 (10.1%)

Seats

85 (16.6%)

26 (5.1%)

56 (10.9%)

Votes

10,412 (17.2%)

3,896 (6.4%)

5,701 (9.4%)

SDL

4,437 (8.5%) 5,497 (10.5%) 55 (10.8%)

17 (3.3%)

6,177 (10.9%) 5,878 (10.4%) 57 (11.2%)

39 (7.6%)

2 (0.4%)

5,283 (9.8%) 5,626 (10.4%) 368 (0.7%) 29 (5.7%)

3 (0.5%)

5,804 (9.8%) 402 (0.7%) 26 (5.1%)

3 (0.5%)

5,302 (9.3%) 381 (0.7%) 26 (5.1%)

4 (0.8%)

5,313 (8.8%) 499 (0.8%)

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Source: Asahi Nenkan, various issues. Notes: JSP=Japan Socialist party (Nihon Shakaitō); JCP=Japan Communist party (Nihon Kyōsantō); DSP=Democratic Socialist party (Minshatō); SDL=Social Democratic League (Shaminren)

politics of sweet reason, it comes to be regarded by dissatisfied elements as the politics of ‘Tweedledum and Tweedledee.’ 5 In the British case, the political center of gravity of both major parties had by the late 1970s moved conspicuously toward their respective extremes and away from middle-ofthe-road consensual politics, which despite much confrontational rhetoric had prevailed since the 1950s. The rise of the Alliance of Liberals and Social Democrats in the early 1980s stemmed from widespread dissatisfaction with the polarization of the two major parties under diverging leadership. Ironically, however, the effect of the Alliance’s emergence was to split the opposition to the radical Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher, and, given the highly nonproportional electoral system based on single-member constituencies, the inability of either the Labour party or its centrist rivals to eliminate the other could perhaps permit the long-term continuation of Conservative rule.

CHANGING JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES During the late 1950s and early 1960s many political observers within Japan believed that Japanese politics were likely to travel down a road leading to alternating politics and that such a system as it operated in Britain and elsewhere had merits that were readily transferable to Japan. 6 Today in contrast, it has become quite fashionable to present Japan as an example demonstrating the merits of nonalternating politics. 7 Several factors appear to be at the root of this remarkable change in approach. From a Japanese point of view, lack of appeal in British-style alternating politics (whatever it may have meant in practice) reflected in part the perception that the British economy was in relative decline. A common belief in Japan about the British (and other European) politicoeconomic systems was that conflict between antagonistic and wellorganized social classes served to inhibit economic progress. Alternating government therefore was seen as essentially the political reflection of (or at best, an attempt to manage) a fundamentally class-divided society from which Japan is happily distinct. The other side of this coin was that domestic criticism of Japan’s own politicoeconomic arrangements declined as belief in Japan as an economic success story capable of overtaking in economic competitiveness regions such as Europe, became widespread. 8 Political continuity and stability, allied with social discipline, diligence, resourcefulness, and communal striving for group goals on the part of a technologically educated work force were seen as highly desirable features of the system. The specifically political part of this evaluation contains some interesting nuances. Defenders of the system are perfectly prepared to criticize (often in forthright terms) particular politicians or decisions or even institutions, but assume as a matter virtually

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213

beyond argument that the LDP will and should continue more or less to monopolize the right to form cabinets. The opposition parties are dismissed as incapable of governing in their own right, although it is conceded that one or other of the smaller middle-of-theroad parties might be brought into government as a junior partner. (This has already happened with the New Liberal Club (NLC) that in 1986 was reabsorbed into the LDP from which it defected, in a protest over corruption, in 1976.) There are certain tacit assumptions here of great importance. One is that there is no point in upsetting the channels of communication that have been built up over a long period between the LDP government ministries and a range of interest groups. In the main, these relationships are thought to work well and result in policy outcomes which are both realistic and forward-looking. 9 Another is that the opposition parties have shown little evidence of their capacity to undertake responsible government. They are badly fragmented and do not effectively cooperate because each is seeking increased parliamentary representation at the expense of the others. The quality of their leadership is generally low and they lack the depth and extent of contacts and experience that the LDP possesses. Third, and at a deeper level of analysis (or rather, feeling), the concept of alternation of power, or even the idea that the opposition parties might have a realistic chance of governing at rare intervals, runs counter to the sense of a unified Japanese polity, in which so far as possible a patron-client relationship is maintained between the central government and other elements within the system, whether these be interest groups (other than those semi-incorporated into central government), local government authorities, or political parties in opposition. The opposition parties themselves are taking on some of the characteristics of government clients. Essentially this is because a party permanently out of office is still faced with the necessity of effectively representing its supporters, even though it has no chance of doing so by attaining office and seeking to put its proposals into law. Except in the case of parties whose ideological opposition to the established government is uncompromising, parties in permanent opposition must over a long period be strongly tempted to be drawn into a client role vis-à-vis government, including the party in office. There is evidence that faction leaders in the LDP actively pursue contacts for their own purposes with leaders of some opposition parties, which have been developing a relationship with the LDP smacking of clientelism. In any case, the parties in opposition occupy a largely peripheral position in the political system, and this has come to be widely accepted as their natural situation. The LDP, by contrast, has become a kind of ‘Japan-party,’ in other words, the party whose natural role it is to run Japan.

OPPOSITION PARTIES AND THEIR POSITION IN THE JAPANESE PARTY SYSTEM We now turn to the principal focus of this chapter, which is why the opposition parties have been so unsuccessful since the 1950s in attaining office at national level, and whether this really matters. Let us examine first why the opposition has failed in what should presumably have been its primary task, that of attaining office. The opposition as a whole has had some successes since the 1950s, but the picture is

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one of progressive fragmentation and proliferation. The LDP, on the other hand, despite rumors of splits, has only once suffered an organized defection, that of the New Liberal Club in 1976 (though individuals have occasionally defected). 10 At the general elections for the House of Representatives held in May 1958, 97 percent of seats were taken by the two major parties, the LDP and the Japan Socialist party (JSP), with the JSP winning 35.5 percent In 1988

Table 2 Urban Support for Parties by Prefecture in the National (PR) Constituency: House of Councillors Elections, 1983

Order of LDP JSP DSP Kōmeitō JCP voting strength Const. % Const. % Const. % Const. % Const. % C per vote vote vote vote vote Prefecture 1

Aichi

16.28 Osaka

22.89 Kyōtō

20.97 K

Osaka

16.70 Sa

2 3

Hyōgo

14.17

T

4

Osaka

11.63 Hyōgo

19.77

5

Tōkyō

11.92 C

10.41 K

6 7

Kanagawa 10.08

8 9

Tōkyō

17.89

10

Saitama

17.51 Hyōgo

11

Saitama

12

10.47 O

Kanagawa 17.40

13

Kanagawa

8.79

14

H

15

Chiba

16.55

16

Aichi

15.98 Aichi

8.28

17 18

Kyōtō

8.46

A

19 20

Chiba

21 22

Kyōtō Tōkyō

8.04

14.86

7.77

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23 24

Order of LDP JSP DSP Kōmeitō JCP NLC voting strength Const. % Const. % Const. % Const. % Const. % Cons per vote vote vote vote vote Prefecture 25 26

Chiba

6.92

27 28

Saitama 6.48

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

Kanagawa 14.07

38

Hyōgo

13.68

39 40

Chiba

33.21 Chiba

13.27

41

Kyōto

31.79

42

Aichi

31.09 Saitama

11.99

43

Saitama

29.05 Aichi

11.69

44

Tōkyō

27.62

45

Hyōgo

27.34 Kyōto

10.25

46

Osaka

24.94 Tōkyo

9.98

47

Kanagawa 22.67 Osaka

9.18

Source: Nihon Keizai Shinbun, 27 June 1983. Note: The eight most urban prefectures are listed. a The New Liberal Club and the Social Democratic League were in alliance for this election.

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there were five parties in opposition, none of which had even been in government since the LDP was formed in 1955. How they have all fared in successive elections can be seen in table 1. Of them, the JSP remained the largest parliamentary party throughout, but its strength was declining or at least remaining static, its image was generally regarded as poor, and from its status in the late 1950s as the only significant party in opposition, it has become merely primus inter pares. The Democratic Socialist party (DSP) was formed in 1960 as a splinter from the JSP. The defectors were unhappy about what they regarded as proCommunist tendencies in the JSP leadership during the political crisis over revision of the Mutual Security Treaty with the United States. The DSP, backed by the Dōmei federation of labor unions, has considerable support among certain categories of private sector workers, but has never managed to win more than thirty-eight lower house seats (its total at the elections of December 1983). The Kōmeitō (sometimes called in English the Clean Government party) 11 is based on the Sōka Gakkai sect of Nichiren Buddhism and was formed as a political party contesting parliamentary elections in the early 1960s. Although it broke formal links with the Sōka Gakkai in the early 1970s, those who vote for it are still largely sect members. The sect has a tightly knit organization, and the Kōmeitō is able to calculate with remarkable accuracy the number of its voters in advance of an election. Its support is heavily concentrated in big cities and among workers in small firms and their wives. It attracts about 10 percent of the vote and its policies are generally moderate. The Japan Communist party (JCP) is by far the oldest party in Japan but has only been legal since 1945. After a brief flowering during the occupation, when it fought (unsuccessfully) to control the labor union movement, it entered a period of persecution and internal dissent in the 1950s, when it lost nearly all its parliamentary representation. Under more united and resolute leadership in the 1960s, however, the JCP built up its grass-roots organization to a point where it was able to gain as much as 10 percent of the vote 12 and more than thirty seats in lower house elections. It has since declined slightly in support. The Social Democratic League (SDL; also sometimes called in English the United Social Democratic party) was a right-of-center breakaway from the JSP at the time of the latter’s leadership troubles in 1977–78. It is a miniparty which once engaged in some parliamentary and electoral cooperation with the NLC. Several points emerge from our analysis of the process of opposition party fragmentation. First, since the 1950s both the LDP and the JSP have declined considerably in strength in the big cities of Japan’s eastern seaboard where concentrations of people live. In those areas in the 1960s and 1970s the JSP suffered even more serious losses than the LDP, as the two of them saw their votes eaten into by a JSP splinter (the DSP), a new religious party (the Kōmeitō) and an old party revived (the JCP). To some extent the electoral situation now appears to have stabilized with the opposition stuck in this fragmented condition. Some indication of the difference in vote catchments of the various parties may be seen in table 2. In this table, the vote totals for the eight prefectures containing the biggest cities have been listed in descending order for each party. From this it may be seen that the LDP and JSP are similar in concen-trating the big-city prefectures exclusively at the

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bottom end of the table; in other words, they perform most poorly in metropolitan constituencies. This is in extreme contrast to the Kōmeitō, JSP, and NLC-SDL (the last two mini-parties combined their meager strength in that election), whose performance in the eight metropolitan prefectures lies toward the top end of the table. Only the DSP has a fair spread, though with marked urban concentration in the Nagoya area and in Kansai. This appears to reflect the establishment of new loyalties with the rapid postwar urbanization, together with a notable increase in the urban protest vote. From this, however the JSP with its old-fashioned and unappealing image signally failed to profit. On the other hand, in the remoter rural prefectures of Kyūshū, Tōhoku, and elsewhere, where the LDP is overwhelmingly strong, the JSP remains the only opposition party with any substantial following. This picture is extremely interesting when we contemplate the differences in electoral behavior that have led to this result. To oversimplify, whereas the countryside is the twoparty preserve of the LDP and JSP, with the former outclassing the latter, the big cities are an arena of political competition among five or six roughly equal political parties. It is common in metropolitan constituencies for no party to win more than one seat (each constituency elects several members), whereas in rural constituencies the LDP regularly wins two, three, or even four. In other words, the impact of urban protest against government policies is severely blunted by the babel of voices against the LDP even though the LDP itself has lost much ground in city areas. When to this is added the failure substantially to redraw constituency boundaries to take account of population shifts, 13 we come closer to an explanation why the LDP remains so entrenched in power. In order, however, to penetrate to the deeper reasons why this should be so, we need to look at the electoral system, especially that for the lower house.

ELECTORAL POLITICS The electoral system has two key features: it is based on multi-member constituencies, and the voter has a single nontransferable vote. Until 1987, all constituencies for the House of Representatives (except one) elected either three, four, or five members. The 1987 reform created., in addition., one six-member and four two-member constituencies. Each voter has one vote, and there is no possibility of vote transfer or preferential voting. This system (or something very like it) has been in use in all House of Representatives elections between 1925 and World War II, and in all such elections since 1947. Its correct designation is ‘single nontransferable vote (SNTV) in medium-sized constituencies. Since the system has been in use for the bulk of Japan’s electoral history, and since it is rare outside Japan, we may well call it ‘the Japanese system of voting.’ The system has several important effects. First of all, it is possible for a candidate to be elected in a fivemember constituency with as little as 10 percent of the total votes (two-, three-, and fourmember constituencies are naturally less permissive). This makes it easy for small parties, for factions within large parties, and for individual candidates with a personal base of support, to be elected. Conversely, it creates conditions inimical to the imposition of tight party discipline such as is required for the development of a (pre-Alliance) British-style two-party system. For instance, a party able to muster, say, 15 to 20 percent

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of the vote in all of the forty-three five-member constituencies would have a quite reasonable chance of electing one member in most of them. Under the British system candidates are rarely elected with less than 30 to 35 percent of the vote in a given constituency. This makes things very hard for small parties without a regional base. In the Japanese but not the British system a dissident group within a party has considerable incentive to defect and establish a new party. Another effect of the Japanese system is that it does not encourage the voter to think of party rather than personality. The voter knows that several members will be elected from his constituency but he merely has a single vote, which he cannot transfer in any preferential way. He also cannot vote for a list of candidates. 14 It is possible, therefore, for individual candidates (including candidates for big parties such as the LDP in the many constituencies where several of them are standing) to cultivate a strictly personal, strictly nontransferable local base of support (in Japanese jiban or jimoto). This in turn tends to promote, though it is by no means the only factor promoting, factionalism within the larger parties. We are here faced with a considerable analytical dilemma, which is also of importance for our study of Japanese democracy. Put in crude terms, does the Japanese system of voting simply reflect the norms of Japanese society, being thus the ‘natural’ system forJapan, or is it, on the contrary, an ‘introduced’ system which itself has structured the party system and created its features of one-party dominance, fragmented opposition, factionalism endemic in big parties and so on? The problem is that most of the evidence could lead more or less equally plausibly to either conclusion. For instance, does the fact that the system has lasted so long mean that it fits in with social and political norms which may be regarded as ‘given,’ or does it, on the other hand, mean that it has persisted because it is convenient for the ruling LDP establishment? Fragmentary and incomplete evidence leading to suggestive conclusions does exist, but it is insufficient to produce a clear general answer. In the 1986 House of Councillors elections (as in previous elections) twenty-six out of the seventy-six seats available in prefectural constituencies were fought as contests to elect a single member, or in other words as British-style contests. Of these every one was contested by a single LDP candidate, all but five were contested by the JSP, all but one were contested (hopelessly) by the JCP, and two were fought by the DSP Twenty-three contests resulted in LDP victories, and three were won by independents. In this example, therefore, LDP multiple candidacy (and therefore much of the rationale for factionalism) was eliminated, only one party (the JSP) presented a serious opposition candidate in nearly all the constituencies, and the JCP only ran because of its longstanding policy of contesting all constituencies, however hopeless. The JSP did so badly because nearly all the upper house singlemember constituencies are in rural prefectures where the LDP has a natural majority. The system, however, largely eliminated overt manifestations of LDP factionalism and most minor party candidacies apart from the Communists. In other words, it is at least arguable that it forced the LDP and the opposition in general to behave not unlike major parties in Britian. Another tantalizingly incomplete piece of evidence comes again from the 1986 upper house elections, where for the second time fifty seats were contested in a nationwide constituency using list system proportional representation (PR). (Before 1983 these seats

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had been contested at each upper house election based on the single nontransferable vote.) The LDP vote was 38.58 percent, or substantially below the national LDP total in the simultaneous 1986 lower house elections (elected under SNTV in medium-sized constituencies) of 49.4 percent. It seems at least a plausible hypothesis that when voters were confronted with an impersonal list of names and an instruction to vote for a party, fewer of them were inclined to vote for the LDP than in the cosier constituencies of the House of Representatives which gave ample Opportunity and incentive for personality voting. On the other hand it also seems to be true that the lower house electoral system survives because it is, or has become, an integral part of the political system. Whether this means that it is the ‘natural’ system for Japan is a metaphysical question which is beyond our capacity to resolve. It seems, however, that it survives because it is in the interests of most of the participants in politics that it should survive. It is convenient for the LDP for several reasons: it fosters personality voting, which is advantageous in rural constituencies where the party presents several candidates; it perpetuates Opposition fragmentation by allowing minor parties to survive; the failure to rectify imbalance in the value of a vote between rural and urban constituencies (the negative gerrymander’) gives the LDP more seats than it deserves from its vote percentage and so helps it win elections; at a more abstract level, fostering the proliferation of parties in Opposition has perpetuated an LDP monopoly of power which has gradually sapped opposition morale in the sense of determination to take power. The notion of a natural, experienced, and responsible party of power is then easy to promote, with its counterpart, a fragmented, irresponsible, inexperienced opposition, bereft of serious political ideas, which it would be foolish to admit to the corridors of power. More surprisingly, the present system is also convenient, to a greater or lesser degree, to the Opposition parties themselves. That it is convenient for the DSP, Kōmeitō, JCP, and other minor parties, is easy to understand. They would probably be eliminated from Parliament in a British-style system. The JSP too, however, has opposed change on more than one occasion. Apart from the fact that it appears to reap a marginal advantage from the ‘negative gerrymander’ (see table 1), its loss of votes to minor parties in the big cities means that it would have virtually no safe seats in present circumstances if the British system were adopted. Its distribution of support has diverged greatly from that of the British Labour party, which concentrates its support in inner city and mining areas, particularly in the north of England, Scotland, and South Wales. A similar exercise to that just attempted in relation to a change to the British electoral system might also be essayed with various systems of proportional representation. Here we have some concrete data to analyze, because PR has now partially been introduced into elections for the upper house. Limited though it is, this reform might be seen as revolutionary in its implications because the voter votes for a party, not a single candidate. He still, however, only has a single nontransferable vote, and therefore is unable to express his preferences beyond one party list. The results of the experiment in 1983 and 1986 show a reduction in the LDP vote percentage, and a further proliferation of small parties. 15 If we return, however, to the British system of election, we should note that JSP objections might not prove valid in the long term. Much would depend on whether that

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party were able to seize the initiative in the creation of a new effective second party in the aftermath of the electoral elimination of most of the minor parties. A whole new political game would have emerged, with far-reaching implications for all parties and politicians. Whether a two-party system with frequent or infrequent alternation were to emerge would depend on a fairly long-term series of initiatives and developments following the reform. Unfortunately political scientists do not possess laboratories where these things can be tested through experimental procedures. Japanese electoral politics has achieved a position of relatively stable (perhaps even extremely stable) equilibrium. Few people believe that a change of government (except in the sense of ‘incorporation’ of minor parties) will take place in the foreseeable future. Without a radical change in the electoral system (and perhaps not even then) the only event likely to precipitate a serious change in the party composition of cabinets would be a split of the LDP into two parties of roughly equal size as a result of factional quarreling. Even then it seems quite possible that they would form a coalition government with each other., which would scarcely constitute much of a change.

THE OPPOSITION’S ROLE IN JAPANESE POLITICS The stable equilibrium of Japanese politics (which should not be confused with illusory ‘metastability’ 16 ) favors the LDP at the expense of the opposition and excludes the opposition from most meaningful participation in policymaking. On the other hand, the opposition since the 1950s has managed to exercise a certain degree of veto power, the results of which are to be seen in particular in defense policy. The ‘no war’ clause (article 9) of the 1946 constitution would seem, according to a literal interpretation, to render armed forces (‘military potential’) illegal. Although the LDP has patently not been inhibited by this article from building up the quite impressive military force euphemistically described as the Self-Defense Forces, it has never been able to revise the article (nor any other article in the constitution) because the opposition has blocked the two-thirds majority of both houses of the Diet required before a proposal for constitutional revision can be put to a referendum of the people. So far as actual defense policy is concerned, the fact that it has been developed in an atmosphere of controversy about the legal status of the Self-Defense Forces may be seen as some measure of the opposition’s effectiveness. The LDP itself, however, has been divided on defense matters, with some influential groups being strongly in favor of restraint. 17 On the other hand, there has been some erosion of anti-defense thinking on the part of oppposition parties. The National Diet has been a forum for the exercise of a limited amount of opposition influence though the manner of its exercise has changed over time. During the 1950s and 1960s there were set-piece confrontations over contentious issues, in which the opposition (at that time largely the JSP) would resort to filibustering and boycotts in order to block government legislation. The filibuster was used because the government lacked complete control of the parliamentary timetable. The opposition was sometimes able to force a delay to the point where contentious legislation would lapse at the end of the session. There was a limit to the extent to which extraordinary sessions of the Diet

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could defeat these tactics. Boycotting the Diet (or its committees) also had some success because the LDP was at times inhibited from resorting to the ‘forced vote,’ where it would pass the legislation on its own votes in the absence of the opposition. For several years during the 1970s, known as the hakuchū or ‘parity’ period, the opposition parties had sufficient parliamentary strength to deny the LDP control of key committees of both houses. This was a time of greater give and take in relations between government and opposition, partly because of changes within the opposition itself: it was now not one party but several, with the small centrist parties favoring a conciliatory approach. It is doubtful whether the fragmented opposition parties even during the hakuchū period, with their narrow clienteles, were ever able to make much of a positive impact on policy. Since the end of the hakuchū period in 1980, government-opposition relationships have still been notably less confrontational than in the 1960s. The LDP is able to buy off the opposition with minor concessions on many issues, which makes less surprising the frequency with most of the opposition parties vote with the government. The publicity given to noisy confrontation on certain issues ought not to obscure the backstage deals on many others. All this, however, is less important than the overwhelming fact that the opposition remains a weak and rather minor force in political decision making. It has faced the unenviable dilemma of other long-term oppositions—whether to adopt a strategy of confrontation or assimilation. In postwar Japan, confrontation used to be crucially important, but has tended to give way to assimilation. The tendency is aided and abetted by the mechanisms of clientelism, put into operation by sections of the LDP with a view to ‘subverting’ sections of the opposition. Most of the opposition parties, but not the Communists, have virtually opted out of serious policy formulation on ‘hard’ issues of economic choice. Civil servants admit that they only take serious note of policy proposals emanating from the LDP and are able to forget about most of what comes from the opposition, which they would say is hardly ‘policy’ in any case. 18

CONCLUSION In conclusion, let us return to the principal questions posed by the ‘predominant party’ character of Japanese politics since the 1950s, and the weakness of the opposition faced with the impressive political success of the LDP. Why the system has evolved in this way is a question best answered by comparison with other nations. Where something approaching the alternating politics model has operated, the major parties have been able to stay reasonably close to the ‘middle ground’ of political opinion. Also, related to this, they have continued to represent the interests of broad sections of the community, rather than confining their appeal to narrow groups. This in turn has contributed to their general moderation of approach. They have for the most part avoided severe polarization based on region, religion, class, or ideology, even though these factors have played some part. In addition, the major parties have remained reasonably intact and have avoided excessive fragmentation. In Japan, from the late 1950s onward, one major party, the JSP, rather than following the ‘aggregative’ path of the German Social Democrats or the British Labour party,

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turned inward on itself and sought to appeal to the ideologically committed and to what the party itself defined, somewhat unrealistically, as the working class of Japan. This led to various evils from the party’s point of view. Talented people of moderate views were forced out of the party, its base of support narrowed, and much of its electoral support, especially in the cities, was eroded by minor parties, notably the Kōmeitō, the DSP, and the JCP. To an extent this would have been understandable had Japan been a society severely divided along class lines. It was difficult, however, to view the nation in the 1960s and 1970s in this way, and indeed many commentators have noted that contemporary Japan appears to be remarkably homogeneous. While not accepting the more extreme versions of this view, it is nevertheless difficult to understand the rationale behind the direction of the JSP appeal in that period. Minor parties were able to erode its support as a result, though it is worth noting that none of them succeeded in aggregating widely different sources of support and evolving into major parties. It is true that rapid economic growth tended to erode the JSP’s appeal, but that ought to have dictated evolution toward the more mundane and practical concerns of the electorate, rather than a retreat to narrow Marxist rhetoric. However we state the problem, the rationale behind the JSP approach in the 1960s and 1970s is difficult to understand. The net effect of JSP failure combined with limited success by the minor parties has been to weaken the opposition, even though, as we have seen, it is not entirely impotent. Our final concern, raised in the introduction to this chapter, is whether the weakness of the opposition has really mattered. A respectable case can be made for the view that it has not. Essentially the argument is that the LDP has brought good government to Japan. In face of this one salient fact, what some might regard as blemishes, such as factional struggle, corrupt dealings, personality rather than party voting, opposition clientelism, and so on, pale into insignificance. Politics in Japan has developed in such a way as to avoid for the most part the economically debilitating effects of strong horizontally organized unions confronting employers. The governability problem besetting European politics in the 1970s has been rather less salient in Japan. The Japanese way of conducting politics has evolved in the direction of strong central government able to stay in control without stifling local and private initiative. It is true that some decision making is characterized by immobilism, though there are subtle ways in which immobility is paraded as an argument against foreign pressure in issues of trade and defense. 19 Indeed it is quite possible to construct an argument that policy immobilism has actually contributed to the national interest, in particular by slowing down foreign-induced change in ways that enable the domestic economy to adjust to them more easily. On the other hand, a largely impotent, fragmented, and in part clientelist opposition is a feature of the Japanese system of politics which is difficult to reconcile with notions of democracy as generally understood. 20 It is true that there are pluralistic as well as corporatist features of the system, irrespective of weak political opposition. To some extent factions in the LDP provide opposition, but their operation has a personalistic and money-centered, rather than policy-oriented, character. Governments before 1940 changed frequently in a kaleidoscopic process of competing elites, none of which had sufficient power to dominate. The occupation reforms provided greater clarity and simplicity in the location both of sovereignty and of power. This had

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the salutary effect of enabling the political system to evolve in the direction of ‘fusion-ofpower’ politics where power and responsibility were fairly clearly located. It is also true that the establishment of political stability and accountability was facilitated by the formation and consolidation of the LDP. The system, however, as it has evolved in the three decades since 1955, shows distinct signs of stagnation and self-satisfaction. In the words of Robert Dahl: If high consensus societies can profit from the advantages of incremental change, they run an opposite danger. Where there is little dissent, both political leaders and citizens escape the compulsion to weigh the relative advantages offered by a comprehensive, large-scale change, even when a large-scale change might prove less costly in the long run than either the status quo or a series of incremental changes. The history of politics is writ large with the results of costly timidities that have produced too little too late. 21 Dahl, it is true, goes on to warn against ‘ideological’ conflict as in postwar France and Italy, 22 but the essential point still stands. It is obvious that for a range of reasons it would be difficult to create a viable opposition in Japan, capable of responsibly taking power. Many observers, Japanese and foreign, will remain unconvinced of the desirability of trying. Nevertheless, we conclude with three points. The first is that changes of government do not necessarily mean loss of national ‘consensus.’ To an extent the belief that a loss of ‘consensus’ would ensue derives from European and other class-conflict models that are largely inappropriate for Japanese conditions. Second, the assumption that the present electoral system is ‘natural’ for Japan needs to be subjected to close scrutiny. I have suggested in this chapter that in several crucial respects it is an outdated and inefficient system that serves to perpetuate without much intellectual justification a status quo that strongly favors the present political establishment. Finally, no real change in the system is likely to occur unless the opposition parties themselves will it (though a change in the electoral system may be required to help them rethink). Healthy democratic politics for Japan depends on a willingness on the part of government and opposition alike to rethink the system creatively and with a long-term perspective. Many aspects of Japanese life since the war have proved extraordinarily creative and successful. Why should this not happen in politics also?

NOTES 1. See for instance T.J.Pempel, ‘The Dilemma of Parliamentary Opposition in Japan,’ Polity 8 (1975): 63–79; Terry B.MacDougall, ‘Asukata Ichio and Some Dilemmas of Socialist Leadership in Japan,’ in Political Leadership in Contemporary Japan, ed. Terry E. MacDougall, Michigan Papers in Japanese Studies 1 (Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, 1982), pp. 51–91; Gerald L.Curtis, ‘Domestic Politics and Japanese Foreign Policy,’ in Japan and the United States: Challenges and Opportunities, ed. William J.Barnds (London: Macmillan, 1980), pp. 21–85. 2. Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis

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(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976). 3. So long as the Alliance fails to replace the Labour Party but itself fails to be eliminated, the Conservatives could well continue as the predominant party. 4. See A.H.Birch, Representative and Responsible Government (London: Allen and Unwin, 1964). 5. See R.Catley and B.McFarlane, From Tweedledum to Tweedledee: The New Labor Government in Australia (Artarmon: Australia and New Zealand Book Co., 1974). 6. For instance, the LDP politician Ishida Hirohide in 1963 predicted that the Socialists (JSP and DSP) would attain a parliamentary plurality by 1970, an argument based in part on the British model. ‘The Vision of the Conservative Party,’ Chūō Kōron, January 1963, pp. 88–97; an abbreviated translation is in Journal of Social and Political Ideas in Japan 2 (August 1964):55–58. For an early account of the JSP which broadly assumed that an opposition capable of taking power was inherently desirable, see Allan B.Cole, George O.Totten, and Cecil B.Uyehara, with a contributed chapter by Ronald P.Dore, Socialist Parties in Postwar Japan (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1966). 7. See, for instance, Satō Seisaburō and Miyazaki Tetsuhisa, ‘Jimintō no chōchōki seiken no kaibō’ (Analysis of the Ultra-Durable LDP Regime), Chūō Kōron, November 1984, pp. 66–100. 8. A Japanese visitor to Oxford in 1984 cited Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West as prescient of the decline of Europe and rise of East Asian and Pacific region in world affairs. 9. There are conspicuous exceptions where policymaking shows less than optimum effectiveness. For a recent study of protest against the siting of Narita airport see David E.Apter and Nagayo Sawa, Against the State: Politics and Social Protest in Japan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984). 10. It is important to remember, however, that the conservative side of politics was as much subject to fragmentation before 1955 as the progressives. 11. ‘Fair Play Party’ would be a better translation. 12. This figure exaggerates JCP support by comparison with the Kōmeitō because the JCP always contests virtually every seat whereas the Kōmeitō fights only those it can win. 13. In 1984 the difference in the value of a vote in the most overrepresented and most underrepresented constituencies was approaching five to one, but in 1986 a constituency reform reduced the discrepancy to about three to one. 14. A list system has now been introduced for the national constituency of the House of Councillors. 15. Apart from the parties previously mentioned, seats were won in the 1983 upper house elections by Second Chamber Club, a grouping of Independents, the Nonparty Faction (similar), the newly formed Salaryman’s party and the newly formed Welfare party. 16. Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Fragile Blossom: Crisis and Change in Japan (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), pp. 14–17. 17. See Ōtake Hideo, Nihon no Bōei to Kokunai Seiji (Japanese Defense and Domestic Politics) (Tokyo: Sanichi Shobō, 1983).

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18. Discussion with group of civil servants, 1983. 19. See the discussion in ‘Government Decisionmaking in Japan: Implications for the United States,’ submitted to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, US House of Representatives (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1982). 20. This assumes that ‘democracy’ is a concept of general applicability. Extreme nationalists in Japan (as elsewhere) argue that democracy is not a Japanese concept anyway, but this does not appear to represent mainstream political thinking in Tokyo. 21. Robert A.Dahl, Political Oppositions in Western Democracies (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1966), p. 392. 22. Ibid.

17 Politics, Power and Parties in Japan Lecture given at Philipps-Universität, Marburg, May 1989 (Center for Japanese Studies, Occasional Papers, 1990) THE SUBJECT of this talk is the Japanese political system, and my intention is to give an analysis of the nature of the system, the way politics works in Japan and in particular the ways in which politics and the political system have been changing over the period since the 1950s. Let me begin by referring to the so-called Recruit Cosmos scandal, which has been widely reported in the Western press and obsessively analysed the newspapers of Japan. The crisis arose as a result of the attempts by a particular company, the Recruit Co., to expand its influence and secure government decisions favourable to its interests, by making donations to politicians and others. The Recruit Co. operates in the business of exchanging information between job-seekers and organizations having job vacancies. This firm, under the leadership of an extremely ambitious businessman, Mr. Hiromasa Ezoe, offered quantities of unlisted securities to politicians, who were made aware that, once the shares were officially listed, they could be sold at a greatly increased value. Selected politicians from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), and also, to a lesser extent, from the parties in opposition, were offered substantial numbers of these unlisted shares in the company. In many cases it was not the politicians themselves, but their assistants or secretaries, who were provided with the shares, and some leading politicians may not have known about the transactions at the time they were carried out. Even so, they stood to make a great deal of money from the subsequent appreciation in the value of the shares. The story began to come out in the press form the early summer of 1988, but at first it did not appear to be an exceptionally important affair. Later, however, more information was revealed, more and more politicians were implicated until virtually every leading politician within the LDP and some politicians also in the parties of opposition (except for the Japan Communist Party, or JCP) were found to have received largesse from the Recruit Co. Ultimately even the Prime Minister, Noboru Takeshita, was caught up in the tentacles of this affair, and has recently announced his resignation, though he remains in office until a successor can be found. Interestingly enough, the immediate reason why he has announced his resignation is that the opposition parties were unwilling to be present in the National Diet (Parliament) for the passage of the annual budget. A parliamentary boycott by the Opposition is an accepted tactic in Japanese politics whereby political groups express strong dissent, and in circumstances of boycott it is difficult, though not impossible, for the LDP to pass the budget. The fact that an Opposition boycott should have caused difficulties for the Government

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in bringing its budget into law may seem surprising from a Western European perspective, when we consider that since the general elections of 1986 the LDP has enjoyed a very substantial majority over all other parties combined within the House of Representatives. Of the 512 seats in the Lower House of the National Diet, the LDP won 304 in 1986, giving it a most comfortable majority. The largest party of opposition, the Japan Socialist Party (JSP) was reduced to 86 seats, while three other parties, the Buddhist Kōmeitō, the right of centre Democratic Socialist Party and the centrist Social Democratic League (a minor grouping) each received fewer seats than the JSP. Clearly, therefore, the Opposition is both fragmented and weak, so it is interesting and surprising that they should have been able in effect to bring about the resignation of the Prime Minister by boycotting parliamentary sessions over the budget. In practice there is a convention of parliamentary behaviour, that the simple principle of majority decisionmaking is not always acceptable. Rather, in the case of important matters, such as the annual budget, the opposition can argue that there ought to be a consensus, symbolized by the parties in opposition being present in Parliament at the time of the vote. For them to boycott the session is to indicate that they believe symbolic consensus has been broken by the ruling party. In the present case the issue was further complicated by the fact that the opposition parties wanted the former Prime Minister, Yasuhiro Nakasone (Prime Minister, 1982– 1987) to testify before the National Diet to explain his alleged role in the Recruit scandal. Nakasone, who like Takeshita was leader of one of the major factions (habatsu) of the LDP, refused to testify before Parliament and in so refusing contributed to the downfall of his successor, Takeshita, because this gave the Opposition the opportunity to put the Prime Minister in a bad light, even though the decision for Nakasone not to testify had been taken by the Nakasone faction and not by Takeshita himself. There are many things that could be said about this particular affair, but I should like to go back to the origins of the present party-political system in Japan and try to trace the changes which have come about in that system since the 1950s. Frequently observers of the Japanese political scene describe it as the ‘1955 Political System’. This is because two important events happened in that year. The first was that the right wing and left wing of the JSP, which had split into two parties four years earlier over the peace settlement, reunited as one party named ‘Japan Socialist Party’. In part responding to the amalgamation of the Socialists one month earlier, the various competing conservative factions or parties amalgamated and formed the ‘Liberal Democratic Party’ in November 1955. The amalgamation of conservative forces which took place towards the end of 1955 was a difficult task to perform because the leaders of the predecessor parties were big faction bosses, used to fighting with each other politically, and they held control of their factions as patron-client organizations. To persuade them to work together in one party was far from easy. Much of the impetus behind that amalgamation came from the ranks of the business world. Japan’s major business combines, together with their peak associations such as Keidanren (the Federation of Economic Organizations) brought pressure to bear for the conservatives to merge into a single party. For at least ten years after the party’s foundation in November 1955, that is until the middle of the 1960s, the Liberal Democrats were essentially a loose coalition of competing factions. Nearly every

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faction was led by a strong personality demanding the loyalty of his immediate followers and having an organization on the national level which did not really owe allegiance to the LDP as a party, but rather to the leader himself. During that early period and also for some time later the leaders of the factions were able to obtain large amounts of funding from the big business world. There was, in other words, a close financial nexus between the intra-party factions of the LDP and business combines. This was not simply a one-to-one relationship, since businesses would spread their contributions among a number of factions. This led to the establishment of a network of connections between various factions and various of the big business firms. Party organization as such was quite weak by comparison with the factions themselves. This weakness of the party was illustrated in the political crisis that occured in 1959–60 over revision of the Japan-US Security Treaty, which originally came into effect as part of the peace settlement in April 1952. Revision of the Security Treaty was bitterly opposed by the union movement, the student movement, the JSP, the far weaker and smaller JCP, and the ranks of intellectuals very generally, on the grounds that revision of the Treaty meant its prolongation, and thus the incorporation of Japan into an Americanled global power structure, threatening the maintenance of peace for Japan. In May and June 1960 huge numbers of people demonstrated outside the National Diet building in Tōkyō, and the issue turned into a massive political crisis. In the middle of May the LDP Government sought to pass a bill for the extension of the Diet session, which could then enable it to send the Treaty legislation to the Upper House. Once it had rested in the Upper House for a month, it would become law. In order to prevent the extension bill from being put to the vote before the session ended at midnight, JSP Diet Members and their secretaries physically obstructed the Speaker (President) of the House of Representatives from putting the bill to the vote. In a fateful move, the Prime Minister, Nobusuke Kishi, brought about 500 police into the National Diet building so as to remove the obstructing Socialists. From that moment the crisis became much more serious than it had previously been, because once Kishi had brought police into Parliament the issue was not just a question of the Security Treaty, but related to the integrity of Japan’s fledgling democratic system. The scope of popular protest immediately increased and came to involve many people not normally connected with the Opposition parties but who were deeply alarmed about the future of democracy in their country. I do not have time to explore all the complexities of the Security Treaty crisis, but I want to attempt to explain why Kishi resigned as Prime Minister shortly after the Treaty was passed into law and despite the fact that his party retained a handsome majority of seats in Parliament. Kishi’ s own personality and background was itself a factor in the crisis. Politically he was a long way to the right of centre, had been a leading Government official during the war, and was arrested as a class ‘A’ war criminal suspect during the American Occupation. It was widely believed that his commitment to democracy was less than complete. Another factor was that the political tactics he used during the crisis ultimately backfired. He deliberately arranged with the US President Eisenhower, that the President’s visit to Japan (part of a tour of several capitals) should be on the very day when the Treaty passed its final legislative hurdle (the Upper House) and became law.

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Unfortunately for Kishi, however, the size of the demonstrations, and the fury of the demonstrators, incensed by the incursion of the police into the Diet building, were so great, that Kishi was faced with the necessity of cancelling the Eisenhower visit. A further complicating factor was the so-called ‘U-2 Incident’, when the Soviet Union shot down an American spy plane flying high over their territory and incarcerated the pilot, who bailed out. This led to President Eisenhower having to cancel his visit to Moscow, which was to have been part of his overseas tour which included Tōkyō. The fact that the American President would now combine a visit to Tōkyō with visits to Seoul, Taipei etc gave the tour a much different image in the eyes of the Tōkyō Government’ s critics from the tour as originally planned, which included Moscow. In any case Kishi was faced with the embarrassing necessity of saying to President Eisenhower: ‘I’m sorry, I cannot invite you to Japan because I cannot guarantee your safety’. That of course was a major loss of face for Kishi and although the Treaty was successfully revised to Japan’s advantage, and the LDP retained a majority in Parliament, he found that he had to resign. The reasons for his resignation are not, perhaps, wholly clear, but one cause of major importance was that the whole crisis was being used by rival factions within the LDP to get rid of him as Prime Minister and as Party President so as to replace him with a leader of one of the other factions. Another reason may possibly be that in resigning Kishi may have believed that he would defuse the crisis. If so, he was quite right, since under a new Prime Minister, Hayato Ikeda, who came of course from the same party, the Liberal Democrats performed creditably at the subsequent general elections held in November 1960. In other words, given the Japanese political environment, the change of prime minister virtually meant a change of government, even though the same party remained firmly entrenched in power. Towards the end of this lecture I want to use the lessons from the Security Treaty crisis of 1960 in order to throw light on the Recruit scandal and what may happen henceforth. First, however, let us stay with the 1960s and ask ourselves how far the working of the political system has actually changed between the 1960s and the 1980s. The 1960s witnessed the hiqh noon of Japanese economic growth. Almost every year between 1958 and 1973, GNP grew by around ten percent, amounting to a sustained period of ultrarapid economic advance unprecedented in world history. It was entirely to be expected that this would create social change, and this indeed was what happened. Population moved in huge numbers from the countryside into the cities. The population of the rural areas, for whom agriculture was the main occupation, rapidly decreased as people moved out of the countryside into huge cities such as Tōkyō and Osaka. Naturally, an argument widely used to explain the LDP’s electoral successes is that the party presided over a period of rapid economic growth in which the population of Japan became incomparably more prosperous. Kishi’s successor, Ikeda (1960–4), embarked upon a quite deliberate political strategy of emphasising economic growth and telling the people that the Government was going to double the income over ten years. This was of course ambiguous, since people tended to assume that their own incomes would double in real terms, but that was not quite what he meant. He really meant that the national income was going to double, and in fact it much more than doubled over a ten year period. People did indeed find their pay packets increasing rapidly, and they did feel more prosperous. In these circumstances it is perhaps surprising that over the same period the percentage

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of the total vote cast for the LDP declined from every election to the next. In 1958 about 58 per cent of all voters supported the LDP, in other words a massive majority. By 1972 the percentage was down to around 47 per cent, still enough for the party to win 55 per cent of total seats, in part because of an imbalance in the value of urban and rural votes, favouring the rural areas, which were strongly conservative. The reasons for this apparent paradox are, in my view, fairly clear. Those who voted for the LDP in the country areas, being farmers and people dependent directly or indirectly upon agriculture, behaved in a quite traditional manner. Essentially a voter would vote for a local candidate in order to show community solidarity. The voting turnout was high—often in the 80–85 per cent range—and rural people tended to favour the LDP very heavily because agriculture was being favoured by the Liberal Democrats, but also because most of the local candidates that people knew and had contact with were also Liberal Democrats. Thus in the rural areas there was a massive vote for the LDP, and the LDP in that period was essentially a party of the rural interest. The party’s support in the cities was much lower. During the 1960s, however, people were moving from this community-centred environment in the countryside into the cities where they lacked community support. There they were in a much ‘freer’ situation, but a situation where they no longer enjoyed the community linkages which in the countryside tended to created a heavy conservative vote. In addition, conditions in the big cities were not very pleasant: problems were caused by the influx of population, infrastructure had simple failed to keep up with the move into the cities by so many people, the transport system was in poor repair, social services were inadequate, there was a worsening problem of environmental pollution, which by the early 1970s was at crisis level (the press published photographs of policemen on duty at street corners in central Tōkyō wearing gas masks), so that unsurprisingly the environment became a serious issue in the early 1970s. Naturally, opposition parties were able to capitalise on these sorts of issue. Thus it is possible to explain why the Liberal Democrats should have lost votes in this period of rapid economic growth, even though it appears superficially paradoxical that they should have done so. On the other side of the political divide—the side of the Opposition parties—there is also an interesting story to tell. In the late 1950s the only party of electoral significance in opposition to the LDP was the Japan Socialist Party or JSP. During the 1960s, however, the JSP was losing votes even faster than the LDP. Thus by 1972, not only the LDP, but both the major parties in the two-party system of the late 1950s, had lost a good deal of political support. The electoral ground lost by the major parties was taken up by several parties which came to prominence during the 1960s. The first of these was the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP), formed as an anti-leftist breakway from the JSP in 1960, at a time when the latter had veered a long way to the left. The DSP was a party of moderates, inclined to look towards the British Labour Party for inspiration. They attained a certain level of support, which they still retain, but they never progressed beyond the level of about 30–35 seats in the House of Representatives. On the other hand, they eroded the vote of the JSP. Second, and more interestingly, a new party was formed in 1964, called the Kōmeitō, sometimes unofficially translated into English as ‘Clean Government Party’. This was the first party in Japan’s political history to be based upon a religion, and the religion upon which it was founded was the largest of Japan’s so-called ‘new religions’, the Sōka

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Gakkai. The sect had runaway success in recruitment during the 1950s and 1960s, recruiting largely people who had missed out in the great rat-race of Japanese society to get to the top. The Kōmeitō attracted people who worked in small factories, or were undereducated. Among their voters were to be found a high proportion of middle aged women in families that were not particulary well off, nor especially highly educated. The party plainly appealed to what in an earlier age might have been called the upper working class, or ‘petit bourgeois’ category. When the Kōmeitō first emerged, it was widely reported to be a nearfascist party because, first, of its base of support, and second, the very rigid organizational structure and degree of control the religion maintained over its members. Surprisingly, however, it proved to be essentially a middle-of-the-road party whose policies and positions on most issues were rather hard to discover. Kōmeitō policies seem ambiguous and the party is inclined to policy opportunism, but the ‘fascist’ image turned out to be unduly alarmist. The third party to gain support during the 1960s (and early 1970s) was the Japan Communist Party or JCP. This party is Japan’s oldest party still in existence, having been founded originally in 1922. It existed illegally up to 1945, but was legalized after the war when the Americans released virtually all Communists who had been held in prison before and during the war. In the period of the Occupation (1945–52) it gained some support, particularly among intellectuals, but failed in a bid to gain control over the labour movement. From 1950 it reaped the whirlwind, by embarking upon a policy of militancy against American military bases in Japan. As a result, the parliamentary representation of the JCP during the 1950s was negligible, but from the mid-1960s, under intelligent leadership, the Japan Communist Party was able to increase its support to nearly 40 seats in the House of Representatives. Despite their ideological differences, the Kōmeitō and the JCP have in common that they are heavily dependent on support in Japan’s biggest cities. A considerable number of Kōmeitō and Communist candidates are elected in constituencies in the Tōkyō Area, as well as in the Kansai region including, Osaka, Kyōto and Kōbe, and in the industrial areas along the Inland Sea and in northern Kyūshū. On the other hand their representation in other parts of the country, and especially in the countryside, is far smaller. Why is it then that the Japan Socialist Party, which used to be virtually the only party confronting the LDP, should have lost most of its support in these same metropolitan areas? In my opinion the JSP from the 1960s onwards suffered the fate common to political parties which consciously narrow rather than broaden their base of support. The general perception of the JSP has been that it is narrowly dependent upon a restricted set of labour unions, whose interests have not been representative, even of labour unions as a whole. For a long time it also continued to emphasise ideological Marxism at a time when this was of declining interest to a population experiencing increasing prosperity. Moreover it appeared to be less vigorous than the smaller Opposition parties in pursuing the salient issues of the 1970s, such as quality of life and the environment. Even so, however, the Socialists and Communists together did have a certain degree of success in the 1970s in gaining control of local authorities in urban areas. Indeed the voting patterns in local elections at that time were markedly different from those in parliamentary elections. In local authority elections a considerable number of prefectural governors and mayors of cities and towns were elected with the principal support of

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Socialists and Communists during the 1970s. These were the so-called ‘progressive local authorities’. Successes at local level, however, were based on a different strategy on the part of local ‘progressive’ executives from that of the JSP at parliamentary level. By the 1970s the general impression’ of the JSP was that it was a party devoid of experience of running the country, devoid of ideas except for old-fashioned rhetoric, essentially corrupt like the Liberal Democrats, fractious, divided, ill-led and so on. In other words a generally negative image (though not a threatening image) of the JSP was widespread throughout Japan. It still remained the largest party of opposition, but its support had greatly declined. Returning to the Liberal Democrats, by the early 1970s they realized that they were facing an electoral crisis. When LDP strategists plotted the general election results of the 1960s and early 1970s on a graph, it was easy for them to see that if the line were to continue downwards at the same rate for much longer, they would be out of power, unless something were done to stem the ebbing tide of support. Unlike the JSP, which was facing a similar problem but did little effective about it, the Liberal Democrats were in government, and subject to what George Ball has called ‘the discipline of power’. They also enjoyed the resources which power brings. In any case, they were able to exhibit flexibility and policy adaptation, they adopted new strategies and sought to diversify their sources of support. As suggested above, the Liberal Democrats in the 1950s and 1960s were a party essentially of farmers. And plainly it was increasingly unwise in the 1970s and 1980s to rely only upon farmers for support. The Liberal Democrats thus sought to win the support of people in diverse professions and occupations. Although even in 1980s they remained considerably weaker in the big cities than in the countryside, they have had notable success in winning support from a more diverse set of interests than in earlier years. For one thing, they proceeded to tackle the environmental questions that were worrying people in the early 1970s, with a series of legislative measures. The LDP did not succeed in getting rid of pollution and other environmental problems altogether, but the situation has improved. The number of days you can see Mount Fuji from central Tōkyō is said to have greatly increased, though I cannot recall having seen it recently myself. Another change of policy by the LDP governments of the early 1970s was to spend a great deal more money than in the past on schemes of social welfare. The ultimate effect of this was more controversial than in the case of environmental policy. Kakuei Tanaka, Prime Minister for rather more than two years between 1972 and 1974, proceeded to change policy radically on social welfare. The year 1973, when welfare legislation was passed through Parliament, is often said to be the ‘foundation year of social welfare’, or in Japanese fukushi gannen. This was a response to widespread criticism which the Opposition was using with increasing effect against the LDP, that in pursuit of ever higher GNP, it was neglecting to care for the elderly, the sick and so on. The Government was also regarded as neglecting to provide for social infrastructure, except for that narrowly serving the interests of industry, though here again policy was changing. The revolution of the early 1970s in favour of greatly improved social welfare turned out to be short-lived, although government spending in this area never returned to the low levels obtaining before 1973. By the end of the 1970, when Japan had been hit by two successive oil crises (those of 1973–4 and 1979–80), actually and potentially damaging

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for the economy, budget increases on welfare posed problems for economic management. The Liberal Democrats therefore again changed their position and moved back towards budgetary restraint and retrenchement, although this did not really begin to bite until the beginning of the 1980s. The many ‘progressive’ local authorities elected in the late 1960s and early 1970s were by the end of the decade finding it difficult to meet the obligations they had assumed, to provide, for instance, free hospitalisation for the elderly. By the early 1980s, most of them had been replaced by conservative or ‘conservativeprogressive’ administrations. During the 1980s we have seen a much different atmosphere once again from that in the 1970s. In the 1970s the LDP was consciously seeking to cultivate a broader base of support through increased spending. During the present decade, however, first under Prime Minister Suzuki and then under Prime Minister Nakasone, the budget has been kept under strict control with (in principle) zero budgeting except in a few areas, particulary defence, foreign aid and pensions (this last inevitable because the number of old people is rapidly increasing). There has actually been negative budgeting—that is, budgetary expenditure has been reduced in some areas from the middle of the 1980s. The Government, in other words, has been able to retain its support despite reversing many of the policies of the 1970s relating to government spending for social welfare and related purposes. At the 1980 and 1986 general elections (but not at the general elections of 1983), the LDP performed extremely well, and in 1986 they won 304 seats out of a total of 512. This being the case, why then is Prime Minister Takeshita now in such deep political trouble? Recent public opinion polls make one gasp: in April 1989 several polls asked respondents whether or not they supported the Prime Minister. The percentage prepared to support Takeshita was in some polls below four (not, as one might imagine, forty) per cent. No previous prime minister’s popularity has ever fallen as low as this, and it reflects extraordinary circumstances. There have also been a number of by-elections and local elections in which the opposition parties did very well and the Liberal Democrats did very badly. One in particular stands out, namely the election recently for the governorship of Chiba Prefecture. Chiba Prefecture is on the opposite side of Tōkyō Bay from Tōkyō itself, and contains a big conurbation around Chiba City and a rural hinterland stretching east to the Pacific coast. Traditionally it has been a conservative prefecture, always voting heavily for conservative candidates except in Chiba City itself. In this year’s election, the only Opposition candidate was a Communist. The conservative (not formally a Liberal Democrat, but supported by them) won the election. But while the conservative polled more than 700,000 votes, the Communist polled more than 500,000 votes, which is an enormously higher number of votes than Communists normally win in that part of Japan. Plainly, more than half a million people who voted for the Communist candidate were not dyed-in-the-wool Communists. Rather, they were casting a protest vote against the Government. Let us, however, examine more closely why they were voting Communist. One reason was that the only Oppsition candidate was a Communist, so that if they wanted to cast a protest vote they had no other choice. Beyond that, the JCP is now the only party which appears to be completely untainted by the Recruit scandal. This may simply be because

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the Recruit Company was not prepared to give money or shares to the Communists. A further factor may be that the JCP is the only party which, generally speaking, has clearly defined policies sharply divergent from those of the LDP Government. In contrast, during the 1950s and 1960s the Opposition in general, and in particular the Japan Socialist Party, put forward policies which provided a clear alternative to those of the LDP. There were great differences between the outlook of Government and Opposition on matters concerning the Constitution, particularly the ‘peace clause’ which the Socialists strongly supported while the Liberal Democrats were pledged to abolish it. Socialists strongly opposed the Government over the Japan-US Security Treaty, on matters relating to foreign policy in general, control of the police, education, where they feared (and still fear) attempts by the Ministry of Education to tighten its control and move education in a more nationalist direction, and also concerning labour union legislation and a host of other issues. Thus there was great polarization, and there is evidence that in the 1950s the electorate was polarized along lines which related to social class. One political scientist, Professor Jōji Watanuki, has described this as ‘cultural politics’. In his formulation, ‘cultural politics’ meant that the sort of people who voted Socialist were younger and more educated than the sort of people who voted Liberal Democrat. The older age groups and those with less education voted conservative (in other words, for the LDP), whereas those who were younger and had more education voted for the JSP. Significantly, this distinction died out completely in the 1960s and 1970s. Both cultural political distinctions and social class based distinctions became greatly attenuated as predictors of voting behaviour. It is indeed exceedingly difficult to generalise about social class in Japan today. Correlations between social class, education, age and occupation on the one hand, and voting patterns on the other are complex. Those who vote for the Kōmeitō tend to be rather less educated than the average, but the general level of education in Japan has become much more equal than it was in the 1950s and 1970s. In essence all the parties win votes in substantial numbers from most sections of the population, except that there is a rural-big city difference of significance: farmers and people in rural areas vote heavily for the LDP, whereas in big cities voters divide between supporters of all the main parties. Given the fact that the electoral system for the House of Representatives is based on multi-member (three-member, four-member or five-member in most cases) constituencies, and the voter casts a single, non-transferable vote, in a five-member constituency in Tokyo the following may be regarded as a typical result: first, a Liberal Democrat; second, a Communist; third, a Kōmeitō candidate; fourth, a Socialist; and fifth, a Democratic Socialist. By contrast, let us take a remote rural constituency. A typical result might be: first, Liberal Democrat; second, Liberal Democrat; third, Liberal Democrat; fourth, Socialist; fifth, independent or Liberal Democrat. We should remember, of course, that there are many parts of the less remote countryside that have become quite heavily industrialized. Let us, however, return to Prime Minister Takeshita. In the course of the current crisis the Recruit scandal has coincided with at least two other issues. To some extent the Western press has concentrated on the Recruit scandal and neglected the other issues, one of which at least is possibly more important than Recruit.

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The first issue is the imposition by the Takeshita Government of a form of value added tax, called consumption tax, or shōhizei. There is something similar called sales tax in the US, but let us call it ‘value added tax’, or VAT. From the standpoint of Western Europe it may seem surprising that there should be such fuss in Japan about the imposition of VAT, since the rate is mere three per cent, compared which much higher rates in West Germany or in Britain. Among Japanese, however, the new tax has incurred a great deal of anger. Perhaps the reason for this is that it hurts the pockets of small businessmen and farmers, people who are self-employed, and they dislike it because in many cases it draws them into the tax net in a way to which they were hardly accustomed. Hitherto they have paid rather little tax because of loopholes in the law, whereas there is no way of avoiding VAT. A more minor reason why it is unpopular is that now for the first time it is necessary to use one yen coins in order to calculate VAT. A one yen coin is virtually valueless but the shops have to keep large quantities of them in order to be able to pay the correct change, and these coins suddenly have to be produced in large numbers. Another issue of importance is the partial lifting of protection on certain agricultural products, notably citrus and beef, under great pressure from the United States. An outside observer might well express surprise that this should be so strongly opposed within Japan, given the advantage that the lifting of protection gives to the consumer in the form of cheaper food. Unfortunately, however, one of the salient features of Japanese politics is the relative absence of an effective consumer lobby. Although the support for the LDP has become more diversified than in earlier years, the imposition of VAT and the lifting of protection on certain agricultural items has offended elements in its core constituencies of small businessman and farmers, this has greatly hurt the party in recent elections, so that what happens now is quite uncertain. Returning to the 1960 crisis over revision of the Security Treaty, it is certainly true that Kishi’s resignation did much to relieve the sense of crisis. Similarly, Takeshita’s resignation is designed to defuse the crisis which has arisen over the Recruit scandal. This may indeed succeed, since the political temperature seems to have been reduced considerably since Takeshita announced that he would resign. So far a successor to Takeshita has not been officially decided, although Masayoshi Itō is being groomed for the succession—a man who is 76 years old and a diabetic, but who would be an interim prime minister for a few months before somebody else, not too tainted by Recruit, can be found. On the other hand, this rather sanguine assessment from the LDP point of view must be qualified by the question of resentment on the other issues of policy. How far the electoral reverses of the LDP are merely a temporary setback and how far indicative of a long term trend is at the moment very hard to assess. But essential to understanding and analysing the outcome of all this will be the question of how the Opposition handles itself. Will the Opposition parties have the intelligence, as well as the strategic and tactical sense, to change their policies and adapt their policies to a new set of circumstances and opportunities? Will they, on the contrary, simply remain much as they have been over the past twenty or thirty years? First indications are not particularly encouraging. First of all the Opposition parties found it very difficult to unite or cooperate with each other. They have had some success in this, but it is quite limited. Prospects for the JSP becoming a party of the urban consumer also seem distant. That

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party is now led by Mrs Takako Doi, the first woman to lead a political party in Japanese history. Sometimes the less intelligent sections of the press call her ‘Japan’s answer to Mrs Thatcher’. In fact I believe her to be quite different from Mrs Thatcher. Ms Doi is a politician who comes from the mainstream of the JSP. She is flexible, and has a considerable capacity to adapt to new circumstances. But it still has to be proved that she has the ability to transform the party. In my opinion the other Opposition parties lack the capacity on their own to strike out and form a major party capable of gaining power from the Liberal Democrats, and this leaves the JSP alone as a likely contender. If the Japan Socialist Party were to change its image, to change certain of its policies and become the kind of flexible power-oriented party that the LDP has been, but without the corrupt money politics of the LDP, I believe that it would have a substantial chance of pursuing and even gaining power. The experience, however, of the past twenty or thirty years must make one sceptical of that actually happening. In the absence of a sustained and effective power play by the JSP, we may except a continuation of LDP rule in some form, perhaps in coalition with one or other of the smaller parties such as the DSP, into the 1990s.

DISCUSSION Question: You have talked about the imposition of VAT, and people being angry about it. But have they not had various forms of taxation in place before this? Answer: Company taxation is quite high, but for people who run small shops and businesses there are various opportunities for tax evasion. VAT, which does not admit of evasion, and is also administratively timeconsuming, is in this sense a new experience for them. Question: This may seem a rather nasty question. It consists of two parts. The first thing is that I was astonished to hear that ‘majority’ does not have the meaning it does in our political system. Secondly, if ‘majority’ does not count, what theoretical concept is democracy actually based on? Answer: In formal terms democracy does indeed depend on the principle of majority rule. Plainly, however, things are not in practice quite the same as in Western democracies in respect of attitudes to the concept of ‘majority’. I believe that two kinds of analysis are possible. One is a cultural analysis, based on the proposition that Japanese society is geared to the making of decisions according to the principle of seeking a consensus between groups or individuals whose views differ. Often Japan is said to be a ‘consensus society’, but plainly it is not so in the sense of everyone naturally agreeing with each other. It may, on the other hand, be a ‘consensus society’ in the sense that there are mechanisms and habits of operation whereby people seek consensus. When you have a decision making situation, you consult all those involved, you take a long time over the consultation, you make sure that all relevant views are heard, and you try to arrive at a decision which reflects those views, which originally may have been highly divergent. In practice the element of relative power should not be ignored, so that those who are the stronger tend to prevail over those who are weaker. To this extent we ought not to idealise

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the notion of consensus, since up to a point at least there is an element of imposition from above in the formation of a consensus. In any case, however, there is at least a tatemae (facade) of consensus. Using a cultural explanation, therefore, we could say that when the Opposition parties boycott a parliamentary session in order to show their disapproval of the government’s budget, and the government ‘forces’ the passage of the budget in the absence of the Opposition, the government in breaking consensus has handed to the Opposition a kind of moral victory. An alternative explanation of the budget boycott situation, however, would be that it was essentially a question of tactics by the Opposition. Indeed, such tactics were sometimes quite successful during the 1960s, in particular, when the Opposition parties would not infrequently complain about the ‘tyranny of the majority’ exercised by the LDP. Now, from a Western majoritarian point of view that is nonsense. But in the National Diet of Japan, the Opposition has not only used boycotts but also the tactics of physical obstruction (as during the 1960 Security Treaty crisis) to which I referred earlier. There is also an Opposition practice known as gyūho (cow-walking) whereby the Opposition party parliamentarians walk with deliberate slowness through the voting lobbies, in order to slow down the voting process. This is a tactic specifically designed to prevent objectionable legislation being put to the vote before the end of the Diet session. A plenary session of the Diet cannot easily be extended, and although in special circumstances an extraordinary session may be held, the Opposition is sometimes able to slow down the business of the plenary session so that some legislation has been crowded out by the end of the session. In practice all these tactics are meant to force the government party to make concessions to the Opposition, and make deals with it in order to ensure that the government’s legislative programme is passed by the end of the current Diet session. Boycotts and other delaying tactics employed in particular by the Japan Socialist Party have declined since the 1960s, but partly as the result of deals worked out between the Government and the Opposition. My second explanation is thus political rather than cultural. Does that answer your question? Question: Yes, it does. The reason for my question was that from your description of the Opposition parties it appears that none of them, except possible the Communists, seem to have fully formulated and distinct ideas on policy. You described the Kōmeitō, for instance, as thoroughly opportunistic in its policy initiatives. Why, then, are the Opposition parties not able to unite into a single force to oppose the LDP? Answer: I believe that it is a Western-type argument that because they happen to agree with each other across a broad range of policies, they are therefore likely to be able to form a coalition. In the Japanese case it is important to take into account of the propensity to form factional organizations based on personal loyalities and networks. The smaller parties are essentially networks extending from the Diet members in Tokyo down to the grass roots at local level. There is indeed some cooperation between them at election time, but they constitute quite separate organizational networks. We also have to remember that the Communists, Kōmeitō,

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Socialists and Democratic Socialists are competing in the same constituencies for much the same vote. Japan, of course, is not alone in producing political situations where parties with similar ideas find difficulty cooperating with each other. Witness, for instance the terrible shambles of the former British ‘Alliance’ parties (the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party) following the 1987 general elections, where absolutely idiotic things were done because of an inability to subordinate narrower interest to broader interest. Question: Is there any prospect of reforming the system of political financing so as to eleminate corruption? Answer: I believe that they will have to do something about it. Reform would have to involve not only the financing system but also the electoral system. The present electoral system goes back, in its essential features, to 1925, so that it has a long history. All elections but one since 1945 have been fought on some variation of the present system based on a single non-transferable vote in a multi member (threemember, or four-member, or five-member) constituency. This may not sound like an answer to your question, but the current electoral system is most relevant to the question of political financing and corruption. In a multi-member constituency, where electors have a single, non-transferable vote, there are different candidates of the same party, as well as with candidates representing other parties. In present circumstances this is particularly true of candidates from the LDP, which is much the biggest party. This results in a situation where every LDP candidate virtually has to form his own support group, separate from the party organization, which in Japanese is known as his kōenkai. A kōenkai is a network within a parliamentary constituency, consisting of local notabilities and personalities having influence. The kōenkai supports a candidate, but in order to create such an organization and keep it active, a candidate must produce a great deal of funding. To support, and continue to maintain, a kōenkai is a most expensive operation indeed. The Japanese electoral law includes stringent provisions which, for example, prohibit door-to-door canvassing. You cannot in Japan go around knocking on people’s doors and saying ‘please vote for me’. This is illegal because of official fears that door-to-door canvassing would create or further worsen corruption. The laws on how much money a candidate may spend at election tiime are also strict, with the effect that most candidates are forced to break these laws in order to have any chance of being elected. Often they go unpunished. In general the present electoral system is crucial in relation to political financing, because it makes candidates from the same party rely on these personal support machines called kōenkai. This is the main reason why reforming the electoral system is currently on the political agenda. What is being proposed is a reform whereby the majority of seats in the House of Representatives would be contested in singlemember constituencies, while each elector would cast a single non-transferable vote. In other words, this would amount to the British system. In addition, a minority of seats would be contested using a form of proportional representation by list (presumably using the whole nation as one constituency, as is now the case for 50 seats contested at each election for the House of Councillors). The practical effect of this in the short term would probably be that in the seats

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contested on the British system the LDP would do overwhelmingly well—certainly better than they perform at present—but in the proportional constituency they would do relatively badly. In the House of Councillors’ proportional representation constituency the LDP now receives notably fewer votes than in local constituencies for either House. The reason for this is that electors voting for a party list lack the opportunity of voting for an individual candidate; instead they are voting for an impersonal list represented by the name of a particular party. Significant numbers of voters apparently are deterred from voting ‘Liberal Democratic Party’, who might well vote for an LDP candidate if it was a question of indicating support on the ballot paper for an individual candidate rather than a party. There may also be some change in the law relating to financial contributions for elections, and this is being actively discussed. It is, however, quite difficult to achieve real reform of the electoral system when the system depends on funding elections in the ways I have described. It might hurt the LDP to have to reform this law on political contributions, at least in the short term. In my opinion the difficulty of bringing about a real change in the practice of electoral funding is daunting. It is true, of course, that the Recruit scandal has boosted discussion about political funding as an issue. Prime Minister Takeshita has said that he is pledged to bring in measures of reform, but such things have been said before. I think, therefore, that a process of reform is likely to take a considerable time. Question: Since all the parties have dirty hands with the sole exception of the Japan Communist Party, what about the prospect of new parties forming? What do you think about alliances with new parties and the future prospects of such parties? Answer: A new party called the New Liberal Club (NLC) was formed by a group of LDP defectors in 1976, following the corruption revelations into what became known as the Lockheed scandal. Although the NLC briefly did quite well, it very quickly failed. Other parties, which were formed earlier, such as the Kōmeitō, and the Democratic Socialist Party, did not disappear and continue to exist with not inconsiderable representation in the National Diet. These parties in effect contribute to the fragmentation of the Opposition. You may well ask why it is that it should be the Opposition that has become fragmented and not the conservative camp, since with the single exception of the forming of the NLC in 1976, the LDP has remained intact. My answer to that is that this is because the LDP is the party in power, and power is a powerful discipline for politicians. It is much more difficult to contemplate the loss of political power than to be worried about the prospects of failure to gain political power when you have been out of power for a long time. Psychologically, these are two quite distinct situations. In addition, there are a great many extremely influential interest groups in the business world, the bureaucracy and so on, which work hard to prevent any break-up of the LDP, and to ensure that the LDP stays in power. Having said that, however, I should qualify it by saying that if the Opposition, in whatever form, were to come close to gaining national office, elements in the bureaucracy would begin to cultivate the Opposition. This was beginning to happen to some extent already in the 1970s. Once an Opposition that has been out of power for many years is able to gain sufficient support to gain credibility, and to show that

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it might be capable of governing, then not only is it likely to be cultivated by sections of the bureaucracy, but people of ambition think it worth joining the Opposition, people, that is, who are really interested in power. In the early postwar period there were civil servants who left their profession in order to join the Japan Socialist Party. During the 1950s there was one faction in the JSP which was in part at least a faction of former bureaucrats. Since the late 1950s or early 1960s, however, the only former civil servants in politics have been within the LDP, where of course they have been very important indeed. Question: Do you think that politicians involved in the Recruit scandal used the money derived from the Recruit Co. to enrich themselves? Answer: They certainly enriched themselves. The question is: for what purposes did they use the funding so derived? and in many cases the enrichment was undoubtedly for political, rather than personal, purposes. This is simply because leading politicians, particularly faction leaders, need a great deal of money in order to keep their political machines in operation. In the existing system it is essential for politicians to have access to funding on a large scale. Quite possibly some politicians used the Recruit money for strictly personal purposes without political context, but that is likely to have been a minority, and political purposes certainly predominated. There is one further point that I should like to mention: if you analyze the LDP factional system from the 1960s to the present, you find that it has changed markedly. During the 1960s there were up to ten or twelve factions of various sizes, and the politics of the 1960s and the 1970s were characterized by great rivalries between groups of factions. These groups of factions were usually designated ‘mainstream coalition’, ‘anti-mainstream coalition’, or ‘non-mainstream coalition’, depending on the position they had taken in the previous election for LDP President. During the 1980s, in contrast (and particularly during the prime ministership of Nakasone between 1982 and 1987), there have been on average five factions, all of which have normally been a part of a single mainstream coalition backing the Prime Minister. Recently you heard David Morris speak about one of these factions, the Kōmoto faction, which is the smallest of the five. The reason why during the 1980s it has proved possible to construct a single mainstream coalition of all the factions in the LDP is that it is easier to control a smaller number of factions than a larger number. It is also an indication that the LDP has learned to control itself in a rather predictable fashion. The party is also much more institutionalised than it was in its earlier years. During the years immediately after its formation in 1955, the LDP was poorly institutionalised, and by contrast factions were extremely powerful, whereas today the balance has been somewhat redressed in favour of party organization. The factions now find it easier to cooperate with each other, and although there is certainly much rivalry over the party leadership, contests are not necessarily disruptive to party unity. Today we may also discern a pattern of seniority preferment, or advancement by a strict principle of seniority, among LDP parliamentarians. This bears an interesting resemblance to seniority promotion within ministries of the government. From a Western perspective the way Japanese conservative Diet Members are promoted is

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quite strange. If you are an LDP member of the House of Representatives, you will not obtain a cabinet post until you have been elected five times to Parliament. If you are elected at each successive election, without ever being defeated, five terms will normally amount to fourteen or fifteen years. Once you have occupied a parliamentary seat, as an LDP member, for fifteen years, you are almost certain to be offered a post in Cabinet. After that, however, perhaps sixty per cent of LDP parliamentarians will never obtain another Cabinet post. The remaining forty per cent go on to higher things and continue to rise up the seniority progression of cabinet and party posts. This looks surprisingly similar to the seniority progression that operates within much of Japanese industry and also in the government bureaucracy. Now in the case of Parliament it is necessary to submit to a regular trial by election and this introduces an element of uncertainty into the picture. But if you succeed regularly at the polls, you are virtually guaranteed at least one Cabinet post. Beyond that, it is, as it were, a question of promotion by ‘merit’, which parallels the practice today in industry where after a certain level of seniority progression, promotion is likely to be by merit. We may conclude, therefore, that the LDP now has an organizational structure rather like that of a large industrial firm or a government ministry. If, of course, the electorate decide to inflict punishment upon the LDP at the polls, then its system of seniority promotion would be quite seriously threatened. Naturally, the party is concerned to prevent such an outcome, and may be forced into some adaptation and flexibility in order to prevent electoral defeat which would not only threaten its tenure of office but also its system of promotion by seniority.

18 Challenge and Response, or Challenge and Failure to Respond?: The Nihon Shakaitō under Doi Takako First published in Proceedings of the Seventh Biennial Conference, Japanese Studies Association of Australia, July 1991 (Australia-Japan Research Centre, Australian National University) MOST TEXTBOOKS about the contemporary politics of Japan start from the perception that its salient feature is quasi-permanent single party dominance by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Around this has formed a structure of bureaucratic and business-oriented power that is complex, replete with checks and balances and somewhat pluralistic. It exhibits some highly problematic features, notably slow response in situations of crisis, a tendency to corruption and a failure to present the electorate with real policy alternatives. Some, on the other hand, argue that although extremely conservative, the Japanese system of politics gives to the Japanese people continuity of administration, political stability, an atmosphere in which it is possible to plan for the long term, and a conspicuously professional, if bureaucratic, approach to many areas of policy making. Perhaps the biggest issue facing Japan in the 1990s is whether the political system can be made more accountable, less corrupt and more responsive in situations of need without destroying the stability, professionalism and predictability that have been its strong features. This paper will not concern itself with these vital issues, but rather with a contingent feature of the political system which bears on the question of single-party dominance. For the most part, the fact that the LDP has been in power without interruption since it was formed in November 1955 is taken as a political ‘given’, and if the reasons for its continual occupancy of national office are analysed at all, they are attributed to its success in delivering economic growth and prosperity, the relative stability that has been a feature of its rule, the flexibility and ‘creativity’ of its conservatism, its use of the resources of power at its disposal to ‘buy off’ and politically neutralise a succession of interest groups which at various times have put in challenges, its proven ability to maintain a network of support at local level through access to superior financial resources, and skill in using the multi-member constituency system to its own advantage. While agreeing that these explanations—or some combination of them—have substance, we wish to focus on an aspect of causality that is rather rarely examined, namely the failure of Opposition parties to mount an effective challenge to the LDP. Most often, the inability of the Opposition to win a majority of seats in the House of Representatives is simply seen as the tailside of the coin of LDP success. Our argument is, on the contrary, that the political dominance of the LDP for an unbroken 35 years is

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substantially caused by the ineffectual political strategies and lack of will to take power of the Nihon Shakaitō (formerly Japan Socialist Party, or JSP, since January 1991 Social Democratic Party of Japan, or SDPJ). It is an implication of our argument that the same party’s perpetual habitation in the political wilderness has never been inevitable, but was to a large extent its own doing. Ronald Dore once created a metaphor of Japanese political power, in which express lifts inside a high-rise building stood for seniority progression within the elite bureaucracy, the LDP and the industrial and financial world. On scaffolding outside the building leaders of the JSP could see through the windows what was happening inside, but could do nothing to influence it. 1 The sense of being an out-group lacking access to the real centres of power has sunk deep into psyche of Japan’s Opposition parties in general, and the JSP in particular. It is nicely captured by the word normally used to express ‘opposition party’ in Japanese: yatō. Its meaning is ‘party in the field’, by extension ‘party remote from power’, or even ‘party in the wilderness’. This conspicuously fails to convey the idea of active or constructive opposition of the kind expressed within the British political tradition by the phrase ‘Her Majesty’s Opposition’. Some recent Japanese analysts have sought to develop a distinction between ‘party of resistance’ (teikō seitō) and ‘party of opposition’ (taikō seitō), with the implication that only by proposing well-designed alternative policies and strategies to those of the LDP can the JSP ever hope to gain power. Mere ‘resistance’ to what the government does abdicates from oppositional responsibility. 2 An association of newly elected Lower House Diet members formed in March 1990, the New Wave Society, expressed rather similar opinions in its foundation prospectus: Even though the JSP should have aimed at coordinated economic, social and political reform, and should have clearly explained the total picture of the reforms it was aiming at, it has been completely unable to escape from its old practice of simply lining up stereotyped slogans. 3 Since the 1960s, for reasons that will be developed below, Japan’s yatō have been multiparty, that is, the JSP, although always the largest party in terms of seats and votes nationally, has found itself in the position of sharing the task of opposing (or resisting) the LDP government with several other parties, all smaller than itself, but all competing with it for votes. Some of these parties have been less strongly opposed to some of the policies of successive LDP governments than has the JSP, and have occupied the political middle ground between the ruling party and its principal opponent. This has rendered it feasible for the LDP at times to divide and rule the Opposition parties, by favouring those prepared to cooperate with it and disfavouring those who are not, on particular policy issues. The implication is that a party prepared to cooperate will have more to offer its electors than a party only interested in ‘resistance’. This has been particularly evident during the period of the Gulf crisis and

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Table 1 House of Councillors elections, 1986 and 1989

1986 (Seat total)

1989 (Seat total)

LDP

140

109

JSP

41

66

Kōmeitō

24

20

JCP

16

14

–

12

DSP

12

8

Other

11

8

7

15

251 (one vacancy)

252

Rengō

Independent Total

Source: Asahi Nenkan, 1987, p. 191, and 1990, p. 94.

its aftermath in 1990–91, when the Kaifu Government ultimately achieved a large measure of success in its efforts to prise apart the ShaKōMin rosen (coalition between the JSP, Kōmeitō and Democratic Socialist Party (DSP)), and substituting for it a JiKōMin rosen (coalition between the LDP, Kōmeitō and DSP). This made it far easier for the government to have its legislation pass the House of Councillors, where it had lacked an outright majority since its defeat in the Upper House elections of July 1989. Both at national level and also most conspicuously at the level of local elections, the LDP in recent years has assiduously cultivated the idea that it is more advantageous to all concerned if there is a grand coalition of parties and interests around the political Establishment than if parties are manifestly appealing to the electorate on competing platforms. Many prefectural governors and local mayors are now elected by such grand coalitions, which may well include all significant political parties except the Communists. The result, which is still much more evident in local than national politics, is the construction of a general patronage system in which policy accommodation is more in evidence than competition between alternative policy prescriptions. The July 1989 elections for Japan’s House of Councillors, the lesser of the two Houses but still holding extensive powers of rejection of legislation sent it from the House of Representatives, appeared to change radically the map of Japanese politics. When the results were declared the Chairwoman of the JSP, Doi Takako, quoting the poetess Yosano Akiko, declared: ‘the mountains have moved’ (yama wa ugoita). Varying the metaphor, many commentators spoke of a ‘following wind’ (oikaze) suddenly having blown up to fill the normally limp sails of the JSP. The extent of the change in electoral support away from the LDP and in favour of the JSP may be appreciated from a comparison between the state of the Upper House immediately after the 1989 elections and that following the Upper House elections of July 1986.

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It will be observed from these figures that whereas in 1986 the LDP won a comfortable majority over the combined total of all other candidates, in 1989 its seat total fell well short of a majority. The JSP had greatly improved its position, but even when combined with candidates standing under the banner of

Table 2 Seats contested in the 1989 House of Councillors elections

National PR constituency

Prefectural constituencies

Total

LDP

15

21

36

JSP

20

26

46

Kōmeitō

6

4

10

JCP

4

1

5

Rengō

–

11

11

DSP

2

1

3

Others

3

2

5

Independents

–

10

10

50

76

126

Total Source: Asahi Nenkan, 1990, p. 94.

Rengō, the recently formed union federation which was closely aligned with the JSP, its seat total fell well short of the LDP total. This, however, resulted from the fact that only half the seats in the Upper House were being contested in this election. When we examine the seats actually contested in the 1989 elections, we find that the LDP was well behind in second place, and the JSP, together with Rengō, had achieved a truly remarkable victory. The reasons for this victory are not difficult to determine. The period from the Japanese summer of 1988 until its summer of 1989 had been truly awful for the government of Takeshita Noboru and his immediate successor, Uno Sōsuke. Takeshita, who had succeeded the durable and generally popular Nakasone Yasuhiro in November 1987, did well at first, but rapidly lost popularity following revelations about illegal or dubious share dealings affecting many LDP leaders and involving a company called ‘Recruit’. In addition, the Takeshita government introduced a deeply unpopular indirect tax, known as consumption tax (shōhizei), which came into effect at the level of 3 per cent on 1 April 1989. A third contentious issue was the liberalisation of beef and citrus imports, a measure unpopular among farmers. At the beginning of June Takeshita handed over as party President and Prime Minister to Uno Sōsuke, a much less well known politician who had served as Foreign Minister in the Takeshita cabinet. Uno promptly faced damaging revelations about his private life, which hampered his efforts to lead his party in the election campaign. None of these factors had anything to do with the JSP, which simply became the

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beneficiary of a ‘following wind’ not of its own making. In addition, however, although probably less important, the JSP itself can be credited with having contributed to its own victory. In December 1986, foliowing extremely poor results in simultaneous elections for both Houses of the National Diet two months previously, the JSP made political history by electing a woman as its Chairman. Doi Takako, a former lecturer in constitutional law at Dōshisha University in Kyōto, who had been a Diet member since 1969, turned out to be a forceful and determined Chair, who was able to establish notable rapport with electors (especially women) through her plain, down-to-earth speaking. She quickly became a national celebrity, who managed to create a reassuring image for herself among electors who would normally have found her party tired and unappealing. The new Chairman endeavoured both to create a new image for her party and also to reform its decision-making processes in such a way as to make them less hidebound and more responsive to the real world. Although the party manifestly suffered from the tangled legacy of its past and conspicuously lacked sufficient numbers of personnel with qualifications relevant to constructive policy making, Doi Takako was able quite effectively to improve the party image. A feature of the 1989 Upper House election campaign was the deliberate promotion of women as candidates—a strategy which had previously been the preserve of the Japan Communist Party (JCP). The strategy paid off, since 11 of the 46 Socialists elected in July 1989 were women, making the Socialist contingent much the largest group of women in the Diet. As a way of appealing to the better half of the electorate, Doi Takako’s approoach made a great deal of sense In retrospect, the unprecedented level of support for the Japan Socialist Party in the July Upper House elections of 1989 was the product of extraordinary circumstances and would have required efforts beyond the capacity of any leader to sustain. From quite soon after the elections it became evident that many voters who had written the name of a Socialist or Rengō candidate on their ballot papers in July 1988 were likely to return to their normal inclination to vote for an LDP candidate in the next elections for the House of Representatives. Moreover, the electoral constituencies for the Lower House, with their many entrenched networks of LDP members, formed a more favourable environment for the LDP than the less predictable electorates of the Upper House. When Lower House elections were declared for February 1990, chances of the LDP losing its majority, not to speak of the JSP winning a majority in its own right, had faded. Indeed, the chances of this last possibility actually occurrng were precisely nil. The number of candidates chosen by the JSP was 148 (plus a few associated Independents), or much less than half of the total of 512 seats which the House contained, and only 10 more than the party had run in 1986. It may seem strange from an Australian, British or indeed any other perspective except Japanese that the leading party challenging the supremacy of the party in power should fail to run a sufficient number of candidates in a general election to take office even if all of them were elected. The reason for this unusual state of affairs lies partly in the nature of the electoral system and partly in the party’s lack of confidence in its own capacities which had developed over its decades in the political wilderness as a quintessential yatō. The constituencies for the Lower House of the National Diet are multimember, that is, in most cases they elect either three, or four, or five members, whereas the elector casts a single, non-transferable vote. This means that, in practice, it is quite possible for a

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candidate to be elected after receiving a mere 15–20 per cent of the total votes cast in the constituency. In the case of a minor party (such as the Communists) this system is helpful in that it guarantees some parliamentary representation even though the party cannot aspire to a plurality in any constituency. For the JSP, however, it is yery arguable that the system has contributed to its decline since the 1950s by removing, or at least greatly reducing, the necessity for candidates to campaign. In most constituencies, a JSP candidate enjoying the backing of union organisations will count on sufficient numbers of anti-LDP and labour union votes (though some of these may ‘leak’ to other parties) to guarantee his election. Before the campaign period for the February 1990 elections a debate took place within the party concerning the number of candidates per constituency the party ought to run. Older conservatives within the leadership were extremely cautious about multiple candidacies, whereas the ‘young turks’ thought multiple candidacies, though bringing with them the risk of ‘tomodaōre’ (going down in defeat together because the vote was split), were nevertheless essential if the party were to develop dynamically. In the event, out of 24 double candidacies (constituencies where the JSP ran two candidates) 15 were successful in the sense that both candidates won, and in the rest one out of the two won. There were no triple (or more than triple) candidacies as is common in the LDP and as the JSP had sometimes attempted in the past. But also there was no constituency in which both candidates lost as a result of splitting the vote between them. Despite several much publicised cases where a completely new JSP candidate performed beyond all expectations, analysis of the 24 double candidacies shows that sitting Diet members polled more votes than new candidates in rather more cases than the reverse. 4 A comparison of the 1986 and 1990 general elections is given in Table 3. It is abundantly clear from these results that the JSP under Doi Takako had done much better than in the previous Lower House elections and indeed had produced its best result since the elections of 1967. Most significantly, it appeared to have put into reverse a tendency that had first manifested itself in the 1960s for smaller parties of the centre and far left (DSP, Kōmeitō, JCP, New Liberal Club, Shaminren) to erode its vote, particularly in big cities such as Tokyo and Osaka The small parties had done badly in the general elections of February 1990, and although their influence was not eliminated (in particular the Kōmeitō support remained reasonably firm), the composition of the House of Representatives following the 1990 elections had much more of a two-party (or one-anda-half party) character than it had possessed at any time in the

Table 3 House of Representatives elections, 1986 and 1990

1986 Seats

1989 Vote %

Seats

Vote %

300

49.4

275a

46.1

JSP(SPDJ)

85

17.2

136a

24.4

Kōmeitō

56

9.4

45a

8.0

LDP

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JCP

26

8.8

16

8.0

DSP

26

6.4

14

4.8

Others

10

2.8

5

1.4

9

5.8

21

7.3

Independent Total

512

512

a 17

of the 21 Independents elected in 1990 subsequently joined political parties: 11 joined the LDP, boosting its seat total to 286; 5 joined the JSP, giving it a toal of 141; and one Independent joined the Kōmeitō. Sources: Asahi Nenkan, 1987, p. 101, and 1991, p. 95. Kokkai Binran, 83rd edition, August 1990, p. 297.

previous two decades. The result looked much like a return to the composition of the House of Representatives as it had been in the middle of the 1960s. On the other hand, by comparison with the House of Councillors elections a few months earlier, support for the party had faded to some extent. Granted that media hype meant the party could hardly meet the inflated expectations generated on the basis of its results the previous year, it was essential for the party leaders to renew the political momentum and build on the achievements already made. The LDP had responded to the challenge presented to it by the 1989 Upper House election results by choosing a new leader, Kaifu Toshiki, who was able to present a ‘clean’ image, and attained considerable initial popularity. He even appointed women to cabinet office, in an obvious attempt to counter the ‘madonna strategy’ of Doi Takako. Although the LDP lost seats in the February 1990 elections, its majority was a comfortable one, and far ahead of most media predictions. Although, therefore, Doi Takako’s party did amazingly well by its own previous standards, psychologically the impression was created that it was running out of steam. Moreover, ever since the previous year’s elections, the spotlight of attention had been focused on the party, and it was not difficult to find evidence that it had yet to overcome many of the structural weaknesses that had plagued it in the past. Some of the criticism may have been unfair, since the Doi leadership had its achievements in this area, but it could not afford to relax. Shortly after the February elections a group of 29 newly elected Diet members formed themselves into an association which they called the New Wave Society. Nine of the 29 were lawyers and much fewer than the average for JSP Diet members had been union officials or local councillors. The aims of the Society were to reform the JSP in such a way that it should shake off the lacklustre legacy of its past and develop into a party capable of taking over the reins of government. Its ideological position was broadly centre or centre left, and in its ‘Foundation Prospectus’ it described the policies of the LDP as based on ‘extravagant consumption of raw materials, large-scale concentration, and centralised bureaucratic power’, whereas those of social democracy were concerned with ‘recycling of raw materials, small-scale and dispersed operations, and regional autonomy’. 5 The Society called for a coherent party strategy, which it thought had been sadly lacking in the past, and proposed four principal areas of reform. The first was that the party should agree on a new statement of purpose which would take into account the

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worldwide collapse of Marxist-Leninist regimes and with it the end of the Cold War. Second, it should no longer confine its recruitment of members so closely as in the past to the ranks of labour unionists, but should seek to bring together talent from various classes of people including the ‘bureaucratic and industrial worlds’. 6 This was linked with the aim of creating a party realistically capable of taking power, and recognised that ideological inhibition ought not to prevent contacts with those who, along with the LDP, currently controlled policy. The third reform related to strategies for gaining electoral support. Whereas hitherto the party had placed inordinate emphasis on the backing of union organisations for electoral support, the New Wave Society advocated much more concentrated involvement in local activities of a parochial but vital kind, such as providing advice to people about their housing problems. This was clearly an attempt to take a leaf out of the book of other parties, notably the JCP, which were skilled at making converts through counselling activities of this sort. Fourthly, the group proposed a ‘shadow cabinet’ system on the British model, whereby JSP Diet members would be chosen to ‘shadow’ the portfolios of cabinet ministers. In this way, the party would accumulate experience which would be vital to it should it find itself forming a government, and also ‘shadow’ ministers by their activities should generate favourable publicity for the party. 7 In a series of policy documents presented to the party leadership over the next few months, the New Wave Society developed its ideas on the party campaign policy for 1990, 8 management of the National Diet, 9 commercial law revision, 10 electoral and political reform, 11 taxation reform, 12 responses to the Gulf crisis, 13 and reform of JSP central organisation. 14 Perhaps the most radical of the reforms which the group proposed was the last one, concerning party organisation. On the basis of a study of the British Labour Party and the West German Social Democratic Party, the New Wave Society proposed that the existing unified structure of party organisation (which it castigated as ‘Marxist-Leninist in style’) should be replaced by a divided structure, in which the body of JSP Diet members should have substantial autonomy in policy making. Of course there would be a linkage between the policy-making organisation of JSP Diet members, on the one hand, and the party organisation outside the Diet, which would manage party affairs. But the Diet members would be enabled to make policy in a way which was not possible at present. 15 Another area where the Society’s views were forthright was that of electoral reform. Whereas the Kaifu government proposed to introduce a completely new electoral system for the Lower House, based principally on single-member constituencies (retaining firstpast-the-post), but with a smaller number of constituencies decided by proportional representation, the JSP leadership, fearing that the party would not be able to compete in such constituencies, was holding out for the retention of the present system, though with modifications. By contrast, the New Wave Society argued for a new system different from that being proposed by the government, in which most seats would be decided by proportional representation. Its members strongly dissented from the position of the party leadership that the existing system should be retained, essentially for the reason mentioned above, that it encouraged a ‘minimum effort’ mentality, since it was easy to elect one member per constituency in many parts of the country with minimal campaigning. 16

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The New Wave Society also proposed a freedom of information act, an ombudsman system in relation to national and local government, and improved practical rights for the individual in other respects. 17 It wanted much greater openness of access to party documents relating to policy issues in the Diet. 18 On various issues of policy it urged the party leadership to make concrete proposals that could be seen as alternatives to government polity, rather than simply opposing government policy without presenting a realistic alternative. This was the essence of its stance over consumption tax, 19 and on cooperation with the multinational peacekeeping operation in the Gulf.20 On this last issue, however, the New Wave Society found itself divided on what its stand ought to be, between those who wanted some measure of flexibility in the party’s position, and others who felt that here the pacifist element in their tradition should prevail, and therefore attempts by the government to involve the Self Defence Forces, however minimally, in the peacekeeping effort in the Gulf should be opposed. In October 1990 the Kaifu government attempted to introduce legislation that would have permitted some Self Defence Force participation, though technically they would have gone to the Gulf as members of a contingent that would no longer have belonged to the SDF, and would have had severe restrictions imposed on them in respect of their right to bear arms and participate close to any war zone. The fact that the government was forced to drop this legislation was from a political point of view a fiasco for it. Its failure was precipitated by the loss of its majority in the 1989 Upper House elections, which gave the Opposition parties a veto on legislation (apart from the budget and treaties), and by the refusal of Opposition parties including the Socialists to accommodate in any measure the government point of view on this issue. If it was a fiasco for the government, however, it also turned out to be disadvantageous for the JSP. Although public opinion was generally sceptical about the necessity or desirability of sending the SDF abroad, it also disliked the negativism of the position taken by the JSP. Another factor which later became of vital importance was that the failure of the Kaifu government’s initiative in October-November 1990 led to a search for ways of circumventing the veto over government legislation which the Opposition parties had enjoyed ever since the Upper House elections of 1989. A new strategy was devised, largely, it seems, on the initiative of the LDP Secretary-General, Ozawa Ichirō, to persuade the DSP and the Kōmeitō to vote with the LDP on crucial legislation in the Upper House. As we have seen, this led to the establishment of a de facto JiKōMin Rosen, and although the Kōmeitō, whose position formed the key to this strategy, naturally played hard to get, the fact that it was eventually prepared to play along with the government on some major issues greatly weakened the veto power which the JSP had held since July 1989. It is quite conceivable that a more accommodating and subtle approach by the Doi leadership on measures of international cooperation relating to the Gulf, consumption tax and so on, would have obviated the need for the Kaifu government to devise such a stratagem, and left the JSP veto power intact. One of the ways in which the Kaifu government attempted to accommodate the Kōmeitō was by attempting to coordinate strategy with it over choice of candidacy for the Tokyo prefectural governorship elections, due in April 1991. For some twelve years the governor had been Suzuki Shunichi, who in previous elections had been backed by the

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LDP, Kōmeitō and other parties. He was, however, 80 years old in 1991, and some of his recent policy decisions had aroused criticism. The Kōmeitō in particular had become disillusioned with his regime and there were many rumours in Tokyo at the time that it was to appease Kōmeitō on the Gulf cooperation issue that Ozawa devised the stratagem of ceasing to support Suzuki and selecting an alternative candidate, more agreeable to the Kōmeitō, in his stead. This strategy may have succeeded in its principal aim, to bring round the Kōmeitō to a position where it was prepared to support government policy (or key parts of it) on the Gulf. On the Tokyo governorship election issue, however, it failed because Suzuki refused to step down, stood as an Independent, and won by a handsome margin. Ozawa promptly resigned as LDP Secretary-General following Suzuki’s victory. Once again, however, it did not follow that a Liberal Democratic disaster was matched by a Socialist success. Far from succeeding in exploiting a golden opportunity to profit from a serious division in conservative ranks, with two essentially conservative candidates contesting the Tokyo governorship against each other, the Doi leadership publicly failed to persuade a succession of possible candidates to stand for election (Doi Takako herself was considered, but refused to stand), and eventually chose a little known university professor, who went on to receive less than 7 per cent of the votes cast. Results of the local elections held in April throughout much of Japan were extremely poor for the party, and it is difficult to escape the conclusion that a combined image of unreasonable intransigence and incompetence on the part of its leadership had penetrated the minds of the electorate and replaced the positive and innovative feeling which Doi Takako had earlier imparted. As of May 1991, the future of the current leaders is highly uncertain.

CONCLUSION Many observers in Japan now assume that the surge in Socialist support in 1989–90 was transitory, that the status quo ante has now been restored, and that stable rule by the LDP can be anticipated for the foreseeable future. Many arguments can be advanced in support of such a conclusion, but in this writer’s view they are not conclusive. Three basic points need to be made. The first is that the LDP itself faces a variety of structural and contingent problems, which could once again cause it major problems with its support base at some time in the future. These include leadership succession, factional realignment, alienation of key interest groups and ‘money politics’. There is plenty of evidence that many voters vote for LDP candidates less because they support the party than because they can see no viable alternative, or because they are brought into the ambit of a particular LDP candidate and vote for him for personality, rather than party, reasons. Secondly, since the early 1980s the electorate has evinced greater volatility than used to be the case. Swings up and down in LDP support have been more marked than they were before the end of the 1970s. Especially in the cities, voters now seem to respond more to immediate circumstances, candidates and mood than they used to. The swing against the LDP in the 1989 Upper House elections was merely the most extreme manifestation of this enhanced volatility. While this may favour the LDP at certain times,

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it may equally well harm its chances at others. There is the added factor that radical electoral reform would make established assumptions about electoral behaviour and outcomes even harder to sustain. The third point is that as we have already argued, the inability of the JSP (now SDPJ) to project itself as a credible alternative government has, we would argue, been a necessary condition for quasi-permanent LDP rule. As the New Wave Society frequently points out, the failure of the JSP in the past to tread the path mapped out by the German Social Democratic Party at its Bad Godesberg Congress of 1959, when it abandoned its Marxist heritage and became a pragmatic party of social democracy, was a catastrophe. It led to the phenomenon, not unknown in Australia (especially at State level) where a party loses ambition to get into power, falls into the hands of ideologues and those receiving and dispensing patronage and power of a localised, restricted nature, but who develop vested interests in the status quo continuing. Since 1986 the JSP has made some progress away from this all too familiar syndrome. The New Declaration (shin sengen), which was accepted as official party policy a few months before Doi Takako became Chairman, is a relatively pragmatic and forward-looking document. The Chairman herself has done much to renew the party and restructure its thinking, and most recently the New Wave Society has acted as an important (though often frustrated) ginger group pressing for change. Challenged, first by its rout in 1986, and then by its unexpected successes in 1989 and early 1990, the JSP (SDPJ) has responded by showing signs of evolving into a modern political party, capable of taking office without simply replicating the policies of the LDP. The Gulf crisis, however, exposed the party’s continuing weaknesses which still need to be addressed in a bold and intelligent manner. There is a large potential audience in Japan for a modern social democratic party, provided that it is combined with other desirable attributes of a modern political party, notably competence. As of this writing, the final point has yet to be established.

NOTES 1. Ronald Dore, The Future of Japan’s Meritocracy, Bulletin, The International House of Japan, Inc., No. 26, October 1970:30–50, at pp. 45–8. 2. Nakamura Kenichi, Teikō seitō kara taikō seito e no shōhōsen (From a Party of Resistance to a Party of Opposition: a Prescription), Asahi Jānaru, 20 July 1990, Yamaguchi Jirō, ‘Shakaitō wa “taikō seito” ni dappi subeshi’ (The JSP must turn into an Opposition), Ekonomisuto, 9 October 1990. 3. ‘Niyū Uēbu no Kai ‘setsuritsu shuisho (Foundation prospectus of the New Wave Society), mimeo, April 1990. 4. Both sitting members: 3; sitting member ahead of new candidate: 10; new candidate ahead of sitting candidate: 7; both new candidates: 3. Calculated from Asahi Nenkan, 1991:91–5. 5. Niyū Uēbu no Kai setsuritsu shuisho, op. cit.:2. See also Niyū Uēbu no Kai and Takagi Ikurō, Niyū Uēbu no shakaishugi (New Wave Socialism), Rōdō Kyōiku Sentā, 1991:23.

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6 Op.cit. 7. Op. cit. 8. Ikensho (Statement of Opinion), mineo, 31 March 1990. 9. Kokkai unei no arikata ni tsuite no ikensho (Statement of Opinion concerning Management of the National Diet), mimeo, 26 April 1990. 10. Shōhō kaisei ni kansuru ikensho (Statement of Opinion concerning Commercial Law Revision), mimeo, 26 April 1990. 11. Senkyo seido, seiji kaikaku ni tsuite no wareware no teigen (Our Proposal concerning Reform of the Electoral System and of Politics). 12. Ikensho (Statement of Opinion), mimeo, June 1990. 13. Ikensho (Statement of Opinion), mimeo, 30 August 1990. 14. Nihon Shakaitō chūō soshiki kikō kaikaku ni kansuru watakushitachi no teian, mimeo, 31 August 1990. 15. Ibid. 16. Senkyo seido…, op. cit. 17. Ikensho, 31 March 1990, op. cit.:3. 18. Kokkai unei…, op. cit. 19. Ikensho, June 1990, op. cit.

19 Japan’s Opposition Parties and the Prospects for Political Change First published in The Japan Foundation Newsletter, Vol. XIX, No. 2, October 1991 IN JUNE 1991 a public opinion poll revealed that the popularity rating of the Social Democratic Party of Japan (formerly, Japan Socialist Party) 1 was at a level so low that few could remember it having been so low before. A mere 17 percent of the sample said that they supported the SDPJ. 2 What a contrast with the situation a little less than two years previously, when with the ruling Liberal Democrats in acute disarray, more electors had voted for the Japan Socialist Party (JSP) than for the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in the House of Councillors elections, and had deprived the LDP Government of its majority in the Upper House. 3 A sudden rise had been followed by a precipitate fall, or perhaps, following the concepts of ancient Greek tragedy, hubris had been followed by nemesis. A comfortable and widespread explanation of the rise and fall of the SDPJ (JSP) between 1989 and 1991 is that the rise was brought about by unique, extraordinary and never-to-be-repeated factors, and so the fall was merely a return to the status quo ante in which the party could be regarded as a narrowly based ideological rump, with neither the capacity nor even the will to contend seriously for power at the national level. It is the contention of this article that this is altogether too complacent a view, which neglects the changes taking place over several years in the Japanese political system as a whole. Japanese politics has indeed revealed an extraordinary degree of basic stability in recent decades, but in the late 1980s the public reacted sharply against pervasive corruption by politicians in office, as well as against decisions to increase indirect taxes and lift protection on certain agricultural products. This in our view was a sign of deeper uncertainties which are only capable of being solved by fundamental reform and realignment of the political system as a whole. Despite the ubiquitous signs of systemic conservatism, the chances of fundamental change taking place over the next few years are more substantial than many commentators are currently prepared to admit. When we speak of fundamental change, however, we envisage something more complex than the kind of reversal of roles between government and opposition parties that is a normal feature of politics in Great Britain and elsewhere. Leaving aside the question of whether Britain really has ‘the politics of alternation,’ few would now argue that there is a ‘natural’ party of government and a ‘natural’ party of opposition. Both major parties are normally in realistic contention to form the government that will emerge from the next general elections. In Japan, by contrast, since the 1950s there has indeed been a natural party of government and several natural parties of opposition. It has seemed to many observers as natural as that the sun will rise in the morning for the LDP to form every succeeding government, and for the yatō (literally ‘parties in the field’) to

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languish in the wilderness of perpetual and largely impotent opposition. If in Japan this situation is going to change, we should not simply conceive of it in terms of the British model. If Japan were Britain, what happened in 1989 would not seem peculiar. For various reasons a government became unpopular and the electorate moved massively towards the leading party of opposition. This has happened many times in British political history, and it can be predicted as certainly as that night will follow day (though with less precision as to timing) that the electorate will one day swing back again. Japan, however, is not Britain, nor is it France, nor the United States. Japanese politics has its own history, institutions, traditions, pressures, culture, just as does politics in any other country. It needs to be analyzed in its own terms even though it is very often helpful to make comparisons with other systems. In Japan, what happened in 1989 was extremely peculiar. Indeed, nothing like it had ever happened before. Western commentators who in the immediate aftermath of the Upper House elections of July 1989 thought that the LDP was about to be tossed out of power by the voters, were thinking in terms of the normal expectations of their own political systems, and failing to reckon with the self-correcting mechanisms of the Japanese predominant party system. By February 1990, when elections for the more important House of Representatives were held, the LDP had made a remarkable recovery, and the Socialists, though they achieved substantial gains, were far short of a parliamentary majority. 4 Our argument is that political change in Japan is likely to take the form of complex realignments leading eventually to a different sort of system, rather than of a simple replacement of one party in power by another. The exact shape of change is of course unpredictable, but once real change begins to happen, it is likely to be multifaceted. The new system will hardly represent a revolutionary break from the old, but in many subtle and important ways it will work differently. Before, however, we explore the possibilities for the future of Japanese politics let us retrace briefly the course of events leading to the Socialist advance of 1989 and its subsequent retreat.

SOCIALIST PARTY BEFORE A FOLLOWING WIND Not since the 1950s had the JSP looked like a serious contender for government. The 1960s saw it turn in on itself—unlike the British Labour Party or the West German Social Democratic Party—and take refuge in narrow ideological appeal as well as linking itself largely to the interests of particular groups of labor unions. It was indifferently led and prone to factional conflict having an arcane ideological character. Above all, few with real political ambition or ability cared to join it or represent it. By the 1970s and 1980s such appeal as it still retained depended in considerable part on the party’s staunch defense of Japan’s postwar Constitution, and in particular Article 9, the ‘pacifist’ clause, against what it regarded as government inspired attempts to erode, or subvert, the substance and spirit of the article. Given the continued popularity of the Constitution as revealed in numerous public opinion polls, this stance was not entirely without its rewards in terms of political support. Nevertheless, the Japanese Socialists between the late 1950s and the mid-1970s

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suffered a steep decline in support, as reflected in votes cast in general elections, from over thirty percent down to around twenty percent. Most significantly, the steepest decline occurred in the largest cities, which in the 1950s had provided the core of its support. Since over the same period the LDP was also experiencing large-scale defections in the big cities, support for both the main parties was ebbing away towards smaller parties which found the crowded conditions of Tokyo, Osaka and other metropolitan areas a favorable environment for their campaigning. These included the Kōmeitō, backed by the Sōka Gakkai religion, which seemed to be sweeping all before it the middle and late 1960s, the Japan Communist Party (JCP), which peaked in the early 1970s, and the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP), an anti-Communist splinter from the JSP, which had broken away in 1959–60 and continued to pull voters away from the JSP in areas where it was strong, such as Nagoya and Osaka. The great difference between the 1950s and the 1970s was that whereas in the late 1950s Japan enjoyed a two-party (or as some described it, a ‘one-and-a-half party’) system, in the 1970s the system had become ‘one-plus-several,’ in other words the LDP was still the party in office (though with a slender parliamentary majority), but the Opposition had become fragmented into several different parties, of which the JSP was still much the largest but hardly the most dynamic. During the early 1970s, at a time when many ‘progressive’ (i.e., left of center) local authorities were elected, moves were afoot for party realignment around a centrist pole, with disaffected elements of both the ruling LDP and of the JSP to form a new party (or alliance), which would capture the center ground for a new and dynamic party. These efforts did not bear fruit, however, though as part of this abortive process relatively minor defections from the LDP (the New Liberal Club, formed in 1976) and from the JSP (the Shaminren, formed 1978) took place. Towards the end of the 1970s the JSP experienced a showdown between its moderate, centrist wing and a militant, Marxist-oriented group called the Shakaishugi Kyokai (Socialism Association), which led to the weakening of the latter. Several significant things happened in Japanese party politics during the 1980s. Perhaps the most heralded development was a substantial recovery in the electoral fortunes of the LDP, which did extremely well in the lower house general elections of 1980 and 1986 (though much less well in 1983) and performed respectably in 1990. In general, this was a great improvement over the 1970s, when the ruling party was bumping along with marginal majorities over the combined total of seats won by the opposition parties. Whatever the reasons for this, it is clear that the LDP demonstrated a flexibility, and an ability to cultivate new interests and constituencies of support, that was gener-ally lacking among the opposition parties. The advantages of incumbency— particularly the financial and patronage advantages—were of course considerable. It is also arguable that the electoral system for the lower house, with its multi-member constituencies ensuring competitive dynamism on the part of LDP candidates, was an additional stimulus. Secondly, inspection of national and local election results during the 1980s strongly suggests that electoral behavior had become more fluid and unpredictable than in previous decades, though it was still, by comparison at least with that of Britain, relatively stable. Thirdly, and unremarked by many commentators until the events of 1988–89, the

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Japan Socialist Party was beginning to change. Although reform within the JSP is generally associated with the name of Doi Takako, the first woman ever to head a Japanese political party, who became Chairman of the JSP in September 1986, in fact significant reform began during the chairmanship of her predecessor, Ishibashi Masashi. It was Ishibashi’s persistence which led the party to endorse a New Declaration (shin sengen), early in 1986, replacing a document which had served as the party platform since 1966. The New Declaration abandoned the Marxist legacy still apparent in its predecessor, and placed the party in the camp of social democracy. It was also under Ishibashi that the party, in a curious phrase, declared that the Self-Defense Forces, whose existence it had always opposed as contravening Article 9 of the 1946 Constitution, were ‘unconstitutional but legal.’ This was an attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable: adherence to the letter of the Constitution with recognition that Japan now possessed major military capacity. Following a severe defeat in the lower house general elections of 1986, the party chose Doi Takako as Chairman. She very quickly became a national celebrity, and revealed a strength of character and down to earth expression that struck a chord with substantial sections of the electorate. It was not until 1988, however, that circumstances began to develop which were to prove spectacularly favorable for the JSP, although there had been occasional signs before that that the party’s popularity was on the increase. The government of Takeshita Noboru, who had been prime minister since late 1987, became increasingly damaged by the scandalous revelations affecting most leading politicians concerning dubious share dealings. The ‘Recruit scandal,’ as it came to be known, was further compounded in the public mind by the Takeshita government’s decision to introduce a three percent consumption tax on April 1, 1989. This was third attempt since 1979 to bring in a form of general indirect taxation, and it had long been recognized as electorally unpopular. In addition, the lifting of protection against imports of beef and citrus fruit caused sharp alienation among farmers. Takeshita was forced to resign the prime ministership in May 1989, and his designated successor, Uno Sōsuke, soon found his private life the subject of critical scrutiny in the mass media. Meanwhile the JSP and its leader, sensing a favorable wind propelling them forward, made a bid for women’s votes by running considerable numbers of women candidates in the Upper House elections to be held in July. In addition, the party was helped by the recent amalgamation of much of the labor union movement into the Rengō federation, since Rengō proceeded to run candidates allied to the JSP in constituencies where they could appeal to broad-based anti-LDP sentiment. When the results were declared, the LDP seat total had declined from 140 (total seats 252) to 109: in other words the LDP had lost its majority in the upper house for the first time since its formation in 1955. By contrast, the JSP had improved its position from 41 to 66 seats, and successful Rengō candidates numbered 12. The smaller parties had all lost seats. Since only half the Upper House seats were in contention in this election, the LDP still remained the largest party, but it had both lost its majority and was not ahead of the JSP in share of the total vote. Faced by this stunning and completely unprecedented reverse, the LDP exerted itself to put its house in order. Quite apart from the blow to its prestige, losing its majority in the House of Councillors had serious political implications, since apart from the budget and treaties with foreign states, any bill sent from the lower house to the upper and rejected

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by the latter could only be reinstated by a two thirds majority of the former. Such a large majority of the lower house the LDP was not in a position to muster. Uno’s successor as LDP President and thus prime minister was Kaifu Toshiki, a politician untainted by suspicion of financial impropriety, who was neither a faction leader nor a member of a major faction. The fact that he was able to achieve personal popularity greatly assisted the task of stabilizing the LDP against the Socialist challenge. When the crucial general elections for the House of Representatives were held the following February, the LDP did far better than it had the previous July, though its total was about twenty seats down from 1986. The JSP increased its seat total from 85 in 1986 to 136 in 1990. In addition, five independents joined it on being elected, so that it emerged with 141 out of 512 seats, its best Lower House performance since 1967.

REVERSAL OF FORTUNES Evaluation of this result depends on perspective. From the point of view of Doi Takako and her party, this could be regarded as a magnificent performance. The appalling defeat of 1986 had been avenged and the Socialists were once again far ahead of any other party in opposition to the ruling LDP. With increased numbers in both houses of the National Diet, it was now possible to tackle the task of opposing the Kaifu government with enhanced vigor and effectiveness. New blood had been introduced, and the party’s parliamentary representation was notably more varied in character, and less union based, than before. The prospects for implementing modernization of the party’s structure and policies looked hopeful. On the other hand, from the perspective of the previous year’s upper house election results the February 1990 lower house result could be portrayed as a reverse. Indeed, the party’s will to win was placed in question by the fact that the candidates running under the JSP label in February 1990 only totalled 148, so that even had all of them been elected the party would have been far short of a majority. The reason for this was that it was thought unwise to split the party vote in multi-member constituencies (there was much intra-party disagreement about this while candidates were being chosen), but it created the impression that the JSP was fundamentally unserious about challenging the LDP for power. Shortly after the February elections, some thirty newly elected JSP members of the House of Representatives formed a group which they called the New Wave Society, dedicated to reforming the party and its policies along social democratic lines, and in converting it from a weak and ineffectual yatō to a party in contention for national power. The New Wave Society presented the party leadership with a series of policy proposals, and initially seems to have been favored by the leadership, but gradually it became frustrated as its proposals appeared to be largely ignored. 5 On August 2, Saddam Hussein, President of Iraq, invaded Kuwait. This set in motion within the politics of Japan a series of developments which were to prove extremely testing and difficult for the Kaifu government, which, however, managed to survive them, perhaps against the odds. On the other hand it was wholly disastrous for the JSP (SDPJ). The Kaifu government soon found itself under intense American pressure to provide a substantial contribution to the multinational peacekeeping effort in the Persian Gulf.

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After promising $4 billion in aid, it attempted in October 1990 to legislate for a contingent to be sent to the Gulf that would include Self-Defense Force personnel, though they would no longer formally belong to the SDF and would be engaged essentially in non-military activities. In a humiliating retreat, Kaifu was forced to withdraw this legislation as he was unable to guarantee majority support for it in the House of Councillors. His second attempt, however, was rather more successful. Soon after the Gulf war was launched on January 17, 1991, he was rather easily able to offer a further $9 billion—by any standards a massive sum—towards peacekeeping in the Gulf, despite the fact that it would entail appreciable increases in taxation. The key to this was that the Kōmeitō on this occasion was able to be persuaded to back the new package of measures, although it extracted a certain policy price (including a promise of reduced defense spending) from the government for its support. Moreover, some weeks after the war was over, it proved possible to stretch the constitutional restrictions on overseas dispatch of the SDF by authorizing the sending of five minesweepers to assist in minesweeping operations in the Gulf. The Kaifu government was widely criticized both overseas and within Japan for its slow and indecisive response to the Gulf crisis, but given constitutional restraints, the jaundiced view of public opinion about contributing to the multinational effort, 6 and particularly the loss of its majority in the upper house, the Kaifu government may be given the credit, not only for surviving, but for making what in the end and in the circumstances it faced may be regarded as the best of a most difficult job. For the Socialists, on the other hand, the Gulf crisis and war could not have happened at a worse time. Just when it was essential for the party to consolidate and build on its electoral gains made in the 1989 and 1990 elections, by maintaining the momentum of its program of organizational and policy reform, it was forced to respond to a crisis which brought to the surface in the most raw manner the party’s traditional constitution-based pacifist attitudes. Chairman Doi Takako, herself trained as a constitutional lawyer, took an uncompromising stand in successive speeches against all attempts by the government to involve the SDF in the operations in the Gulf. It seems rather paradoxical that, while public opinion remained on balance unconvinced of the desirability of breaking with longstanding limits on the overseas deployment of the SDF, the strong stand of the Socialists against just that should have been met with substantial loss of support. There appear to be two principal reasons for this. One is that the approach of the Doi leadership seemed both uncompromising and negative. No potentially effective alterna-tive proposals were advanced by the party, but rather, the effect of its stand was to make more difficult the possibility of attaining a consensus on policy, which might rescue some of Japan’s reputation on the world stage. The second reason was that the party failed to develop or maintain a sense among the electorate that it was competent in decision-making. The most unfortunate example of this related to the elections, held in April 1991, for the governorship of Tokyo prefecture. The Doi leadership went through several highly publicized but abortive attempts to persuade individuals to run for election with its backing, and late in the day found a little known candidate who went on to win less than seven percent of the vote—less indeed than the vote for the candidate backed by the Communists. The image of negative intransigence coupled with leadership incompetence led to a very poor result in the April

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local elections, collapse of support in the opinion polls and, in June, the resignation of Doi Takako as party Chairman. Whether the new leadership which replaces hers is able to build on the early achievements of her regime in such a way as to overcome the disasters of its final year remains to be seen.

PROSPECTS FOR CHANGE It would be easy to conclude, from the events we have sketched above, that after a temporary aberration Japanese politics has now settled down into its old patterns and that all we may expect in the way of change over the next few years is occasional fine tuning. We would not wish to rule out the possibility that this may indeed turn out to be the case. The inertia of the existing predominant party system is great, and although it is much criticized for corruption, bureaucratism, insularity and slowness in reacting to events, on the other hand its achievements are not to be underestimated. Japan since the war has developed out of poverty through the most sustained experience of economic growth the world has ever seen to a situation where its people are among the most prosperous anywhere. Any political system which had presided over comparable achievements would be deserving of favorable notice even though it stood accused of being corrupt, bureaucratic, insular and slow. Nevertheless, we wish to advance several reasons for believing that something much more substantial than fine tuning may well prove necessary if politics in Japan is to continue to function with reasonable effectiveness. The likelihood of major change taking place is of course highly debatable as to timing and process. Change could well be long drawn out and anything but smooth. It is also tricky to disentangle the desirable from the practicable. What follows is simply an outline of why the present system seems unlikely to remain in much like its present form in ten, or even five, years time. The first argument against a complacent belief in the survivability of the present system is that the Gulf war has precipitated a debate within the country about the deficiencies of policy making as revealed in the Kaifu government’s response to the crisis. While some of this may be unfair to the government given the dilemmas it faced, the point is that debate is focusing on the issue of leadership. Despite the secure position of the LDP, there have been many changes of prime minister since 1972, and few of them have made an outstanding impact on events. Now granted that there are dangers in principle in strong personal leadership, the perception is widespread that political leadership is structurally predisposed to weakness. The critics of this think it undesirable now that Japan has become such an important factor in world affairs. Secondly, despite the powerful inertia inherent in the way LDP-centered politics actually works, there is something approaching a consensus among many younger politicians both in the LDP and in the parties in opposition that systemic change is needed. This in itself is not a sufficient condition for reforming the system, but at least it is possible to identify a substantial constituency for reform. The third point is that when we look back over political history since the 1950s, it seems clear that there was no preordained rationale for unbroken LDP predominance. A principal condition for it was that the Japan Socialist Party in effect opted out of serious

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contention for power from the 1960s, by deliberately narrowing, rather than broadening, its appeal and basis of support. This opened the way for smaller parties to erode its vote, without ever abandoning the field to them. The result was a divided and impotent opposition—a situation beyond the dreams of any conservative party in Europe. Fourthly, the multi-member constituency system for the Lower House has proved uniquely favorable for the LDP style of campaigning, because it forces LDP candidates to engage in large-scale local networking simply in order to compete with other candidates from their own party in the same constituency. This leads to expensive elections, but it is also extremely opportune for the LDP. Other parties, which normally run one candidate per constituency (sometimes two, in the case of the JSP), lack such competitive pressures and have little incentive to make a positive appeal. A single Socialist candidate in a fivemember constituency can expect to be elected with a mere fifteen or twenty percent of the vote, and that is not difficult to achieve with minimal effort. This form of election system, however, is now under threat. The Kaifu government, which has staked its reputation on electoral reform, is proposing a radical revamping of Lower House constituencies. The proposal is that 300 of them should be single-member, and the remaining seats (about 170) should be elected by proportional representation. The Opposition parties oppose such a radical proposal which they believe would gravely disfavor them and provide an undue advantage to the LDP. This, however, presupposes that the existing parties remain as they are. In fact the reform would provide a strong incentive for the formation of a new party of opposition, combining elements of the old opposition parties, together perhaps with centrist elements from the LDP as well. Should this happen, the shape of party competition will change radically, and some trend towards parties alternating in power may be predicted. In the context of the past three decades this would be novel, but it would not necessarily be un-Japanese. 7 Our fifth reason for thinking in these unorthodox terms is less concrete and clearly demonstrable than the previous ones. It is that generation change in Japan has brought with it the widespread feeling that whereas in many areas of endeavor, notably industrial and commercial endeavor, Japan has done spectacularly well, in politics little has changed in over thirty or more years. The view that the nation deserves and can now afford a more modern and more clearly democratic political system was reflected both in the electoral revolt against LDP corruption and unpopular policies in 1989, and also in the aban-donment by the electorate of the JSP (SDPJ) once it became obvious that that party remained bogged down in its legacy of thinking from a remote and largely irrelevant past. Finally, the world is rapidly changing. The international political context facing Japan has changed far more since 1989 than in the previous forty years. Even though the East Asian region has been changing at a slower pace than Europe, Japan cannot remain unaffected by the eclipse of communism in Eastern Europe, the massive changes underway in the Soviet Union, possibly leading to its fragmentation, the thaw in relations between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and tensions in the relationship between the United States and Japan itself. The future of the mutual security treaty between Japan and the United States is no doubt secure for the time being, but the perceived waning of a Soviet (or Russian) threat, together with US doubts about continuing to underwrite the security of economically prosperous Japan, suggests that

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sooner or later this issue will need to be tackled in a manner which will require political leadership from Japan. The same can be said about the need for Japanese initiatives in the face of the tendency for the world to divide into separate trading blocs. For these reasons, and possibly others too, the assumption that Japanese politics has simply settled back into its old patterns looks too complacent in the context of all that has happened since 1989.

NOTES 1. The annual Congress of the party held at the end of January 1991 decided to change the English translation of its name from ‘Japan Socialist Party’ to ‘Social Democratic Party of Japan.’ Its name in Japanese, however, remains Nihon Shakaitō. 2. Asahi shimbun, June 12, 1991. 3. LDP seats in the House of Councillors fell from 140 out of 252 to 109. 4. After a number of candidates standing as independents joined them, the Socialists ended up with 141 seats out of a total of 512. 5. See J.A.A.Stockwin, ‘From JSP to SDPJ: The New Wave Society and the “New” Nihon Shakaito,’ Japan Forum, forthcoming. 6. In a pubic opinion poll published in November 1990, 78 percent of respondents opposed overseas dispatch of the Self-Defense Forces, and 54 percent opposed overseas dispatch of a basically civilian peace cooperation organization. (Asahi shimbun, 6th November 1990) In February 1991, during the Gulf war, 44 percent opposed the extra grant of $9 billion to peacekeeping in the Gulf (39 percent supported it), and 55 percent opposed dispatch of Self-Defense Force transport planes to move refugees. (Asahi shimbun, 5th February 1991) 7. For much of the period between the two world wars two major parties alternated with each other in dominating the House of Representatives, though the House itself had limited power.

20 From JSP to SDPJ: The New Wave Society and the ‘New’ Nihon Shakaitō First published in Japan Forum, Vol. 3, No. 2, October 1991

INTRODUCTION: BECALMED AFTER A FOLLOWING WIND AT ITS ANNUAL CONGRESS held at the end of January 1991, the Japan Socialist Party resolved to change its official name in English to ‘Social Democratic Party of Japan’. Since, however, the name in Japanese remained ‘Nihon Shakaitō’, an accurate and literal translation into English was turned into an inaccurate one, which incorporated an adjective (‘democratic’) lacking in the original. 1 Curiously, this change was a reversion to the English title which the Nihon Shakaitō used during the Allied Occupation. The ‘democratic’ element was deliberately excluded from the English name of the party once the Americans had left. Its reinsertion, therefore, some four decades later ought not to be without significance. It represents some progress, however small, towards a party which might aspire to govern Japan, rather than merely to oppose ritualistically those that govern it. Unfortunately, however, for the SDPJ, the Congress occurred at the height of the Gulf war. This meant not only that a small symbolic change in the party’s English name was lost in the noises of battle coming from the Middle East, but also that far more important changes of substance in party policy on a range of issues failed to emerge because both the leadership and much of the rank and file were absorbed by the issues raised by the war. Indeed, the spectacular ‘following wind’ that filled the party’s sails to such good effect in 1989 and the early part of 1990 died away, leaving it utterly becalmed, once Saddam Hussain invaded Kuwait. On 7 April 1991 the SDPJ suffered an extraordinary humiliation in seeing its tardily selected candidate for the Tokyo governorship, Professor Okawa Mitsunori, forced into fourth place, with little more than six per cent of the vote, behind even the candidate backed by the Communists. If the sudden failure of the ‘following wind’ in 1990–1991 was remarkable, it is now easy to forget that the way in which it blew up out of nowhere between late 1988 and early 1990 was one of the most extraordinary and unpredicted phenomena of recent Japanese electoral politics. So many times had the ISP (as it was then called) been written down as a party deeply conservative of its outdated ideology, narrowly founded in labour union organisations which represented nothing but themselves, wedded to gut reactions of ‘nandemo hantai’ (‘oppose everything’), prone to arcane internal struggles which the electorate regarded with profound disinterest, and incapable of even conceiving itself as running the national government. The solid electoral support which it succeeded in

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gathering during the 1950s had gradually been eroded, particularly in metropolitan cities, by smaller parties: the semi-religious Kōmeitō, the Japan Communist Party (JCP) the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP) and some smaller groupings, not to speak of the ministerial Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), eternally in power. Following a series of victories in by-elections and elections for prefectural governorships from early 1989, the JSP actually performed as the strongest party in the House of Councillors elections held in July 1989. Because only half the Councillors are elected at any one (three-yearly, fixed-term) election, the JSP did not achieve a majority in the House, but together with successful candidates standing under the label of the recently formed Rengō union federation, as well as other Opposition parties, it forced the LDP for the first time into a poor minority position of 109 seats out of 252. This was of great political significance, because a bill sent to the Upper House by the House of Representatives may be blocked by the former (if it is not the budget or a treaty with a foreign power), and such a rejection may only be overruled by a two-thirds majority of the Lower House, which of course the LDP does not enjoy. Much of the Kaifu Government’s subsequent appearances of indecisiveness over its response to the Gulf Crisis stemmed from the fact that in order to ensure that the necessary legislation pass both houses, it needed to cobble together a majority in the House of Councillors by persuading some of the smaller parties to agree with its response. Although the JSP did not keep up the spectacular level of support it had obtained in the Upper House elections over subsequent months, its performance in the elections for the House of Representatives in February 1990 was most respectable. The LDP comfortably retained its Lower House majority (despite some losses), the JSP increased its net seat total by some 55 over its poor showing in 1986, at the height of the Nakasone boom. It was still nowhere near the possibility of winning a Lower House general election, but it had progressed at the expense of its smaller rivals, and could consider the result a springboard for further advance. The principal reasons why the JSP over this period was favoured by a ‘following wind’ were the public disillusion with LDP-run governments over the Recruit scandal, the imposition of a three per cent consumption tax, lifting of protection from some agricultural products, and to a lesser extent revelations about the private life of Uno Sōsuke, briefly Prime Minister in mid-1989. While negative causes predominated over positive ones, we should not ignore entirely the contribution made by the JSP itself, and its leadership. The choice of Doi Takako as party Chairman following the resignation of her predecessor, Ishibashi Masashi, to take responsibility for the reduction of the party’s seats to 86 in the double elections of 1986, captured the imagination of the nation since she was the first woman to lead a political party in Japanese history. Moreover she was able to develop a style of appeal to the electorate which appeared firm and courageous, while also humane. Hardly surprisingly, her appeal to women voters grew, and with it the popularity of many of the women candidates that she helped groom for candidacy in the 1989 and 1990 elections. What the media dubbed her ‘madonna strategy’ paid handsome dividends, especially in the Upper House elections of July 1989. It is not entirely true to say that the surge in support for the JSP from 1988 to 1990 stemmed simply from a combination of scandals and unpopular policy decisions by the LDP government, together with the ‘image improvement’ provided by the novelty of a

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woman as party Chairman. At least the ideological basis for reform had been introduced in the face of considerable internal opposition in 1986, with the acceptance by the party of a New Declaration (shin sengen), replacing the Marxist (and even Marxist-Leninist)influenced Nihon ni okeru shakaishugi e no michi (The Road to Socialism in Japan), which had acted as the party’s official platform since 1966. The New Declaration was regarded by some reformists in the party as the equivalent of the Bad Godesberg Programme of the West German Social Democratic Party in 1959, and indeed one of them went so far as to express the opinion that had the JSP followed the German Social Democratic path back in the late 1950s, instead of reinforcing the Marxist elements in its heritage, it too would have attained power at the national level. 2 Another development which appeared to favour the JSP, at least temporarily, was the long awaited (and admittedly incomplete) reunification of the labour union movement into the Rengō federation accounting for some eight million workers and combining the formerly competing federations Sōhyō and Dōmei, which had respectively backed the JSP and DSP. By blurring these longstanding antagonisms within the union movement, labour reunification tended to disadvantage the DSP, which depended on the distinct character of its union backers, and thus helped the much larger JSP, which was able to portray itself with some credibility as sympathetic to the union movement as a whole. Rengō, as we have seen, backed a number of successful candidates in the 1989 Upper House elections, making possible a kind of de facto joint candidacy of the left, where candidates under the label of one of the Opposition parties would have faced dissent from other Opposition parties. 3

THE NEW WAVE SOCIETY The New Wave Society, consisting of Diet Members newly elected in the elections for the House of Representatives held in February 1990, was officially launched on 23 March 1990. Its members had been meeting as a study group since December 1989, and some of them appear to have been acting with the encouragement, or even patronage, of Chairman Doi. 4 Not all of the 55 Members newly elected in February joined the New Wave Society, indeed some later showed themselves hostile to it, 5 but the Society’s membership soon stabilised at 29. The background and characteristics of the members are worth investigating. All, as we have seen, were first-term members of the House of Representatives. Their ages, as of July 1990, ranged from 39 to 59 and their average age was 47.9. Seven of them were women. No less than nine of the 29 were lawyers and only two had been union officials (a much greater and smaller proportion, respectively, than the average for these categories in the party as a whole). Otherwise their career backgrounds were heterogeneous. A breakdown is given in Table 1. It seems that the most active members of the New Wave Society were in general those from a professional or intellectual career background. For instance, the 11 ‘managers’ (sewayaku or kanji) elected when the group was launched had been in the careers indicated in Table 2. Of these, four were designated ‘representative secretaries’ (daihyō kanji), and two as ‘administrative bureau heads’ (jimukyokuchō). These six comprised the four lawyers, the university professor and the manager of a

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social welfare facility. 7 Further evidence substantially consistent with this is provided by an analysis of the names on six policy proposals sent to the party leadership by the New Wave Society between 31 March and 31 August 1990. These concerned the JSP campaign policy for 1990 (signed by 20 members); 8 Management of the National Diet (signed by 12 members); 9 commercial law revision (signed by 23 members); 10 electoral and political reform (signed by 19 members); 11 taxation reform (signed by all 29 members); 12 responses to the Gulf crisis (signed by 12 members and two non-members); 13 and reform of JSP central organisational structure (signed by 21 members). 14 Of the 29 members of the Society, four

Table 1 Career backgrounds of New Wave Society Diet Members Lawyer

9

Local JSP official

4

Local councillor

2

Nōkyō official

2

TV journalist

2

Union official

2

Co-op organization member

1

Manager of social welfare facility

1

Medical doctor

1

NTT employee

1

Railway employee

1

Research institute member

1

Snack bar proprietor/film critic

1

University professor

1

Source: Calculated from data in AERA, 10 July 1990, p. 8.

Table 2 Career backgrounds of NWC ‘managers’, March 1990 Lawyer

4

TV journalist

2

Manager of social welfare facility

1

Medical doctor

1

Snack bar proprietor/film critic

1

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Union official

1

University professor

1

signed all seven documents, seven signed six of them, six signed five, four signed four, four signed three, and a further four signed only two. Of those who signed seven or six, six were lawyers, one a TV journalist, one a university professor, one a research institute member, one a railway employee, and one a unionist. This group corresponded fairly closely to those who on other evidence were the most active members of the Society. Seven of the eleven had been appointed ‘managers’, and we may venture the speculation that it was essentially these seven who formed its central creative core. Their names are listed in Table 3.

Table 3 ‘Core’ members of the New Wave Society 15 (alphabetical order of surname)

Name

Age

Constituency

Career background

Akiba Tadatoshi

47 Hiroshima 1

University professor

Horigome Ikuo

48 Nagano 2

Unionist

Ikeda Motohisa

49 Kanagawa 4

TV journalist

Itō Hideko

46 Hokkaidō 1

Lawyer

Matsubara Shūō

45 Nara

Lawyer

Sengoku Yoshito

44 Tokushima

Lawyer

Tsutsui Nobutaka

45 Niigata 4

Lawyer

It is immediately apparent that this was an extraordinarily homogeneous group in terms of career background and age. From the present writer’s observation, they appeared to work closely together, share a similar outlook and ambition, be genuinely concerned to turn the JSP into a modernised party capable of taking office at national level, and experience acute frustration that their efforts seemed inadequately appreciated by the party leadership. Their ideology was that of the centre or centre-left and their style open and pragmatic. They maintained closed links with the Shaminren, a social democratic mini-party with five Diet members, and its leader Eda Satsuki, son of the former reformist JSP leader of the 1960s and early 1970s, Eda Saburō. Talk of a merger of the JSP and Shaminren was widespread during 1990. 16

POLICY INITIATIVES OF THE NEW WAVE SOCIETY The ‘Foundation Prospectus’ of the New Wave Society gives a considered indication of its principal purposes. The Prospectus begins by contrasting the basic philosophy of Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) governments with that of social democracy, and

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providing a surprisingly ‘green’ definition of the latter. The policies of the LDP are described as being based on ‘extravagant consumption of raw materials, large-scale concentration, and centralised bureaucratic power’, 17 while those of social democracy are founded in ‘recycling of raw materials, small-scale and dispersed operations, and regional autonomy’. 18 The first was said to give precedence to the economy and the second to human life. The document went on to call for two-party politics based on clear distinctions between the parties’ policies rather than blurred compromise, and urged the JSP to develop a coherent policy strategy covering the economy, society, and politics, ratherthan ‘as hitherto, simply lining up stereotyped slogans. In order to allay public anxieties about the party, and make itself a party in contention for national office, it should become “a party capable of being understood by everybody, a citizens’ party open to everybody, and a party not merely of opposition, but also capable of being creative”. The document made four specific proposals: (i) write a new ‘New Declaration’, containing coherent and farsighted policies; (ii) bring together talent from various classes including the bureaucratic and industrial worlds; 19 (iii) extend the party’s daily activities and influence locally, engaging in consultations about housing problems, in the work of co-operatives 20 and block associations; 21 (iv) develop a form of party organisation capable of sustaining a shadow cabinet system. Finally, the Society declared that its members had already begun to avoid using vocabulary special to labour unions, or other kinds of specialist vocabulary, and also that they would not use the designation sensei (‘teacher’: a term of respect). 22 The four specific proposals made in this document represented the main planks in the Society’s agenda for reform, which would attack what its members regarded as the salient and chronic weaknesses of the party of which it formed a part. A new ‘New Declaration’, was needed because even though the 1986 ‘New Declaration’ had been a step forward, it still contained elements of thinking not attuned to the contemporary world in which the Cold War had come to an end. Overtures to the bureaucracy and business were essential if the JSP was to seem a credible party of power. Presumably, if the LDP could develop a symbiotic relationship with these groups in the business of running the country, the JSP would have to attempt something of the sort also, rather than simply relying on labour unions which were remote from power. The party needed to be more active in grass roots activities, not excluding those of block associations (which the left often castigated as a kind of feudal relic), if it was not to lose out to smaller parties, such as the Communists, which were assiduous in this kind of activity. As one New Wave Society member said, many of the older style JSP Diet members hardly bothered to campaign: as the only Socialist representative in a three, four, or five member constituency, a member could rely on the 20–25 per cent of the vote necessary to be elected, since this would automatically come from those who were unhappy with the LDP. 23 Finally, the idea that the party should designate members to ‘shadow’ the portfolios of government ministers, on the British ‘shadow cabinet’ model, was designed to prepare the party for office by making the leadership more responsible and knowledge-oriented in respect of policy matters. This last idea was discussed quite widely within the party, but by the spring of 1991 had made little headway, prompting some New Wave members to speculate that the party leadership was afraid of the responsibility and policy research that a shadow portfolio would entail. 24

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Reform of the party’s organisational structure was indeed near the top of the New Wave Society’s agenda. In a document presented to Chairman Doi at the end of August 1990, the Society criticised the existing structure for being modelled on that of the Japan Communist Party (JCP), which in turn was modelled on that of the Soviet Communist Party. The aspect of organisation which in the Society’s view exemplified this criticism was described as follows: Marxist-Leninist style party organisation gives structural centrality to party affairs (tōmu). This means that the party administrative machinery in charge of party affairs holds effective power over the party, and political matters (seimu) are subordinated to party affairs. 25 The Society therefore proposed a radical separation of party bureaucracy, which would essentially be in charge of organisation, and the body of ISP Diet members, which as representatives of the electorate would have principal say over matters of policy. As an example of separation, it took from the British Labour Party the shadow cabinet idea, whereby members of parliament, by ‘shadowing’ government portfolios, both gained the political experience necessary to participate eventually in government, and also were able to show the electorate what they were made of. 26 After examining the structures both of the British Labour Party and the West German Social Democratic Party, the Society devised a scheme whereby JSP Diet members would have their own leadership and committees grouped into an ‘executive management committee of the Diet member group’ (Kokkai giindan shikkō kanbukai). These would be linked to a shadow cabinet structure and separate from the party organisation centred on the (existing) Central Executive Committee (Chūō shikkō iinkai). Coordination between the Diet member policy machinery and the party organisation machinery would be handled by linkage between a ‘chief executive within the Diet’ (Innai jimukyokuchō) and a ‘central chief executive’ (Chūō jimukyokuchō) on the party organisation. Ultimate responsibility for solving jurisdictional disputes between the two sides would rest with the party’s Central Executive Committee (Tō chūō shikkō iinkai). 27 Perhaps unsurprisingly, this radical set of proposals failed to find favour with the party executive, and made no progress. Another contentious area where the New Wave Society put forward proposals at variance with those of the party leadership concerned reform of the electoral system. There was widespread agreement that the current system of elections for the House of Representatives, based on multi-member (mostly three, four, or five-member) constituencies, for which the elector cast a single, non-transferable vote, contributed to widespread corruption, elections that were amazingly expensive, and political appeals founded in candidate personality rather than in party. The Kaifu Government was proposing to effect electoral reform which would scrap the multi-member constituencies and replace them with a mixed system of single-member, first-past-the-post constituencies electing the bulk of candidates, and a much smaller number of candidates who would be elected by proportional representation. This was known as the ‘parallel’ system (heiritsu gata), and had long been opposed by the JSP leadership, which feared that it would be unable to mount campaigns of sufficient vigour and persuasiveness to

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win seats in single-member constituencies. 28 The view of the leadership was that the existing system ought to be retained, but with some reapportionment to take account of population shifts and perhaps the introduction of some seats based on proportional representation. It will be recalled that a substantial number of JSP Diet members could expect to be elected under the existing system with little campaigning, taking advantage of the residual anti-LDP vote in basically conservative constituencies. Such members would of course find the proposed new system far less comfortable, but the existing system was in the eyes of the New Wave Society a recipe for permanent minority party status precisely because it did not provide an impetus for vigorous campaigning. The Society from the time of its foundation had urged that the party should run at least two candidates in most constituencies in order to provide a healthy element of competition and dynamism. 29 The New Wave Society now petitioned the party leaders to take a much more radical approach to electoral reform. Rejecting the British system on the ground that it tended to produce too many ‘dead votes’ (votes cast for candidates who failed to be elected), and risked entrenching one party semi-permanently in power, it proposed a system which combined single member constituencies where the elector voted for individuals, and proportional representation, where the voter would vote for a party list. Each elector would thus have two votes. Seats should be evenly divided between single member constituencies and proportional representation, which meant a much heavier weighting for proportional representation than in the government’s own proposals. This was known as the ‘combined system (heiyō gata), and was based on the West German model. 30 Once again this proposal seems to have met a muted reaction from party leaders. Yet another piece of new thinking emanating from the Society related to the conduct of business in the National Diet, including how the JSP and its Diet Policy Committee dealt with issues before the Diet. In a document produced in April 1990, the New Wave Society argued for greater openness and wider circulation of documents, greater and more independent use of the House of Councillors committee system and reduced reliance on under the table deals over policy issues discussed in the Diet. The document was in part a criticism of how the National Diet dealt with legislation, but also in part, of the tendency within the party to confine relevant information to a narrow circle. 31 The Society also campaigned for a freedom of information act, for an ombudsman system in relation to national and local government, as well as to ‘enterprises and groups having a public and monopolistic character’, and for a system of direct inspection by citizens where they were directly affected by the administration of, for instance, consumer affairs, health and welfare, regional development, disaster protection, environment, and discharge of wastes, as well as the disposal of nuclear waste from nuclear power stations. 32 It put forward proposals on tax policy, 33 agricultural and food policy, 34 energy policy, 35 defence policy, and policy towards Korea. 36 On defence, it proposed a phased reduction in defence establishment and a gradual running down of the Japan-US Security Treaty, balancing the party’s pacifist traditions with developing international strategic realities. 37

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DECLINE OF THE DOI-YAMAGUCHI-TANABE LEADERSHIP In May 1991 Doi Takako offered to resign as party Chairman, to take responsibility for the party’s pathetic performance in the local elections the previous month. No doubt many factors were involved in the rapid decline of the JSP and its leadership between the middle of 1990 and the first half of 1991, after the high hopes of 1989 and the early part of 1990. Three principal reasons may, however, be singled out as being most conspicuously responsible for this sudden change of fortune: the Gulf crisis and war; the structure of party leadership; and the weakness of the party’s policymaking capacities. The Gulf crisis seems in retrospect to have been disastrous for the party for a combination of reasons. The most important, of course, was that the Doi leadership took an uncompromising anti-war stand on the issue at a time when the electorate was looking for something more constructive. This is not to say that the electorate had shed its longstanding antipathy to Japanese military involvement overseas, and indeed a succession of public opinion polls showed continuing caution, but the relentless negativism of the Doi line concerning possible types of Japanese contribution clearly struck the wrong note, and JSP popularity plummeted as a result. There is no space here to analyse in detail public opinion in relation to the crisis, but whatever they thought of the merits of the multinational effort in the Gulf and Japan’s relation to it, few indeed seem to have thought that the JSP was presenting an effective alternative approach to that taken by the Kaifu Government. Many, indeed, thought that the Socialists had simply reverted to type, and could only mouth negative slogans. The results of the Upper House elections of July 1989 deprived the LDP of its majority in that House, and thus, as we have seen, of its automatic capacity to see its legislation pass through both houses. This faced the Kaifu Government with a serious dilemma, as was starkly revealed with its withdrawal of its United Nations Peace Cooperation Bill from the Diet in October 1990. This was a fiasco for the Government, and was a direct result of the fact that it knew it could not push the bill through the Upper House. This setback, however, prompted the Kaifu Government, and particularly the LDP Secretary General, Ozawa Ichirō, to attempt an alternative strategy, that of attempting to persuade the centrist parties, especially the Kōmeitō, to come round to its way of thinking concerning the Gulf. The details of what happened are complex, and concessions had to be made to the Kōmeitō on other issues, but ultimately the strategy was substantially successful. Its success, however, had a catastrophic effect on the JSP (now SDPJ), because in effect the longstanding loose alliance between the Socialists, Democratic Socialists and Kōmeitō (ShaKōMin rosen) was replaced by an alliance between the Liberal Democrats, Democratic Socialists and Kōmeitō (JiKōMin rosen). The SDPJ was consequently left isolated and stranded, with severe psychological effects. The second reason related to the party’s current leadership structure. Doi Takako had become Chairman in 1986 in the aftermath of the party’s defeat in the 1986 elections, and without strong apparent factional affiliation. The fact that she was a woman and went on to win great personal popularity undoubtedly made her more independent of factions than she might otherwise have been. In any case factions had become somewhat less significant than they had been in the past and the factional map within the party was by

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now extremely fragmented. Factions were small cliques rather than the massive organisations that existed within the LDP. Even the far left Socialism Association (Shakaishugi kyōkai) that had been powerful in constituency branches during the 1970s, was a shadow of its former self. Nevertheless, there were three broad factional groupings, usually designated as ‘right’, ‘centre’, and ‘left’. During 1990–1991 the SecretaryGeneral, Yamaguchi Tsuruo, and Chairman of the Central Executive Committee, Tanabe Makoto, were both from the right (specifically from the Suiyōkai, or former Eda faction), while the Policy Committee Chairman, Itō Shigeru, was from the centre, or perhaps centre-left. Doi herself cooperated closely with Tanabe, who had a high reputation within the party and outside it, 38 but in the course of her chairmanship also seems to have forged links with figures much further to the left. As a specialist in constitutional law, teaching at Dōshisha University in Kyoto before she entered politics, she owed much to her sensei, Professor Tabata Shinobu, who, together with Narita Tomomi, the former Chairman of the JSP who originally persuaded her to enter politics, was not entirely averse to the idea of a united front between Socialists and Communists. 39 Several previous chairmen of the party have started their period of office to the right of centre but ended up much further to the left. It is not easy to be precise here concerning what is meant by ‘left’ and ‘right’, but it is arguable that the party congress held in January 1991, despite the ‘rightward sounding’ change in its English title, signalled a move to the left. What this signified was that the party was reverting to its older style rhetoric, with Marxist overtones, particularly on matters of peace and war. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that Doi Takako, with her strident rhetoric against cooperation with the multinational force in the Gulf and her obdurate attitude towards the consumption tax and other issues, had contributed to the party’s ‘reversion to type’ that so alienated the electorate in the early months of 1991. Thirdly, however, much was plainly lacking in the party’s capacity to make policy. Many of the New Wave Society’s polemics about poor decision making structures and performance were indeed apt, and particularly its criticism that the executive merely ‘lined up unconnected slogans in place of a coherent strategy’. The party’s handling of the consumption tax issue, where it failed to contemplate compromise even after if had become clear that public opinion was moving in that direction, its rigid attitudes on agricultural protection, and failure to do much that was constructive in relation to the Gulf crisis (admittedly a next to impossible issue for the party to get right, given party history), dissipated much of the support it had earlier gained. But the most disastrous performance turned in by the party leadership related to the Tokyo governorship elections of 7 April 1991. After seeking to persuade a candidate from the Shaminren to stand (either Eda Satsuki or Kan Naoto) 40 the SDPJ executives spent some time attempting to persuade various candidates, and finally, late in the day, endorsed a little known university professor who polled less than seven per cent of the total vote.

FRUSTRATION, ACHIEVEMENT AND LEARNING: RETROSPECT ON THE NEW WAVE SOCIETY The New Wave Society during the first year of its existence was not entirely without

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solid achievement. For instance, it was able to have the following paragraph incorporated into the conclusions to a long party policy document on security, the Self Defence Forces and disarmament, which was endorsed by the January 1991 Congress: It was in November 1959 that the West German Social Democratic Party at its Bad Godesberg Congress adopted a new platform and brought about a major change in basic security policy (NATO) and defence policy (rearmament). Subsequently, from 1966 until 1982, first as part of a coalition government and then as a governing party in its own right, the SPD was able to establish a solid base for itself both domestically and internationally. Naturally, there are differences in national circumstances and political environment between Germany and Japan, but the historical process of party reform and change in basic policies which the SPD accomplished, leading to its becoming a party in power, could well be taken as a point of reference. 41 The unmistakable implication here that a major shift in anti-war policies could lead to the attainment of power, even though qualified by a recognition of differences in circumstance, squared ill with some other statements in the same document. For instance, the sections on ‘The UN Charter and the Japanese Constitution’ and on ‘Japanese Cooperation with the UN’ stated unambiguously that Japan could not, under her Constitution, contemplate the use of force even for UN peacekeeping objectives. 42 The Gulf crisis created strains, even within the New Wave Society. Although the core members of the Society generally supported a more constructive and positive approach towards cooperation with peacekeeping in the Gulf than that of the party leadership, others (particularly some women members) did not. It seems that on this issue the Society’s impact was blunted by this disagreement, 43 and this may explain why the Society was unusually quiet at the party Congress held in January 1991. 44 By early 1991, its members were increasingly inclined to apply for ‘dual nationality’, and join one or other of the party’s factions, including the Social Democratic Forum (Shakaiminshushugi Fuoramu) set up in late December 1990. 45 Some of them had become convinced that the Society’s failure hitherto to make much impact on party policy despite its best efforts in the production of policy documents on several key issues, had something to do with its lack of influence in the existing factions. 46 Despite strains, one major achievement of the New Wave Society was simply to stay together as a reasonably cohesive force. It was a reformist group concerned not only with certain policy issues but also with the task of turning a party which had become remote from the idea of taking national office into one which was properly in contention for power. As such, it experienced the frustration of seeing most of its initiatives ignored or undervalued by party leaders, but also the bitter-sweetness of witnessing the fall from grace of this same leadership. How far Doi Takako herself should be blamed for the party’s steep electoral decline in 1990–1991 was a matter of uncertainty and disagreement, but the principal blame was placed on the kind of bureaucratic, unimaginative and self-satisfied policymaking that their own proposals had been designed to rectify. In Japan’s politics of the early 1990s, where demonstrably the ruling LDP was faced

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with internal difficulties of a structural as well as a contingent kind, it could be expected that the New Wave Society and its sympathisers would redouble their efforts to ensure fundamental reform of Japan’s leading opposition party in order to regain the initiative seized in 1989 and early 1990, that had brought them so spectacularly into the National Diet. If they were to succeed, their party’s change in its English name at the January Congress might acquire substance as well as form. Japan would then have a social democratic alternative to entrenched conservatism.

NOTES 1. Nevertheless, during the 1950s the fissiparous Japanese Socialists spent much time debating whether they were ‘social democrats’ (shakai minshushugisha) or ‘democratic socialists’ (minshu shakaishugisha), the point being whether ‘socialism’ or ‘democracy’ should come first. 2. Matsubara Shūō, in Niyū Uēbu no Kai and Takagi Ikurō, Niyū Uēbu no shakaishugi (New Wave Socialism). Rōdō Kyōiku Sentā, 1991, p. 23. 3. It is significant that virtually all successful Rengō candidates stood for single member constituencies, where it was necessary to obtain a plurality of votes to win. 4. See discussion on the meaning of social democracy between Matsubara Shūō and Sengoku Yoshito, and article on women’s values in society by Akiba Tadatoshi, in Doi Takako o osaeru kai (Society to Support Doi Takako), Niyūsureta (Newsletter), No. 13, 20 December 1989, pp. 2–8. Matsubara, Sengoku, and Akiba were all elected in the February 1990 Lower House general elections and went on to become leading members of the New Wave Society. 5. In November 1990 a group of first term MHRs formed a body called ‘New Power’, in part to counter the influence of New Wave. Asahi Shimbun, 18 November 1990. One newly elected JSP Diet member from a farming and local politics background in Yamagata told the writer that he had thought of joining the New Wave Society but had decided not to. He considered its members lacked experience of local politics and therefore it was a big shock to them when they found themselves in the National Diet. Endō Noboru, interview, 29 July 1990. 6. ‘Niyū Uēbu no Kai’ setsuritsu shuisho (Foundation Prospectus of the ‘New Wave Society’), mimeo, April 1990, p. 2. 7. Ibid. 8. Ikensho (Statement of Opinion), mimeo, 31 March 1990. 9. Kokkai unei no arikata ni tsuite no ikensho (Statement of Opinion concerning Management of the National Diet), mimeo, 3 April 1990. 10. Shōhō keisei ni kansuru ikensho (Statement of Opinion concerning Commercial Law Revision), minieo, 26 April 1990. 11. Senkyo seido, seiji kaikaku ni tsuite no wareware no teigen (Our Proposal concerning Reform of the Electoral System and of Politics). mimeo, 20 June 1990. 12. Ikensho (Statement of Opinion), mimeo, June 1990. 13. Ikensho (Statement of Opinion), mimeo, 30 August 1990. 14. Nihon Shakaitō chūō soshiki kikō kaikaku ni kansuru watakushitachi no teian (Our

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Proposal concerning Reform of the Central Organisational Structure of the JSP), mimeo, 31 August 1990. 15. From AERA, 10 July 1990, p. 8. 16. In late July 1990 the Shaminren held a seminar with JSP Diet members (including strong representation from the New Wave Society) at Tsumagoi village in Gumma Prefecture. It was evident that little separated them ideologically. 17. Shigen tashōgata, daikibo shūchūgata, chūō shuken kanryōgata. 18. Shigen junkangata, shōkibo bunsangata, chiiki jiritsugata. 19. Kankai keizaikai. 20. kyōdō kumiai. 21. Chōnaikai. 22. ‘Niyū Uēbu no Kai’ sersuritsu shuisho, op. cit. 23. Interview with Tsutsui Nobutaka, 27 February 1911. 24. Interview with Itō Hideko, 19 March 1991. See also Nakamura Kenichi, ‘Teikō seitō kara taikō seitō e no shōhōsen’ (From a Party of Resistance to a Party of Opposition: a Prescription), Asahi Jānaru, 20 July 1990, pp. 22–4. Yamaguchi Jirō, ‘Shakaitō wa “taikō seitō” ni dappi subeshi’ (The JSP Must Turn into an Opposition), Ekonomisuto, 9 October 1990. Yamaguchi Jirō, Ittō shihai taisei no hōkai (The Collapse of One Party Dominance). Tokyo, Iwanami, 1989. 25. Nihon Shakaitō chūō soshiki kikō kaikaku ni kansuru watakushitachi no teian, op. cit., p. 1. 26. Ibid., p.2. 27. Ibid., pp. 3–5, and unpaginated appendix chart: ‘Nihon Shakaitō chūō soshiki kikō zu (kaikaku an)’ (Chart of JSP Organisation: Revision Proposal). Matsubara Shūō, interviewed 19 February 1991, expressed the view that in European social democratic and labour parties it was perfectly normal for party parliamentarians to have the final say on matters of policy. 28. Doi Takako, interviewed 2 October 1987 when she had been Chairman for about a year, told the writer: ‘I am wholly opposed to going over to the British electoral system because it would result in an LDP victory so overwhelming that they could revise the Constitution’. 29. Ikeda Motohisa, interviewed 28 February 1991, held that the secret of LDP success lay in having several candidates fighting elections in the same constituency. 30. Senkyo seido, seiji kaikaku ni tsuite no wareware no teigen, op. cit. Ikeda Motohisa, interviewed 28 February 1991, claimed authorship of the core of this document, and pointed out that it proposed not only reform of the electoral system as such, but also of money politics, and treated the two issues as a single package. 31. Kokkai unei no arikata ni tsuite no ikensho, op. cit. Ikeda Motohisa, interview, 28 February 1991. 32. Ikensho, 31 March 1990, op. cit., p. 3. 33. Ikensho, June 1990, op. cit., p. 4. 34. Ikensho, 31 March 1990, op. cit., pp. 5–6. 35. Ibid., p. 7. 36. Ibid., pp. 8–9. 37. Ibid.

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38. The Kanemaru/Tanabe mission to North Korea in September 1990 was widely heralded as a successful piece of LDP/JSP cooperation on an international issue where JSP contacts with the North Koreans were helpful to the Government. 39. Nishii Yasuyuki and Nishimae Teruo, ‘Shakaitō kenkyū, sono jinmyaku, soshiki, seisaku’ (Research on the Socialist Party: its personal connections, organisation, policy), Asahi Jānaru, 11 August 1989, pp. 14–18, at p. 16. Uezumi Minoru, SDPJ International Bureau, 9 February 1991. 40. Eda Satsuki, interviewed 1 March 1991, said that the Shaminren was not necessarily opposed to the idea of running a candidate with SDPJ backing (although this would mean losing one of their five Diet members), but only if it were clear that the SDPJ had new ideas about it, whereas it had become evident that they had approached the Shaminren only because they had no candidate of their own. 41. Nihon Shakaitō ampo, jieitai, gunshuku seisaku iinkai, ‘Heiwa no sōzō’: waga to no atarashii anzen hoshō seisaku (Constructing Peace: our Party’s New Security Policy), mimeo, January 1991, p. 14. 42. Ibid., p. 7. 43. Sengoku Yoshito, interviewed 15 February 1991. Ikeda Motohisa, interviewed 28 February 1991. Tsutsui Nobutaka, interviewed 17 February 1991. Matsubara Shūō, interviewed 19 February 1991. Sengoku, Ikeda and Akiba were among the delegation of five who visited Iraq late in 1990 to argue the case for Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait. Itō Hideko, interviewed 19 February 1991, argued that the Self-Defence Forces should be split, with part being used for national defence, and part retired from the SDF and used as a UN force. 44. Nihon Keizai Shinbun, 7 February 1991. 45. Of the ‘core’ members of the New Wave Society, Akiba and Ikeda joined the right wing factional grouping Seikōken, Tsutsui, Horigome, and Matsubara joined the Social Democratic Forum, while Itō and Sengoku did not join any faction. Ibid. 46. Ibid. Matsubara Shūō, interview, 19 February 1991, took this view, whereas Itō Hideko (interview, 19 February 1991), showed little interest in factions or in the need to secure posts in the Central Executive Committee of the SDPJ, which she regarded as holding little appeal.

21 On Trying to Move Mountains: The Political Career of Doi Takako First published in Japan Forum, Vol 6, No. 1, April 1994 WHEN DOI TAKAKO became the first woman to be elected Chairman of the Japan Socialist Party (JSP) on 6 September 1986, a media sensation was created. No woman had ever headed a political party in Japan before, indeed precious few women had ever been elected to membership of the House of Representatives, although the percentage figures were slightly higher for the less important House of Councillors, or Upper House. 1 Indeed, for the previous two decades, the numbcr of women parliamentarians had tended to fluctuate with the fortunes of the Japan Communist Party (JCP), which was the only party actively promoting women as parliamentary candidates. Between her election as JSP Chairman in September 1986 and her eventual resignation on 24 June 1991, she was not only the best-known woman politician in the country, but among Japan’s most reported and commented-on politicians nationally and even internationally. During this period of nearly 5 years, she led her party to a stunning and unprecedented success in winning the Upper House elections held in July 1989, when the ruling Liberal Democrats lost their previously comfortable majority, and ended up with a mere 109 seats out of a total of 252. 2 The much more crucial House of Representatives elections of the following February (1990) did not yield so spectacular a result for the JSP, but the party still managed to attain a more than 50-seat improvement on its previous Lower House election performance in 1986. 3 Doi Takako’s famous reaction to victory in the House of Councillors elections of July 1989 was to quote her favourite poetess, Yosano Akiko, who flourished in the early years of the twentieth century, and to announce: Yama wa ugoita (The mountains have moved). By this expression she meant, first of all, that the monolithic rule of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) had been shaken (though not yet, of course, overturned). It is clear, however, that she meant much more than that. Her programme included substantial reform of a corrupt political system, economic reforms to satisfy the interests of ordinary people rather than those of an economic élite, the creation of a Japan open to the world rather than friendless against the world, improvements to welfare provision and human rights, the approach towards greater equality between men and women, the evolution of a cultured society open to the influence of different cultures, progress towards disarmament and away from environmental degradation. 4 Above all, she wished to put new life into Japan’s 1946 Constitution., including the peace clause (Article 9), the spirit and letter of which she believed had been sorely eroded by successive LDP Governments. 5 The political significance of this concern with the Constitution will become apparent later. The party’s electoral successes of 1989 and the early part of 1990 need to be seen in terms of the long conservative ascendancy, accompanied by a corresponding stagnation

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in the fortunes and popular images of all the parties out of power, including especially the largest of them, namely the JSP. The surge of support to the Japanese Socialists which occurred at that time would not have seemed so extraordinary for a party out of power in Britain, Australia, France, or the United States. In Japan, however, such a thing had not happened for so long that many people had come to assume that it would not happen, and it is for this reason that Doi Takako came to be seen, for however brief a period, as a worker of miracles. When she was elected Chairman in September 1986, her party had just suffered its worst electoral defeat since 1949, in the double elections of 6 July 1986, receiving in the Lower House a mere 85 out of 512 seats, with 17.2 per cent of the vote. This was at the height of Prime Minister Nakasone’s ascendancy, when the conservative leader’s successes in walking tall with world leaders at summit meetings seem to have struck a harmonious chord with a Japanese electorate which was becoming inclined towards renewed pride in nationhood. An immediate result of the Socialist defeat was that the party leadership, including the Chairman, Ishibashi Masashi, resigned to take responsibility for the electoral catastrophe. To find a replacement was no easy task. When an election for a new chairman was called, there were no candidates. The party executives therefore asked two candidates to stand. One was Ueda Tetsu, an upwardly mobile Socialist Diet member from the Tokyo area, and the other was Doi Takako, who as Vice-Chairman of the party had represented a consistuency in Kobe since 1969. A ballot of party members was held, and Ms Doi received 83.32 per cent of the vote, or in absolute figures 58,670 votes. 6 Although she had been in Parliament already for some 16 years when she was unexpectedly precipitated into the party’s most powerful position, she was not, at the time of her election a nationally known figure, and it is some measure of her achievement that she was able to create for herself a national persona of such significance during the course of her chairmanship. If we now turn from the beginning to the end of her period in office, we find that she herself was compelled to resign, much like her predecessor, in order to take responsibility for an electoral defeat that was as sweeping as that which had forced him out of office. In the ‘unified local elections’ of April 1991 the JSP once again plumbed the depths of its popularity, losing many seats. Its most humiliating defeat, however, came in the elections for Governor of Tokyo prefecture—the most responsible local government post in the whole country—where after experiencing great difficulty in finding a candidate, the party at a late stage chose a little known university professor who trailed behind even the Communist candidate, realising less than 7 per cent of the total vote. Thus in the nearly 5 years of Doi Takako’s chairmanship the party appeared to have come full circle, from political irrelevance to political irrelevance, by way of a period in which the Socialists were briefly and intoxicatingly discussed as the future party of power. In retrospect it might be argued that this was all an illusion, created by media hype around Chairman Doi, coupled with a temporary reaction on the part of the electorate against LDP corruption as demonstrated in the Recruit Cosmos scandal, the imposition of a 3 per cent consumption tax, the lifting of protection of beef and citrus fruits, and the personal peccadilloes of the ill-starred and temporary prime minister, Uno Sōsuke. In the aftermath of her resignation in the spring of 1991 there were many prepared to argue that ‘business as before’ would indefinitely continue, with the Liberal

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Democrats monotonously winning every election and controlling the political agenda in co-operation with the bureaucracy and major interest groups. According to such a scenario, the Socialists and other parties out of power were destined for ever to remain so, and the political ‘system’ was unsusceptible to anything other than the most cosmetic of reform. In the first draft of this paper, finished in April 1993, I argued that, while it was difficult to be sanguine about the future prospects of the JSP as such, it would be most unwise to assume that politics based on the LDP would continue for an indefinite period. LDP-based politics could be succinctly described as conservative, business-oriented, to an extent immobilist, to an extent dynamic, personality-based, nepotistic, often corrupt, reactively responsive and not particularly democratic (but not entirely undemocratic). Moreover, the kind of political agenda developed under Doi Takako to such good, if nonlasting, effect in the late 1980s was now firmly entrenched, mutatis mutandis, in the consciousness of the electorate and ready to be reactivated once political restructuring really began in earnest. I argued that it would not, of course, be the only agenda, and we might expect that others, including distinctly less palatable ones, could also take their place in the arena of contention. My argument was, and remains, that the Doi experience is something that repays careful analysis and that it has considerable relevance—positive as well as negative—for the future of the politics of Japan. On 9 August 1993, the LDP found itself deprived of the satisfactions, habits and spoils of office, for the first time since its foundation nearly 38 years earlier. In its place a coalition Government of eight parties, led by Hosokawa Morihiro, a ‘new face’ whose Japan New Party had been formed only a year before and who had only just been elected to the House of Representatives, took over. The LDP fell from power, not because the electorate rejected it, but because its usual adaptability deserted it, and as a result it split. The proximate cause of the split was the declaration of the Miyazawa Government that it would not pursue a plan for reform of the electoral system. The Government was then defeated in a no-confidence motion, two groups of dissidents broke away and formed new parties, and in the consequent July elections it lost its parliamentary majority. Ironically, the JSP performed even worse, losing nearly half its previous seats, but found itself in office (as the largest party in a coalition) for the first time since 1948. Doi Takako, despite LDP protests and her own strong reservations, was made Speaker (gichō) of the House of Representatives. Let us now return to her earlier career within the JSP. She was born on 30 November 1928 as the second of five daughters of a medical doctor. It was a middle class family placing great emphasis on education, and seems to have been both liberal in respect of the amount of freedom accorded to the children, and close-knit in terms of relations between the family members. She attended Kyoto Women’s University and then entered the law faculty of Dōshisha University, a famous private college in Kyoto where she finished the graduate school. She went on to teach as a lecturer at Kansai Gakuin University, as well as at her alma mater of Dōshisha, and was the first woman in the whole country to work as a member of the personnel committee of a city—in her case of Kōbe City. 7 She first entered politics, standing successfully for election to the House of Representatives on behalf of the JSP, for Kōbe No. 2 constituency, in the general

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elections of December 1969, scraping home as the fifth candidate in a five-member constituency, which was contested between no fewer than 12 candidates. 8 According to Professor Takabatake, her selection in 1969 was part of an attempt by the then party Chairman, Narita Tomomi, to broaden its parliamentary representation beyond the ranks of labour union officials. As a specialist on the Constitution, teaching at Dōshisha University, she fitted in well with his plan to introduce into the party a leavening of academics, media personalities, bureaucrats and assorted intellectuals. 9 Doi Takako did not achieve any significant office in the party until she became a ViceChairman, after Ishibashi Masashi became Chairman, in 1983. During the chairmanship of his predecessor, Asukata Ichio, between 1977 and 1983, there had been talk of making her Secretary-General—the second position in the party after the chairman—but nothing had come of this as these things were decided at the time essentially on factional grounds and she was not a member of a faction. 10 During her career in Parliament before becoming Vice-Chairman, the principal parliamentary interests she pursued were foreign affairs and environmental policy, while outside Parliament she concerned herself with citizens’ movements, women’s movements, as well as with the human rights of Koreans living in Japan. By all accounts she was uninterested in factional struggles, party administration or parliamentary management matters. Thus, until the early 1980s when she belatedly attained high office within the party, she operated largely outside the party’s ruling circles. 11 It is also suggested that for a politician she was surprisingly uninterested in money, lived in most modest circumstances, and was actually quite genuine when she urged an improvement in political financial ethics. 12 With this background Doi Takako was quite unlike any top leader that the party had previously experienced. Having been practically uninvolved for most of her political career in the kind of intra-party factional politicking that virtually all of her predecessors had engaged in, she was free to develop and exploit her personal charismatic authority, and she did this with admirable panache. During the party’s campaign for the Upper House elections of July 1989, not only did her speeches attract unprecedentedly large audiences, but the party made a great deal of money by selling telephone cards with a photograph of her face printed on them. Takabatake makes an interesting comparison between JSP leadership styles and those to be found among presidents of the LDP. Nakasone, whose personal factional base within the party was comparatively weak, operated a personalised, top-down method of governing, with much reliance on outside task forces and other sources of advice external to the party. Takeshita, on the other hand, who headed the largest and most powerful faction within the LDP, relied far more on the arts of intra-party consensus creation summed up in that word taken from the root-binding of transplanted trees: nemawashi. Doi Takako, in Takabatake’s view, adhered much closer to the Nakasone model than to that represented by Takeshita. She relied heavily on the advice of a more or less privately recruited group of advisers, and much less than her predecessors (especially Ishibashi) on the established structures for aggregating opinion within the party itself. 14 The logic of this strategy was that by building up her own personal popularity with the electorate and the mass media (the latter being a crucial element in her success), she would thereby improve the electoral popularity of the party and thus make herself indispensable to it. One of the great rewards of success in this enterprise, from her point of view, was that

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she would then become relatively free to pursue her own policies and policy initiatives without having to fight for every comma and full stop through endless committees of the party. Its potential weakness, however, was that should the charisma ever fade, should success in the national electoral arena be replaced by something less than success, or her image among the fickle moguls of the mass media become tarnished, she was likely to become vulnerable to attack from established factional interests within the party. She could of course, in Weberian terms, bureaucratise her charisma, but that was hardly her style or forte. The House of Councillors’ elections in July 1989 were by any previous standards a stunning reversal for the LDP and an astonishing success for the JSP. The party that for three decades had been written off by so many commentators as a political irrelevance, which appeared to be in thrall to outdated thinking of Marxist provenance, and was seen as cleaving to a quixotic pacifism dating from the 1940s, had suddenly gained an extra 10 million votes in the national constituency, beating the LDP into second place. 15 In the prefectural constituencies, where local ties and obligations tended to favour the LDP, the JSP vote total remained about 4 percentage points behind its conservative rival (though that was an improvement on the 23 percentage points between them in 1986). Even so, the Socialists actually won more seats than the Liberal Democrats in the prefectural constituencies too (26 as against 21). Perhaps the most extraordinary result of the whole election was that in the 26 prefectures which at each House of Councillors’ elections return one candidate each (and thus operate in the same way as parliamentary constituencies in Britain), a conservative majority of 25 out of 26 seats was converted into a majority for the JSP and its Rengō allies (of whom more later) of 23 out of 26. Given that the bulk of these constituencies was predominantly rural, it was clear that the LDP had seriously alienated its core voters. One widely canvassed explanation for the surge of support for the ISP in the 1989 Upper House elections was that it resulted from a combination of scandals and unpopular policies on the part of the LDP. This was known colloquially as jimintō no santen setto purasu wan, in other words a set of three problems, namely the Recruit scandal, the imposition (breaking a previous election promise) of a 3 per cent consumption tax, and the lifting of protection on beef and citrus fruit. 16 If that was the Santen setto, the purasu wan was the allega-tions that the new Prime Minister Uno had not been treating his mistress properly, with the said lady appearing on television to make her case. Truly, between July 1988 and July 1989 the LDP seemed unable to get anything right. Such a negative hypothesis, however, is plainly insufficient to explain what happened. For one thing, the ukezara (beneficiaries) of popular disillusionment with the ruling LDP were not, as they had been in the 1970s, minor parties of the centre or far left such as the Kōmeitō, New Liberal Club or JCP. The New Liberal Club no longer existed, and in 1989 the Kōmeitō, Democratic Socialist Party (DSP) and JCP all lost seats. The electorate had positive reasons for voting for the JSP. One of the best publicised changes of approach developed under Doi Takako was the decision to promote substantial numbers of women as parliamentary candidates. As a result of the elections, no fewer than 14 out of the 66 JSP Diet members occupying seats in the Upper House were women. 17 Taking the House of Councillors as a whole, the proportion of women candidates in the 1989 elections was 21.79 per cent and the percentage elected jumped from 7.94 per cent to

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17.46 per cent—a quite unprecedented figure. 18 Doi’s approach was dubbed by the media her ‘madonna strategy’ and to the ranks of newly elected women parliamentarians was applied the curious coinage obatarian, which seems to have been derived from oba (aunt) and ‘batallion’. It appears that women voted heavily for the JSP—especially but not only for its women candidates—and we may reasonably assume that the ‘madonna strategy’ was an important factor in attracting the votes of women (and perhaps of some men too). Briefly, after the Upper House elections, it seemed that this might be the turning point towards a reformed political system in which the JSP was a genuine contender for power. A number of serious journals devoted whole issues to analysis of the JSP and its policies. 19 It quickly became evident, however, that the Upper House elections marked the peak of support for the party, and a decline set in thereafter. One reason for this was that Kaifu Toshiki took over as President of the LDP and Prime Minister. His evidently ‘clean’ character went some way to restore that party’s reputation with the electorate. Nevertheless, Doi Takako’s standing remained high and her party did well in the House of Representatives elections held in February 1990. The JSP won a total of 136 seats, and this total was boosted to 141 with the subsequent adherence of five sympathetic independents. This was a great improvement on the 85 seats it had been left with after the disastrous elections of 1986, and meant a welcome infusion of new blood into the party’s parliamentary membership. In contrast to the previous July, however, the Socialist performance once more fell a long way behind that of the LDP (24.4 per cent of the total vote as against 46.1 per cent for the Liberal Democrats), so that although the Socialists were in the best position they had been in for several years, the LDP had almost fully recovered. Where the political situation, however, had materially changed was that the ruling Liberal Democrats now lacked a majority in the Upper House, and the combined forces of parties out of power could block any legislation, other than the budget and treaties, coming to it from the House of Representatives. This is an extremely important point to understand in evaluating the developments following the February 1990 elections. So far we have concentrated on the role of Doi Takako in improving the fortunes of her party over the period up to early 1990, but it is important to take account of two other developments which occurred independently of her influence. The first was that in January 1986, while Ishibashi Masashi was still Chairman, and before the party’s disastrous defeat in the double elections later the same year, the 50th party congress approved a document called ‘The New Declaration’ (shin sengen), which replaced a previous document entitled ‘The Road to Socialism in Japan’ (Nihon ni okeru shakaishugi e no michi), which had guided the party in its policy formulation ever since 1966. Whereas ‘The Road to Socialism in Japan’ was strongly infused with MarxistLeninist thinking and with what was often referred to as ‘scientific socialism’, the ‘New Declaration’ departed largely from such an old-fashioned legacy, and appeared to be firmly grounded in concepts of parliamentary democracy, welfare state liberalism and the spirit of the peace Constitution. It specifically repudiated the Soviet and Chinese political models, unlike its predecessor. It is worth noting at this point that a former official of the JSP, Uezumi Mitsuharu, in his recently published mammoth book on the party (630 pages), maintains that the ‘New Declaration’ still contained within it elements of the old

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‘scientific socialism’. 20 Nevertheless, a comparison of the new document with its predecessor suggests that a major intellectual leap had been accomplished. 21 This meant that when Doi Takako became Chairman of the party, she was taking over a party which had already, so to speak, turned an intellectual corner. The second important related development of the second half of the 1980s was a concerted reorganisation of the national labour movement, in response both to declining rates of unionisation and to the privatisation campaigns waged by the Nakasone Government, which hurt unions in the public sector. To simplify a complicated story, by 1990 the major union federations Sōhyō and Dōmei had merged into a new federation, embracing the vast bulk of unions, known as Rengō (Alliance). Rengō, under its dynamic leader, Yamagishi Akira, proceeded to organise electoral campaigns, and ran candidates in the 1989 Upper House elections in close alliance with the JSP. Several of them were duly elected. In the heady days of 1989–90 it seemed as though an alliance between the JSP and Rengō might have the capacity to effect a restructuring of the political system. Despite these two positive developments, however, the party continued to suffer from serious weaknesses of structure and policy. In structural terms, the JSP, like most other Japanese political parties, was notably prone to factional division. The Japanese term ha, or habatsu, is normally translated into English as ‘faction’, but in my view the term does not refer to a simple or easily definable phenomenon. Habatsu in the LDP are powerful and wealthy political machines, with relatively little policy significance, designed to optimise the power position of their members and facilitate the channelling of funds. Factions in the JCP are largely ideological and subject to suppression or expulsion by the party leadership. In the JSP the habatsu that existed in the 1950s and 1960s combined the functions of political machine and ideological focal point. The party was badly split between politicians who inclined towards Marxism-Leninism, those who were much influenced by Marxism but also had a certain commitment to parliamentary democracy and the peace constitution, and those who were unambiguously social democrats. Today the position is extremely unclear. Uezumi lists no fewer than 26 groupings existing as of January 1992 among the parliamentary membership of the JSP. Not all are listed as nani nani ha; some are nani nani kei (such and such a tendency), and some are nani nani gurūpu (such and such a group). All of them are categorised in broader groupings designated respectively ‘left’, ‘centre’ and ‘right’. 22 It seems that the small ‘factions’, ‘tendencies’ or whatever are essentially what the French would call des groupuscules, whereas the broader groupings are fairly amorphous. Nevertheless, so far as policy formulation and the creation and maintenance of the party executive is concerned, factional manoeuvre has not lost its significance. Doi Takako, once her popular appeal started to fade, found herself increasingly dependent on the support of factional groupings. Although her executive group was initially based on a balance between the left, centre, and right wings of the party, increasingly she came to be perceived as dependent on the left. In some senses this dependence on left-wing elements sounds surprising, since it is very difficult to categorise her as in any sense a Marxist, 23 and she had demonstrated an independence of vision and an acute sense of what appealed to the needs of ordinary people. As time went on, however, she came to seem more intransigent, less flexible,

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more inclined to prefer all or nothing proposals to those based on compromise or subtlety. 24 It is not entirely clear how far this stemmed from her own temperament and how far from the advice she was receiving from those among her advisers whose connections were with the party’s left wing. However this may be, it soon became plain that the trenchant opposition to the Government’s policies and record which made her so popular in 1989 needed to be modified to take account of rapidly changing public opinion once the LDP had returned to something like an even keel under Prime Minister Kaifu. In retrospect it is clear that the biggest blow to the popularity of the JSP was provided by the party’s reactions to the Gulf crisis and war of 1990–91. This was a testing period also for the Kaifu Government, but at least in domestic political terms it survived the experience. The JSP under Doi Takako, however, seriously misread the changing mood of the people. No longer was it a case of justifiably castigating a corrupt government which had broken its election pledges and introduced widely unpopular policies. Now Japan was faced with a perplexing problem of how to react to international demands on it for contributions to the establishment of order in a part of the world which everyone could see was vital to Japan’s national interests, one, moreover, which vitally involved her relations with the USA. To do what the USA wanted, however, and participate in the multinational peace keeping force, would fly in the face of inhibitions which had built up over the years under the influence of the 1946 Constitution. Public opinion was seriously divided. For the Kaifu Government it was a perplexing dilemma. For the JSP it was a nightmare. If it was difficult for the Government to change policy, for the JSP, with its long history of championing the Constitution, it was next to impossible. For Doi Takako, who had made her early career lecturing on the Constitution, and then as a politician championing it against creeping erosion of its principles, there was really no alternative to opposing with all her powers of persuasion any change in the law which might have the effect of permitting participation by the Self-Defence Forces in military operations overseas. According to Professor Shinohara Hajime, it was widely said that Doi Takako was ‘married to the Constitution’. 25 The electorate, however, were no longer in a mood to accept the negative politics of blank opposition to Government attempts to respond positively to the crisis. When the Government’s first attempt at passage of a peace-keeping operations bill, in October– November 1990, ended in failure largely because of Socialist opposition, there were distinct indications of popular disillusionment with the JSP, even though a majority of respondents to public opinion polls were still unhappy about the bill. When the Gulf War ended in rapid victory for allied forces, the JSP was even more widely seen to have been unconstructive in its attitudes. Socialist negativism was also now widely blamed in relation to the issue of consumption tax. Whereas the initial popular reaction to its imposition, apparently in breach of a Government election promise, was extremely hostile, once it was in place, it seemed to many people more appropriate to seek to amend its more onerous aspects, such as its application to food. Doi Takako, however, preferred all or nothing solutions. 26 The July 1989 Upper House election result had, as we have seen, removed the Government’s majority in the House of Councillors, which meant that any piece of legislation that was not a treaty or the national budget could be vetoed by the Upper House. This was the basic reason for the failure of the first PKO bill in the autumn of

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1990. In these circumstances the LDP devised a strategy of engineering majorities for itself in the House of Councillors by making deals with the Kōmeitō and the DSP. Japanese conservative politicians are practised at the arts of political seduction, and these centrist parties were fair game, though they naturally extracted a political price. To cut a long story short, the early 1990s saw a shift from the 1980s pattern of political alliances between the JSP, DSP, and Kōmeitō, to one between the LDP, DSP, and Kōmeitō. In permitting this, the Doi leadership was not entirely blameless. Left-wing elements in the JSP had never been entirely happy about the party aligning itself, even in electoral pacts, with centrist parties, and with Doi Takako herself tending to become more dependent on the left within the party, her capacity to keep the centrist parties on side was reduced. Doi Takako’s nemesis was experienced in the unified local elections of April 1991, which I have referred to previously. On the face of it, the key election for the governorship of Tokyo ought to have presented the JSP with a fine opportunity. The LDP Secretary-General, the ambitious, radical and manipulative Ozawa Ichirō, was seeking to replace the veteran elitist conservative Governor, Suzuki Shunichi, with a candidate more congenial to the Kōmeitō, which for its own reasons had turned against Suzuki. Suzuki, however, refused to stand aside, and as a result the conservative camp was split between the official LDP candidate Isomura, of NHK, and the rejected candidate, who nevertheless profited from an upsurge of popular sympathy, Suzuki. If Doi Takako herself had agreed to stand for election to the governorship, she would have had a reasonable chance of being elected, and of reviving her own popularity in the process, though success could not be guaranteed. According to Andō Jinbei, however, her advisers thought it was a plot to remove her from the party chairmanship., and advised her not to stand. After she refused, the party approached a number of other candidates, amidst a glare of publicity, before persuading, late in the day, the unknown and less than universally appealing Professor Okawa Mitsunori to be the party’s candidate, with appallingly predictable results. The episode projected an image of incompetence which no doubt partly accounted for the party’s terrible showing in the local elections up and down the country. Not long after this fiasco Doi Takako herself stepped down from the party chairmanship. With her unexpected elevation to the speakership of the House of Representatives, two years after she lost the party chairmanship, she followed custom by severing her formal links with her party. 27 The performance of the JSP as a constituent element in the Hosokawa Government is beyond the scope of this article, but suffice it to say that the experience of participation in government has been a less than comfortable one for its members. The imminent demise of the JSP as a single party (and indeed of a unified LDP) was widely predicted. Doi Takako set about the task of reforming the procedures of the House of representatives with her customary forthrightness. She immediately replaced the designation kun, which her predecessors had added to the names of Diet members they addressed, with the politer san. More substantive reform proved more difficult. The key to reform would be to turn the perfunctory and often pre-scripted ‘interpellations’ of the Diet into real debate, as well as curbing the tendency of ministers to rely on their civil servants to answer difficult or technical questions in Committee or on the floor of the

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House. 28 To date (November 1993) rather little progress has been made in these endeavours.

CONCLUSIONS The rise and fall of Doi Takako between 1986 and 1991 is a fascinating story. It is easy to see within it the elements of a Greek tragedy, even despite her ‘resurrection’ in 1993. Unexpected elevation to high office, unexpected both because she was a woman and well outside the range of standard politicians, equally surprising success in leading her apparently moribund party to victory through her personal vision, then an inability to sustain the vision in the face of politically adverse circumstances such as the Gulf crisis, the commission of a series of errors of judgement, and the final ebbing away of support. There are several causal elements in the story that may be singled out for comment. The first is the political vision of Doi Takako herself. When I interviewed her in October 1987, when she had been Chairman for a little over a year, I asked her how, after its long period of decline, the party could hope to increase its votes. She replied that it could do so by emphasising peace issues, as well as welfare, health, and education. It was important to continue to support the peace Constitution. The party had always opposed armaments, but had hitherto not said enough about how money saved from defence—we should now call it the ‘peace dividend’—should be spent. I asked her what she thought about the recent breaking by the Nakasone Government of the 1 per cent ceiling on defence spending. She replied that it was not good for the people. ‘We have’, she said, ‘prewar memories of being controlled and influenced by the armed forces. We want civilian control’. I then asked her what she thought about evidence from public opinion polls that young people under 30 years were conservative and had no war memory. She replied: ‘young people don’t want to fight. They say they would flee rather than fight. A student doesn’t want to go into the army, even if he accepts it if his friend does’. After the end of the formal interview, when I had put my pencil down and we were enjoying cups of tea, she spoke in remarkably pessimistic terms about the party, and said she was not sure that she would seek a second term as Chairman. She also said with some frankness that since 1969 when she was first elected, the JSP had changed, but not in desirable ways, while changes that were desirable had not been made. 29 What she said in the interview seems consistent with the view that she had a firm vision, based on Japan’s intellectual progressive culture, which is a mixture of social democratic ideas with the particular Japanese brand of pacifism based on the peace Constitution. She was not out of line in this respect, and if we take into account the influence of her mentor, Professor Tabata Shinobu, at Dōshisha, who was inclined towards support for a JSP-JCP alliance, she may even be categorised as inclined towards the left of the JSP. On the other hand, in the opinion of Ishikawa Masumi of the Asahi, she was in no sense a Marxist-Leninist theoretician, unlike some of her predecessors such as Narita Tomomi. She was an academic, not an ideologue. She was able to project an image of reassurance (anshinkan) and of approachability (chikazukziyasusa), given the fact that discussions at JSP congresses were mostly conducted in terms incomprehensible to the average individual., and in terms of squabbles between factions, her approach was

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refreshing and attractive. 30 The second point I should like to emphasise is that since the early to middle 1980s the Japanese electorate has exhibited higher levels of instability in its voting behaviour than in previous decades. While the double elections of 1986 are an example of fluctuation in a conservative direction, apparently influenced by the popularity of Nakasone, the House of Councillors elections of 1989 and to a lesser extent the House of Representatives elections of 1990 demonstrate surprising fluctuation towards the JSP. What this appears to mean is that the old basis for voting provided by local networks and personal support groups has been giving way to motivations for voting based on image (often image as presented in the media), and policy issues as they emerge from time to time. Ishikawa suggests that this indicates at last a modernisation of political consciousness, while Tanaka Naoki, arguing as an economist, links it in with the liberalisation and relative internationalisation of the economy since the Plaza Accords. 31 My third concluding point is that the rise and fall of Doi Takako demonstrates a painful dilemma for the Japanese left. Until Doi Takako the JSP had been a party essentially relying for its organisational and much of its voting strength on the ability of labour unions to bring out the vote, and indeed provide candidates for parliamentary elections. Unionists, however, are a shrinking proportion of the electorate, and the ranks of ‘natural Socialist voters’ is therefore in decline. It was Doi Takako’s achievement to show that it was possible to appeal to a far wider spectrum of opinion than the union based politics of the past allowed for. Under her chairmanship there was much talk of the party becoming ‘citizen-based’ or even (rather differently) ‘citizen-movement-based’ rather than based on unions. The appeal to women of the ‘madonna’ strategy was another means of broadening the party’s appeal, as was the undoubted personal popularity and charisma of Doi Takako herself. Japanese society has been changing and loosening up quite rapidly over the past decade, and she was recognising the political opportunities which such loosening provided. On the other hand the very extent of her success showed the dilemma facing a progressive party of the kind she led. The ‘old’ JSP at least possessed a more or less reliable organisational base that was capable of bringing out a certain number of voters, though never enough to form a government. With the size even of this base shrinking because of the decline of unions, the fading of Doi Takako’s charisma was apt to show up even more sharply than before the weak organisational structure and confused policy approach long characteristic of the JSP. My final point is that the party remains extraordinarily conservative and ineffectual in its modes of operation, despite some reforms that have taken place in recent years, not least the introduction of the ‘New Declaration’. Doi found herself much criticised by the ‘New Wave Society’ of some 28 Diet members first elected to the House of Representatives in February 1990, 32 but a serious problem for her was that she lacked adequate advice or the organisational resources (for instance, sufficient money to commission opinion polls) such as the LDP could command. In addition, the weight of a deeply divided party history lay heavy on any JSP leader, and to escape from this in a sustained manner was extremely difficult. The fact that successive chairmen, Doi included, had ‘begun on the right, and finished on the left’ 33 testified, among other things, to the continued strength of a rather mindless ideological dynamic within the

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party. In August 1993, a process, long stalled, towards structural reformation of Japanese politics was finally launched. Like most such reformative processes, it was in part messy and chaotic, with the ultimate outcome obscure. It seemed highly unlikely that the precise coalition arrangements of the second half of 1993 would long survive. The fault lines within the system divided the Coalition Government, as they divided both the LDP and the JSP. Many policy issues were interconnected in a tangled skein, and these were further complicated by clashes of personality and interest, while pressures of economic recession and foreign pressure were bound to distort any programme of reform. The long perspective of history is needed to judge the significance of any one politician in all of this. But Doi Takako will surely be seen as an important contributor to the agenda that was at last being seriously addressed following the election of the Hosokawa Government. Despite errors of judgement during her chairmanship of the Socialist Party, and what were very arguably ideological rigidities, her commitment to a more open style of politics, her rapport with ordinary people (especially with ordinary women) and her forthright challenge to the corrupting dominance of a single entrenched party, will surely attract an honourable mention from future historians. If nothing else, she showed that it is exceedingly difficult to move mountains, but it you push hard enough they eventually come tumbling down.

NOTES 1. The Japan Socialist Party (Nihon Shakaitō) changed its name in English to ‘Social Democratic Party of Japan’ in January 1991, without changing its name in Japanese, which means ‘Japan Socialist Party’. The convention used in this article is to retain the old name, abbreviated to JSP. For figures concerning women in Parliament over all elections since 1947, see Iwai Tomoaki, ‘“The Madonna Boom”: Women in the Japanese Diet’, Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Winter 1993), pp. 103– 120, table on p. 104. Between the 1947 and 1986 elections the percentage of women in the House of Representatives averaged 1.83 per cent, and in the House of Councillors averaged 6.43 per cent. 2. The Socialist vote percentage leaped to 35.1 per cent in the national (proportional representation) constituency, as against the LDP’s 27.3 per cent. In the prefectural constituencies, the JSP won 26.4 per cent against the LDP proportion of 30.7 per cent. Because only half the seats were being contested, the LDP remained the largest party, despite losing its overall majority. Asahi Nenkan, 1990, pp. 94–96. 3. The JSP won 136 seats (out of 512), and 24.4 per cent of the total vote (as against 17.2 per cent in 1986). 4. ‘Atarashii seiji e no chōsen [Challenge of a New Politics],’ reproduced in Ekonomisuto, 23 October 1989, pp. 146–156. This document was produced in the aftermath of the 1989 Upper House election victory. 5. Doi Takako, Kuroda Kiyoshi taidan, ‘Doi Takako no kenpō kōgi: “kaku jidai no kyōfu to Nihonkoku kenpō” [Doi Takako’s Lecture on the Constitution: “Nuclear Age Terror and Japan’s Constitution”]’, Doi Takako o sasaeru kai, Nyūsu Reta – ,

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No. 7, 25 July 1988, pp. 1–5. 6. Asahi Nenkan, 1987, p. 112. 7. Oda Takahiro, ‘Shakaitō iinchō Doi Takako san, sabishiki “mai wei” no joō [Ms Doi Takako, JSP Chairman, the Lonely Queen who does things “my way”]’, AERA, 18 October 1988, pp. 52–57. 8. Asahi Nenkan, 1970, p. 273. Doi Takako’s vote steadily rose from 69,395 in 1969 to 121,594 in 1986. In 1990, as party Chairman, she jumped to first position in the poll with 225,540 votes. She had no experience of the JSP before the 1969 campaign. (Interview, 2 October 1987). 9. Takabatake Michitoshi, Shakaitō: mannen yatō kara nukedareru ka [The JSP: Can it extricate itself from the position of a perpetual opposition party?]. Iwanami, 1989, p. 60. 10. Takabatake, op. cit., p. 61. 11. Ibid., pp. 61–62. AERA, loc. cit., p. 55. 12. AERA, loc. cit. 13. Takabatake, op. cit., p. 63. 14. Ibid., pp. 65–68. 15. In the national (proportional representation) constituency, the JSP won 9,869,088 votes (17.20 per cent) in 1986, and 19,688,255 votes (35.05 per cent) in 1989. The LDP by contrast, won 22,132,573 votes (35.58 per cent) in 1986 and 15,343,455 votes (27.32 per cent) in 1989. Asahi Nenkan, 1987, p. 106; 1990, p. 95. 16. See Ishikawa Masumi, ‘Otaka-san genshō (būmu) no yomikata [How to Read the Takako Phenomenon (Boom)’, in Shin Shakaitō tokuhon: Doi Shakaitō no jitsuzō to kyozō o tettei kaibō! [A JSP Reader: a Thorough Dissection of the True and False Images of the Doi JSP]. Bessatsu Takarajima Henshūbu, 1989, pp. 2–8. 17. Asahi Nenkan, 1990, p. 94. 18. Iwai Tomoaki, op. cit., p. 104. Iwai has some telling things to say about the difficulties faced by women politicians in Japan. 19. For instance Keizai Hyōron, special issue, 30 October 1989; Ekonomisuto, 23 October 1989. 20. Uezumi Mitsuharu (Minoru), Nihon Shakaitō kōbō shi [A History of the Vicissitudes of the JSP]. Jiyūsha, 1992, pp. 32–42. 21. For a comparison of the two documents, see Soga Yūji, ‘Shakaitō rosen ronsō shōshi [A Short History of Disputes about the Policy Line of the JSP]’, Ekonomisuto, 23 October 1991, pp. 138–145; see especially pp. 143–145. 22. Uezumi, op. cit., tables on pp. 30 and 37. 23. Andō Jinbei, interview, 22 July 1991. 24. Ibid. 25. Professor Shinohara Hajime, interview, 23 July 1991. 26. Andō Jinbei, interview, 22 July 1991. 27. She was elected with 268 votes, against 222 for the Liberal Democrat Okuno Seisuke and 15 for the Communist Yamahara Kenjirō. Nikkei Weekly, 9 August 1993. Her candidacy may in part have resulted as a way of preventing a Socialist bid for the prime ministership. Sasaki Takeshi in ibid., 16 August 1993. Another element is likely to have been the aim of reconciling JSP left-wingers to the new

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government. Ibid., 9 August 1993. According to the Asahi, she later attracted criticism for holding a meeting in the Speaker’s offices of left wing JSP Diet members critical of key elements in Government policy, including election system reform. Asahi Shimbun, 2 October 1993. 28. Famously, a minister once said in the Diet: ‘This is so important an issue that I would like a bureaucrat to answer.’ Nikkei Weekly, 23 August 1993. 29. Doi Takako, interview, 2 October 1987. 30. Ishikawa Masumi, in Shin Shakaitō tokuhon, p. 7. 31. Ishikawa Masumi and Tanaka Naoki, ‘Seijuku shakai no seiji to Shakaitō', Keizai Hyōron, special issue, 30 October 1989, pp. 17–30. 32. See for instance Iwata Junsuke et al., ‘Shakaitō “naibu kaikaku” sengen’, Bungei Shunju, January 1991, pp. 184–195. 33. See Uezumi, pp. 1–13, 32–56, for amplification of this theme.

Part III The Japanese Political System and Political System Reform

22 Perceiving Japanese Politics First published in Dissent (Melbourne), Autumn 1967 IT IS HARDLY surprising if the politics of ‘mystery’ countries (whether closed or merely alien) give rise to a variety of incompatible and often single-factor theories. This is well known in the case of the Soviet Union, until recently at least the most ‘mysterious’ of them all. Japan, with a unique culture and opaque language, has also tended to attract the attention of model-builders and categorizers. A brief look at the postwar Western literature on Japanese politics reveals something of the influences upon the writers themselves, as well as many insights into the nature of the system. Two anthropologists working with the Occupation isolated four prevailing attitudes to the Japanese among the Occupation forces. The first was the ‘G.I.—vulgar’ view that the Japanese were ‘gooks’ or inferior beings to be despised. The second was the ‘G.H.Q. image’ of them as a highly intelligent but amoral people in need of stern authoritarian control. The third was the ‘progressive’ attitude that the Japanese were amenable to reason and had been fundamentally on the right track politically, until they were misled by a bunch of reactionary militarists. And the last was the ‘gone native’ perspective of the ‘tatamifled’ expatriate intellectual. 1 Needless to say, the anthropologists in question identified themselves with third category, into which one could probably fit most serious academic students of modem Japan, although there have been occasional excursions into categories two and four. Within a single genus, however, it is usually possible to isolate a number of species. Let us categorize the categorizers and divide their attitudes according as they reflect: (1) the influence of the Occupation, especially upon those writers who were directly involved. (2) subsequent problems in American policy towards Japan. (3) pessimism or optimism over the functioning of the economy. (4) preoccupation with democracy as a unique, definable and universally desirable political system. (5) Preoccupation with the modernization of developing countries and the application of modernization theory to Japan. The Allied Occupation of Japan attracted attention from many concerned with the science of politics. It was a veritable laboratory for the testing of political theories. If it was impossible to try a run through of Roman history without Julius Caesar, at least the world could sit back and watch what happened while a victorious occidental power took over a defeated oriental nation and set about calmly and deliberately revolutionizing the institutions of that nation and the way of thinking of its people. Unfortunately the experiment was botched. The story is well known how the Occupation changed course half-way through. The first half was a thoroughgoing attempt to impose ‘democracy’; the second, a not necessarily compatible attempt to introduce ‘stability’ and ‘strength’. In terms of American priorities, ‘Japan our ally against communism’ replaced ‘Japan the

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pillar of democracy in Asia’ at the head of the list. Not surprisingly the initial experiment had its passionate defenders and its equally committed detractors. Some of the former expressed in strong terms their fear that given half a chance the Japanese would subvert the most precious of the Occupation reforms and return to their authoritarian and perhaps also militaristic) ways. 2 This of course paralleled deep fears felt and expressed by Japanese progressives, whose political behavior and loyalties soon began to strike the ‘stability’ school as dangerous and subversive. As the Occupation receded in time, however, a more measured appreciation of its reforms began to replace the passion and polemics of the postwar period. The ‘reverse course’ which followed Japanese independence in 1952 and undid much of what the Occupation had done in the fields of education, local government and anti-trust legislation, was no longer regarded as the thin end of an authoritarian wedge. The passion for decentralization evinced by the American reformers had encouraged in many cases local boss politics of a reactionary kind, and had done less than was hoped to educate the people in democracy. When the Japanese Government, composed in a large part of prewar Conservatives, proceeded systematically to recentralize the police, education and other spheres, and to encourage reamalgamation of the Zaibatsu (financial combines) Western observers coolly regarded it as necessary for efficiency and in line with trends in other advanced industrial countries. Even the land reform, almost unanimously held up as the most successful part of the Occupation’s programme, was seen to have resulted in a ceiling on the size of land holdings too small for the most efficient cultivation. A somewhat different fate overtook the vexed problem of constitutional revision. Probably in order to anticipate Soviet and Australian interference, General MacArthur had pressured the Japanese into accepting almost intact a hastily-prepared document which went in the direction of popular sovereignty far beyond anything that the Japanese would have dreamed up for themselves. It also contained the ‘pacifist’ clause, or Article 9, whereby Japan renounced the use of force, and according to the obvious interpretation, pledged herself not to maintain armed forces in any form. With the war in Korea, the Americans came out in favor of revising Article 9, and various schemes of constitutional revision were prepared by groups of Conservative Japanese politicians. In 1956 the Government set up a commission to examine the whole question, but it was boycotted by the left wing parties. By the time it brought down its final report some eight years later, in favor of a modest amount of revision, the issue had become largely academic because the left wing had long possessed sufficient parliamentary strength to block any revision attempt. A considerable literature exists in English on the revision controversy. Some American writers on the subject reflect American government policy to a predictable degree. In the early 1950’s concern with the integrity of an American-sponsored ‘democratic’ constitution was tempered by the feeling that the manner of imposition, and the disregard of Japanese traditions had been unwise, and that some revision was probably inevitable. More recently the knowledge that the issue, if not dead, is dormant, has led to a more purely academic concern with the finer points of historical exegesis and legalconstitutional interpretation, the voluminous reports of the Constitutional Research Commission providing an invaluable archive. In any case it is realized that the unrevised constitution has not deterred the Government from doing certain things that it really

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wanted to do, such as building up ‘Self-Defence’ forces. The crisis in 1960 over revision of the Japan-United States Security Treaty was at the time a severe blow to American confidence in Japan as an ally. In response to this some American Japan-specialists sought to rehabilitate the Japanese image by pointing out with a degree of sympathy the nature of apprehensions about the American alliance felt by leftists and intellectuals. Notable among these writers were the Harvard Professor Edwin D.Reischauer, whom President Kennedy subsequently appointed ambassador in Tokyo, 3 and Robert A.Scalapino, of Berkeley. More recently a preoccupation of many writers has been with the possibility of Japan taking a more active and responsible role in international relations, particularly of the Pacific area. This would seem to be in harmony with the long-term policies of the American Government, which is apparently concerned to shift some of the American burdens in the Far East and South-East Asia onto countries such as Japan. Whether such an aim has any prospect of being realized, is of course another matter.

PESSIMISTS AND OPTIMISTS Our third way of categorizing writings about Japanese politics was according to whether they reflected pessimism or optimism over the functioning of the economy. One may risk the generalization that up to about 1958 most writers were pessimistic, sometimes profoundly so. As the economic historian W. Lockwood put it in 1958, ‘The evergrowing need for more jobs and more imports of food and materials invites deep pessimism about the future, as it has for the past 50 years.’ It was gloomily noted that economic depression and basic poverty had been, as much as anything, responsible for the rise of the militarists in the 1930s. This attitude seems to have had its effect on political assessments. The electoral chances of the Socialists (the party has been out of power since taking part in a coalition in 1947–8), were sometimes rated more highly than warranted by the circumstances, although certainly it would have been difficult in, say, 1956 to predict the electoral stagnation into which the party later sank. In contrast, in the early 1960’s—a period of prosperity—the Socialists may have been dismissed rather too easily. From around 1958, Japanese economic growth rates became so spectacular that a spate of eulogistic publications on the subject began to appear. The way the economy now operated was even used as a weapon with which to belabour governments of countries whose economies had failed to exhibit such marked growth. Japan’s economic development also came to be treated as a model for developing economies. 4 Prime Minister Ikeda’s well known plan, published in 1960, to double the national income in ten years, was widely commended as a sensible effort to take the tension out of politics by concentrating on the achievement of a prosperity that was already in the making. It was felt that in so doing he was making a rational appeal to the pockets of the electorate and thus taking the ground from under the feet of the Socialist opposition. Underlying this view was the theory that increasing prosperity and high economic growth rates tend to produce both political stability and, in the long run, more modern forms of political organization. The corollary was sometimes argued that only a

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disastrous economic slump could cause political instability. It was frequently pointed out that despite such apparent Conservative reverses as the forced resignation in 1960 of Prime Minister Kishi, his Liberal-Democratic Party maintained its massive majority at successive elections. The left, meanwhile, remained disunited and failed to advance. The work of Kyogoku and Ike, among others, showed that urbanization was accompanied by more modern voting patterns, with the voters paying more attention to policies and parties and less to the personalities of the candidates and the will of the local group to which the voters belonged. 5 It therefore seemed to follow that the parties would gradually be forced to change their character from loose coalitions of personal (or in the case of the left, in part ideological) factions, to organizations genuinely competing on policy issues. The Liberal-Democrats would have to give more thought to social welfare, while the Socialists would be driven to rethink their Marx-and-water ideology, and broaden their appeal beyond the ranks of big labour. It was noted that the influence of Marxism on intellectuals, overwhelming in the postwar decade, was gradually waning as they came into contact with more sophisticated methodologies. Unfortunately, however, it soon became clear that certain qualifications had to be made to this optimistic appraisal. Rapid urbanization was seen to be having its own destabilizing effects. Some of the protest and alienation in Japan was traced to the loss of cohesive rural group ties by newcomers to the towns, who were proving susceptible to the attractions of the ‘parties of total commitment’. 6 Membership of the Communist Party quadrupled between 1960 and 1966, while the Soka Gakkai, a neo-Buddhist sect sponsoring a rapidly growing political party claimed over six million families as adherents, and exercised strict moral control over their votes. Disillusionment with the political trafficking of the main political parties—in Japan always a devious business— could, it was sometimes feared, prove dangerous to the health of the political process, as had occurred before the war. Another qualification was that the Socialists failed to moderate their leftist stand to the extent that the optimists hoped. It is interesting to note how first the Democratic-Socialist Party (which broke from the main body of Socialists in 1959) and later Eda’s ‘Structural Reform’ group, were welcomed as signs of the belated filtering of sweetness and light into the left wing, but each in turn failed to make sufficient headway to realize this expectation. Our fourth category was that of writers primarily concerned with democracy as a unique, definable and universally desirable political system. Those American (including Japanese-American) writers who have written general surveys of the Japanese political system, mostly seem to fall into this category. In view of the above-mentioned controversies over ‘democratization’ in the Occupation period, it is perhaps remarkable that for the more recent writers of this type Japan has nearly always seemed an example of a ‘democratic’ system. Morever students of the comparative politics of non-Western countries often saw Japan, in the words of Fred W.Riggs, as ‘an oasis in a desert of parliamentarism.’ One writer who has concentrated almost exclusively on the question of Japan and ‘democracy’ is J.M.Maki. His Government and Politics in Japan is explicitly written to show that democracy has, in the main, been achieved. He defines the concept as entailing guarantees of freedoms, especially against arbitrary governmental action against the

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individual, free elections and representative and responsible government. The prior conditions, he thinks, are an industrialized economy and a fairly high degree of political institutionalization, which is not to deny, in his opinion, the universal relevance of the concept. He cites the success of democracy in Japan as a refutation of the view that would confine it to parts of the world (notably America and some of Western Europe) with a certain tradition. It follows from his approach that ipso facto ‘undemocratic’ practices in Japan (village bloc-voting, bossism, corruption, voting on personalities rather than on parties or issues, factionalism in the political parties, excessive power in the hands of the bureaucracy) are condemned but also somewhat de-emphasized. He also has a corresponding tendency to overstate the extent of authoritarianism under the Meiji Constitution (1890–1947). It is perhaps symptomatic of Maki’s attitude that the introduction to his Court and Constitution in Japan takes a considerably more sanguine view of the Supreme Court’s role in the protection of constitutional freedoms than has been taken by other writers. Ardath W.Burks, another American political scientist to write a general account of the Japanese political system, warns against the use of ‘totalitarian versus democratic’ and other stereotypes as ‘hopelessly inadequate for describing the dynamic process of change in Japan. 7 He nevertheless fails to escape entirely these pitfalls himself. He advances a somewhat ambiguous theory based on the ‘agraria-industria’ dichotomy, in which he appears to equate ‘agraria’ with ‘oriental’, and ‘industria’ with ‘occidental’. One wonders whether his theory is not simply one of progressive westernization. Japan, he goes on to say, is ‘in the advanced stages of transition from a tradition-oriented political system to some sort of modern parliamentary democracy’. The dangers and essential shallowness of this kind of analysis can be seen in the following example: one of Burks’ main complaints about the recent course of Japanese ‘democracy’ is what he considers to be the failure of the two main parties to live together in a permanent dialogue of ideas. The arrogant use of their majority by the LiberalDemocrats has been matched, he thinks, by the all-or-nothing obstructionism of the Socialists. Although, however, this generalization is based on sound evidence, it really only scratches the surface of what goes on between and within these parties in the everyday business of politics. In actual practice they tend to keep within certain tacitly agreed limits in their dealings with each other, each realizing that the other can bring uncomfortable pressure to bear if these limits are overstepped. In other words Burks here fails to take into account the informal mechanisms for reaching (or at least for not too flagrantly violating) consensus in the decision-making process. A prefer-ence for behindthe-scenes manoeuvres over open debate may itself not perhaps be ‘democratic’, but that is not the same point. Again, is the phenomenon that Burks describes evidence of the persistence in a ‘democratic’ system of ‘traditional’ ways of operating, or does it derive more simply from the long-term minority position of the Socialists, which at times gives them, in the eyes of their leaders at any rate, no other method of advancing their point of view than by obstruction? Burks gives us few clues wherewith to resolve these perplexities. Perhaps a more explicit distinction should be made between ‘democracy’ (however defined) used as a tool of analysis and considered as a coherent ideology influencing the Japanese themselves. As a tool of analysis it seems a particularly blunt instrument in the

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Japanese context. Its influence as an ideology, however, is less often discussed but probably more important. Ward thinks that it is too early to say that the ideology of democracy has been established ‘in the minds and hearts of the people to provide a satisfactory substitute for a divine Emperor’, 8 and points, as others have done, to what is sometimes termed the ‘spiritual vacuum’ of postwar Japan. It would be interesting to see a considered evaluation of the effect of the ideology of democracy (as distinct from the institutional changes of the Occupation) upon the actual functioning of actors in the present political system.

POLITICAL MODERNIZATION Finally, the preoccupation of political analysts in recent years with comparative studies of modernization has naturally led to analyses of the Japanese experience in these terms. It is obviously more difficult to define modernization in its political than in its economic aspects, and nothing approaching a consensus has yet been reached on the criteria that would determine a ‘politically modernized’ state. In this context Japan excites interest for two reasons: first, as we have already seen, it is a rare example in a non-Western nation of economic modernization on the way to being successfully accomplished; and second, because of the obvious persistence of ‘traditional’ forms of organization in a political system that seems to exhibit many ‘modern’ characteristics. What a number of Western political writers have for some years been discovering about the Japanese political system is that the modernization process has actually been reinforced by so-called ‘traditional’ forms of organization and social behavior. In the late 1950’s Abegglen 9 and Levine 10 spoke of the essential functionality of a labor employment structure which included such apparent anachronisms as a system of lifelong employment in one firm for all except an under-privileged minority, particularistic loyalties between employees and employers, ‘paternalistic’ fringe benefits making up a substantial proportion of the worker’s wage and reducible by the employer in times of recession, and a highly fragmented trade union structure based almost entirely on enterprise unions stalled frequently by the lower and middle levels of the firm’s management. To these could be added the economy’s ‘dual structure’, whereby a myriad small and highly vulnerable firms had to confront a few industrial giants which virtually permitted them to exist, or not, at will. This system was seen to have contributed to rapid and inflation-free development, and to have minimized social dislocation in the process of absorbing surplus rural labor into the urban economy. Again, the personal factionalism which pervades political parties has come in for its fair share of criticism, but more recently certain of its aspects have close informal connections between big businessmen, top bureaucrats and been defended for their contribution to pluralism in decision-making. 11 The Liberal-Democrat politicians (some 25% of Liberal-Democratic Party politicians in the Lower House of the Diet and an even higher percentage in the Upper House are retired high-ranking bureaucrats), has also been defended for aiding flexibility in planning and plan implementation. In this argument much of course depends on what is meant by ‘traditional’ forms. The prewar inheritance system in rural areas has often been cited as ‘traditional’ in the sense

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that family continuity was the overriding consideration. Such continuity was, however, frequently assured according to achievement rather than ascriptive criteria. A less-thancompetent eldest son would easily be passed over in favor of a competent younger son, or even, if necessary, of a son of another family adopted specifically for the purpose of succession. The permanent employment system in firms, called ‘traditional but functional’ by Abegglen and others, in fact did not arise with any universality until after World War I, and was then a response of large firms to a skilled-labor shortage. Abegglen has been criticized by one Japanese academic for overestimating the beneficial results of the employment system and underestimating the forces working to change it into something more on Western lines. 12 Ward, who puts very forcibly the argument about ‘reinforcing dualism’, argues tentatively that now self-sustaining economic development has been achieved, the evolution of traditional into modern forms may be inevitable. 13 His argument, however, is stated in terms of democratization and of a necessary connection between democracy and modernity. Perhaps the most valuable insights into the Japanese political system have been indirectly provided by the sociologists, notably such writers as Dore, Vogel, DeVos and Bellah. For instance Vogel’s view, derived from a study of white collar employees of government departments and private firms, that achievement-orientation is intense but is on behalf of the group rather than of the individual 14 suggests the desirability of retaining much of the ‘functionalism of tradition’ theory, despite the reservations mentioned above. The Japanese case hardly provides conclusive evidence for the view that modernization is inevitably accompanied by the disappearance of traditional forms. If the Occupation is considered a ‘modernizing’ experience, we have to face the curious paradox that some of the Occupation reforms actually served to reinforce tradition. A good example is the land reform. The substantial abolition of tenancy in the countryside had the effect of reinforcing the solidarity of the traditional unit of rural organization, the buraku or hamlet (now deprived of any formal legal existence). The success of the land reform in reducing class tensions has made the rural areas barren territory for the Socialist Party and a solid basis of support for the Liberal-Democrats. Urbanization and fairly rapid rural depopulation is now gradually eroding this support, but the process is slowed by an electoral map gerrymandered to the detriment of the cities. Whether the Socialist Party itself represents a ‘modernizing’ force, in contrast to the ‘traditional’ Liberal-Democrats is a further subject for disputation. One could well argue that in both parties the traditional and the modern exist side by side. In the first paragraph Japan was referred to—half facetiously—as a ‘mystery’ country, and also as attractive to the model-builders and categorizers. Now why should there be anything mysterious about a political system concerning which a vast and swelling mass of vernacular information (and now a considerable flow of information in English) is available to anyone prepared to use it? Economists long ago found that Japan was the only nation to Australia’s north publishing decent statistics. Similarly the quantity of ink spilled by Japanese journalists, politicians and scholars describing and analyzing—with more or less intelligence and accuracy—their political processes is probably far greater than anywhere on the Eurasian landmass east of the Mediterranean.

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Again, it has not been the intention to argue that there is anything wrong with analyzing and categorizing. On the contrary, I believe that Japan’s political processes are of vital interest and importance to any Western social scientist concerned with the overall implications of his discipline. It does, however, seem that a good deal of what has been written outside Japan has been over-facilely grounded in theories and preconceptions of less than universal applicability. Confrontation with Japan should ideally force the political student to re-think some of his basic assumptions, and that, one would imagine, ought to be a salutory exercise.

NOTES 1. J.W.Bennett and I.Ishino, Paternalism in the Japanese Economy (Minneapolis, 1963). 2. For instance M.Gayn, Japan Diary (New York, 1948), and W.MacMahon Ball, Japan, Enemy or Ally (Melbourne, 1948). 3. See especially E.O.Reischauer, ‘The Broken Dialogue with Japan’, Foreign Affairs, 39, 1 (October 1960), pp. 11–26. 4. For an article debunking the model’s relevance for South-East Asia, see E.S. Crawcour, ‘Japan’s Economic Experience and South-East Asia’, Papers on Modern Japan, 1965 (Canberra, 1965), pp. 70–82. 5. See for instance J.Kyogoku and N.Ike, ‘Urban-Rural Differences in Voting Behaviour in Post-War Japan’, Economic Development and Cultural Change, (October 1960). 6. See H.Passin, ‘The Sources of Protest in Japan’, American Political Science Review, June 1962, pp. 391–403. 7. A.W.Burks, The Government of Japan (New York, 1961). 8. R.E.Ward and R.C.Macridis (eds.), Modern Political Systems: Asia (Englewood Cliffs, 1963), p. 113. 9. J.C.Abegglen, The Japanese Factory (Glencoe, 1958). 10. S.B.Levine, Industrial Relations in Postwar Japan (Urbana, 1958). 11. See for instance G.O.Totten, and T.Kawakami, ‘The Functions of Factionalism in Japanese Politics’, Pacific Affairs (Summer 1965), pp. 109–122. 12. K.Odaka, ‘Traditionalism and Democracy in Japanese Industry’, Transactions of the Fifth World Congress of Sociology, 1962, Vol. III, pp. 39–49. 13. R.E.Ward, ‘Political Modernization and Political Culture in Japan’, World Politics, XV, 4 (July 1963), pp. 569–596. 14. E.F.Vogel, Japan’s New Middle Class (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1963).

23 Is Japan a Post-Marxist Society? First published in Pacific Affairs, Vol. XLI, No. 2, Summer 1968 THE VIEW THAT Japan may be regarded as a ‘post-Marxist society’ 1 has been expressed most forcibly by Robert Scalapino in his recent book on Japanese communism, 2 but also seems to be a hidden premise of some other writing on contemporary Japanese politics. 3 Scalapino puts it most clearly in the final paragraph of his book: The chances for Communist success in Japan, however, do not appear promising barring external interference. In the most fundamental sense, Japan is a post-Marxist society. Marxist doctrines, whether of economics or of revolution, have less and less validity for this society as it joins the ranks of the advanced nations of the world. Japanese Communists, whatever the doctrinal changes they can effect, will never be able to use the Communist appeal that has had the greatest impact in our times, namely, the appeal that only they can eradicate the deep-seated obstacles to change in stagnant or fragmented societies, and that only they can fully mobilize the people for a drive toward modernization within one generation. The Japanese, having attained modernity, can afford freedom. 4 It is possible to distinguish four separate points here, which may be spelled out as follows: (1) Marxism (or perhaps Communism, for the two do not appear to be distinguished) is objectively irrelevant to the task of solving the problems of an economically advanced society; (2) Japan has already attained, or is well on the way to attaining, the status of an economically advanced society; (3) Communism (or perhaps Marxism), irrespective of whether or not it is objectively valid as a doctrine, strikes people as credible only in situations and societies where a need is felt for a ruthless instrument of rapid modernization; (4) Communist (or Marxist) parties will therefore not possess credibility, and thus presumably have no future, in societies which have already achieved modernization. It should be obvious that each of these four propositions needs to be demonstrated separately, for an erroneous or irrelevant doctrine can still command a wide appeal. The first point, about the objective irrelevance of Marxist (or Communist) theories to advanced industrial societies, is not seriously in question here. This writer accepts the view that for a contemporary ‘advanced’ society much of the Marxist economic analysis is either too crude or has proved false. Certainly Marx was basing his theories on the industrial societies of his own day and was very pessimistic for the most part about whether revolution could be successfully accomplished in predominantly agricultural societies, at least in the short term. On the other hand those who came after him and made use of his doctrines neatly turned Marx on his head by carrying out revolutions in Russia

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and China respectively. When, however, Marx was talking about alienation or class conffict in industrial societies, he was using concepts not entirely outlandish for contemporary Japan, whatever the validity of the general theory on which they were based. Nevertheless, Scalapino’s general point here is well taken. The second point, that Japan, at least in an economic sense has progressed far along the road of modernization, is a matter of common knowledge. There is no necessity to list here the Japanese achievements as measured by the various indices of ‘economic modernization’ about which there is much more general agreement than on the more difficult concept of ‘political modernization.’ 5 Japan indeed ranks among the world’s industrial giants, but there are good reasons why political comparisons with other industrial nations should be used with caution. Quite apart from the obvious differences in political culture, the very rapidity with which industrialization has been carried out, and the scope and pace of the accompanying social changes point to the existence of severe tensions beneath the surface of the general prosperity. The third and fourth points relate, not to the validity, but to the credibility and appeal of Marxism and its exponents. Scalapino and others believe that Communist parties may have a future in backward countries, but have little or none in advanced countries. In a sense, this is a version of the ‘end of ideology’ argument advanced by writers such as Lipset and Bell. 6 Their argument is variously stated, but its main components are a correlation between prosperity and a lack of interest in extremist or millenarian solutions, and the desirability, for the purpose of combatting extremism, of a stable and cohesive society ‘in which all the major political parties include supporters from many segments of the population.’ 7 This view has been attacked on two main grounds. 8 The first is a question of definition, namely that ideology should not be equated merely with extremism or the passionate fervour of political belief, but that the term should be interpreted more widely, to include, for instance, a commitment to the welfare state or economic planning. The second is an empirical objection, namely that in many countries increasing prosperity has been accompanied by more rather than less concern with ideology in this sense. Formerly extremist political parties, such as the Italian Communist Party, have moderated some of their policies, but have both retained a fundamental interest in ideological formulations and have improved their electoral position. Moreover, ideological concerns have spread to previously pragmatic parties. Two further considerations are of particular relevance to Japan. As Lipset readily admits, 9 left-wing extremism may be correlated with high economic growth. Therefore the process of rapid industrialization itself need not be accompanied by a decline of ideology, even in this narrow sense, but rather the opposite. Again, assuming a political system in which a substantial part of the population is effectively excluded, or feels that it is excluded, from access to political power, then any trend towards the politics of consensus may well be arrested and extremism may continue to thrive. Before developing these points, let us analyse in more detail the empirical basis of Scalapino’s argument that Marxist-based parties have no real longterm future in Japan. The question obviously concerns both the Japan Communist Party (JCP) and the Japan Socialist Party (JSP). How weak is the JCP in fact? Scalapino maintains that it is on the way to becoming the ‘symbol of eccentrism’ (which is how he would describe the

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communist party ‘in most other advanced societies’)—a party, in other words, not serious enough to be taken into real political consideration. 10 Present trends, however, seem to throw considerable doubt on this prediction. Since 1960 most of the indicators of political success have been moving steadily in the party’s favour. These include party membership, membership in subsidiary organizations, readership of party publications, financial status, and voting at elections. On the other hand, at the general election for the House of Representatives held in January 1967 the Communists only won five seats, with 4.8 per cent of the total votes cast. Scalapino tends to play down the significance of its organizational growth in the light of these electoral figures. This writer is less inclined to do so. 11 Marxism, moreover, is also an important force in the Japan Socialist Party, which in terms of votes at national elections remains far stronger than the JCP, although organizationally and financially it is much weaker. 12 The JSP, of course, is in both form and organization a social-democratic party, and yet it differs from virtually all socialdemocratic parties in Europe in having failed to shed—or indeed drastically to modify— its Marxist heritage. Interestingly enough, there have been times (such as the period immediately after reunification of Left and Right Socialist Parties in 1955, and again after the Security Treaty crisis of 1960) when it seemed as if the party were making a genuine and permanent shift toward moderation. Repeatedly, however, the forces of left-wing dogmatism have pulled it once more to the left. Indeed, it has seldom been so extreme in its views, at least on foreign policy, as in the period 1965–7, when its leaders gave apparently wholehearted support to Communist China., despite the Cultural Revolution and despite the fact that the JCP had already defected from Peking. The phenomenon of a recurrent ‘pull to the left’ in the JSP may be interpreted by reference to a number of factors, but the following seem to this writer to be crucial. On the one hand, most of the party leaders are essentially political opportunists concerned primarily with the spoils of office, which means in this case leadership of the party itself; on the other hand these leaders calculate (whether rationally or not) that they can only build up their support within the party by means of a continuing appeal to the rank and file in terms of militancy, Marxist concepts and anti-Americanism. The Vietnam war has probably been important since 1965 in tipping the scales in favour of a group of leaders oriented towards the extreme left wing, but the war has only served to demonstrate the latent strength of militancy within the party. There is not the space within this article to defend this analysis in detail, but the repeated falsification of predictions that the JSP was evolving into a moderate ‘consensus’ party is surely significant. 13 Now Scalapino points to trends within the Sōhyō group of trade unions (notably the election of Horii to replace Ota as Sōhyō Chairman) as indicating that the direction is once more one of moderation. 14 Certainly the trade union movement at the present time is in a state of flux, with Sōhyō facing serious challenges from various directions. This seemed to be reflected in the slight electoral decline of the JSP itself at the January 1967 election. Nevertheless, the tone of opinion within the JSP is still very militant, and the prospects for a swing away from a basically Marxist approach, at least to foreign policy, do not at present seem bright. At this point it is necessary to put the argument into a rather wider historical context by reviewing the conditions for Marxist successes and failures in Japan hitherto. The present

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writer accepts in the main Scalapino’s analysis, except for the most recent period. On the surface at least, Japan of the 1920s was fertile ground for Marxism. Japan had an organised and politically conscious society, a literate proletariat and peasantry and an intelligentsia concerned with social criticism. Thus the emergence of a militant working class, allied with sections of the peasantry and organized under the leadership of a Marxist intelligentsia, must have seemed at the time to be a very real possibility. On the other hand, four factors worked against it. First, Marxist doctrines made their appearance rather late, since a great deal of modernization had already been achieved by the end of World War I. The fact that Japan had managed to avoid coming under colonial domination had contributed to political and social continuity. The ruling group sought consistently to preserve rather than to subvert traditional values, which served as a form of national discipline and an instrument of national pride. The traditional social relationships, which exalted the place of the small hierarchical group in society, also inhibited the mobilization of an amorphous discontented mass by left-wing organisers. Finally, police repression of extremists, and the absence of economic stagnation, also had their effect. After World War II, the initial reforms of the Occupation gave a boost to the Communists, whose leaders were released from prison. Revolution was in the air (as it was in France, Italy and other countries of Europe), and in particular the intellectuals became very susceptible to Marxist ideas. Nevertheless two failures by the JCP were absolutely crucial to its ultimate inability to exploit that atmosphere to its own advantage. One was the failure of the party to gain control over the trade unions because of successful bids by anti-Communists to frustrate the Communist bid for control. The other was the American land reform programme, which effectively made class struggle a doctrine irrelevant to the countryside. The JCP reached the peak of its parliamentary influence in the 1949 Lower House general election, when it won 35 seats, mainly at the expense of the Socialists, who had been discredited by their part in the disastrous coalition governments of 1947–8. In January 1950, however, the JCP leaders were publicly criticized by the Cominform, thus precipitating a period of internal strife and ‘ultra-left wing adventurist’ policies. As a result the party became a negligible force in Japanese politics for the following decade. Marxism in the JSP, in the Sōhyō-affiliated trade unions and among the intellectuals remained strong. It is concerning the period since 1960 that this writer dissents from Scalapino’s analysis. During these years the JCP has profited from a determined and basically united leadership, which in turn has purged the pro-Moscow Right and the pro-Peking Left (both of them in the event proving to be small minority factions), and has greatly improved both the party’s organisation and its credibility as a political force. Personal membership has increased from 40,000 in 1960 to some 200,000 in 1966. This is four times the membership of the JSP, and there seems little doubt that the accredited members of the JCP are activists, whereas one cannot be so sure about the accredited members of the JSP. The sales of the Communist paper, Akahata (Red Flag), have rocketed upwards, so that now it has over a quarter of a million subscribers, while its popular Sunday edition is bought by over a million people. The party’s vote has risen at a more modest rate, from 2.6 per cent of the total vote at the Lower House election of May 1958, to 4.8 per cent at the election of January 1967. The difference was sufficient for the party to elect five

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Members in 1967 as against one in 1958. At the Upper House election and Tokyo Metropolitan election of 1965, the JCP registered gains which, considering the normal lack of significant fluctuations from election to election in Japan, must be considered quite spectacular. In the prefectural constituencies of the Upper House election the JCP improved on its 1962 result by nearly a million votes, and attracted 6.9 per cent of the total vote. Scalapino treats these figures with considerable reserve. The increase m membership, in his view, was the result of the formal adherence to the party of people already voting Communist, who had been persuaded by the current membership drive to become actual party members. 15 He attributes the results of the Upper House elections of 1965 to temporary factors highly unfavourable to the government, notably the economic recession and the charges of corruption against Liberal-Democratic members of the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly. (At the elections for the latter body the JCP share of the vote rose from 4.5 per cent to 10.1 per cent.) These, he argues, were non-recurring conditions. 16 Again, there is the highly complex question of party funds. The JCP has plainly been in an affluent condition in the past few years, but its defection from Peking, Scalapino thinks, may have cost it a considerable proportion of its revenue, although he surmises that it may be able to make it up in other ways. 17 It is, however, very arguable that one should not underestimate the significance of what is, however one looks at it, a remarkable and important improvement in the JCP performance during the 1960s. This may be attributed to the vastly improved organization of the party under its present leadership, which has injected a dynamism and sense of purpose into the party’s activities that was conspicuously lacking before. The party may now be seen to be as united as any in Japan today, to have asserted a measure of independence in the world Communist camp, and to have rejected the bomb-throwing excesses of yesteryear. Moreover, the potential scope for a party wishing to organize the discontented is probably greater than Scalapino’s criticism of the membership figures suggest. Even if it is correct that the JCP has merely recruited as members some of those who already voted for it, the significance of this is that the party has been campaigning to involve supporters or potential supporters as closely as possible in the party and its subsidiary organizations. The youth group Minseidō (Democratic Youth League), which is closely associated with the JCP, is known to have been particularly successful in this regard. The organizational activities of the JCP take on a particular interest when one considers that the other parties (except for the Kōmeitō, whose methods are rather simlar to those of the JCP, and have also had conspicuous success) do not even attempt to organize the masses. The other parties, including the Socialists, work essentially on a factional patronage system, whereby support is given in return for material rather than ‘spiritual’ benefits. The number of those closely involved in the affairs of these parties is small. In the case of the JSP, much of the work of organizing, particularly for elections, is undertaken, not by the party itself, but by certain trade unions affiliated with Sōhyō. These unions, however, have little real sense of involvement with the JSP as a whole— nor even with any of its factions, although factional considerations certainly enter into their calculations—but rather with individual parliamentary candidates whom they themselves are sponsoring. It is not by accident that the individual membership of the JSP

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has been kept small, since the party does not seek to cater for the psychological needs of individuals in the mass. The JSP now finds itself faced by an insidious whittling away of its long-established position as the major Japanese opposition party by the Kōmeitō on the one side and the JCP on the other. This is a process which seems likely to continue, although probably at a slow rate. This does not seem to imply the impending demise of ideology, nor of communism, in Japan. This brings us to the main argument of this article, involving an examination of the actual nature of the Japanese party system, and its implications for the survival of ideology. It seems to be implicit in the view of Japan as a ‘post-Marxist society’ (in the sense that Marxist-based parties have no future) that it is sufficient to show that such parties can only aspire to a share in power if they reject, or moderate out of all recognition, their Marxism; otherwise they are destined to decline fairly rapidly. This view, which is apparently held by many observers of the Japanese political scene, would seem to be based on a mistaken understanding of how Japanese party politics work. An alternative hypothesis may therefore be put forward, containing the following elements: (1) Marxism, however defined, is much the most powerful ideological force in both the JSP and the JCP, and is likely to continue to be so for the foreseeable future, although it will probably continue to be modified in various directions, as at present. (2) Although these two parties have very little prospect of coming to power, they play a particular and significant role in the party system as at present constituted. They have a future in this sense. (3) A rejection of Marxism by the JSP is not likely in itself significantly to improve its electoral chances. The Japanese party system has generally been regarded since 1955 as bearing the characteristics of a two-party system, although the permanent majority held by the Liberal-Democratic Party (LDP) and the pervasiveness of factionalism have given currency to the terms ‘one-and-a-half-party system’ and even ‘multi-party system.’ 18 More recently, there has been much discussion of a trend toward multi-partism, as the minor parties make electoral gains at the expense of the major. New light has now been thrown on the subject in a recent article by Michael Leiserson. 19 The essence of his argument is that the Japanese party system is very unlike that of Britain to which it often compared, but bears quite a close resemblance in certain respects to that of Fourth Republic France and to that of postwar Italy. It is not a two-party system in any real sense, but rather a coalition system. This means that there are several parties in parliament, all hoping to become part of a coalition government, all maintaining reasonably stable membership and all existing over a reasonably long time. No one party can obtain an overall majority, and there is an established mechanism, controlled by the parties themselves, for putting the coalition government into power and for overthrowing it. Now Leiserson simply substitutes ‘faction’ for ‘party,’ and ‘factions within the LDP’ for the parties actually permitted to take part in coalition governments. If this assimilation of factions to parties seems implausible, it should be remembered that Lasswell’s classic definition of a faction, which has been followed by many anthropologists, 20 scarcely fits the Japanese case. Lasswell’s definition was: ‘…any constituent group of a larger unit

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which works for the advancement of particular persons or policies.’ ‘The term,’ Lasswell continues, ‘drops out of usage when certain lines of cleavage have become rather permanent features of the political life of a group; these divisions are accepted as parties.’ 21 There seems little doubt that the LDP factions, with their highly organized political machines, are ‘permanent features of the political life’ of the LDP, and as such it does not seem inconsistent with Lasswell’s usage to treat them as though they were parties in their own right. 22 Leiserson conducts a sophisticated analysis of the mechanisms whereby ‘coalition governments’ retain power or are replaced by other combinations at party presidential elections. This is the battle between the ‘mainstream’ and the ‘anti-mainstream’ upon the outcome of which depends the distribution of party and cabinet posts. What is important for our purposes here is that the confines of the system are said to be the boundaries of the LDP itself, membership of which guarantees at least the possibility of participation in office, but exclusion from which ensures non-participation in office. This has indeed been the case since 1955. The LDP has completely monopolized significant power, and the possibility of an alternative government has only existed within the ranks of the LDP itself. The ‘anti-mainstream’ within the LDP at any one time has very often been the government’s most effective critic, because it represents a credible alternative government. What then is the position of those parties excluded from membership of the LDP? Leiserson argues that they are analogous to the parties permanently excluded from the possibility of participating in the coalition governments of France and Italy, most notably the Communist parties of those countries. These parties form a permanent opposition whatever the colour of the government in power at any particular time. The secular decline in electoral support for the LDP has prompted much speculation about the prospects for party government in the 1970s. Since general election results in Japan are subject to long-term trends rather than temporary fluctuations, it is perhaps not unreasonable to project the electoral trends of the past ten or fifteen years into the future, 23 in which case the LDP might lose its overall majority of seats in the House of Representatives sometime in the 1970s. 24 The question therefore arises, what kind of government might replace the present LDP majority. Some writers, prepared to be speculative, have come down in favour of the likelihood of a centre-left coalition, as the most plausible ‘scenario’ of Japanese politics in the mid-1970s. 25 Presumably such a coalition, to command a parliamentary majority, would have to include the JSP (or part of it), the Kōmeitō, the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP) and some breakaway left-wing factions of the LDP, but would exclude the JCP and most of the LDP factions. This view, however, would seem to be based on a swingof-the-pendulum theory of party politics which is scarcely applicable to Japan. In some countries the defeat of a right-wing party simply means its replacement by a left-wing party and vice versa. By a simple extension, the defeat of a right-wing coalition leads to the victory of a left-wing coalition. This is not the case, however, when there are large parties ‘outside the system.’ Such a situation necessarily limits quite narrowly the number of parties from which a government can be chosen. Shifts in the centre of gravity of power are likely to be marginal rather than radical. The key to the problem of future trends in Japan, therefore, probably lies in the position of the DSP and the Kōmeitō. If the LDP, faced with the loss of its majority

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position, were able to attract one or both of these parties into the ranks of those parties (or factions) from which governments are formed, presumably it would be prepared to do so. At present the DSP has thirty seats in the Lower House and the Kōmeitō has twenty-five, so that the adherence of even one of these parties to the LDP would enable it to perpetuate its power for a considerable time, provided that the LDP did not suffer a really disastrous electoral collapse, such as the stability of Japanese electoral behaviour renders unlikely. Moreover, it appears most improbable that the various left-of-centre parties could achieve even the sort of unity in coalition that has been possible for the LDP factions since 1955. Can one really imagine the DSP, for instance, joining a coalition government including the JCP, even if the JCP formed an ‘anti-mainstream’ within such a government? The nearest approach hitherto to a unification of left-wing forces took place in 1955 with the reuniting of the Left Socialist Party and the Right Socialist Party, which had existed as separate parties since 1951, but unity proved unstable, and broke down irretrievably in 1959. If one examines the position of the DSP since 1960, it is clear that it has been at least as keen to stress the differences between itself and the Socialists as between itself and the LDP. DSP spokesmen generally explain this by decrying the ideological extremism of the JSP and citing their own desire to create a political base for progressive but pragmatic, welfare-statist policies. Nevertheless, as Leiserson suggests, 28 there is no doubt a further tactical reason for their arguments: DSP electoral strength, though limited, is assured by the existence of a stable and independent jiban (power-base) for the party in the tradeunion federation Dōmei, just as the Kōmeitō has its own base of power in Sōka Gakkai. In other words, neither of these parties will be eliminated by a failure to join up with the Socialists. It seems not impossible, therefore, that the DSP (the mind of the Kōmeitō is more enigmatic) might be prepared to come to an arrangement with the LDP to be allowed to participate in the company of Les Ministrables. Leiserson makes the point that there is an almost exact parallel for this in the action of the Saragat Socialists in Italy in 1950 in breaking away from the Italian Socialist Party and participating in a conservative coalition. 27 One may well extend this parallel by examining the action of the Nenni Socialists in Italy in the mid-1960s, when they finally abandoned their long-established rapport with the Communists and started participating in cabinets with the Christian Democrats. This involved the splitting of the Nenni Socialists themselves, with a substantial left-wing faction breaking away and choosing to remain in opposition. It may be suggested that this is similar to what would be likely to happen if the electoral position of the LDP had eroded much further than is the case at present, and if the right wing of the JSP (the factional coalition at present led by Eda Saburō) were to break away from the ‘intransigent’ Sasaki faction and follow the DSP into a coalition with the LDP. For reasons of electoral arithmetic such a possibility is obviously a long way off, but given those conditions the logic seems inexorable. Indeed, at the height of Eda’s power in the JSP in 1962, there were distinct, though shortlived signs of a reconciliation between his group and the DSP. One of the reasons for his subsequent fall from power in the JSP was a left-wing reaction against the possibility of such a reconciliation. That Eda was trying to make the JSP into a ‘second DSP’—a party of ‘revisionists’—was a most damning and effective indictment brought by the Left against Eda himself. 28

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Let us therefore for the sake of argument accept that the LDP will respond to erosion of its electoral position by inviting the DSP (and conceivably the Kōmeitō) to enter the pool of factions from which governmental ‘mainstream’ alliances are formed. What would be the effect on the JSP and the JCP? Is Scalapino right in holding that the Marxist ideologue is in the process of being reduced to the role of a political eccentric on the lunatic fringe of political life? If Leiserson’s analysis is correct, they would seem to be relegated in semi-perpetuity to the status of a permanent opposition, without even the hope of participating in power. The most that they can expect is that one or two non-LDP factions which are really of the political centre may be invited to join in with the LDP in order to perpetuate its rule. The result of this may be to shift the balance of government policy rather more towards the centre than it is today. But for the bulk of the left wing the adoption of political and ideological moderation would hold out no greater prospect of participation in government than it has at present. If the function of an opposition is to oppose, but to oppose in such a way that it does not jeopardize its position when it gets into office, it would seem that the most logical role for a ‘permanent’ opposition is to oppose absolutely, pitting itself against the forces of established authority with all the weapons at its disposal, whether these be parliamentary filibusters, extraparliamentary demonstrations or extremist ideological appeals. 29 It is probably true that the recent downturn in the electoral fortunes of the JSP will continue. It has been doing badly in recent elections and has been losing ground to the minor parties rather than picking up votes lost by the LDP. This being the case it is tempting to argue, with Scalapino, that ideology is paying decreasing dividends in ‘postMarxist’ Japan. Yet the only two parties that have been receiving votes lost by the major parties are the Kōmeitō and the JCP. Both are, by any definition, ideological parties. Both, even more significantly, are parties which know how to organize. Sartori has pointed out that in Italy, more than half of the employees and professional politicians of all parties combined belong to the Italian Communist Party. 30 This party is kept permanently out of power, but is a major political force which shows no sign of declining. As Sartori observes, ‘…a stable Communist orientation is closely related to the ability of the [Italian Communist] party’s organisational network to produce a culturally manipulated isolation of given social groups in given areas.’ 31 Mutatis mutandis, this would also seem to apply to the Japanese Communists, as well as to the Kōmeitō. The Socialist failure to organize, except in a fragmented and intermittent fashion mainly through the Sōhyō trade unions, represents a failure to grasp the implications of this truth. Thus, to sum up the argument: in a political system where, instead of alternating leftwing and right-wing governments (whether of coalitions or single parties) there is a permanent though marginally extensible pool of parties or factions from which what are essentially coalition governments can be formed, those parties or factions permanently excluded from that pool have little reason to dispense with the weapons of extremism in favour of those of moderation. In such a situation, ideology is not so much a product of backwardness or of social dislocation, nor even of basic cultural or religious differences, 32 as of a fragmented party system which gives some party leaders a vested interest in cleavage rather than consensus. 33 The Italian Communists are evidence of the fact that a Marxist party can survive and prosper in a country which objectively speaking has as much right to be called ‘post-

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Marxist’ as Japan. 34 The conditions for its survival would seem to be the absence of a system of alternating governments. Very much the same factors operate in Japan. Neither the JSP nor the JCP (nor the Kōmeitō) are viable alternative governments, and this is not so much their own fault as the fault of the system. They can between them continue to rely on the perpetuation of a protest vote of sufficient magnitude to ensure that their combined proportion of electoral votes and parliamentary seats continues to increase or at least to remain stable. Certain arguments, therefore, ought not to be pressed too far. One is the alleged cracking of the long Marxist domination of intellectual thought in Japan by a new, American-influenced generation. This is partly true, but is not automatically reflected in party politics. Another is that Marxist orthodoxies are being challenged in the trade unions. In part at least, the challenge to orthodox Marxism in the trade unions is the challenge of revisionist Marxism. The essential intransigence of the protest remains. It remains finally to suggest a historical comparison. It can now be convincingly argued that the Japanese political system from 1890 until the militarist takeover the 1930s enshrined the principles, not only of conflict, but also of compromise between a number of elites. The essence of the system was that there had to be factional compromise both within each elite and also between individual factions of different elites. 35 Factionalism was thus, in a sense., the lubricant of the system, in that it ensured that compromise would prevail over ideological intransigence. (During the 1930s, however, this device broke down under severe strain). The American Occupation admitted to a place in the political system certain groups (notably Labour) which had not had a place of any consequence in it before. In the years 1945–55, it did seem that those forces, or their political representatives, might be admitted to a real share in political power. Temporary political coalitions between conservatives and socialists did take place during that period. From 1955, however, political power was effectively restricted to elites within the LDP, the bureaucracy and sections of business. Within and between those groups, factional compromises and accommodations once more proved the lubricant of a complex and bewildering system. Between this ‘power elite’ on the one hand, and labour and the opposition parties on the other, compromises indeed took place, but on a much lesser scale. Most crucially, the opposition was never to be admitted to a share in the formation of a government. Its various parts are now torn between a desire to take a real part in the top councils of the state and a necessity to dig in their ideological toes in order to consolidate their existing positions vis-à-vis each other and the government. The Japanese ‘genius for compromise’ has hitherto proved unable to solve this problem, as it failed to solve the much more serious problems which ideological intransigence provided between 1931 and 1945.

POSTSCRIPT Since this was written one notable development has been an unprecedented degree of cooperation between the Kōmeitō, the JSP, and the JCP, for the purposes of attacking the current foreign policy direction of the Satō Government. The DSP, in contrast, has for the most part held itself aloof. This would not seem to be inconsistent with the analysis given

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above.

NOTES 1. This article is a revised version of a paper presented to a meeting of the Far East Seminar at St. Antony’s College, Oxford, on 7 November 1967. I am grateful for the perceptive critical comments made in discussion by members of the Seminar, and wish to express my particular thanks to Mr. Richard Storry, who arranged and chaired the meeting. 2. Robert A.Scalapino, The Japanese Communist Movement 1920–1966 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1967). 3. See for instance Allen B.Cole, George O.Totten and Cecil B.Uyehara, Socialist Parties in Postwar Japan (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1966), especially pp. 451–64. 4. Scalapino, op. cit., p. 354. 5. See for instance Robert E.Ward, ‘Political Modernization and Political Culture in Japan,’ World Politics, XV, 4 (July 1963). 6. See especially Seymour M.Lipset, Political Man (London, Heinemann, 1960); and Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology, (Glencoe, Ill., Free Press, 1960). 7. Lipset, op. cit., p. 31. 8. See for instance Joseph LaPalombara, ‘Decline of Ideology: A Dissent and an Interpretation,’ American Political Science Review, LX, 1 (March 1966), pp. 5–16. For further controversy on the same topic, see ibid., pp. 17–18 and 110–11. 9. Lipset, op. cit., p. 68. 10. Scalapino, op. cit., p. 338. For a similar evaluation, see Paul F.Langer, ‘Independence or Subordination?—the Japanese Communist Party between Moscow and Peking,’ in A.Doak Barnett (ed.), Communist Strategies in Asia (New York, Praeger, 1963), pp. 63–100. 11. See J.A.A.Stockwin, ‘The Communist Party of Japan,’ Problems of Communism, XVI, 1 (January–February 1967), pp. 1–10. 12. In January 1967 the JSP won 140 seats out of a total of 486. 13. See J.A.A.Stockwin, The Japanese Socialist Party and Neutralism: A Study of a Political Party and its Foreign Policy (Melbourne University Press, 1968). 14. Scalapino, op. cit., pp. 283 and 307. 15. Ibid., p. 292. 16. Ibid., p. 299. 17. Ibid., p. 310. 18. See especially Robert A.Scalapino and Junnosuke Masumi, Parties and Politics in Contemporary Japan (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1962). 19. Michael Leiserson, ‘Jimintō to wa renritsu seiken to mitsuketari,’ Chūō Kōron, August 1967, pp. 188–201. 20. For instance Jeremy Boissevain, ‘Factions, Parties and Politics in a Maltese Village,’ American Anthropologist, vol. 66, no. 6, part 1 (December 1964), pp.

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1275–87. 21. H.Lasswell, ‘Faction,’ in Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences (1931), vol. 5, pp. 49–51. 22. Two closely-related criticisms of this type of approach have been put forward: one is that LDP factions do not publish distinctive political platforms as do parties in coalition systems elsewhere. The other is that within the LDP compromises between the factions are arrived at in an ‘unprincipled’ fashion within the party, and not in public view. See Misawa Shigeo, ‘Seisaku kettei katei no gaikan,’ in Gendai Nihon no Seitō to Kanryō (Nihon Seiji Gakkai Nempō, 1967), pp. 5–33, at p. 11. It is arguable, however, that the difference between Japanese and, say, Italian practice in this regard is mainly one of degree. See especially the Italian tradition of trasformismo (propensity to switch policies and ideologies in response to the dictates of political advantage), as described by Raphael Zariski, ‘Intra-Party Conflict in a Dominant Party: The Experience of Italian Christian-Democracy,’ Journal of Politics, vol. 27, no. 1 (February 1965), pp. 3–34. Moreover, it now appears that LDP factional organization is undergoing a change, with economic rather than personal cleavages rapidly increasing in importance at the local level. See Masumi Junnosuke and Akagi Suruki, ‘Yogen,’ in Gendai Nihon no Seitō to Kanryō, pp. 1–4, at p. 3. Conceivably this could develop into a situation where the differences between LDP factions were based on substantive economic cleavages and issues, rather than personal loyalties. In this case the factions would have become even more like ‘parties’ than they are today. A further possible criticism of the above usage, which there is no space to develop here, relates to the existence of the central organization of the LDP, which although weak vis-à-vis the factions and certainly not free from factional influence itself, is not without an independent importance. 23. This does not, of course, take into account such possibilities as reform of the electoral system itself. 24. At the 1967 Lower House elections, the LDP vote for the first time sank below fifty per cent, although the party still polled a solid 48.8 per cent of the total vote. 25. For instance Herbert Passin, in The American Assembly, The United States and Japan (New York, 1966). 26. Leiserson, op. cit., p. 192. 27. Ibid. p. 192. 28. See J.A.A.Stockwin, ‘Faction and Ideology in Postwar Japanese Socialism,’ inD. C.S.Sissons (ed.), Papers on Modern Japan, 1965 (Canberra, Australian National University, and Vancouver, University of British Columbia Publications Centre, 1965), pp. 34–49. 29. The famous ‘Asanuma statement’ of 1959 that ‘American imperialism is the common enemy of the people of Japan and China’ is a case in point. This was said, not by a Communist, but by a life-long member of a moderate Socialist faction. It has been officially endorsed by other Socialist leaders on several occasions. 30. Giovanni Sartori, ‘European Political Parties: the Case of Polarised Pluralism,’ in Joseph LaPalombara and Myron Wiener (eds.), Political Parties and Political Development (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1966), pp. 137–76, at p. 146.

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31. Ibid., p. 145. 32. At the St. Antony’s College Seminar, the Catholic issue in Italy was urged as a reason, absent in Japan, for the perpetuation of ideological parties, and for this reason the validity of the comparison made here was doubted. The existence, however, of strongly felt issues ripe for ideological exploitation is also not lacking in Japan. The key point is that in both countries conditions exist impelling party leaders to exploit them. 33. See Ibid., p. 159: ‘Since most parties have no prospect of winning a majority, each party—except eventually the leading party—is more interested in securing for itself a stable electorate of ideologically safe believers, than tempted to run the risk of becoming an open party of the non-ideological variety.’ 34. In the Federal Republic of Germany the translation of a ‘de-ideologized’ SocialDemocratic Party from an opposition party to a ministerialist party has been accompanied—and one strongly suspects that the relationship is a causal one—by a substantial increment of support for parties both of the extreme right and the extreme left. If, as is unlikely, the present coalition were to prove semi-permanent, this polarization would probably increase. The coalition happens to embrace a far bigger section of the political spectrum than is necessary simply to obtain a parliamentary majority. This was because a coalition of the two main parties was the only viable alternative after the coalition between the Christian Democrats and the Free Democrats had broken down. In Japan such a wide-ranging coalition would not be necessary, because of the far more fragmented nature of the parties (as in Italy). 35. See for instance George Akita, Foundations of Constitutional Government in Modern Japan 1868–1900 (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1967).

24 Alternative Politics for Japan? First published in Australia’s Neighbours, Fourth Series, No. 88, November 1973– January 1974 TWO THINGS stand out in any survey of Japan over the past twenty years; ultra-rapid economic growth, and political stability under business-oriented conservative governments. Japan’s economic growth is too familiar to Australians to require any documentation here. Her political stability, however, is perhaps less widely recognised since the more frenetic and sensational aspects of Japanese politics have tended to attract more attention from the mass media than the extraordinary stability that has underlain them. For the first time in many years the Japanese economy faces a severe crisis, as a result of the Arab policies on oil supplies and rapid increases in basic raw material costs. The growth rate of around ten per cent per annum was already having to be cut back late in 1973; and were restrictions on oil supplies to continue or to become still tighter, then a zero or even negative growth.rate was widely expected for 1974. Although in its effects on the economy much depended on the duration and severity of the Arab embargo, the crisis graphically illustrated the extreme vulnerability of Japan’s industrial machine to fluctuations in external supplies of oil, upon which she was dependent for some seventy per cent of her energy needs. It was also difficult to envisage a policy which could substantially reduce that dependence, or give cast-iron guarantees of adequate and sustained supplies, in the foreseeable future. If at the time of writing (December 1973) the prospects for the Japanese economy seem unusually bleak, what of the future of Japanese politics? Can the stable conservative rule of recent years survive such drastic economic cutbacks as now seem inevitable, and which had already been preceded by a period of exceptionally severe inflation? Is some alternative government, or more broadly an alternative style of politics, a likely development either as an outcome of the economic crisis or as the cumulative result of long term shifts in the political allegiances of the electorate? The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has been in power continuously since its formation in 1955. Previous to that, post-war governments were formed exclusively of conservative parties except for a few months in 1947–8 when the Socialists participated in a coalition government. No left wing party had ever come near to taking office, even as part of a coalition, before the war. Loss of office by the Liberal Democrats, therefore, would be a much more unprecedented experience for Japan than was the Labor victory in Australia in 1972. It might also be a different kind of experience from the Australian in other ways, as we shall be able to see if we trace the development of the Japanese party system from the late 1950s. The 1958 House of Representatives elections provide a convenient base line. In those

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elections it briefly seemed as though Japanese party politics might be moving towards that pattern sometimes acclaimed by Western political thinkers as being the most desirable, where two parties, one of the moderate right and the other of the moderate left, alternate in power at not too infrequent intervals. The results of the 1958 elections were a walk-over for the two major parties, the LDP and the Japan Socialist Party (JSP), which won 287 and 166 seats respectively out of a total of 467. The only other candidates elected were one Communist, one representative of a minor party, and twelve Independents, most of whom joined the LDP immediately after they were elected. The Socialists were still a long way behind the Liberal Democrats in terms of both votes and seats, but it was possible to project the electoral trends of the 1950s into the future and say that a Socialist Government would come about in due course. The rapid progress of unbanisation, accompanied by a flight of population from the rural areas, seemed to be working in favour of the Socialists, and there appeared a reasonable prospect that party politics would become largely centripetal, with each of the two major parties competing for the middle ground of electoral opinion. Each party would be led by its moderates rather than by its extremists, because the logic of competition for office through the parliamentary system dictated that this was the only way of getting into power. It is important to realise how new the vision of two-party politics was for Japan in the late 1950s. Between 1945 and 1955 (as for much of the pre-war period) there had been fluid multi-party politics, with coalition governments as common as single-party administrations. In 1955 the various separate conservative parties finally managed to sink their differences and amalgamate into a single party, only a month after left and right wing Socialists had done the same. It seemed at the time as though a new dawn had arrived. Japanese party politics, having been painfully reminiscent of Fourth Republic France, was about to ascend to the new heights of a British-style Butskellite paradise. In practice, the vision proved ephemeral, and the prospect of alternating government in a two-party system very quickly receded. The JSP leadership moved to the left instead of to the right, and failed either to maintain the impetus of the Party’s electoral advance or the unity of its ranks. In 1960, a substantial part of its right wing defected, complaining that the policies of the leadership were pro-Communist, and formed the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP). The rump of the JSP subsequently maintained a precarious unity, but it gradually lost ground to the dynamic new Komei Party (political offshoot of an aggressive and well-organized Buddhist sect, the Soka Gakkai), and a little later, to the resurgent Japan Communist Party (JCP). In the late 1950s the Komei Party (KP) had not yet come into existence, while the JCP had been a negligible political force. The Liberal Democrats, too, were faced with grave problems of internal unity and cohesion, and the capacity of their powerful intra-party factions to create havoc for the leadership was amply demonstrated in the Security Treaty revision crisis of 1960, which resulted in the resignation of Kishi as prime minister. Scalapino and Masumi noted in 1962 that Japan had the appearance of a two-party system, but that this was not the reality. In fact it was a ‘one-and-a-half party’ system, the Socialists not being a ‘whole party’ in the sense of being seriously in the running for office. They qualified this by saying that in a sense it could also be regarded as a multi-party system, since much of the real jockeying for power took place not between parties so much as between factions.

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The pre-war statesman Ozaki was quoted to the effect that ‘in Japan we have not parties, but factions’. 1 During the 1960s, there was a good deal of writing by political scientists in this vein, implying that the faction is the primary unit of party politics in Japan, and that parties, though important, are in some ways less significant than factions. Valuable as much of this literature is in analysing the way in which parties and factions operate, some of it tended to miss the point that the Liberal Democrats, whose unity had been as precarious in 1955 as that of the Socialists, were hanging on to power and indeed consolidating it in an impressive fashion. They had succeeded in establishing hegemony over national politics, based on solid majorities in successive elections. The LDP also seemed perceptibly more cohesive than it had been, and Sato, especially in the middle years of his long period as prime minister (1964–72), achieved greater stability between the factions than his predecessors had managed to do. In close liaison with ‘big business’ and a powerful civil service, he and his Party presided over the most rapid period of economic advance Japan had ever known. Thus for the Liberal Democrats, the 1960s were a far cry from the instability and fluidity which had characterised conservative party ranks during the first post-war decade. The same, however, could not be said of the Opposition, which appeared to be growing more and more fragmented. By the beginning of the 1970s there were four antiLDP parties, all of centre or left wing persuasion, and each fighting the others electorally as well as the LDP. Generally speaking, the older, social-democratic parties (the JSP and DSP) were losing ground to the more aggressive and better organized KP and JCP, but since the last two were still fairly small and contesting a rather similar kind of urbanised electorate, no single focus for the Opposition was able to emerge. During the late 1960s and the start of the 1970s it was reasonable to describe party politics in terms of a broadly based hegemonic conservative party confronting a weak and divided left and centre-left Opposition. Since about 1971, the picture has been gradually changing. The LDP has been doing badly in a series of big city elections at local and national level, and the Opposition parties, though still badly divided among themselves, have been showing rather more resilience. A number of issues stemming from the more untoward effects of rapid economic growth (particularly environmental pollution, poor and expensive housing, overcrowded transport, inadequate social services and low infrastructure spending, and accelerating inflation) have tended to counteract the positive electoral effects, from the Liberal Democratic point of view, of rapidly increasing economic prosperity. Faced with a complex set of economic, social and foreign policy problems, many of which have arisen rather suddenly as a result of Japan’s precipitate entry on the world stage as an economic giant, the ruling Party has not seemed as sure in its political touch as it was in the late 1960s, when the problems were not yet as acute. The early popularity of Tanaka after he became prime minister in 1972, brought about partly by his success in achieving a settlement with China, was rapidly dissipated in 1973 by a series of hamfisted political decisions and a worsening economic situation. Divisions between the left and right wings of the LDP became more acute, and dissatisfaction within the Party with Tanaka’s handling of the prime ministership reached quite serious proportions. An attempt to close Party ranks was made in late November 1973, when Tanaka’s main factional rival,

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Fukuda, who was also the leading critic of his policies of high economic growth, accepted the senior Cabinet position of Minister of Finance. This was at a time when the oil crisis had already forced a radical shift in government priorities. Looking beyond temporary and contingent factors to long-term electoral trends, the position of the LDP also appears to be weakening, although the trend is one of glacial slowness. Its proportion of the total vote has fallen slightly at each successive House of Representatives elections since the 1950s, from 57.8 per cent in 1958 to 46.9 per cent in 1972. To these percentages must be added roughly between 2.5 and 5.0 per cent (depending on the election) for Independent candidates who, though they are refused LDP endorsement, become full members of the Party if they are elected, as a handful always are. Thus the 1972 percentage of 46.9 per cent should be raised to a little over 50.0 per cent of the total vote. When translated into seats, the falling percentage of the vote has been accompanied by a slight, though less even, decline in the proportion of total seats held by the LDP. The Party is, however, substantially over-represented in terms of seats when compared with its proportion of the total vote. In the 1972 elections, the LDP obtained 55.2 per cent of the total seats in the House of Representatives (271 out of 491), to which must be added a further 2.6 per cent (13) for successful Independents who on election affiliated with the LDP, making 57.8 per cent. This means that the Party received a comfortable majority of seats on the basis of a bare overall majority of votes. 2 The system works thus in favour of the LDP in part because of what may be called a ‘negative gerrymander’ of electoral boundaries. There has been no positive attempt to gerrymander electorates, but neither has there been any attempt (apart from the addition of 19 metropolitan seats in the mid-1960s) to correct the extreme discrepancies between the size of population of urban and rural electorates whose boundaries were drawn up in the immediate post-war period, despite the massive shifts in population to the cities which have occurred since. At the time of the 1969 House of Representatives election, the number of electors on the roll per one seat 3 in the most populous constituency (Osaka No. 3) was 337,234; in the least populous (Hyogo No. 5), 77,965. The value of a single vote in the rural hinterland of Hyogo prefecture was therefore more than 400 per cent of the value of a vote in metropolitan Osaka! In terms, however, of valid votes cast per one seat, the discrepancy was notably less marked. Thus whereas in Osaka No. 3 only 154,851 voters per one seat cast valid votes (a 45.9 per cent turnout), in Hyogo No. 5 as many as 65,967 did so (an 84.6 per cent voter turnout). This is in line with the generally higher turnout in rural areas, where community solidarity remains strong. The gradual decline in the proportion of the total vote going to the LDP is largely accounted for by a much steeper decline than the average in the most urbanised areas, which because of the ‘negative gerrymander’ are the least well represented in the National Diet. Whereas in the 1958 elections for the House of Representatives the LDP was represented fairly evenly across the various types of constituency, in the 1972 elections the balance of the Party’s support had shifted heavily towards the rural and semi-rural areas, while its share in urban and especially metropolitan areas had substantially declined. This suggests that a rectification of the gerrymander without changing the multimember constituency system (which tends to favour the smaller parties in comparison with a single-member constituency system) would now be highly disadvantageous to the LDP, whereas in 1958 it would not have made so much

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difference. Another factor which has hitherto worked in favour of the Liberal Democrats is the system of multi-member constituencies itself. which, somewhat paradoxically, the LDP has been able to turn to its own advantage by careful electoral tactics. When contesting the 3, 4, or 5-member constituencies into which the country is divided for House of Representatives elections, a major party will be advantaged if it can calculate accurately the number of candidates it can expect to have elected for each constituency, and avoid putting up candidates who will either waste votes by being too popular (in comparison with other LDP candidates) or who are not fairly certain of winning a seat. In the 1972 elections, the LDP was the most successful of the five parties in this regard. As a percentage of total votes cast for the LDP, votes for successful LDP candidates were 84.8 per cent. (Comparable percentages for the other parties were JSP 79.3 per cent, JCP 67.3 per cent, KP 59.4 per cent, DSP 37.8 per cent, Independents 34.0 per cent.) In fact, the successful LDP candidates have managed for the most part to consolidate their positions on the basis of highly organized personal support groups at constituency level, normally financed by the candidate with funds derived from intra-Party factions at the centre. It might be imagined that such a system would make it almost impossible for the LDP to avoid putting up an excess of candidates, with consequent vote wastage and loss of seats. In practice, however, the conservative nature of the electorate is reflected in the enormous advantage possessed by sitting Members, as against either new candidates or candidates attempting to make a comeback. Of the 271 Liberal Democrats elected to the House of Representatives in 1972, 242 (89.3 per cent) were sitting Members. Since a number of the rest would have stepped in to replace those who had either died or retired, it can easily be imagined how difficult it is to break in to the select and self-perpetuating circle of LDP Diet Members from the outside. Indeed, the entrenched position of longestablished LDP Diet Members, backed by cohesive networks of supporters—a persistent phenomenon especially in non-urban areas—may go a considerable way to explaining why the LDP has hitherto managed to retain the support of such a major portion of the electorate. As the LDP has recently lost support in metropolitan areas so those areas have moved into the orbit of the Opposition. Within the Opposition itself, however, there have been major changes. The long-established and ideologically leftist JSP (the only significant Opposition Party in 1958), despite its largely trade union backing, has lost ground heavily in the cities, so that the balance of its electoral support is now slightly more rural than urban. The KP and the JCP have both eaten into the JSP and the LDP support at the metropolitan level, so that in the cities (but so far only in the cities) a fragmented multiparty pattern now prevails. The KP appears to have reached the limits of its advance, but the JCP is still advancing. It is arguable, therefore, that if present trends were to continue, the LDP ought to be able to hold on to its overall majority in the House of Representatives for some considerable time, so long as the present electoral system continued to operate without substantial alteration. Moreover, attempts have been made to alter it in the Liberal Democrats’ favour, and although these attempts were not successful, it should not be assumed that something of the kind will not be tried again. 4 If the Opposition were united into a single party as it was in the late 1950s, the LDP would probably by now be

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facing a formidable electoral challenge. In practice, however, the Opposition is badly divided, with the most dynamic ‘growth’ parties almost confined to those constituencies which are most under-represented in the ‘negative gerrymander’. What is most striking is the current contrast between the stability and conservatism of the countryside and the radicalism and unpredictability of the cities. While the cities remain electorally underrepresented and the personal electoral machines of entrenched LDP Members remain largely intact, the LDP may well retain its majority for some time to come. The electoral impact, however, of an unprecedented economic crisis could be very serious for the ruling Party. Let us then return to our original question: what alternatives to continued LDP rule are conceivable? We shall outline eight theoretical possibilities, although clearly some of them do not have to be taken very seriously, and the list should not be regarded as exhaustive. (1) Left wing coalition. The LDP loses its overall majority of seats in a Lower House (House of Representatives) general election, and a coalition of Opposition parties takes over peacefully and forms a new government. This can be regarded as extremely unlikely because of the acute divisions between the existing Opposition parties, and also between left and right wings of the JSP. If such a government were actually formed, a period of decision-making paralysis, together with considerable political chaos, could reasonably be expected. (2) Centre-left coalition. The Opposition parties mount an effective electoral challenge to the LDP, which nevertheless stops a little short of an outright Opposition majority (compare the Australian Federal elections of 1969). Following the elections, the LDP splits, with some of its more middle-of-the-road factions breaking away and joining the more moderate elements among the Opposition parties to form a new government of the centre-left. This seems rather more likely, and could be more viable than a left wing coalition. The ex-LDP contingent within it would have some experience of office, and their presence would presumably go some way towards reassuring the business world and the civil service, for whom a left wing coalition would be anathema. Nevertheless, it would be likely to face daunting problems in maintaining cohesion and effectiveness. (3) Centre-right coalition. The Liberal Democrats just fail to maintain their majority in the Lower House, but avoid a split and manage to perpetuate their rule by ‘coopting’ one of the smaller and more moderate Opposition parties, most likely the DSP or just conceivably the KP. This would be a quite possible LDP response to the loss of its majority. Whether any Opposition party would be willing to enter a centre-right coalition is another matter. The most promising candidate for such a role at present is the DSP, but it is a declining electoral force, and if the decline continues, it might not have the numbers to ‘rescue’ the LDP in this way, even if it wished to. Such a government would probably not in practice be much different from the present one. (4) Left wing revolution. An extreme left wing government comes to power by revolutionary means. This is out of the question in presently conceivable circumstances. The JCP, which is the most effective political force on the far left at the moment (although whether it should

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now be classified as ‘far left’ is problematical), is pursuing a scrupulously parliamentary and moderate path. Other extreme left wing organizations are too disorganized to count. One may speculate about this as the outcome of a grave crisis, where, say, a left wing coalition were under siege, but for practical purposes it can virtually be ruled out. (5) Rightist coup. A reactionary or counter-revolutionary government of the far right comes to power by extra-constitutional means. This is perhaps a marginally more likely outcome of a crisis situation (particularly of a left wing coalition) than left wing revolution, and it is possible to draw up a scenario resembling the 1973 events in Chile. Nevertheless, it requires a fairly paranoid imagination (and gross exaggeration of the current influence of political extremism in Japan) to take either left wing revolution or rightist coup as serious possibilities in reasonably conceivable circumstances. (6) Right wing radicalism. The balance of power within the LDP shifts radically towards the right, so as to bring about a change in the whole style of politics, without actually going beyond the bounds of constitutionalism, broadly conceived. This is somewhat more likely as an LDP reaction to a situation of crisis in the economy and in foreign policy. It would presumably involve a showdown between the government and the more radical unions and a reopening of contentious issues of defence and foreign policy such as the ‘peace clause’ (article 9) of the Constitution. If past experience is any guide, however, there would probably be a later reaction in favour of consensus politics (7) LDP comeback. A relatively brief period of chaotic government by a left wing or centre-left coalition is followed by a general election in which the LDP is returned to office by a disillusioned electorate. The chances of this are difficult to assess, as it would depend upon too many unknown variables, but it would be quite within the bounds of possibility if, as seems most likely, an alternative government were to make heavy weather of governing. On the other hand, the swing of the pendulum has not operated in Japanese elections to anything like the same extent as it has in Australian or British elections, so that one cannot simply assume that the Japanese electorate, having eventually moved to the left, would easily or suddenly move back again. (8) Split Houses. The Liberal Democrats retain their majority in the House of Representatives, but lose their majority in the House of Councillors, with resultant paralysis, to some degree at least, of governmental and particularly legislative processes. This appears to be the least unlikely of the alternatives so far as the near future is concerned. The LDP is in some danger of losing its House of Councillors majority in the elections for that House scheduled for July 1974. Unlike Members of the House of Representatives, Members of the House of Councillors serve fixed six-year terms, half of their number being renewed every three years. 5 There was a strong swing against the LDP in the 1971 Upper House elections, as a result of which the combined Opposition total was 113 as against a Liberal Democratic total of 132. (There were also 7 Independents.) A loss of ten seats by the LDP from its 1971 total could therefore mean a loss of its overall majority, although the number and allegiance of Independents would then become crucial. Tanaka’s unsuccessful bid in 1973 to restructure the electoral system was probably timed to enable the LDP to cope with a situation of this kind. It must be observed, however, that the Opposition parties will have to do substantially

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better than a mere projection of past trends would indicate, if they are to destroy the LDP majority in the Upper House in 1974. They would then have to coordinate their voting effectively in order to defeat government legislation. If they were able to bring off this double feat, the LDP government could be in serious difficulties, since it requires a two-thirds majority of the House of Representatives (which the LDP currently does not possess) in order to override a rejection by the Upper House of a bill presented to it from the Lower. It may be speculated that a complex process of bargaining between the government and the various Opposition parties would ensue, with the government striving to break the unity of Opposition ranks by ‘buying off’ certain elements within it. These tactics could well have some success if the divisions which have plagued the Opposition are allowed to continue. Thus it is possible that the days of LDP hegemony are numbered, and that some form of alternative politics may emerge, characterised by greater instability and fluidity than has been the norm in recent years. A mere projection of electoral trends does not give this result, at least not in the near future, and as we have seen, there has been an extraordinary stability in the LDP vote. Nevertheless, Japan faces a grave economic crisis which must lead her to some extent into uncharted political seas. Expectations have been rising so rapidly that a major cutback in economic growth is likely to have serious political repercussions. The economy is in need of substantial restructuring to cope with the changing circumstances of the mid-1970s. The LDP has faltered under Tanaka. It would, however, be unwise to underestimate the staying power of the LDP and its backers. Despite their faults and failures, they are tough, experienced and flexible people. They also have ample resources. The Opposition taken as a whole is in much worse disarray than they are. Alternative politics for Japan may not arrive so quickly as some believe.

NOTES 1. Robert A.Scalapino and J.Masuini, Parties and Politics in Contemporary Japan. Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1962. 2. While the LDP obtained 271 seats, the JSP won 118, the JCP 38, the KP 29, the DSP 19, Independents 14, and minor parties 2. 3. Each electorate in the House of Representatives contains 3, 4, or 5 seats. Each elector who chooses to vote (voting is not compulsory) writes the name of a single candidate of his choice (who must be standing for election in that constituency) on his ballot paper. 4. In April 1972 the Prime Minister attempted to gain Diet approval for legislation substituting a combination of single member constituencies with first-past-the-post voting, and some measure of proportional representation. The bill had to be withdrawn in the face of bitter and concerted attacks from the Opposition parties, which boycotted Diet sessions for a considerable period. 5. There are 252 Members of the House of Councillors. Of these 100 (50 every three years) are elected from a ‘national’ constituency, the country as a whole being treated as a single constituency. A further 152 (approximately 76 every three years) are elected from ‘prefectural’ constituencies, each prefecture electing from two to

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eight Members in all. The prefectural constituencies, like the constituencies of the House of Representatives, suffer from an uncorrected or ‘negative’ gerrymander.

25 Is Japan Becoming Harder to Govern?* First published in I.J.Catanach (ed.), Japanese History and Politics; NZASIA Occasional Papers, Vol. 4, 1980 ‘The English sickness may not be contagious; but its virus may well be present in other bodies politick.’ 1

THE TERM ‘English sickness’ (Eikoku byō) is widely known and used in Japan rather as the devil was used in early Victorian England to bring misbehaving children into line with the wishes of their parents. The implication is that Great Britain (and perhaps certain other countries too) 2 are exhibiting pathological symptons such as collective greed, reluctance to work hard, excessive egalitarianism, and a declining willingness to defer to established authority. Western writers in recent years have alternated between euphoria and pessimism abouth the health of the Japanese polity, but up to the oil crisis of 1973–4 the sanguine tended to predominate over the doubters and doommongers. 3 Not surprisingly, the past four years have seen a dampening of euphoria about the prospects for Japan, but the revised assessments which have emerged have in many cases been measured, sober and not without a touch of optimism, rather than deeply pessimistic. The best-selling allegorical novel Nihon no chimbotsu (The Sinking of Japan) was noted, but not taken seriously, in the West. Most writers assumed, with good reason as it turned out, that the Japanese economy would not only survive the massive increase in price it now had to pay for its essential supplies of energy, but would live to fight many another battle in world markets. Indeed there was a certain comfort to be derived from the fact that the oil crisis had brought Japan down a peg, and that Japan was facing problems rather similar to those being experienced in Western countries. The editors of a massive assessment of the Japanese economy recently published by The Brookings Institution in Washington, put it this way: ‘The economy, made confident by a long period of extremely rapid, selfsustaining growth and newly achieved affluence, has been chastened by the oil crisis and by the difficulty in combating inflation without depres * Originally prepared for presentation at the Second New Zealand Conference on Asian Studies, Christchurch 11–14 May 1977. Postscripts dated 2 May 1980 and 28 May 1980 are appended after the notes.

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sion, and perhaps even by pollution. But Japan’s problems are indeed the problems of all affluent, highly industrialized nations.’ 4 Later they concluded: ‘…Thus, rapid economic growth is the consequence not of some mysterious oriental secret, but of a combination of favorable internal and external circumstances and supportive public policy. What is the lesson? We need not live in awe or fear of Japan; given the right circumstances, we (and others) could do as well relative to our own potential.’ 5 The economists have certainly progressed further than the political scientists in the task of placing Japan in a comparative context. Possibly this says something about the comparative sophistication of economics and political science as disciplines, but it is noteworthy that a book on the Japanese economy by a European economist can attain a degree of depth which would be hard to match among political scientists, presumably because of the impressive analytical tools which he brings to bear and which are relevant to the study of any advanced economy. 6 If Japan’s economic problems are similar to those of other ‘affluent, highly industrialized nations’, then it would not be very surprising if her political problems bore similar comparison. At the present time practically all the industrialized nations of the non-Communist world are faced with a common set of economic problems which can be expected to react on each of them—though to a greater or lesser degree and taking into account differences of political institutions, political culture and so on—in ways which must be closely comparable. Now, despite the great influence of the United States on Japanese political institutions and political thinking, and although the bulk of non-Japanese political scientists specializing in Japanese politics are American, 7 the American model of politics is not necessarily the most appropriate to compare with that of Japan. Apart from rather imponderable factors, for instance the great differences in geographic and economic size, and the fact that Japan is an ‘old’ country whereas the United States is a relatively ‘new’ one, two specific institutional dissimilarities stand out. One is that American federalism contrasts strongly with the unitary nature of the Japanese State and its traditions. The other, and more important, is that whereas the American Executive and Legislature are chosen in separate elections, the Japanese system may be seen as being based on the ‘Westminster model’, whereby the Cabinet is chosen by Parliament (in practice, by the party or parties commanding a majority of parliamentary seats), and is responsible to Parliament and through it to the electorate. Although the term ‘Westminster model’ may oversimplify and to some extent distort the actual processes of Japanese politics since the formation of the Liberal Democratic Party in 1955, the Japanese system is clearly closer to this model than to that of the United States. 8

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For the student of Japanese politics, therefore, it is of great interest that the original home of the ‘Westminster model’ should also now be regarded as the home of the ‘English sickness’. Japan’s apparent immunity to such viral infection has now been tested through the cold blasts of the oil crisis, and despite severe early symptoms the patient’s capacity to resist has proved adequate, at least for the time being. But what of the long-term prognosis? It is at least arguable that a necessary part of the immunity has been the ability of the existing power structure to remain intact. Even without subscribing to the more extreme versions of ‘power elite’ or ‘Japan Incorporated’ models of Japanese politics, 9 it is easy to see that the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has constituted the linchpin of this power structure. This is not to say that a new concatenation of forces replacing the LDP would necessarily be incapable of performing essentially the same set of tasks, but such a prospect leaves many unanswered questions and the transition would no doubt be unsettling. In the aftermath of the Lockheed scandals of 1976 and the defection of six LDP Diet Members in June 1976 to form the New Liberal Club, the LDP narrowly avoided losing its simple majority of seats at the House of Representatives elections of December 1976. 10 A loss of two seats would deprive the LDP of its majority over all other parties and Independents in the House of Councillors elections to be held in June or July 1977. Although the House of Councillors only has limited powers and the opposing groups are divided among themselves, a defeat in those elections would significantly weaken the LDP politically, particularly as it might well be followed by further defections from its ranks. The LDP itself appears to be in no doubt about the seriousness of its reverse in December 1976. The ‘Action Policy’ prepared for the annual Party Congress of January 1977, speaks of it in the following terms: ‘The reverse which we suffered in last year’s general elections not only threatens the existence of our Party, but may well produce a crisis so serious as to place in jeopardy the very continuance of a system of politics based on the principle of freedom. (…jiyūshugi taisei no sonzoku sura yūryo sareru hodo no jūdai na kiki wo mukaeru ni itatta.)’ 11 It is perhaps characteristic of politicians faced with defeat that they seek to identify their own continuance in office with the integrity of the system, but it is at least arguable that the above statement is a reasonable forecast of the possible consequences of the LDP losing office. This is not simply because of the unprecedented nature of such an event, 12 and the difficulties likely to arise in finding an alternative coalition sufficiently capable of sinking its internal difficulties to form a reasonably stable government (though the second problem is potentially serious), but because of changes in the nature of the problems confronting governments of industrial countries in the second half of the 1970s. Indeed, the continuance in office of the LDP would of itself be no guarantee that such problems would be successfully surmounted. In such matters as internal

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party organisation, procedures for selecting leaders, factional conflict, corruption arid failure to effect electoral reform, the LDP has demonstrated a chronic inability to achieve desired change. It is arguable that the system of personal connections made manifest in factionalism, personal support groups, gerontocracy, 13 large-scale monetary contributions from business, and expensive elections, is related to Japanese social norms and so should not be judged according to inappropriate Western criteria. Nevertheless, partly no doubt because of vigorous media exposure, there is ample evidence that the practices mentioned above are coming to cause the Party both internal and external problems. Whatever the electoral outcome, therefore, the capacity of governments 14 to cope with difficult issues in the next few years may well be reduced, at just the time when the gamut of issues facing governments are becoming more and more complex. It is the probability that a weakening of political direction will coincide with a worsening of political problems that prompts a search for comparisons in countries where possibly similar political situations have been encountered at an earlier stage. In a fascinating booklet published in 1976 by the BBC, entitled Why is Britain becoming harder to govern?, 15 two political scientists (one non-Marxist and one Marxist), two Members of Parliament (one Conservative and one Labour), and a financial journalist, 16 each give their independent answer to the question asked in the book’s title. In his brief introduction to the collection the editor, Anthony King, argues that while in the 1960s people were gradually coming to realise that Britain’s economy was not growing fast enough, nobody really questioned the future of her political institutions. ‘Britain’, he writes, ‘would remain in the future what she had been in the past—a tolerant, liberal democracy’. But: ‘Suddenly, in the mid-1970s, we are not so sure. We had got used to the crisis in our economy. Now we begin to wonder whether we are not also confronted with a crisis in our polity. Laws enacted by Parliament are not obeyed by the people. Elected Governments find that they have to share their power with unelected bodies like the Trades Union Congress and the Confederation of British Industry. Governments come and go with increasing frequency. Events are seemingly beyond their control. And the signs multiply of popular restlessness. Turnout at general elections has declined sharply since the early 1950s. So has support for both of the two major political parties. Men and women who have grievances, whether they be trade unionists or nursing sisters or dairy farmers, are far readier than they were a generation ago to take their grievances into the streets. Politically as well as economically, we in Britain can feel the ground shifting, ever so slightly, under our feet.’ 17

If we compare this description of an incipient or creeping political crisis in

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Britain with the current situation in Japanese politics, there are important differences, but also some striking similarities. A difference of obvious significance is that in Japan laws are still generally obeyed. The author of a comparative study of police behaviour in Japan and the United States concludes that Japan has ‘a crime rate that is low and declining. Streets are safe and narcotics addiction infinitessimal. Law enforcement is conducted virtually without stress. Policemen are proud rather than defensive. They perceive the public as supportive, the political environment benign.’ 18 It is true that outside areas of activity most clearly conjured up by the word ‘crime’, standards can be more lax. Examples that most easily come to mind are the ‘water trades’ (nightclubs and the like), which are apt to have connections with traditional-style gangs (bōryokudan), and various dubious or illegal activities in the commercial world, which connect with politics, as revealed dramatically in the Lockheed scandals. Student demonstrations and violence peaked in the late 1960s, and then declined as a mass phenomenon, although gang warfare and terrorism continue among a pathological fringe, some of whose activities take place outside Japan. 19 There are many violations, detected and undetected, of the election law. 20 Secondly, it has been the case for a long time in Japan that elected governments share some at least of their power with unelected bodies. If close consultation with industry on economic policy is a case of sharing power, then this has been the norm in Japan rather than the exception. Less widely recognised perhaps but still of great practical importance is the fact that agricultural interest groups have had a long-term effect on Government priorities, partly because a high proportion of LDP Diet Members sit for rural constituencies. 21 It is not yet the case that the trade union federations share in power in the same sense, but their impact in the spring struggles following the oil crisis was dramatic. If in Britain governments ‘come and go with increasing frequency’, this is not so in Japan in the British sense of parties alternating in power. Japan has, however, now had four prime ministers over the period from 1972 to 1977, and none of the transitions has been smooth. Moreover, the prospect is looming of the LDP losing its majority without any credible alternative to which it can hand over power. Events are not out of control, indeed Government and industry since the oil crisis have handled the momentous economic problems it produced with surprising effectiveness, but the tendency is for the economic climate to become more complex rather than less. Most recently, for instance, the Japanese fishing industry is under serious threat from the imposition of 200 mile fishing limits by various countries, an issue which has brought to crisis point Japan’s relations with the USSR. This has coincided with a campaign of mounting belligerence from Western European governments and business leaders against the imbalance of trade in Japan’s favour. Turnout at general elections has not substantially declined in the countryside, where it remains high, but one of the problems constantly lamented by political parties is that more than a third of big city voters do not vote. 22 Since the

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balance of electorates is heavily weighted in favour of the countryside because of totally inadequate provisions for electoral redistribution, this represents a larger number of city electors failing to vote than the figures suggest at first sight, even though the average turnout for the whole nation has remained fairly steady at a little over seventy per cent since the early fifties. Support for the two major political parties has dramatically declined, though the decline has followed a different pattern from that in Great Britain. The LDP proportion of the total vote has fallen steadily from one election to the next. In the first election which it fought as a united party, that of 1958, it obtained 57.8 per cent of the total vote, though this itself was a decline from the combined figure of 66.1 per cent polled by the then divided conservative parties in 1952. In December 1976 the proportion had fallen to 41.8 per cent (though this figure needed to be supplemented slightly to account for pro-LDP Independents). 23 Even more striking losses were suffered by Japan’s second Party, the Japan Socialist Party (JSP). The JSP polled 32.9 per cent of the total vote in 1958 but in 1976 it polled only 20.7 per cent of the vote. 24 Both major parties were aided (the LDP substantially, the JSP slightly) by the electoral system. 25 The readiness of people with a grievance to take to the streets is nothing new in postwar Japan as King argues that it is in Britain. The 1950s and 1960s were the heyday of mass demonstrations, in which labour unionists and students were major participants, and the American alliance, the Constitution, education and the rights of workers in the public sector were principal issues. The early 1970s saw the ‘citizens movements’ come into fashion, with ‘quality of life’ issues such as housing conditions and environmental pollution achieving prominence. The methods used by these movements were quite varied, and included both the use of ‘normal channels’ and more imaginative ways of putting pressure on authorities. The economic recession since the oil crisis has to some extent taken the steam out of environmentalism, for the simple reason that an economy working at less than full potential capacity puts less strain on the environment and on living conditions than an economy that is going full steam ahead. Nevertheless, citizens’ movements are far from dead. 26 While citizens’ movements are frequently hailed as evidence of the stirring of democratic vigour in the Japanese polity, they are also sometimes disparaged as likely to be too weak and dispersed to challenge effectively Japan’s principal centres of economic and political power, whether by fair means or foul. 27 It is arguable, however, that both the ‘ideological’ issues of the 1950s and 1960s, and the’ quality of life’ issues of the early 1970s, were the product of economic growth. Environmentalism was in the most obvious sense a reaction to the unpleasant and dangerous consequences of uncontrolled growth, including its neglect of human values. But the prominence of what I have called (for the lack of a better term) ‘ideological’ issues up to about 1970 was also a product of rapid growth in the sense that many if not most sections of the workforce were experiencing steady increases in their take-home pay. It may seem paradoxical to explain the salience of ‘ideological’ issues by reference to increasing affluence. Indeed it was the discovery in the late 1950s that affluence might take

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the edge off the distributional conflicts which flourish in circumstances of scarcity, that led to the ‘end of ideology’ arguments, in vogue for a time both in the West and in Japan. It is sometimes forgotten that before the apparent permanence of the jimmu būmu 28 became etched into the national consciousness, the JSP was vitally concerned with issues of distribution, and was prepared to fight hard for what they regarded as a more just order in which the industrial worker would get his rightful share. It is true that the JSP went through much travail during the late 1940s and early 1950s, and that the peace settlement in particular was disruptive of Party unity. 29 But this too could be seen, not without realism at the time, as a matter of momentous urgency. It did not require too much imagination in 1951 (no matter what it may look like with hindsight) to believe that the wages and conditions of workers as well as their recently won freedoms, were imminently and gravely threatened by a combination of reactionary Japanese politicians 30 and Americans who were backing them because of a relentless determination to push back Communism. The JSP at that period may have been confused and divided, but it was prepared to take a vigorous stand on real issues, and was rewarded for its pains by increasing voter support. In a new version of the ‘end of ideology’ argument, three Japanese writers in a joint article make the point that the LDP under Ikeda quickly learned from the experience of the Security Treaty revision crisis of 1960 to avoid sterile confrontations with the Opposition over ‘ideological’ issues, and instead embarked upon a highly creative (with deliberate paradox, they use the word ‘progressive’, or kakushinshugiteki) path of massive economic and social reform. The JSP, on the other hand, in their opinion failed to learn from the experience, and so conceded the initiative to the LDP, ultimately with disastrous results for themselves. 31 This is a reasonable analysis as far as it goes, but it does not explain why the LDP should have reacted ‘creatively’ whereas the JSP acted with such a singular lack of creativity. Any attempt to explain such a complex history by a single factor will oversimplify, but the coincidence of national economic takeoff, a ‘plateauing out’ of JSP electoral improvement, and the failure of attempts by Eda and others to persuade the Party to jettison sterile dogmas, is so striking that it is tempting to seek an overarching explanation. What I wish to argue is that the spectacular success of Japanese industry in expanding the national cake took the pressure off the JSP over a crucial period, and allowed it to become complacent, secure in the knowledge that the sections of the workforce that it principally stood for—the permanent workers in the large firms and the public sector—were well provided for and could look forward to a secure and prosperous future. What had been the raison d’être of Japanese Socialism in the prewar and immediate postwar periods had been struggle: struggle for even minimally decent standards of living for a depressed yet productive segment of the community, and struggle for basic rights and freedoms, including the right to organise in labour unions. After the war, these rights and freedoms were granted by the American Occupation, but material conditions were still grim and the

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later stages of the Occupation as well as its immediate aftermath gave grounds for fearing that even the rights and freedoms were in jeopardy. By the late 1950s the picture was changing, and was to change even more spectacularly in the decade to come. In a sense the radical JSP was being ‘bought off’ by Industry and Government. But whereas the Democratic Socialists, who had quit the JSP in 1960 because of the ‘pro-Communism’ of the JSP leadership, were inclined to tread a path of compromise with the new economic order, the JSP, for the very reason that its supporters were getting steadily richer, abandoned struggle on bread and butter issues, not for compromise with the system like the DSP, but for struggle in pursuit of goals which, if not illusory, were at least secondary in the minds of the electorate. Essentially the JSP became esoteric, but remained a major Party (through a Party in decline) because it still possessed a power base. Japan has now entered an economic and political situation which is sharply different from the euphoria of the 1960s or even of the period in the early 1970s when the challenge of beating pollution seemed to create a new national goal for a nation that was still buoyant and self-confident. The emphasis now is much more on international resource dependence and dependence on the world economy as a whole. This is a more sobering situation at a time when expectations have been raised by a long period of rapid growth, when the society—especially urban society—is becoming more pluralistic, sophisticated, and conceivably individualistic, and when political authority, which was for a period was exceptionally strong, is becoming perceptibly weaker and could perhaps become catastrophically weaker. There are many differences between Great Britain and Japan. One is that the Japanese economy has proved itself to be more adaptable and has had wellknown successes. Another is that the gap between personal and group expectations and national performance which has proved so difficult to deal with in Britain is as yet far less of a problem in Japan. The different structures of the union movements of the two countries may well be a crucial difference. Social norms in the two countries are different, and this has all sorts of material consequences. On the other hand, Japan has not yet faced, but may have to face before long, a situation where a government long used to office is replaced by a government having a partially or completely different composition, whose natural expectation is to perform differently (hopefully better) than the government it replaces. This problem is often understood as one of ideological differences: a new government is to be contrasted with the old because it professes a contrasting set of political principles—typically a left-right contrast. Many Liberal Democrats in Japan seem to have a well-developed sense of the ideological differences which divide them from the parties of the Opposition. If, however, the LDP should lose control of Government, all the signs point to its being replaced by a coalition formed from relatively moderate centre parties, including perhaps ones that would have broken away from the LDP itself. A government including Communists or left Socialists seems remote at present.

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The practical differences of approach and policy between the present Government of Mr Fukuda (generally regarded as a right of centre politician) and a hypothetical government of the centre, could well in the ultimate outcome be more cosmetic than substantial. What might make such a transition problematical in the case of Japan is a combination of inexperience in office, difficulties in maintaining the coalition intact and difficulties in agreeing on policy. Even so, continuity and assurance would no doubt be provided by the public service, which has a tradition of policy initiative as well a policy implementation. In any case new governments without experience generally learn their tasks fairly quickly, even though they may make mistakes in the process. Especially in the case of Japan, we should not confuse the constant politicking that accompanies the attainment and retention of office with failure to carry out effective policies, even though there may be some relationship between the two. During its long tenure of office the LDP has experienced practically unceasing internal conflict between well organised factions and pressure groups, and yet for at least part of that time the administrations which the Party led were effective and imaginative in basic economic policy. The problems to which the authors of Why is Britain Becoming Harder to Govern? address themselves are different from these. Though the authors do not agree on their diagnoses or prescriptions, most of them keep returning to a set of problems which can be reduced to a set of five overlapping categories: expectations; compexity; authority; group emulation; and intractability. Let us take these briefly one by one: (1) Expectations Several of the writers argue that expectations, both for rising living standards, and also particularly what is expected of government, have greatly increased. As Anthony King puts it: ‘Once upon a time, then, man looked to God to order the world. Then he looked to market. Now he looks to the government. The differences are important. God was irremoveable, immutable. The market could be removed or mutated but only, it was thought, at a very high price. Government, by contrast, is removeable, mutable—and corporeal. One blames not ‘Him’ or ‘it’ but ‘them’. The Mass has given way to the general election, which is (to coin a phrase) a whole new ball game’. 32 (2) Complexity Partly as a result of the expectations placed upon governments, they are grossly overloaded by the complexity of the tasks that they are expected to perform. This is seen as reflecting the extension of public responsibility into many fields where previously government authority had little or no role to play. As a consequence, decisions have become fantastically interdependent, which reduces the manoeuvrability of governments, and makes them weaker in the face of harder tasks.

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(3) Authority Interestingly enough, both St John-Stevas (a Conservative MP), and Mackintosh (a Labour MP) appear to be at one in deploring what they see as a general weakening both of the acceptance of authority and a sense of community. St John-Stevas attributes this to the decline in religious belief, while Mackintosh puts it down more vaguely to ‘a decline in the sense of common purpose among the various sections of the society’. 33 Mackintosh also thinks that confusion over Parliament’s role and the rise of major pressure groups has gravely weakened the authority of Parliament. (4) Group emulation Samuel Brittan, a financial journalist, believes that group emulation, or ‘competitive pluralism’ is at the root of much of the problem and that given the institution of competitive party politics, rival contenders for office will indulge in outbidding of their rivals. More important, however, than what parties do, is what he calls the ‘rivalry of coercive groups’, constantly pursuing relative equality, relative, that is, to other groups taken as a yardstick. Thus there is a ‘lack of budget restraint among voters’. 34 (5) Intractability This is the principal argument of David Coates, who adopts the Marxist standpoint that Britain is becoming harder to govern because of a crisis of world capitalism. The problem is therefore basically intractable, at least until the system of capitalism is changed. In a sense, this argument is a means of dismissing all or most of the arguments used by the other writers in the book, 35 since if nothing but abolishing the capitalist system will work, there is little point in complaining about a reluctance to defer to authority, or about union pressure for wage increases which the country ‘cannot afford’. On the other hand, if one speaks in terms of a crisis in the world economy, then it may be the case that individual polities, however they perform, will continue to face intractable difficulties until that crisis has passed, if indeed it will pass. King argues that a factor external to Britain, OPEC, exercises more power than an internal factor, the trade union movement. 36 Depending on the size and nature of their economies, different countries differ in the degree to which they are vulnerable to the forces of ‘the world economy’. Only the very biggest economy, that of the United States, can expect plausibly to have more effect on the world economy than the world economy has upon it. Japan is an important element in the world economy, but is also highly dependent upon it. In the words of Isaiah Frank: Of all the industrial countries, Japan has the greatest stake in a smoothly functioning international economic system subject to agreed norms and rules. Its dependence on foreigners for the necessities of life is greater than that of any other major industrial country. 37

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The sense of national economic vulnerability engendered by this situation of dependence leads to attempts to insulate the economy from external dependence, by such costly methods as seeking to increase the level of self-sufficiency in foodstuffs. The Government’s programme of developing nuclear sources of energy, despite the multifarious problems it involves, is similarly motivated. In so far as current European allegations are correct that imports of consumer goods from Europe are artificially restricted by unnecessary regulations and obstacles, a similar motivation is likely to be at work. A stable international economic environment would, as Frank suggests, certainly ease the burdens on Japanese political and economic decision-makers, and perhaps also assist other nations having major trading relationships with Japan. Whether anything of the kind will be achieved, however, in the near future, is uncertain. Meanwhile, as suggested above, a polity which for a long time appeared relatively free of the kinds of systemic problem affecting Great Britain can look forward to a period of substantial political change in which government capacities and authority may become weaker. A number of implications for the future of Japanese politics may be discovered in the five problems for Britain listed above. A change of Government to a centre coalition, if effected smoothly, may make little difference to the way policies are decided and implemented, and indeed may result in a process of elite circulation of a basically healthy kind. On the other hand, if one prefers to look on the dark side, it could raise expectations and then either fail to deliver, in which case the resultant popular disillusionment might have unfortunate consequences, or else engage in the politics of ‘outbidding’ in a fashion that would invite political, not merely economic, inflation. When compared to Great Britain the social welfare functions of government, as well as public enterprise, are much less developed. Private welfare schemes— often administered by employers for their employees—predominate. Although governments to date have been slow to enter this field of public welfare on the scale that is common in European countries, the pressure on a new government to move further in that direction would be considerable. On the other hand the Japanese public service is no stranger to playing a major role in economic affairs. Whether political developments in the next few years will result in the serious overloading of government, so that political leaders and their public servants are hamstrung by the very complexity and interdependence of the decisions they have to make, is a matter for further research. Whether authority in general has declined in Japan is a difficult question to answer. Japanese often say that is has. Foreigners, on the other hand, are more likely to be impressed by the strength of authority relationships, and, more generally, of community relationships in Japan when compared with the situation in their own societies. The continued integrity of the family is also remarked upon, although the nature of family life is far from static. So far as attitudes to political authority are concerned, the picture may be rather different. It is generally believed that politicians are not held in high esteem, though government ministries and their officials are looked up to. The individual’s

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sense of personal efficacy in the political arena has not been high. 38 The Lockheed scandal has clearly not helped the image of politicians. The politics of outbidding has been fairly normal among the Opposition parties because of their distance from power. Whether a taste of power would be likely to deter outbidding would depend on unpredictable circumstances. 39 On the more important question of whether rival pressure groups would begin to usurp the power of established organs of the polity, one may well be inclined to answer that there have been elements of this in Japanese politics for a long time, but that there has been an inequality of influence, with the power of the big industrial corporations being disproportionate to that of other groups. How far a change of government would entail a serious diminution of the influence of the big corporations relative to other pressure groups including labour unions, would also depend on many now unknown factors, but their influence may not extend quite so far as is often believed outside Japan. What makes the next few years in Japanese politics so difficult to predict is that Japan is now coming to face for the first time a set of problems which have elements in common with problems faced by other advanced countries for some years. In a ‘worst case’ analysis, the consequences might be chronic and severe popular alienation from the system and mounting unrest with unpredictable consequences. That seems unlikely, at least in the short to medium term. The curbing of excessive power—whether economic or political—by the gradual development of broader and more balanced participation in Japanese politics is in principle a welcome development, and a smooth transition of power from one party or parties to another party or parties is a logical consequence of it. Nevertheless, the fact that several advanced industrial democracies have recently been faced with political dilemmas of a new and intractable kind suggests that Japan too may not be entirely immune to the ‘English sickness’. NOTES 1. Anthony King (ed.), Why is Britain becoming harder to govern? London, British Broadcasting Corporation, 1976, pp. 141–2. 2. The term ‘Australian sickness’ (Osutorariya byo) is not unknown to Japanese businessmen, journalists and others having a passing acquaintance with that nation. 3. The most famous (and in some ways most misleading) ‘optimist’ was Herman Kahn, in The Emerging Japanese Superstate, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1973. See also numerous issues of the London Economist, notably those of 1 and 8 September 1962, 28 November 1964, 27 May and 3 June 1967, and 31 March 1973. The optimism of that journal survived the oil crisis: see its issue of 4 January 1975. A much more cautious, but not notably perceptive, work was Z.Brzezinski, The Fragile Blossom: Crisis and Change in Japan, New York, Harper and Row, 1972. 4. Hugh Patrick and Henry Rosovsky (eds.), Asia’s New Giant: How the Japanese Economy Works. Washington, D.C., The Brookings Institution,

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1976, p. 61. 5. Ibid., p. 920. 6. I am thinking of Andrea Boltho, The Japanese Economy 1953–1973, London, Oxford University Press, 1975. 7. The Newsletter of Japanese Politics, vol. VII (March 1976), lists 204 names of specialists in the field. Of these 13 (6.4%) are resident elsewhere than in the United States or Japan. Academic writing on Japanese politics in English with what appeared to be a substantial comparative focus amounted to 8 items of completed research out of 64 listed in The Newsletter, vol. V, 20 out of 106 in vol. VI, and 6 out of 72 in vol. VII. 8. With factors such as these in mind, the present writer is involved in the teaching of a course to second and third year political science students in which Japanese politics is compared with the politics of Western Europe, specifically France, West Germany and Italy. 9. For a well-argued attack on such theories see Philip A.Trezise with the collaboration of Yukio Suzuki, ‘Politics, Government, and Economic Growth in Japan’, in Patrick and Rosovsky (eds.), Asia’s New Giant, pp. 753–811. The book’s editors, in their final summing up, appear to think that the Trezise/Suzuki argument has been taken too far. Pp. 921–2. 10. At the elections the LDP actually lost its simple majority, but a number of successful Independents subsequently joined the LDP, so that it ended up with 260 out of the 511 seats. The New Liberal Club won 18 seats. Yomiuri Shimbun, 29 December 1976. 11. Jiyūminshutō hōkoku iinkai, Shōwa gojūni nen, waga tō no honnen no hōshin—tōin hikkei no handobukku (1977, Our Party’s Policy for this Year—a Handbook for Party Members), Tokyo, February 1977, p. 33. 12. In May 1977 the LDP had been continuously in power for more than 21 years, but for over 27 years if the period of governments formed by conservative coalitions before 1955 is also counted. In Australia the Liberal and Country Party coalition was continuously in office for 23 years (from 1949 until 1972) and even Great Britain, with its traditions of alternating two-party politics, was under Conservative administration between 1931 and 1945 (counting a period of ‘national’ government and the wartime when general elections were not held), and again between 1951 and 1964. In Spain a much more far-reaching transition—that from dictatorship to politics based on free electoral competition—is now close to completion following a period of dictatorship lasting 40 years. 13. In the December 1976 Lower House elections, the following numbers of LDP candidates were elected to the Diet in the various age groups: 20–29

1

30–39

17

40–49

45

50–59

86

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60+

108

Asahi Shimbun, 7 December 1976. One reason for the election of so many elderly candidates is that once a Diet Member is well established in a constituency (especially a rural constituency), his own personal support network, provided he continues to ‘look after’ it, will ensure his reelection time after time. 14. ‘Governments’ here should be interpreted as including the public service, which is generally recognised to have in Japan a particularly powerful role to play in decision-making. No systematic attempt will be made in this paper to forecast its future. 15. See footnote 1. 16. Respectively Anthony King, David Coates, Norman St John-Stevas, John Mackintosh and Samuel Brittan. 17. Why is Britain becoming harder to govern?, p. 6. 18. David H.Bayley, Forces of Order: Police Behavior in Japan and the United States. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, University of California Press, 1976, p. 12. He cites the following comparative crime statistics: in 1973 the US had 4½ times as many murders per person than Japan, 5 times as many rapes, 105 times more robberies (taking property with force or threat of force). The extreme discrepancy in the last item he explains by the almost total absence of firearms in Japan. Ibid., pp. 5–6. 19. An interesting study of student radicals is Ellis Krauss, Japanese Radicals Revisited: Student Protest in Postwar Japan, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, University of California Press, 1974. 20. For an assessment of the election law and the way in which it prohibits reasonable as well as unreasonable forms of campaigning, see Gerald Curtis, Electioneering Japanese Style, New York, Columbia University Press, 1971. 21. Lately, however, the balance has apparently begun to shift slightly. The Asahi makes the following breakdown of LDP seats in the 1972 and 1976 Lower House elections: Metropolitan

Urban

Semi-urban

Non-urban

1972

28

69

110

64

1976

29

64

100

56

(It should be noted that between the two elections 20 extra seats were added in big city areas.) In 1976, out of the 25 ‘non-urban’ constituencies, the LDP still polled over fifty per cent of the votes in 17. Asahi Shimbun, 7 December 1976. 22. The average voting turnout in the December 1976 Lower House elections was:

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Metropolitan

61.62%

Urban

71.87% National average 73.45%

Semi-urban

79.72%

Non-urban

80.69%

Calculated from Asahi Shimbun, 7 December 1976.

23. From 57.8% of the total vote in 1958, the LDP declined to 57.6% (1960), 54.7% (1963), 48.8 (1967), 47.6% (1969), 46.8% (1972), 41.8% (1976). It is interesting that the two biggest percentage losses of votes occurred between the 1972 and 1976 elections (5.0%). The latter election in each case saw the appearance for the first time of a new and dynamic party: in 1967 the Kōmeitō, and in 1976 the New Liberal Club. The LDP’s most striking electoral failures have been in areas where population is most concentrated. In the 9 prefectures where more than two million votes were cast in December 1976, the LDP recorded the following results (in order of total votes cast); LDP % of vote

LDP % of seats

Tokyo

29.9

32.5

Osaka

25.8

30.8

Kanagawa

15.4

15.8

Hokkaidō

37.4

40.9

Aichi

40.5

36.4

Hyōgo

32.8

40.0

Saitama

36.2

46.7

Fukuoka

32.3

42.1

Chiba

43.1

50.0

From Asahi Shimbun, 7 December 1976.

24. From 32.9% of the total vote in 1958, the JSP declined as follows: 27.6% (1960), 29.0% (1963), 27.9% (1967), 21.4% (1969), 21.9% (1972), 20.7% (1976). The Party’s biggest defeats were in the 1960 election, which was preceded by a split in the Party and formation of the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP) and in the 1969 election, when both the Kōmeitō and the Japan Communist Party (JCP) were making rapid advances at JSP expense, and the JSP had too many candidates. 25. % of seats minus % of votes (electoral advantage)

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LDP

JSP

1958

3.7

2.6

1960

5.8

3.4

1963

5.9

1.8

1967

8.2

0.9

1969

11.6

−2.9

1972

8.4

1.1

1976

6.9

3.4

Calculated from Asahi Nenkan, 1973, p. 247, and Asahi Shimbun, 7 December 1976.

26. See Margaret A.McKean, ‘Pollution and Policymaking’, in T.J.Pempel (ed.), Policymaking in Contemporary Japan, Cornell University Press, 1977. 27. For a comparative study of pollution politics, see Cynthia H.Enloe, The Politics of Pollution in a Comparative Perspective, New York, David McKay, 1975, Chapter 7, ‘Pollution Politics in Japan’. For a balanced and perceptive view of the political significance of Japanese anti-pollution movements, see Savitri Vishwanathan, ‘Citizens Movements in Japan’, paper presented to the 30th International Congress of Human Sciences in Asia and North Africa, Mexico City, August 1976. 28. The boom of the late 1950s, named after the first Emperor. 29. The JSP split in two in 1951 over the San Francisco Peacy Treaty, and more particularly, over the simultaneously concluded security pact with the United States, which bound Japan into the American security system in East Asia. 30. A recent article in Newsweek quotes Dr Okita Saburō, an eminent economist and advisor to successive Liberal Democratic administrations, who is now standing for the New Liberal Club in the 1977 House of Councillors elections, as having once resigned a government position because of remarks by the Prime Minister, Yoshida, in which he spoke disparagingly of trade unions. Newsweek, 25 April 1977, pp. 12–13. 31. Satō Seisaburō, Kumon Shumpei, and Murakami Yasusuke, ‘Datsu “hokaku” jidai no torai’ (‘Conservatives’ and ‘Progressives’ are Becoming Irrelevant), Chūō Koron, February 1977, pp. 64–95, at p. 80. 32. Why is Britain becoming harder to govern?, p. 15. 33. Ibid., p. 93. 34. Ibid., p. 104. 35. King also employs an ‘intractability’ argument, but in the sense of excessive interdependence of decisions. Ibid., pp. ff. 36. Ibid., p. 140. 37. Isaiah Frank (ed.), The Japanese Economy in International Perspective, Baltimore and London, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975, p. 13.

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For an example see The Times (London), 26 April 1976. Letter headlined ‘Sauce for the Japanese goose’. 38. For a discussion of these issues in great detail on the basis of data for the 1960s, see Bradley M.Richardson, The Political Culture of Japan, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, University of California Press, 1974. 39. For a balanced and interesting argument about what might happen to economic policy following an LDP electoral defeat, see Suzuki Yukio, ‘Uō saō no keizai seisaku de keiki wa dō naru ka’ (What will Happen to the Economic Climate if Confusion Reigns in Economic Policy?), Chūō Koron, February 1977, pp. 124–34. The article contains a section on outbidding. POSTSCRIPT Precisely three years have elapsed since this paper was written; this provides an opportunity to re-examine its arguments in the light of recent developments. The three years have been eventful ones, particularly in international relations. Japan’s international environment has become noticeably more threatening and less benign. A second oil crisis, triggered by the OPEC powers, has resulted in further massive increases in the price of oil. This affects Japan both directly, through her rising import bill, and indirectly, by delaying further any international economic recovery. The revolution and hostage crisis in Iran and the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan have let loose a series of events which gravely threaten both the stability of the oil-rich Middle East and the viability of detente between the United States and the Soviet Union. The painfully negotiated SALT II agreement remains unratified by the American Congress and may well prove incapable of being revived. An accelerated technological arms race between the two superpowers threatens. While the American President in an election year has to concern himself not only with the national interest and the maintenance of world peace but also with domestic challenges to his re-election, the Soviet leadership is elderly and for purely biological reasons a succession crisis cannot be far off. Nationalism is ascendant in the Soviet Union, and in the United States the post-Vietnam passivity still evident in 1977 has shifted dramatically in favour of national assertiveness. In this altered world Japan’s international role as well as her own security become matters of growing interest and concern. Although there is little sign as yet of the ‘massive buildup’ of her defence preparedness that many Western commentators have long predicted, defence is a less contentious issue in Japan than it once was and a further gradual improvement in her defence capability may be expected over the next few years. In a long term perspective the most significant development of Japanese foreign policy during the past three years has been the conclusion in October 1978 of the Japan-China Peace and Friendship Treaty. This, and the trade agreement between the two countries earlier the same year, seem destined to be

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the foundation of a lasting relationship in which Japan is closely involved in the modernisation of the Chinese economy. The foreign policy of ‘equidistance’ from both China and the Soviet Union which Japanese governments were endeavouring to pursue in the mid-1970s has thus given way to a marked bias in favour of China and a cooling of the never warm relationship with the USSR; the USSR, especially after the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, is regarded as a real threat to Japan’s security and interests. There are also signs of rethinking in the Japanese Government concerning the wisdom of relying entirely upon the United States for security guarantees. Serious differences between the two countries over trade-related matters were endemic since the late 1960s, but have recently compounded by currency instability, depressed world trading conditions and Japan’s determined drive for exports to pay for inflated oil imports. President Carter’s policies on nuclear technology and non-proliferation announced in 1977 were taken badly by Japan, many of whose decision-makers regarded them as an unacceptable impediment to their efforts to achieve a greater measure of energy self-suffi-ciency. Most fundamentally perhaps, the United States is coming to be seen in Japan as less reliable and less capable of handling international threats, particularly threats from the Soviet Union, than in the past. The 1980s, therefore, are beginning with a cautious but thorough reappraisal at high levels of Japan’s international role. The reason for dealing at some length in this postscript with the international aspects of Japanese politics is that if Japan has a problem of ‘governability’ then it is all the more crucial to understand what it is about if she is becoming more significant and more exposed internationally. The evidence of the past three years is reassuring in certain respects, but it would be premature to conclude that the governing of Japan will present no problems in future. Certainly the economy has proved remarkably resilient in the face of unprecedented crises, although the very competitiveness of Japanese exports arguably raises the spectre of dangerous protectionism against Japanese goods in many parts of the world. The productivity of Japanese industry is increasing at a much lower rate than it was in the 1960s, but it is still increasing faster than that of any of its major competitors, including especially the United States. When we turn to the political scene (which was the principal concern of the paper) the picture is more problematical. Since the paper was written there has been yet another change of Prime Minister, so that five successive prime ministers ruled Japan during the 1970s. Following a change in the system of electing an LDP president by a vote of the total party membership (instead of, as previously, LDP Diet Members plus a small number of local party representatives), Fukuda Takeo was unexpectedly replaced in 1978 by Ohira Masayoshi. Ohira succeeded to the party presidency (and thus the prime ministership) through active mobilization of the votes of party members at the grassroots by his own faction together with that of the officially disgraced but still powerful former prime minister, Tanaka Kakuei. Ohira faced the first test of his prime ministership in October 1979 in a general election for the House of

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Representatives. Before polling day a number of public opinion polls were taken which appeared to indicate that the LDP would be able to lift its total number of seats well above the 249 (out of 511) it won in 1976, and possibly even enough to return to it the control of all Diet Committees. In the event the turnout was low, with bad weather being a factor; some voters were apparently alienated by Ohira’s statements about possible tax increases, and the LDP won only 248 seats. As in 1976, however, the subsequent adherence of a number of Independents gave it an absolute majority. It is true that the proportion of the total votes cast for the LDP rose from 41.78 per cent to 44.59 per cent, which was the first time in its twenty-four year history to that point that its vote percentage had risen between one Lower House election and the next. The significance of this is, however, diminished by two factors. First, the 1976 elections were held in the aftermath of the founding of the New Liberal Club, which clearly attracted a proportion of ‘conservative’ votes away from the LDP. In 1979 the New Liberal Club had run out of steam and elected only four Members as against 17 in 1976. If one counts the NLC as a second conservative party and adds its vote percentage to that of the LDP, then whereas the LDP improved its vote percentage by 2.81 per cent, the two conservative parties taken together gained only 1.65 per cent. The second, and more important point is that the increased LDP vote reflected as much as anything the fact that in the expectation of a substantially increased vote the LDP put up more candidates than the optimum for the proportion of the vote that it obtained in the event. In so doing it split the vote in a number of what turned out to be marginal constituencies and so won fewer seats than it might otherwise have done. The difficulty of knowing how many candidates to endorse in Japan’s multi-member constituencies is a subject of continuing anxiety for the LDP, and in this case by endorsing too many candidates it both reduced its number of seats below the optimum for the votes it received and uselessly inflated its proportion of the vote. Neither the House of Representatives elections of 1976 and 1979, nor the House of Councillors elections of 1977 (anticipatorily referred to in the paper) resulted in the LDP losing its majority, but in both Houses its majority is extremely small and another House of Councillors election is due in July 1980. The LDP therefore remains in power in its own right in both Houses, but for technical reasons with such a paper-thin majority it has lost control of several key committees in both the Representatives and the Councillors. Since most parliamentary business is conducted in committee, this was causing serious problems for the party and the Government. In light of the above we may conclude, as the paper itself argued, that the LDP may well lose its absolute majority of seats in one or both Houses in the foreseeable future. Many say that in that case the LDP will continue to govern in coalition with the Democratic Socialist Party, one of the other small middle-ofthe-road parties. This is eminently plausible. It is instructive, however, to note the aftermath of the 1979 Lower House elections, following which the party

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immersed itself in a furious struggle for power between the incumbent Prime Minister, Ohira, and the man he had replaced a year previously, Fukuda, over who was to lead the party and nation following what Fukuda and his supporters plausibly portrayed as an LDP defeat. Ohira, in the view of his rival, ought to have signified his responsibility for the defeat by resigning. In the event, he narrowly survived this challenge. The episode illustrates the deep-seated factional conflict in the LDP and suggests that if ever the arithmetic were right and a ‘centre-left’ coalition should become a practicable possibility with the support of a defecting LDP faction or two, then the break-up of the LDP would not be out of the question. That it has not happened so far may well be the result less of party loyalty than of the fact that hitherto any faction defecting from the LDP would be abandoning the lush fields of power for the waste land of opposition. Should the waste land ever show signs of blooming it could prove attractive for some of those who have stuck to the only pastures that were green—those of the LDP. Another proposition that is sometimes advanced about the future of Japanese politics and government is that, whoever comes to power among the party politicians, the bureaucracy, with help from the corporate sector, will continue to rule. The evidence on this is inconclusive. The undoubted power of the bureaucracy between 1955 and 1980 has been premised on continued LDP majority status in the Diet. Should the majority be lost, the bureaucrats will inevitably be confronted with changes in the familiar pattern of political pressures. The newly evolving pattern need not necessarily be more complex or difficult to deal with than those which exist at present, and the ministries will no doubt learn to live with and manipulate the new situation. Indeed, they may acquire additional resources of power if coalition government should mean weak and indecisive government. The crucial difficulty is, however, that contrary to some popular stereotypes the bureaucracy in Japan is no monolith. The conflicting pressures and tensions existing between and even within some ministries is such that with a weakening of political direction, serious immobilism and drift could result. In this regard the present political situation may even be the exception that proves the rule. The Prime Minister, together with his Foreign Minister, the nonparty economist Dr Okita Saburō, are making foreign policy in conditions of unprecedented international tension and in the face of insistent American pressure to conform with US policy in the Iran and Afghanistan crises. Contrary to some Japanese Government responses in the past (for instance following the 1973–4 oil crisis) Ohira and Okita have moved to close ranks with the United States for the sake of the Western alliance and despite the serious problems that such a move entails for Japan’s future relationship with Iran. This is an example of strong and effective political leadership by two perhaps uniquely internationalist politicians who are prepared to act on the principle that the integrity of the Western alliance in conditions of crisis is worth more than narrow considerations of trade with Iran. Whatever the arguments for and against the Ohira-Okita policies, they have provided an example of principled

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political leadership. In recent Japanese political history, however, such leadership has been comparatively rare. Indeed, the workings or factionalism in the LDP may well deprive Ohira of his prime ministership before the end of 1980 and we shall see yet another short term prime minister strut and fret his hour upon the stage. If coalition government is to be the order of the day, the danger of weak and divided leadership seems even greater, and policies in key areas may emerge which turn out to be the lowest common denominator of agreement between rigidly conservative ministries. We need at least to raise the question whether the health of the Japanese polity would be maintained if such a situation should arise. The point of reference used in the paper was the ‘governability’ controversy in relation to Britain. In some ways Britain was a bad example because the chronic economic problems of that country were far removed from the economic dynamism and adaptability of Japan. For this reason among others the very idea that Japan might have a problem of ‘governability’ may strike some observers as strange. Nevertheless we believe that a record of past successes ought not to lead to complacency about the future. It is plausible to suggest that Japan is entering the most testing period of her recent history. International pressures are rising rapidly at a time when popular expectations based on years of comparative affluence are finding political expression. Elements of the ‘corporate state’, seen as a problem for the governability of Britain, have also long been present in Japan, though the results are far from identical. Although on contentious issues of the past—particularly those concerning foreign policy and defence—there is a coming together of conservatives and progressives, the party system has been experiencing a long slow process of political fragmentation. The LDP, unable to rid itself of the habits of the past, is caught up in a seemingly endless series of corruption scandals and its members play the factional game for all it is worth. The obverse of LDP electoral decline has been the proliferation of parties of opposition. If, therefore, the LDP should lose its majority and split, there is virtually no prospect of a strong viable alternative. The alternative, rather, would be instability, weak leadership, and at least in the more pessimistic scenarios, an unfortunate incapacity to make the decisions on policy that Japan will be required to make. Canberra 2 May 1980 SECOND POSTSCRIPT On 16 May 1980, the Ohira Government was defeated in the first nonconfidence motion to be passed by the House of Representatives since the LDP was founded in 1955. The Miki, Fukuda and Nakagawa factions abstained on the motion, brought by the JSP, which cited corruption, increased public utility charges and the Government’s forward policy on defence as reasons for withdrawing confidence. The Government promptly dissolved the Diet and

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declared general elections for both Houses to be held simultaneously on 22 June. The dissident factions agreed to close ranks with the party leadership at least until the elections were over. Alternative coalition possibilities were being widely canvassed. Canberra 28 May 1980

26 Understanding Japanese Politics First published in Social Analysis, No. 5/6, December 1980 IN AN ARTICLE written more than a decade ago I suggested that there were five sorts of preoccupation that had tended to influence Western writing on Japanese politics from the end of World War II up to the mid-1960s. 1 They were (1) the influence of the Occupation, especially upon those writers who were directly involved, (2) subsequent problems in American policy towards Japan, (3) pessimism or optimism over the functioning of the economy, (4) preoccupation with democracy as a unique, definable and universally desirable political system, (5) preoccupation with the modernization of developing countries and the application of modernization theory to Japan. The first two of these refer to the inevitable narrowness of perspective of those writers (mostly American) who were themselves caught up in the problems and endeavours of the Occupation and with subsequent American attempts to come to terms with an independent Japan. The third relates to some interesting differences of political interpretation during the initial period of Japan’s economic ‘take-off’ between those who viewed Japan’s long term economic prospects pessimistically and those who had already come to realise just how great Japan’s economic potential really was. The differences between the fourth and fifth categories are particularly significant. A number of writers whose books came out up to the early 1960s used a frame of reference which they called ‘political democracy’, and rated Japanese political reality essentially in relation to that frame of reference. The ‘modernization’ perspective (category 5) tended to supersede the ‘democracy’ perspective from the early 1960s onwards, and was heavily influenced by the politico-sociological tradition of Max Weber, and also by the ‘pattern variables’ coined by Talcott Parsons to distinguish between ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’. Much of the writing in category 5 came close to equating ‘modernization’ with ‘westernization’ (much the same could be said in relation to category 4), but as early as the late 1950s Abegglen 2 and Levine 3 were seeing ‘traditional’ features of the employment system as functional for modernization. Ward 4 subsequently generalized this kind of perception in the phrase ‘reinforcing dualism’, by which he meant that Japanese tradition is not necessarily the polar opposite of modernity, but may reinforce it. It is certainly arguable that while many modernization theorists regarded the ‘democratization’ of Japan as compatible with, and even as a necessary part of Japan’s achievement of modernity, the shift of focus which took place in the early 1960’s reduced the salience of such political features (commonly associated with democracy) as parties alternating in power, and a pluralistic balance of interest groups. In practical terms the achievements of the Liberal

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Democratic Party (LDP) were lauded, whereas the Opposition tended to be denigrated or written off. If the term still has any meaning, the transition from a ‘democracy’ to a ‘modernity’ perspective can be seen as a move to the ‘right’, which of course also reflected the dominance of the right wing in Japanese politics during the 1960’s. The period since 1967 has witnessed the development of several new perspectives about the Japanese political system, some of which may be regarded as flowing on from earlier ones. We may distinguish a dominant and two subordinate perspectives. There is a dominating preoccupation with Japan as an ultra-high level, rapid growth economy, with a high level of adaptive ability, geared to constantly increasing productivity, and skilled at shifting resources rapidly out of industries with declining comparative advantage into those with increasing comparative advantage. Writers in this vein often speak of Japan as an ‘information society’ or a ‘postindustrial society’. 5 This follows from the modernization perspective (category 5), but differs from it in that Japan is seen as modernised or even as ultra-modern, and providing an independent economic growth model for other Asian countries such as South Korea and Taiwan. 6 The political characteristics regarded as contributing to such a high level of economic adaptability include the continuation in power of the LDP and the fragmentation of the Opposition, the relative weakness and fragmentation of the labour union movement because of the predominance of the ‘enterprise union’, and the dominant position of the corporate sector and the government bureaucracy, both harmoniously devoted to the promotion of continuous economic growth through the Darwinian elimination of less efficient operators, the holding down of inflation rates etc. Another aspect of this dominant perspective is that politics is seen virtually as an epiphenomenon. Not only is the politicking between the LDP and the Opposition parties regarded as largely irrelevant, but also as functional. In the words of Norman Macrae, of the London Economist: 7 The Japanese constitution has therefore ensured that powerful and magnetic characters are not attracted into parliament, because they would lose seats for their parties in both houses if they were. The system has made parliament a home fit for elderly civil servants to retire into. This devaluation of politicians has given Japan excellent government so far. The reason Macrae gives for arguing that parliament lacks strong personalities is the rather eccentric one that in a multi-member constituency a charismatic politician would ‘hog the votes’ that ought to be spread evenly among his party’s several candidates in that constituency. It is true that in the general election for the House of Representatives in October 1979 the former Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei, standing as an Independent following his financial imbroglios, received 141,285 votes and the second LDP place-getter in the constituency received only 59,321 seats. This allowed two Socialists to win

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seats instead of one and cost one Liberal Democrat his seat. 8 For Macrae, Tanaka—by most standards a charismatic politician, is presumably the exception that proves the rule. The difficulty with the argument is, however, that while it is not without substance in many rural constituencies where the LDP is strong and can expect to have more than one candidate elected, it has rather little relevance in urban and metropolitan constituencies where the LDP can expect to elect one or at best two Members. It also has little substance in most of the prefectural constituencies of the House of Councillors (though it is not irrelevant in the national constituency of that House), and it applies very little to candidates standing for any of the Opposition parties, which (except for the Japan Socialist Party [JSP] in a few rural constituencies) can rarely elect more than one member per constituency and therefore do not put up more than one. In all these cases a charismatic candidate would presumably attract votes to the party rather than spoil the party’s chances. 9 Whatever the merits or demerits of this particular argument, there are other reasons for believing that the environment of party and parliament is inhibiting for ‘magnetic’ LDP politicians. One is the complicated and unpredictable way in which a party president (thus prime minister) is elected—a process which places more of a premium on not offending colleagues than on advocating bold policies. Another is the intense factional involvement in the prime minister’s task of selecting his cabinet, and the frequency of cabinet reshuffles. All these factors tend to favour politicians who are skilled in the art of compromise rather than of innovation, and who do not trespass too much on the affairs of the government bureaucracy. The first subordinate perspective on the Japanese system to emerge since 1967 shows a preoccupation with ‘exploitative’ aspects of the present system. This is to be found as a matter of course among Marxist writers, but also, so far as concerns the domestic situation, among writers of various persuasions who concentrate on minorities, political corruption, environmental pollution, women, and for the external situation, the performance of Japanese business firms in some foreign environments. 10 An important writer stressing exploitation is Dower, 11 who argued forcefully that it was the latter, conservative half of the American Occupation that was more seminal than the reformist first half in that it consolidated the structure of power that has dominated Japan during the high growth period. The political relevance of social class and class conflict is also tackled by Steven, 12 though his conclusions are not likely to appeal to nonMarxists. The second subordinate perspective involves a preoccupation with the alleged ‘fragility’ of the present system. The best known writer in this vein is Zbigniew Brzezinski, whose book The Fragile Blossom, 13 consituted a challenge to the more euphoric predictions of Herman Kahn. 14 Brzezinski argues that Japan’s politico-economic system is ‘metastable’ and could collapse, or at least be severely and dangerously strained, if Japan were to sustain severe external ‘shocks’. Japan’s withstanding of successive ‘shocks’ during the 1970’s has not

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been kind to Brzezinski’s hypothesis, even though several aspects of Kahn’s euphoria also proved wanting. A particular variant of the ‘fragility’ approach is a concern with the allegedly unsatisfactory nature of Japan’s decision-making processes. Some writers have argued that decision-making, particularly in relation to foreign policy, is too cumbersome, looks to the short term rather than the long term, and is reactive to foreign pressures rather than anticipating them. 15 This is a highly complex and controversial area, in which recent research suggests that the situation is neither simple, uniform throughout the system or in varied circumstances, nor unchanging. 16 Faced by such a range of perspectives, how should one proceed to a reasonable understanding of Japanese politics? The answer to this question inevitably involves two sorts of problem. The first are empirical questions involving the establishment of fact, and the second are questions of value involving preference. My brief survey of perspectives on Japanese politics has shown that matters of value as well as of fact tend to shape such perspectives. There is nothing intrinsically wrong in this. Judgments about what kind of political outcome is desirable may be just as valid as judgments about what actually happens. There is a particular problem, however, if the presence of a strong value orientation blinds the observer to facts inconvenient to that orientation or leads him/her to distort the nature and significance of facts actually observed. To an extent, of course, some bias or distortion because of value preferences is probably inevitable, and may actually be helpful by being provocative. Some may argue that value preference is inherent in any judgment about politics, because politics concern conflict between competing preferences. Nevertheless, I believe that the attempt to attain balance in the understanding of Japanese politics is worth making. Such a task requires careful attention to the design of the questions to be asked. I propose an extremely simple set of questions, based on the perception that the most fundamental questions that may be asked about any political system concern the location and exercise of power within that system. The rest of the paper will be devoted to the task of adumbrating answers to the following questions: (1) Who runs Japan? (2) How is Japan run? (3) Will the way Japan is run change? (4) Why is Japan run in the way it is? (5) How well is Japan run? (6) Should the way Japan is run change? It will be noted that questions (4) and (6) require value judgments, whereas the others are essentially empirical.

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WHO RUNS JAPAN? I do not propose to dwell on this as a formal legal-constitutional question, but rather to concentrate on the actual location of power. A common way of answering this question is to say that Japan is run by three interlocking hierarchies, the LDP, the government bureaucracy and the corporate sector (often referred to as a ‘tripod’, ‘triumvirate’, ‘power elite’, etc.). According to this argument, the long period of uninterrupted occupation of the ministerial benches by the LDP, the absence of credible competing power structures, the tradition of bureaucratic rule and the Occupation’s failure to cut the bureaucracy down to size, the consolidation of corporate power through successive mergers, and the docility of a population experiencing rapid increases in its standard of living and fragmented in its impact because of organizational fragmentation outside the central power structure—these and other factors have facilitated the centralization of power in the intermeshed hierarchy of party, civil service and big corporations. There are several possible objections to this type of formulation, although in a very general sense it is quite illuminating. One obvious objection is that it ignores the role of agriculture, and particularly the Nōkyō (Agricultural Cooperatives). It is argued by Aurelia George 17 that for largely political reasons the Nōkyō exercise a much greater degree of influence on central decisionmaking than some earlier formulations would allow. A second possible objection is that the ‘tripod’ theory does not account for evolution and change: the whittling away of the LDP majority in both Houses of the Diet, its loss of control over some key parliamentary committees, the greater complexity of issue choices since the various ‘shocks’ of the early 1970’s, and a somewhat more participatory mood on the part of the electorate as a whole render the theory less applicable than it once was. The LDP was, however, returned with a convincing majority in both Houses in the general elections of June 1980. A third objection is that the theory ignores conflict occurring between various elements of the ‘tripod’. The sectional interests of different Ministries do not necessarily coincide, neither do those of different sections of industry or different corporations. Factional conflict within the LDP is notorious and in the 1970’s has resulted in frequent changes of prime minister. Though elements in the ‘tripod’ may be at one in a very general sense—for instance they may agree that a favourable climate for industrial enterprise needs to be maintained—they may differ profoundly on more contingent matters. The fourth and final objection—though the list is not necessarily exhaustive— is that the theory is too vague: it tells us that there is a concentration of power within the ‘tripod’, but it does not as such inform us how that power is distributed or how much it is dispersed among the several thousand people who presumably make up the interlocking hierarchy of decision-makers. Nor does it tell us whether or to what extent the decision-makers change from issue to issue.

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Power is notoriously difficult to measure: the ‘tripod’ theory is merely a general indication of a broad area in which its exercise may most often be located. HOW IS JAPAN RUN? The logic of the ‘tripod’ theory is that the three constituent elements in the ‘tripod’ mesh into each other in readily definable ways. The LDP needs the bureaucracy because its own independent research and policy-formation capacity is poor and it therefore requires the services of the various ministries to enable it to fuffil these functions. In fact, most legislative formulation is carried on within the ministries, and indeed many bills are written in the bureaucracy and accepted by the LDP and presented to the National Diet with little or no change. The bureaucracy needs the LDP because constitutionally legislation is required to pass the Diet with the support of a majority of its Members, and that majority has hitherto been provided by the LDP. The bureaucracy also needs the LDP so that its politically ambitious senior officials may enter politics; a significant proportion of LDP Diet Members have been former senior public servants, and of these a disproportionate number have occupied high party and cabinet office. 18 The bureaucracy also needs the corporate sector for an analogous purpose so that its ambitious senior officials on retirement may take senior executive positions with major companies. The corporate sector requires the bureaucracy in order that regulations be adjusted in its favour, in order that government policy shall continue to create stable and favourable conditions for vigorous economic activity, for regulation and facilitation of foreign trade and investment, etc. The corporate sector, like the bureaucracy, needs the LDP for the purpose of retaining a majority within the Diet for generally conservative economic policies, and acting as a bulwark against the Socialists and Communists. The LDP needs the corporate sector for economic advice (Keidanren, the Federation of Economic Organizations, in particular performs this role) and also for the ample political contributions for electoral purposes that are so essential to the party’s survival. Thus, according to this picture, the whole structure is closely bound together by a network of mutually reinforcing ties. One essential resource which is largely outside the control of the structure described above is votes. Although electoral contributions on a large scale are provided by the corporate sector to the party and its constituent faction leaders for the purpose of securing votes, this works only up to a point, and may even be actually counterproductive, as seems to have been the case in the House of Councillors elections of 1974. 19 The need for votes leads the LDP to make policies favourable to the agricultural sector which, because of the failure adequately to correct severe inequalities in the population-to-Member ratio of rural and urban constituencies, exercises a disproportionate influence on LDP policy. Indeed, one of the most interesting puzzles about recent Japanese politics is why no really viable party devoted to the interest of city dwellers has yet

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appeared. A superficial examination of the ‘tripod’ theory might lead one to suppose that decision-making within the ‘tripod’ was under strong central control. It might well be assumed from the way the theory is formulated that the Prime Minister in particular, and Cabinet, would exercise commanding power and be free to alter policy at short notice in accordance with their own preferences and changing priorities. In other words, given the fact that the theory appears to assume that the ruling structure is freed from many of the political complications that beset its counterparts in other countries and is essentially stable and continuous, the scope for the exercise of commanding power at the top ought to be great. In fact, however, this is scarcely the case. Most prime ministers in recent years have either been innovators who got into trouble (Kishi, Tanaka, Miki), or consensus-mongers who failed to innovate, except following the most cumbersome process of consultation (nemawashi). The tenure of a prime minister during the 1970s has in any case been so short that the scope for bold enunciation and implementation of policy is severely limited. One major constraint upon a prime minister is the factional system in the LDP, which defies repeated attempts to expunge or even seriously modify it. In forming his cabinet a prime minister is normally constrained by the necessity of balancing competing factional claims, a task which requires the most acute political sensitivity if he is to survive for a reasonably long period in his job. One result of the frequent cabinet reshuffles required to keep the factions from revolt is that cabinet ministers rarely come to dominate their ministries, so that it is normal for a ministry to be considerably freer from cabinet control than would be the case in Australia. Consideration of these points and observation of the working and performance of the leading Japanese ministries suggests strongly that much of the policy formulation and implementation required for the operation of modern government is conducted largely within the bureaucracy, or at least certain sections of it. Nevertheless, the bureaucracy as a whole is anything but a single monolithic organization, and here again many policies have to be thrashed out through lengthy consultative processes involving a number of ministries. Nor are external influences, particularly from the corporate sector, insignificant. WILL THE WAY JAPAN IS RUN CHANGE? Under LDP rule Japan’s political arrangements appear to be so unchanging that some observers appear to assume that systemic change is virtually unthinkable. It is as well to remind ourselves, however, that the politics of Japan might have looked surprisingly different if (a) Japan had won the war, (b) Japan had lost the war but there was no Occupation, (c) Japan had gone Communist in the late 1940’s, (d) under the present Constitution a system of alternation of power between two major parties or party coalitions had developed, (e) a fragmented multi-party system had emerged, (f) a separate, presidential-type election of the prime minister had been instituted (as Nakasone Yasuhiro was advocating in the

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early 1960’s), etc. The prospect of the LDP losing its absolute majority in the foreseeable future was a real possibility, but appears to have receded following the June 1980 general election. The most likely outcome of this would have been coalition government with the LDP and DSP in partnership, but there are also a number of other possibilities, including as the most radical change from the present situation a centre-left coalition government following a major split in the LDP between two rival factional coalitions. This, however, appears to be fairly unlikely. Nevertheless, whatever the precise outcome during the 1980’s, it seems quite possible that a more fragmented party political situation than hitherto will develop. Indeed, this would be merely a development of trends already evident during the latter half of the 1970’s which were reversed, perhaps temporarily, by the 1980 elections. Taken together with a more sophisticated, urbanised and demanding electorate, forcing government to be more responsive to its demands, Japan may not be quite as easy to govern in the 1980’s as in the 1960’s or even the 1970’s. To say this, however, is far short of predicting any major breakdown in political and administrative processes. WHY IS JAPAN RUN IN THE WAY IT IS? Broadly speaking, four kinds of explanation of why the Japanese political system operates as it does are possible: sociological, institutional, political and economic. A sociological explanation might concentrate on the group loyalties and interpersonal linkages of Japanese society in an attempt to elucidate various aspects of the political system. A well known theory about Japanese society with obvious applicability to the political system is the ‘vertical society’ model of Nakane 20 which strongly implies that horizontal class conflict is of little significance in contemporary Japan because of the supremacy of ‘frame’ (the company etc. for which a person works) over ‘attribute’ (one’s occupation in the sense of one’s particular skill etc.). An implication of Nakane’s approach is that Japanese socicty is relatively conflict-free and the operations of the Japanese government arc based on a consensus worked out at the apex of a number of vertical hierarchies. ‘The Nakane theory is taken to task by Mouer and Sugimoto 21 for its excessive ‘holism’, for its minimising of the incidence of conflict and for its excessively conservative bias. Without wishing to underestimate the influence of sociological factors in any explanation of the way Japanese politics works, I wish to place substantial weight upon institutional factors. The Japanese political institutions that emerged from the American Occupation after the war may be considered much closer to the ‘fusion-of-powers’ model associated with the Westminster system than to the ‘separation of powers’ to be found in the United States. I argue that the apparent paradox involved in American reformers coming from a separationof-powers tradition, yet creating a fusion-of-powers system in Japan is resolved

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by consideration of the way they regarded the Japanese political system under the Meiji Constitution and their identification of the fatal faults of that system. Crucial ambiguities in the Meiji Constitution led to a situation of badly coordinated ‘multiple government’, in which the location of power was not clearly identified. The Americans, in attempting to correct what they reasonably saw as the dangerous fluidity and unpredictability in such a system were determined to define the location of power as securely as possible. Thus while on the one hand they extended greatly the possibilities for the population at large to participate in politics according to democratic principles, on the other hand they centralised the power capable of being exercised by the prime minister, cabinet and the government ministries. No longer were the genrō (elder statesmen), army and navy chiefs of staff, Privy Council, House of Peers, or the officials of the Imperial Household Ministry able to dispute power with the prime minister and cabinet, often exercising the kind of veto power that led to a kind of political paralysis during parts of the immediate prewar period. Such an explanation in terms of institutions is not complete, though in my view it points to key elements in the situation. It also requires the consideration of political factors. The most crucial of these is the electoral dominance of the LDP since 1955 (though the dominance appears to be declining), which has cemented the links referred to above between the LDP and the civil service and between the LDP and the corporate sector. It is important to realise that the politics of Japan between 1945 and 1955 were in many ways more fluid than they became after the conservatives sank their differences in a single ‘catch-all’ political party. There are elements in the 1947 Constitution concerning, for instance, relations between the two Houses of the National Diet, which in circumstances of party fluidity might well render the location of power much less stable than it is today. Some of the implications of this were evident between 1947 and 1955, and could become so once again if the LDP should lose its majority in either or both Houses. The principal economic factor that needs to be brought into the picture is the enormous advance of industry through Japan’s high growth period of the 1960’s and 1970’s. This crucially contributed to the influence of the corporate sector within the central political structure, as well as making it more difficult for opposition parties to take votes from the LDP. In the very long term it may be seen also as having contributed to the reduced ability of the LDP to retain the loyalty of a more sophisticated urbanized electorate. HOW WELL IS JAPAN RUN? This question raises the problem of value judgments, where varied and even contradictory preferences are of course possible. Somewhat different answers to the question may emerge depending on whether the questioner takes a national or an international standpoint. Desirable political outcomes for the welfare of the Japanese may not necessarily coincide with such outcomes for the welfare of the world generally. This takes us into the area of Japan’s economic foreign policy,

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where arguably a period during which there was intense single-minded concentration on the achievement of the goals of national welfare at the expense of international welfare has been slowly giving way (some might say too slowly) to a more internationalist outlook. The capacity or incapacity of the system to respond to international pressures of various kinds is an area of concern which raises some most complex questions about the desirability or otherwise of the present set of political arrangements in relation to central decision-making. Secondly, the question involves contentious issues about the kind of values produced by a political system that deserve to be most emphasized. Democracy, equality, economic dynamism, social welfare, ecology, etc., are terms incorporating sets of values which may not be mutually compatible, and each of which may require a different set of policy choices in order to optimise. Critics of the system have tended to complain about excessive emphasis upon economic dynamism at the expense of other values, whereas its defenders often imply that such an emphasis has led also to a reasonably good record in conforming to the other sets of values as well. 22 This is in turn connected with the dichotomous value perceptions of those who commend the system for creating and embodying in policy a general consensus, and those who believe that such consensus is created by an elite at the expense of elements within the society which are socially, politically and economically weak. Thirdly, the question is raised of who within Japanese society benefits, and at the expense of whom. The problem is no doubt more acute in a ‘zero-sum’ situation,, when there is a constant quantity of goods and services for distribution, so that if some gain then others lose. An expanding economy naturally creates a non-zero-sum situation in economic terms, but it is unlikely to solve the distribution problem entirely. Moreover, while distribution of access to power in any society is certain to be unequal, in Japan there are particular inequalities created by the dominant position occupied for so long by the LDP and the groups supporting it and working closely with it. Fourthly, aspects of the way in which the system operates as distinct from the outcomes it produces are further matters for concern. Those who carp would regard such perennial aspects of politics in Japan as corruption, factionalism, the allegedly ‘antique’ image of the LDP and certain aspects of the electoral system as in need of reform. Others appear to see them as either necessary evils given that the system creates adequate compensatory benefits, or else as ‘part of the culture’, in other words reflections of indigenous social norms which it would be foolish to tamper with. The best that can be said about all these issues is that a range of differing opinions exist, and the issues are unresolved. They are not, however, necessarily unresolvable. SHOULD THE WAY IN WHICH JAPAN IS RUN CHANGE? Here once again we confront questions about value, which are difficult to resolve. One might well argue that a central paradox about the Japanese political

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system as it has developed since the ending of the Occupation in 1952 is that it has overseen (and to an extent been responsible for) the creation of a highly efficient and dynamic economy, and yet a man with all the unsavoury credentials of Kodama Yoshio could be used as a go-between by the Lockheed corporation in its efforts to sell aircraft to Japan, because of the closeness of Kodama’s connections with leading LDP politicians. Evidence that this kind of situation could not recur is inconclusive, to say the least. Since in the long run a greater politicization of the system appears likely, it may well be a delicate task to ensure that politics Kodama-style does not erode too severely the objective and impartial criteria for policymaking which have also been a conspicuous feature of the Japanese system in many of its aspects. CONCLUSION Perceptions of Japanese politics have varied both with the changing scene in Japan and with the changing reference frameworks of observers. I suggested at the beginning of this article that a number of preoccupations had influenced Western writing on Japanese politics, with the ‘economic miracle’ having increasingly directed perceptions to the positive, dynamic aspects of the political system that developed in Japan from the end of the Second World War onwards. I have argued that some observers have tended to play down the politics of the Japanese system and that others have underestimated the significance of the institutional structure within which politics is carried on. The way politics is conducted is complex, sophisticated, in many ways controversial, and is subject to continual change though strong elements of continuity also endure. In other words, Japan has many characteristics in common with, and can be examined from similar viewpoints as, the political systems of other advanced industrial democracies. We are all part of the same political world. NOTES 1. J.A.A.Stockwin, ‘Perceiving Japanese Politics’, Dissent, vol. 19 (1967), pp. 15–19 [Chapter 22 of this volume]. 2. James Abegglen, The Japanese Factory: Aspects of its Social Organization. Glencoe, The Free Press, 1958. 3. Solomon B.Levine, Industrial Relations in Postwar Japan. Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1958. 4. Robert B.Ward, ‘Political Modernization and Political Culture in Japan’, World Politics, vol. 15, pp. 569–96. 5. Taketsugu Tsurutani, Political Change in Japan. New York, David McKay, 1977. 6. Ezra Vogel, Japan as Number One: Lessons for America. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1979. 7. Norman Macrae, ‘Must Japan Slow? A Survey’, Economist, 23 February

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1980. 8. The five successful candidates in the constituency (Niigata No. 2) were as follows: Tanaka Kakuei (Independent), 141,285; Murayama Tatsuo (LDP), 59,321; Miyake Shōichi (JSP), 52,061; Kobayashi Susumu (JSP), 49,756 Watanabe Hideo (LDP), 48,454. A third Liberal Democrat was defeated. 9. It would, however, be interesting to analyse whether Macrae’s argument had greater substance in earlier elections when the LDP won a larger proportion of the seats and the Opposition was less fragmented. To the extent that this is so, one might expect over time to find an increasing number of charismatic politicians and conceivably, as Macrae fears, greater interference by politicians in the business of government. 10. On minorities, see George DeVos and Hiroshi Wagatsuma, Japan’s Invisible Race. Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1967; George DeVos and William O.Wetherall, Japan’s Minorities. Burakumin, Koreans, Ainu. London, Minority Rights Group, 1974; C.D.Hah and C.C.Lapp, ‘Japan’s Politics of Equality in Transition: The Case of the Burakumin’, Asian Survey, vol. 8, pp. 487–504. On political corruption, see K.Dixon, ‘Japan’s Lockheed Scandal: Structural Corruption’ Pacific Community, vol. 8, pp. 340–62. On pollution, see Margaret McKean ‘Pollution and Policymaking’, in T.J.Pempel (ed.), Policymaking in Contemporary Japan. Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1977. On women see Joyce Lebra, et al. (eds), Women in Changing Japan. Boulder, Westview Press, 1976. 11. John Dower, ‘Occupied Japan as History and Occupation History as Politics’, Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 34, pp. 485–504. 12. Ron Steven, ‘The Japanese Bourgeoisie’, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, vol. 11, pp. 2–24. 13. Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Fragile Blossom: Crisis and Change in Japan. New York, Harper and Row, 1972. 14. Herman Kahn, The Emerging Japanese Superstate: Challenge and Response. London, Penguin, 1970. 15. Donald C.Hellmann, Japan and East Asia. London, Pall Mall, 1972. Taketsugu Tsurutani, ‘The Causes of Paralysis’, Foreign Policy, vol. 14, pp. 126–41. 16. Pempel, op. cit. Robert A.Scalapino, The Foreign Policy of Modern Japan. Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1977. Hugh Patrick and Henry Rosovsky, Asia’s New Giant. Washington D.C, Brookings, 1976. 17. Aurelia George, ‘The Strategies of Influence: Japan’s Agricultural Cooperatives (Nōkyō) as a Pressure Group’, Canberra, Australian National University, Ph.D. thesis, 1980. 18. Haruhiro Fukui, Party in Power: The Japanese Liberal-Democrats and Policy-Making. Canberra, Australian National University Press, 1970. 19. Michael K.Blaker, Japan at the Polls: The House of Councillors Elections of 1974. Washington, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy

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Research, 1976. 20. Chie Nakane, Japanese Society, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970. 21. Ross Mouer and Yoshio Sugimoto, ‘Nakane Chie setsu e no hōhōronteki gimon’ (Some Methodological Problems in the Theory of Chie Nakane), Gendai no me, 1979, pp. 124–35. 22. Macrae, op. cit. Vogel, op. cit.

27 Japan’s Political Crisis of 1980 First published in Australian Outlook, Vol. 35, No. 1, April 1981 BETWEEN 16th May and 22nd June 1980 readers of the Australian and world press were treated to the unusual spectacle of an apparently serious political crisis in Japan. The long-standing assumption of most Western foreign policymakers that stable conservative government was safely assured in the world’s third largest economy was suddenly placed in question. Although the crisis ended with a spectacular renewal of the conservative mandate in general elections, it brought to the surface for all to see some of the underlying tensions which are more usually masked by the outward appearance of consensus in Japanese political decision-making. The purpose of this article is to assess the nature and significance of the crisis in the broader context of Japan’s domestic and international situation as she enters the nineteen eighties. Our focus will be on the capacity of the Japanese polity to respond effectively and responsibly to the inevitable pressures and dilemmas facing a resource-poor, militarily second-ranking but economically advanced and dynamic nation through the new decade. THE 1955 POLITICAL SYSTEM Japan is not a newcomer to competitive party politics. 1980 marks the ninetieth anniversary of the establishment of constitutional government including a parliament and regular elections. Although until the new Constitution of 1947 Parliament was severely limited in its role, it has never been suspended, and elections have always been regularly held, even in war time. It is also thirty-five years since Japan’s surrender to the Allied Powers and the beginning of wholesale reforms under largely American tutelage. Ever since the late nineteenth century, and particularly since the late nineteen forties, Japan has been accumulating experience in parliamentary politics. Indeed, so far as parties are concerned, the Japanese experience is extraordinarily rich: the writer recently counted no less than 166 political parties between 1874 and 1980. Seen in such a longer perspective, the political history of Japan since 1955 exhibits some unique features. It was in that year that for the first time previously fragmented conservative groups united into a single unit, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). It was the ability of the LDP to maintain an absolute majority in both houses of the National Diet that provided the linchpin of what became known as the ‘1955 political system’, and which appeared to be threatened in the crisis of 1980. This system involved much more than the electoral supremacy of one party. It was premised upon the capacity of the LDP,

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the public service and the powerful corporate sector of the economy to work together in relative harmony in the pursuit of rapid economic growth. Other interests, such as small business, labour, agriculture, consumers and environmentalists, though concessions were sometimes thrown in their direction, were quite weak in the face of the alliance of government and big corporations. Possessing a battery of legal controls and acting through a network of informal channels, government was able to exercise broad regulatory control over the economy in close conjunction with the corporate sector. The system of operation owed much to the experience of economic mobilization developed during the 1930s and in the war, but also the failure of interest groups, particularly labour, to exert effective countervailing power either at the industrial or the political level. The element of corporatism in Japan’s politico-economic system since 1955 has been strong. 1 Politics in Japan in the late fifties and the sixties was not lacking in conflict, but the issues most vigorously contested tended to be those of foreign policy, defence and the constitution. On issues of economic distribution, the impact of the opposition was generally weak. In a sense its energies were diverted away from economics by its excessive concentration on problems of a political and ideological nature. The Government was also given an easy run at this period because of the political largesse permitted by rapid economic growth, American security guarantees which reduced the need for high expenditures on defence, a weak labour union structure, and failure to adjust electoral boundaries to take account of urbanization. Despite all these favourable factors, however, it seems unlikely that conservatives would have been able to monopolise political power had they not united their forces in 1955, and then remained united. Japan’s single experience of Socialists in government occurred in the aftermath of the 1947 Lower House general election, when the Japan Socialist Party’ (JSP) had won a mere 147 out of 466 seats (31.5 per cent). Even though the Socialists occupied well over a third of the Lower House seats by the late 1950s, conservative unification effectively blocked their way to office. Electoral trends from the 1950s to the 1970s were complex, but two developments stand out. Firstly, the conservative electoral dominance was gradually eroded: the proportion of the electorate voting conservative declined at every Lower House election between 1952 (66.1 per cent) and 1976 (41.8 per cent). Second, the opportunities which this offered the Opposition were jeopardised by its progressive fragmentation. Whereas in the late 1950s the JSP was the only effective Opposition party, by the 1970s it was merely the largest of six. 2 Quite apart from the electoral decline of the LDP, the tightly centralised structure of power—with corporatist overtones—that maintained itself in the late 1950s and the 1960s, was materially changing in the 1970s, with the dismantling of government controls over foreign trade and investment, the greatly strengthened financial position of many industrial enterprises, and the emergence of a variety of vigorous interest groups (farmers, doctors, environ-

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mentalists etc) able to exert pressure on government. The consequent development of a somewhat more open political system was accompanied by acute factional conflicts within the LDP itself. The party found it particularly difficult to maintain stable leadership. Whereas between 1964 and 1972 one man (Sato Eisaku 3 ) was LDP President and thus Prime Minister, between 1972 and 1980 the prime ministerial tenure averaged just under two years and was declining. 4 By 1980 the LDP gave the appearance of a factional battleground. Whereas traditionally alliances between factions had been a matter of the convenience of the moment, so that yesterday’s allies regularly found themselves today’s enemies, and vice versa, lines of cleavage had now become much firmer. A powerful alliance between the Tanaka 5 and Ohira factions had remained intact since the formation of the Tanaka Cabinet in 1972 (famous for normalising relations with China) and had been instrumental in having Ohira defeat Fukuda in primary elections in December 1978 and so succeed him as Prime Minister. Ranged against them were the factions led by Miki (who while Prime Minister in 1976 had earned Tanaka’s enmity by facilitating the pressing of charges against him for his role in the Lockheed scandals), and Fukuda. The one leader of a major faction yet to attain the prime ministership, Nakasone, had at various times shifted his support from one side to the other. Following a disappointing performance by the LDP in Lower House general elections held prematurely in October 1979, a determined attempt was made by the anti-Ohira factions to oust him from the leadership. A forty-day crisis ensued, which was only resolved when Ohira narrowly beat Fukuda in a Diet vote on the designation of Prime Minister. It was unprecedented for the party to put up two candidates for the Prime Ministerial post, and allow the Diet to sort out a problem it had not been able to resolve itself. On this occasion the Nakasone faction had sided with the Fukuda-Miki group against the TanakaOhira group. THE 1980 CRISIS Despite this background of internecine strife within the party, it came as a surprise to most observers when, on 16th May 1980, the House of Representatives passed a JSP-sponsored non-confidence motion by 243 votes to 187. 6 In all previous such votes the LDP had voted solidly against nonconfidence motions, but on this occasion 69 Liberal Democrats absented themselves from the vote. The abstainers were Members of the Fukuda and Miki factions, and of the small, recently formed Nakagawa faction. Nakasone and his followers (with two exceptions) changed sides and voted with the Government, as did a small handful of conservative Independents. There ensued a political crisis which lasted until the double elections of 22nd June, which was followed by the selection of a relative political outsider, Suzuki Zenko, as party President and Prime Minister. In the context of Japan’s political history, the crisis had a number of unusual

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features: (a) It was the first time in 28 years that there had been a successful nonconfidence motion, and in consequence of this a dissolution of the Lower House. (b) It was the first simultaneous ‘double election’ for both houses of the National Diet in Japanese history. (c) It was the first time that a prime minister had died in office since the early 1930s. (d) It was the first serious defiance of the party whip by the substantial number of LDP ‘rebels’ for many years. (e) It led to serious discussion by the ‘rebels’ of the formation of a new party, separate from the LDP. (f) The election result spectacularly reversed the secular trend of LDP decline. (g) An apparent ‘outsider’ was chosen as the new party President and thus Prime Minister. On the other hand Japan’s political crisis of 1980 lacked some of the elements characterising previous crises, notably that which arose from revision of the Mutual Security Treaty between Japan and the United States precisely twenty years earlier, in May–June 1960: (i) mass demonstrations. (ii) strikes. (iii) student involvement. (iv) involvement by labour unions. (v) involvement by ultra-rightist organizations. (vi) violence in the National Diet. With some complacency, but not a little justification, the Japanese press was able to contrast the conduct of a political crisis in Japan with the conduct of a simultaneously occurring crisis of a different order in Kwangju, Korea. The course of events following the passage of the non-confidence motion was briefly as follows. The normal stolid and phlegmatic Ohira reacted with a quite uncharacteristic burst of fury when the result was announced in the Diet. He proved, however, to be remarkably well in control of the strategic realities of the situation. The immediate choice with which he was faced was whether to tender the resignation of his Government or to dissolve the House of Representatives. The choice was open to him according to the terms of article 69 of the 1947 Constitution, which reads as follows: If the House of Representatives passes a non-confidence resolution, or rejects a confidence resolution, the Cabinet shall resign en masse, unless the House of Representatives is dissolved within ten (10) days. Ohira’s immediate decision (which he had foreshadowed while sparring with the Opposition in the period leading up to the vote on the non-confidence resolution) was to dissolve the House of Representatives. The decision precipitated a furious argument with the Opposition, which maintained that the

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Ohira Cabinet should resign and be succeeded by a caretaker Cabinet, to prepare for general elections, which would be headed by Asukata Ichio, the Chairman of the largest Opposition party, the JSP. Ohira rejected this option out of hand on the ground that it would further compound the existing political confusion, and also denounced the Socialists, in uncharacteristically strong language, for destabilising the political scene by bringing the non-confidence motion in the first place. The next decision that Ohira needed to make concerned the timing of the election. An election for the fixed term House of Councillors was already scheduled for 29th June, and so it seemed a logical move for the sake of convenience when the Prime Minister duly announced that the elections for the House of Councillors would be brought forward to 22nd June and elections for the House of Representative would be held on the same day. Subsequent events, as we shall see, were to suggest that this move was shrewd, since the unprecedented coincidence of elections for both Houses on the same day may well have been a factor leading to a high turnout of voters, which in turn may have favoured the LDP. The 69 rebel MPs, now operating as a Party Reconstruction Council, actively discussed whether to defect from the LDP and form a new party. The mainstream factions, however, threatened to refuse party endorsement for the ‘rebel’ candidates unless they ceased dissident activity, arid there was even talk of expelling the ‘rebels’ from the party. Somehow, within a few days, a compromise was reached between the two sides, whereby the ‘rebels’ were guaranteed party endorsement for their candidates in return for closing ranks with the party leadership. Ohira, meanwhile, attempted to demonstrate his confidence about the election results by announcing that he would be personally attending the Venice summit of leaders of advanced countries in person, despite the fact that it would take him out of Japan on election day itself. On 22nd May Asukata, Chairman of the JSP, indicated that his party was prepared to ‘shelve’ its traditional policy of unarmed neutralism as part of a policy package for a coalition government of opposition parties following the elections. Subsequent statements from Asukata, however, suggested a backing down from this position. Negotiations were under way between all the Opposition parties except the Communists. On 30th May, Ohira suffered a heart attack and was admitted to hospital. This caused turmoil within the ranks of the LDP, but also seems to have helped the party to pull itself together. The question of leadership was still far from resolved, however, and on 10th June a new group emerged calling itself the New Leaders Group, with a membership derived mainly from the ‘rebel’ factions, but also including recruits from the Tanaka and Nakasone factions. 7 This group urged the existing party leaders to retire so that they could be replaced by a younger leadership set. Two days later, on 12th June, Ohira’s condition suddenly deteriorated and he died. In accordance with the terms of article 70 of the Constitution, 8 the Cabinet resigned, and following article 9 of the Cabinet Law, the Chief Cabinet

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Secretary, Ito Masayoshi, was appointed Acting Prime Minister. In the ten days that were left between the death of Ohira and the double elections, the Opposition parties faced increasingly evident problems in presenting the electorate with a credible united front across a range of policy issues. The LDP, meanwhile, played heavily upon a sympathy vote for its dead leader, and attacked the Opposition for being divided, unrealistic and inexperienced in the business of running the country. When the results of the elections were declared on 23rd June, the LDP had registered a spectacular victory. Whereas in October 1979 it had won 248 out of the 511 seats in the Lower House (scraping an absolute majority only with the help of some Independents who later joined the party), now its Lower House seat total was 284, which meant that it had regained full control over Table 1 Breakdown of ‘mainstream’ and ‘rebels’ in LDP according to type of constituency

Urban No.

Semiurban

%

No.

Medium

%

No.

%

Semirural No.

Rural

%

No.

Mainstream1

28 73.7

30 73.2

50 64.9

46 78.0

Rebels2

10 26.3

11 26.8

27 35.1

13 22.0

%

Total No.

%

28 77.8 182 72.5 8 22.2

69 27.5

Sources: Calculated from Asahi Nenkan, 1980, pp. 270–3; Yomiuri Shimbun, 17th May 1980 Breakdown of constituency types was kindly provided by Professor Nishihira Shigeki. 1. Those LDP MHRs presumed to have voted against the no-confidence motion on 16th May 1980. 2. Those LDP MHRs who absented themselves from the vote in the no-confidence motion on 16th May 1980 (excluding those not present because of illness).

Table 2 Age and tenure of LDP ‘mainstream’ and ‘rebels’

Those Average age (Oct. aged 70 or more 1979) No.

%

Those Average Those aged 49 number of elected 9 times or times or less 1 more elected

Those elected 3 times or less

No.

No.

%

No.

%

%

Mainstream

56.6

21 11.5

47 25.8

5.0

30 16.5

74 40.7

Rebels

58.8

10 14.5

11 15.9

5.6

15 21.7

21 30.4

Sources: Calculated from Asahi Nenkan, 1980, pp. 270–3; Yomiuri Shimbun, 8th October 1979 (evening); Yomiuri Shimbun, 17th May 1980 1. Ignoring by-elections, and assuming continuous tenure, ‘number of times elected’

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means that as of May 1980 an MHR first entered Parliament at an election indicated below: Once: October 1979 Twice: December 1976 3 times: December 1972 4 times: December 1969 5 times: January 1967 6 times: November 1967 7 times: November 1960 8 times: May 1958 9 times: February 1955 10 times: April 1953 11 times: October 1952 12 times: January 1949 13 times: April 1947 14 times: April 1946 15 times: April 1942 16 times: April 1937

the vital Lower House committees, in which much of the Diet’s business is conducted. The ministerial party also greatly improved its position in the Upper House, or House of Councillors. Following the election victory, the party chose Suzuki Zenko, who had inherited the Ohira faction, as its new leader. In the remainder of this article, we shall concentrate on the following issues: (1) Why did the ‘rebels’ abstain from voting in the non-confidence motion? (2) Why did the LDP not split following their abstention? (3) Why did the LDP win the elections? (4) What are the long term implications of the crisis? (1) Why did the ‘rebels’ abstain? A number of possible explanations for the rebellion suggest themselves, and we shall critically examine five of these before describing a combination of factors which we believe to have been important. (a) That the ‘rebels’ were ideologically to the left of the mainstream, and therefore might have been happier, from the viewpoint of ideological propinquity, in coalition with centre and centre-left parties. This explanation might be plausible in relation to the Miki faction, or at least of its leader, Miki Takeo, whose political position had frequently been well to the left of the LDP centre of gravity. It was categorically not the case, however, of either the Fukuda or Nakagawa factions, whose leaders and much of whose membership was strongly conservative in orientation. There was even some speculation in the press that it was the mainstream, rather than the ‘rebels’ that planned to join with some of the Opposition parties in a coalition arrangement, forcing the ‘rebels’ into opposition. 9 Even though such reports probably had little substance, they suggest at the very least, that propositions based simply

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upon the ideological position of the ‘rebels’ were problematical. (b) That the ‘rebels’ were distinguishable from the mainstream in rural-urban terms: that the ‘rebels’ predominantly represented urban constituencies and were aiming to break the rural hold over LDP policy which resulted in high agricultural protection and the aim of maximum self-sufficiency in food. Table 1 indicates that there was little difference in the rural-urban distribution of mainstream Members from that of ‘rebel’ Members, so that this hypothesis is unsupported by the evidence. (c) That the ‘rebels’ were younger and had served fewer terms in the Diet than Members of the mainstream, and could therefore be seen plausibly as a ‘rejuvenating’ group. Table 2 indicates that the ‘rebels’ were on average slightly older and had served marginally longer in the Diet than Members of the mainstream, so that this hypothesis also fails to be sustained. (d) That the ‘rebels’ were on average more educated than Members of the mainstream. Table 3 again provides negative evidence concerning this hypothesis. The proportions of ‘rebels’ who graduated from university and who graduated from the prestigious Tokyo University are actually lower than in the case of the mainstream. (e) That the ‘rebels’ were regionally concentrated and thus could be plausibly seen as representing a regional interest. In Table 4 the country has been divided into regions. From it, it appears that the ‘rebels’ were somewhat more concentrated in the north and east of the country than in the south and west, but not by a significant amount, and in any case the numbers were small. On the evidence presented, therefore, all five hypotheses fail. Instead, we present a preliminary explanation based on contemporary Japanese newspaper and journal accounts, and containing four types of factor. (a) Most importantly, the ‘rebels’ quite clearly felt an intense resentment, which had been building up over a period of years, against the Tanaka-Ohira axis within the party. Fresh in their memory was the primary election victory of Ohira over Fukuda in 1978 (widely believed to have resulted from massive infusions of money from Tanaka’s own sources), and Ohira’s refusal to step down after the party’s poor showing in the general elections of October 1979, resulting in the unparallelled bitterness of the ‘forty day crisis’. (b) During the months preceding the 1980 crisis the press had been full of the lurid details of corruption scandals involving public officials and MPs. One MP, Hamada Koichi, who was attached to a mainstream LDP faction, stood accused of spending exorbitant sums, of dubious origin, at the gambling casinos of Las Vegas. Officials of KDD (the Japanese equivalent of Telecom) were also charged with curious improprieties, while scandals involving purchases of foreign aircraft seemed to occur with monotonous regularity. The ‘rebels’ accused Ohira of reluctance to act with vigour on the Hamada case in particular, and contrasted his performance in this regard with the relentless pursuit of the

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culprits of the Lockheed scandal undertaken by Miki when he was Prime Minister in 1976. 10 The other issues raised by the JSP in its non-confidence motion, namely Ohira’s promises to the Americans of increased defence spending and recent sharp rises in public utility charges, seem to have interested the ‘rebels’ less. (c) A third element was a push for what was sometimes, not entirely accurately, termed ‘leadership rejuvenation’. The feeling was widespread in the party that it was time that the leaders of the 1970s, whose quarrels had jeopardised party unity, were due for replacement. Among the ‘rebels’ Fukuda and Miki, as representatives of the 1970 leadership group, can hardly have shared this sentiment, and there was also no unity among the ‘rebels’ about whom they would support. A feature of the party’s leadership struggles since 1978 had been the emergence of the second-in-command of the Miki faction, Komoto Toshio, as an energetic aspirant for the party leadership. Blessed with extensive financial resources, Komoto was methodically gathering supporters among the party membership. At 69, however, his accession to the leadership, had it occurred, could scarcely have been classified as a ‘rejuvenation’. 11 (d) Fourthly, chance, or contingent factors appear to have played a role. In the Japanese parliamentary system a non-confidence motion takes precedence over all other business. Thus when the bell was rung for the opening of the day’s session of the House of Representatives, it was necessary to proceed directly to a vote on the motion. A satisfactory explanation still has to be made of why the bell was rung at a time when the ‘rebels’ were still out of the Chamber, negotiating with mainstream representatives over the handling of the Hamada case and similar matters. The circumstance was so peculiar that the leader of the rebel Nakagawa faction, Nakagawa Ichiro, speculated publicly (as Table 3 Educational level of ‘mainstream’ and ‘rebels’ according to type of constituency

Number and percentage who graduate university U No. Mainstream Rebels

S-U %

No.

%

M No.

S-R %

No.

%

25 89.3

27 90.0

38 76.0

33 71.7

8 80.0

8 72.7

20 74.1

11 84.6

R No.

Total %

No.

%

21 75.0 144 79.1 6 75.0

53 76.8

Number and percentage who graduated Tokyo University U No.

S-U %

No.

%

M No.

S-R %

No.

%

R No.

Total %

No.

%

9 32.1

11 36.7

16 53.3

14 30.4

8 28.6

58 31.9

2 20.0

2 18.2

8 29.6

1 7.7

3 37.5

16 23.2

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Sources: Calculated from Asahi Nenkan, 1980, pp. 270–3; Yomiuri Shimbun, 8th October 1979 (evening); Yomiuri Shimbun, 17th May 1980 Breakdown of constituency types was kindly provided by Professor Nishihira Shigeki

Table 4 Regional distribution of ‘mainstream’ and ‘rebels’

Hokkaido Tohoku No.

Kanto

Chubu

Kinki

Shikoku Chugoku Ky

% No. % No. % No. % No. % No. % No. % No.

Mainstream

6 60.0

22 66.7

33 63.5

45 76.3

15 75.0

12 80.0

17 68.0

32

Rebels

4 40.0

11 33.3

19 36.5

14 23.7

5 25.0

3 20.0

8 32.0

5

Sources: Calculated from Asahi Nenkan, 1980, pp. 270–3; Yomiuri Shimbun, 17th May 1980; 23rd June 1980

did some journalists) that the bell was timed deliberately so as to give an excuse to the mainstream to dismiss the rebels from the party and so rid themselves of their persistent critics. 12 Such an explanation, however, seems to fly in the face of the clear evidence of Ohira’s discomfiture provided by the evident fury with which he so uncharacteristically greeted news of the motion’s passage. The second-in-command of the Fukuda faction, Abe Shintaro, gave an account of how at the time the bell was rung both he and Fukuda were actually in the Chamber, and when he saw Fukuda depart he was torn in his loyalties to his party and to his faction leader. Significantly, loyalty to the faction leader whom he had served for many years prevailed, and he joined his leader in the rebellion against the party leadership. 13 Although further research is needed on this subject, it seems reasonable to suppose that there was a complex mixture of motives, and a great deal of confusion, in the events which led to the Government’s defeat on 16 May. (2) Why did the LDP not Split? The evidence concerning the motives for the revolt does not suggest a longplanned revolt, with careful preparation for the formation of a new party, but rather a state of marked confusion and of blundering into crisis. Nevertheless, sentiment in favour of a new party was not lacking among the ‘rebels’. A precedent was available in the establishment of the New Liberal Club by LDP defectors at the height of the Lockheed scandal revelations in 1976. Miki had long been considering the formation of a new party as a possible option. Nakagawa, in an interview with a leading newspaper shortly after the passage of the non-confidence motion, said he personally thought it would be preferable if Japan’s conservatives were represented by two separate parties. 14 It is at least arguable (though difficult to test) that two conservative parties, given the way the electoral system works in practice, might collectively attract more votes than one such party.

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There were, on the other hand, several factors which served to dissuade the ‘rebels’ from breaking away from the LDP. The failure of the Nakasone faction to support them despite its previous opposition to the Ohira leadership made the group less viable in terms of numbers. Secondly, some of the younger and newer MPs among the ‘rebel’ faction Members were openly worried about losing their seats if they were to lose LDP endorsement. A third problem concerned the leadership of a new party. Komoto appeared to be the front runner, but there were other possibilities. 15 Komoto was reported to be spending large sums of money to fight the forthcoming LDP presidential primary, so that the formation of a new breakaway party would run across that enterprise. But, on the other hand, the money he had collected could presumably be put to good use in a new party as well, though how far his leadership of the new party would have been supported by the Fukuda and Nakagawa factions is uncertain. 16 Finally, the weaknesses and divisions among the opposition parties made them a poor proposition as coalition partners, a point that became abundantly clear as the election campaign progressed. Despite such obstacles to the formation of a new party, the fact that sixtyTable 5 House of Representatives election results, 1976, 1979 and 1980

Dec. 1976 Seats

Oct. 1979

% of total vote

Seats

June 1980

% of total vote

Seats

% of total vote

LDP

249

41.8

248

44.6

284

47.9

JSP

123

20.7

107

19.7

107

19.3

KP

55

10.9

57

9.8

33

9.0

DSP

29

6.3

35

6.8

32

6.6

JCP

17

10.4

39

10.4

29

9.8

NLC

17

4.1

4

3.0

12

3.0

SDL

–

–

2

0.7

3

0.7

Minor

0

0.1

0

0.1

0

0.2

Indep.

21

5.7

19

4.9

11

3.5

Total

511

100.0

511

100.0

511

100.0

(turnout: 73.45%)

(turnout: 68.01%)

(turnout: 74.57%)

Sources: Asahi Shimbunsha, Senkyo taiken: dai 35 kai sosenkyo, Tokyo, 1980, p. 14 and p. 23; Asahi Shimbun, 23rd June 1980; Asahi Shimbun, 23rd June 1980 (evening); Asahi Shimbun, 25th June 1980.

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Table 6 Party losses and gains, 1979 and 1980 elections

LDP 1979

JSP

1980

KP

DSP

‘79 ‘80 ‘79 ‘80 ‘79 ‘80

LDP

–

–

11

15

3

14

1

1

JSP

6

4

–

–

1

5

0

2

KP

3

1

1

0

–

–

0

0

DSP

4

0

2

0

0

0

–

–

JCP

4

0

10

1

0

1

1

0

NLC

1

1

0

0

0

4

0

0

SDL

1

0

1

0

0

0

0

0

Indep.

1

0

0

0

0

1

0

0

Total of minuses

20

6

25

16

4

25

2

3

JCP

NLC

SDL

Indep.

‘79

‘80

‘79 ‘80 ‘79 ‘80 ‘79 ‘80

0

5

3

0

0

0

0

0

5

1

0

1

0

0

0

1

0

0

0

0

3

0

–

–

6

0

3

–

0

1

0 0

Total of pluses ‘79

‘80

0

18

35

0

0

9

16

0

1

0

6

1

0

0

0

0

9

0

0

0

0

1

0

22

2

–

0

0

0

0

1

8

0

0

–

–

0

0

2

1

0

1

0

0

0

–

–

2

1

14

0

15

1

0

2

0

69

64

Source: Asahi Shimbun, 24th June 1980. Note: Some of the figures in this table differ slightly from those in table 4 because party adherence of Independents following elections is taken into account.

nine LDP Members abstained on a non-confidence motion, and that the cutting of ties with the LDP was actively discussed clearly reflected extreme dissatisfaction with party domination by the Ohira and Tanaka factions. It also points to an important consequence of the tiny majority of parliamentary seats that the LDP had to be satisfied with between 1976 and 1980. In circumstances of a paper-thin majority, the defection even of a relatively small group of MPs

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would lose the party its majority altogether, and make coalition government inevitable. This raised the question of whether loyalties to party or loyalties to faction were likely to prevail. As we saw above in the interview with Abe Shintaro, factional loyalties of long standing could be a powerful counterattraction to party loyalties. Such a situation is in turn some indication of the difficulty faced by the LDP (and by other parties also) in achieving a high degree of party institutionalization. (3) Why did the LDP Win the General Elections? In this account we shall concentrate on the elections for the House of Representatives, though it is good to recall that the LDP also did very well in the elections for the House of Councillors held on the same day. The results of the last three Lower House elections are given in Table 5, and from this it can be seen that whereas the turnout in 1979 was exceptionally low (bad weather apparently accounted for many failures to go to the polls given that in the Japanese system voting is voluntary), in 1980 it was unusually high. It is probably too simple to argue that the increased number of voters bothering to vote is the reason for the improved LDP performance, and in any case if this were accurate as an explanation, we should then have to ask why the increased turnout correlated with voting for the LDP. A preliminary investigation suggests that in vote terms the biggest LDP advance took place in areas where the increase in turnout was highest, and these, with some exceptions, were areas with the highest concentration of population. Rural and semi-rural areas (except for rural constituencies in Kyushu where the LDP performance was exceptionally good) had a positive but much smaller improvement in both LDP performance and voter turnout. 17 Two more points need to be made before we examine possible explanation for the LDP victory. The first is that all the major Opposition parties lost ground in the face of the LDP advance, but in each case they lost a mere fraction of one per cent of their proportion of total votes cast. The worst off group in this regard was the Independents, most of whom were merely aspirant LDP candidates refused party endorsement. Second, despite this, the multi-Member constituency system creates considerable unpredictability about the result in Japan’s three-, four-, and five-Member constituencies, since if, as frequently happens, several candidates are roughly even in popularity, a slight shift of mood in favour or against the LDP will have a disproportionate effect on seats. 18 The explanation for the LDP victory needs to include some combination of the following factors: (a) A sympathy vote for the dead Prime Minister. Ohira’s son-in-law stepped into his shoes in his Shikoku constituency and increased his majority but how far the sympathy factor extended throughout the nation is hard to say, though the LDP played it for all it was worth. (b) The absence of factors which may have influenced the result in 1979, notably the Prime Minister’s pre-election statements about the need to increase taxation.

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(c) A general conservative trend accompanying what was perceived as a dangerous international situation since the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. (d) The fact that the LDP appeared to have closed ranks since Ohira’s death (though the memory of the crisis that brought down the Ohira Government was still only two or three weeks old). (e) The possibility that the Komei Party and the Japan Communist Party, which were the principal casualties of the election in terms of loss of seats, though skilled at long-term organization of committed ‘adherents’, found it more difficult to attract the casual and lightly committed voters who voted in 1980 but at other elections might not vote at all. Conversely the LDP, and even the JSP to some slight extent, seem to have benefited from such ‘casual’ voting, particularly in the big cities. (f) The inability of the various Opposition parties to co-ordinate their policies or their strategies. As the campaign wore on the electorate was given ample evidence that a coalition government might lead to unprecedented confusion. A considerable number of electoral pacts were worked out in Lower House constituencies, but these often conflicted with the electoral requirements of a particular Opposition party in simultaneously fighting an Upper House constituency against the party it was allied with for the Lower House. The pacts were not conspicuously successful. (g) A vote for stability and a rejection of the unknown. Perhaps an important lesson of Japan’s 1980 elections is that electorates are reluctant to change long established habits of government unless the alternatives presented to them can be shown to be manifestly preferable. (4) What are the Long Term Implications of the Crisis? It is possible to approach the events of May and June 1980 from two rather different perspectives. The first approach takes a sanguine view of the crisis because of the nature of its resolution by a convincing conservative electoral victory, and assumes that this will help the party resolve the kinds of problem that led to the passage of the non-confidence motion against the Ohira Government. Thus, according to this approach, the crises may have had a positive effect in that the old guard leaders with their entrenched rivalries are now having to make way for a new generation. The fact that the party now has a healthy majority means that any group tempted to defect would simply be condemning itself to the political wilderness instead of possibly joining a new coalition administration. The LDP will also now be able to concentrate on necessary internal reforms without the tensions and pressures which a paper-thin majority created. The electorate is likely to remain basically conservative and the Opposition parties will continue to be divided and ineffectual. Thus the central structure of power will stay intact, but with a greater flexibility than in receni years, so that we may expect to see some much needed reforms in policy areas such as defence and the electoral system. A second approach concedes that the LDP has won an impressive electoral

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victory, but without seeking to denigrate that victory argues that it may have been influenced by contingent factors such as the high turnout and a sympathy vote generated by the death of the Prime Minister. The LDP, moreover, may be in the process of ridding itself of its ‘old guard’ leadership, but structurally it has not changed. Factionalism remains endemic and may in the future turn out to be as divisive as at times in the past. The Suzuki administration has been launched, as is clear from public opinion polls, with widespread popular goodwill, but as with previous governments, this may quite rapidly dissipate if the Government is injudicious or unwise in its exploitation of a newly secure majority in both Houses. Already there are indications of a more positive attitude towards such issues as defence, electoral reform, and the possible ‘nationalization’ of the Yasukuni Shrine, which is dedicated to the memory of the Japanese war dead, but whose official sponsorship runs counter to the postwar disestablishment of the Shinto religion and the State. In August the Minister of Justice, Okuno Seisuke, launched a debate about the postwar Constitution, which with its no-war’ clause has been a source of endemic controversy but which in recent years has been largely dormant as a political issue. A number of other Cabinet Ministers indicated support for the Okuno stand that the Constitution ought to be rewritten, but the Prime Minister was careful to dissociate himself and his Government from such views. The real testing time for the Suzuki Government will come once the electorate has had a chance to react to these issues and the way the Government is handling them. Most of the signs suggest that Suzuki himself is cautious and middle of the road in his political preferences and will act to curb any excesses perpetrated by the more right wing among his Ministers, emboldened by their big Parliamentary majority. The evidence from recent years also indicates that the electorate is safety conscious and while reacting in June against the prospect of a shaky left-of-centre coalition, would also wish to punish any Government intent on shifting the national consensus too far to the right. The problem for the future is that objective circumstances may well dictate more substantial changes in defence policy and perhaps other politically sensitive areas than has been necessary hitherto. Japan is under relentless and increasing pressure from the United States to increase substantially its contribution to the security of the Western Alliance at the same time as Japanese exports to the United States (especially cars) are causing more and more resentment in that country against Japan. Hitherto, successive Japanese Governments have been caught in the bind that while the Americans have regarded them as dragging their. feet on sensitive issues, attempts to move faster in the sort of directions that the Americans would wish tend to cause political difficulties both with the electorate and from groups within the ruling party seeking to exploit situations to their advantage. The increased leeway that the LDP now has following the June elections is both an opportunity and a danger. It is an opportunity in that the Government has less need to worry about the short term political consequences of decisive action, and with careful handling a number of political issues may prove easier

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to resolve than in the immediate past. On the other hand there is also a danger involved since over-confidence may result in the opening of a number of difficult and delicate political issues relating to the political settlement after the war, which in the interests of long term political stability and the health of the Japanese polity are perhaps best left buried. NOTES 1. T.J.Pempel and K.Tsunekawa, ‘Corporatism without Labor? The Japanese Anomaly’, in P.C.Schmitter and G.Lehmbruch, Trends towards Corporatist Intermediation, Sage, Beverly Hills and London, 1979. 2. See Table 5. 3. Japanese names are given here in their correct order, with the surname first and the personal name second. 4. Since July 1972 Japan has had the following prime ministers: Tanaka Kakuei: 7th July 1972–9th December 1974 (2 years, 5 months) Miki Takeo: 9th December 1974–24th December 1976 (2 years, ½ month) Fukuda Takeo: 24th December 1976–7th December 1978 (1 year, 11½ months) Ohira Masayoshi: 7th Decembcr 1978–12th June 1980 (1 year, 6 months) Suzuki Zenko: 17th July 1980– 5. Since the revelations of his involvement in the Lockheed scandals, Tanaka had sat in Parliament as an Independent, but his influence within the LDP and the degree of control over his faction remained, and remains, large. 6. The non-confidence motion censured the Ohira Government for its economic policies, principally the sharp rises in public utility charges, for its failure to tackle corrpution in high places, and for the Prime Minister’s agreement at his meeting with President Carter to make increases in defence spending. 7. Yomiuri Shimbun, 11 June 1980. 8. ‘When there is a vacancy in the post of Prime Minister, or upon the convocation of the Diet after a general election, the Cabinet shall resign en masse.’ 9. Yomiuri Shimbun, 17 May 1980. 10. Ibid. 11. Yomiuri Shimbun, 21 May 1980. 12. Chuo Koron, September 1980, pp. 108–9. Yomiuri Shimbun, 17 May 1980. 13. Chuo Koron, loc. cit. 14. Yomiuri Shimbun, 19 May 1980. 15. Ibid., 21 May 1980. 16. Ibid. 17. Asahi Shimbun, 23, 24, 25 June 1980. 18. See Table 5.

28 Japanese Politics: New Directions or the Story as Before?* First published in Asian Affairs, Vol. XIV, Part III, October 1983 THE EMERGENCE late in 1982 of a new Japanese prime minister, makes this an opportune time to assess the long term development and direction of the politics of Japan. People in this country are well aware that Japan since the war has become an economic superpower, thus confounding the sceptics who believed in the late 1940s and early 1950s that the prospects for economic recovery were remote. About the politics of Japan the general level of awareness in Britain and Europe is relatively low. This is not so surprising because most people are understandably little concerned about political details of countries remote from the part of the world they happen to inhabit, but in the case of Japan it is not simply a problem of unconcern about detail, but rather of a general absence of ‘focus’. What interests people, but what they often find hard to grasp, is not so much who holds what portfolio in the Nakasone cabinet, or which political parties stand for what set of policies, but more general questions such as how Japanese politics actually works, what is its driving force, is it ‘democratic’ in a recognisable sense, does the electorate have the same sort of political role enjoyed by, say, the British electorate, who really exercises power and makes basic decisions, how far is the government involved in the running of the economy, is there a ‘hands-off’ laissez faire attitude to the economy by government, or should we speak, as some observers have done, of ‘Japan Incorporated’? There is another set of questions about the politics of Japan which I frequently find myself being asked, which relates to the role which an economically vigorous and effective Japan might play in the complex and mysterious world of the late 1980s and 1990s. Concern with this question seems to me to relate to two sorts of perception which people commonly have. The first is a feeling—if I can put it as vaguely as that—that a nation which possesses virtually the second largest economy in the world would be unusual if it did not match its economic strength with corresponding levels of military capacity. Is * Lecture given to the Royal Society for Asian Affairs, London 23 February 1983.

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Japan, therefore, in the process of emerging, or likely to emerge, as a world class military power? The second type of perception is that an economically powerful, and still more, a militarily powerful Japan is likely to make a substantial difference, for good or ill, to the long term picture of international affairs. Granted that Japan is now closely aligned with the United States in a security arrangement known as the Japan-United States Mutual Security Treaty, could the future pattern of international relations include a Japan acting, less as a second-class power looking for cues to the United States, but rather as an independent centre of international initiative which could conceivably change the face of the international system in highly significant ways. A full and definitive answer to these questions would be beyond my competence, since we are dealing with highly controversial and uncertain matters. All we can do is to examine the historical context and developments in the recent past, in order to identify significant trends. We may note, however, that although a period of stability need not necessarily be followed by a further period of stability, nevertheless, where politics is chronically unstable, it is much harder to make forecasts than where political institutions and practices are sophisticated and well-tried. The twentieth century has provided us with many examples of political chaos caused by weak and underdeveloped institutions. Of course, stable politics does not necessarily mean that a country’s rulers will be capable of adjusting to changing circumstances with the degree of farsightedness and dynamism that the national interest may require. The twentieth century also shows us instances of regimes that have proved too stable for a country’s good. A high degree of political stability may also not necessarily be compatible with other desired political ends, such as accurate representation of popular demands, full freedom for individual expression and aspiration, and so on. Nevertheless, in terms of our present task of analysis, where politics is stable, institutionalised and relatively sophisticated in performance, it is possible reasonably to argue that what change will take place is likely to take place within relatively clearly defined parameters. Certain cataclysmic events, such as nuclear war, would nullify such a hypothesis, but it is persuasive given what we may, perhaps over optimistically, call a ‘normal world’. I should like now, after these introductory remarks, to return to the point at which I began, the election by the National Diet (Parliament) of Japan towards the end of 1982 of a new prime minister, Mr Nakasone. It may seem strange, perhaps, from a British perspective, to observe the Japanese parliament actually engaged in electing a prime minister but assuming that there is a clear party majority in the National Diet, the Diet in practice is merely endorsing a decision taken previously by the party (or parties, if it is a coalition) which enjoys such a majority. In fact a single party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has never found itself short of a parliamentary majority in both houses of the Diet (the lower House, or House of Representatives, which has superior powers, and the upper House, or House of Councillors, which has much inferior powers) since the foundation of the LDP in 1955. On only one occasion since 1955—in 1979

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when the LDP could not agree internally and presented two candidates to the National Diet instead of one—has the Diet exercised a substantive role in the selection of a prime minister, and thus in the nature of the next administration. From this it can be seen that it is the LDP where the important choices about political leadership at the top level are made. Alternation of power between rival parties, such as we have known it in Britain, has scarcely occurred at all in Japan since the war, the only exception being in 1947 and 1948, when the Socialists took part in a coalition government. It should not be assumed, however, that because one party has been continuously in power for a long period (in the case of the LDP, already 27 years), there is no problem about leadership. Indeed, Mr Nakasone is Japan’s eleventh prime minister in that 27-year period, and since the resignation of Mr Satō (who had served an unprecedented 7½ years) in 1972, there have been six prime ministers, none of them lasting much more than two years in office. Any assessment of the present and future political impact of Mr Nakasone, therefore, needs to include some judgement about his survivability. A very important question is whether he proves able to break out of the mould of the ‘two-year prime ministership’ which has been the norm since 1972, or whether he succumbs in due course, like his predecessors before him, to the hostile manoeuvrings of rival factions. This is something to which I shall return later on. Mr Nakasone has been widely noticed in the Western news media for the relative clarity and forthrightness of his public statements, especially on matters of defence and foreign policy. On analysis, it is true, the apparent clarity of some of his statements fades a little, though this is not always his fault. One widely reported phrase, which suggested to many readers at the time a fundamental shift in Japanese defence policy, was that Japan should be made into an ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’. This, incidentally, prompted an informal Soviet response that it would take about twenty minutes to sink the ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’. In fact what Mr Nakasone said, during his visit to Washington in January, was that Japan should be made into a ‘large aircraft carrier’, and the introduction of ‘unsinkable’ was a translator’s error. The episode is strongly reminiscent of the interpreting problem faced by the previous Japanese prime minister, Mr Suzuki, during an official visit to the United States in 1981, when he was interpreted as saying that Japan’s defence policy was essentially that of a ‘ wise mouse’ a phrase which caused understandable puzzlement among American editorial writers. In fact what he said was ‘porcupine’, which in Japanese is harinezumi, and this translates literally and graphically as ‘needlemouse’. Quite apart from translation problems, however, the term ‘large aircraft carrier’ gives a general sense of a determination to defend Japan rather than any clear picture about how this is to be done. Similarly, Mr Nakasone’s phrase about the Constitution ‘not being a taboo subject’ stopped well short of a commitment to revise the peace clause (article 9) of the 1946 Constitution, which has been the focus for so much anti-war sentiment. Other statements which he has made, in contrast, appear to contain a more specific programmatic

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content, although it would be unwise to assume that in all cases what is suggested or promised will automatically be carried out precisely along the lines suggested. In his early speeches as Prime Minister he reaffirms that Japan was involved in an ‘alliance relationship’ with the United States (a sentiment that Mr Suzuki hedged on when he was Prime Minister), spoke about Japanese responsibility for sealane protection in areas within reach of Japan, hinted at the possibility of Japan blockading the straits between the main Japanese islands, and indicated that units of the Maritime Self-Defence Forces might in certain circumstances go to the aid of American naval vessels under attack by a hostile power. He proposed that Japan should be prepared to transfer military technology, in areas where Japan was the more advanced, to the United States, and by paying official visits to both Seoul and Washington at the beginning of 1983, appeared to give sanction to the notion of a three-way military cooperation between Japan, the Republic of Korea and the United States. In various practical ways, defence cooperation with the United States was stepped up, though this was part of a process that had been in train for some time. Since the days of the Suzuki Cabinet (1980–82) defence expenditure was to an extent exempted from the severe budgetary ceilings that were being applied in an effort to correct a severe budget deficit. This policy was continued under Nakasone. It is not the purpose of this paper to become involved in the details of Japanese defence policy, but the following general points need to be made, because the whole question of the defence of Japan is something which is particularly difficult to bring into focus. On the one hand Japan since the Second World War is often regarded as lacking a viable defence policy (except for that of simple reliance on American security guarantees) because of the strength of pacifist feeling associated with the catastrophe of defeat in 1945 and the postwar ‘pacifist’ Constitution. On the other hand it is also widely assumed outside Japan that whatever may have been the case in the immediate postwar years, neither the 1946 Constitution nor the existence of anti-war sentiment are now, in the 1980s, much of a barrier to the expansion of military capacity. There are, quite predictably, two sides to this argument, but also the realities of the situation do not follow lines confined to the two approaches outlined above. First of all, whatever may be the case about pacifist public opinion., it cannot be denied that a massive transformation in Japan’s economic capacity has taken place since the 1950s. Japan, with a gross national product some fifty per cent that of the United States, evidently possesses an ability to develop and sustain military forces far ahead of that which she had in the 1950s. At the same time the willingness of Japan to take a positive role even in international debates about questions of security and defence has been slow to develop. The same can be said to some extent of West Germany, though it has been much more marked in the case of Japan. With Japan it obviously has much to do with the long term psychological shock of the unparallelled destruction and humiliation of defeat, with its hideous accompaniment of nuclear bombing. There are, however, in my opinion at least, three other most important factors involved. One is that a

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pattern of policy-making emerged in Japan from the 1950s which made a virtue out of limiting defence expenditure and sought rather to establish national credentials as a first-class economic and trading nation. The reasons for this were partly domestic, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, when the defence issue was still explosive in the context of domestic political confrontation. They also involved a concern by the Japanese authorities to project a low-key image of Japan’s ambitions in the Asian region so as to assuage the intensely hostile reactions which might well have accompanied any resurgence of Japan as a major military power. Secondly, the relationship between Japan and the United States has been in some ways an ambiguous one. It is easily arguable that Japan has been able to spend relatively little on defence because she can rely on the Security Treaty for her protection. Indeed, the notion that Japan has over many years taken a ‘free ride’ on the Security Treaty has held wide currency in the United States. At the same time, however, the Security Treaty may be conceptuahsed as a guarantee that Japan would not ‘go it alone’ in defence, in other words that she would refrain from developing a highly independent approach to security, and to foreign policy in general, outside the ambit of American control. Given the close reliance of successive Japanese administrations upon American security guarantees, this may seem to have been a somewhat remote possibility, but it seems quite plausible that American preparedness to accept that Japan should be allowed a ‘free ride’ was based on the unspoken premise that that was at least preferable to a massively rearmed and non-aligned (or independent) Japan, with all that might from an American perspective be expected to involve in terms of strategic unpredictability in the Northeast Asian region. A third factor also needs to be taken into consideration, and this will take us back into the crucial area of Japanese domestic politics with which we began. There are many continuities between politics in Japan before and after the turning point of 1945, but one vital change was the removal of the military from direct involvement in political decision-making. This, in turn, was accompanied by a marked increase in the stability of the political system as a whole. Japan before the war had developed what in many ways was a sophisticated political system, even though in certain aspects it was extremely oppressive and even irrational. The one most destabilising aspect was the semi-independent decisionmaking power which was in the hands of the (by no means internally united) armed forces and their capacity to weaken and even unseat a government unfavourable to their interests. Following the war and the Occupation, politics and administration was able to proceed without military interference. Even though armed forces (though they were not called that) were re-established (despite the Constitution) from the early 1950s, the lessons of the past had been learned well enough by the civilian Establishment, and whatever other reforms of the Occupation were done away with, the principle of civilian control was firmly enforced. Central to the determination to enforce civilian control was the government bureaucracy, which emerged from the many vicissitudes of war and Occupation with its authority and effective power enhanced.

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In the debates over defence which have continued since the Occupation between the ruling conservative Establishment and parties of the Left, one of the most persistent themes advocated by the Left has been that more substantial armed forces would tend to permit the re-entry of the military into politics. Even seemingly innocuous and apparently common sense developments have sometimes been opposed on the ground that they represented the thin end of a wedge which might force open the fabric of politics and administration and subject it to malign and destabilising military influence. In order to analyse arguments of this kind, we need to look both at the structure of the political system as a whole, and also more carefully at the recent events associated with the new prime minister. As we suggested earlier, politics in Japan since the 1950s have been characterised by a basic stability which surpasses that of almost any other major democracy. The key factor in this regard is the long series of LDP governments. Given such stability in government, combined, it is necessary to empha-sise, with sustained and impressive economic growth, is there any reason to be worried that stability might be jeopardised by an increased national emphasis on military affairs? The answer to this question is not simple,, but the question itself is important. First we need to examine the actual nature of this political stability. When we speak of political stability we think first of the long period of LDP rule and the strong linkages that have developed between the ruling party, the powerful and elitist government bureaucracy and associated interest groups. As we have already hinted, however, in discussing the rapid turnover of prime ministers since 1972, the structure of power within that Establishment is neither monolithic nor unchanging. In politics there is a pattern of clashes, negotiations, manoeuvrings and realignments between groups of various kinds, whose primary aim is the search for influence and power. In the LDP the institution of ‘faction’ (habatsu) is well known, and the party contains six significant factions in early 1983. Habatsu may be best understood as personal political machines, which seek to maximise their power within the party (and within the political system in general) by securing cabinet positions for their members and if possible obtaining the party presidency (which, so long as the LDP remains in power, carries with it the prime ministership of Japan). They also serve as channels of funding for their members for electoral purposes. The party presidency, as we have seen, has in recent years circulated rather rapidly among the leaders of the various LDP factions with the result that the position of prime minister has been subject to comparatively frequent turnover. No single faction (with rare exceptions) can hope to attain majority support within its own party. Certainly in the LDP there has never been a case where a single faction has commanded majority support from LDP MPs, and this means it is always necessary for even the largest faction in the party to seek support from other factions in order to form a coalition. In essence, it is the coalition of factions able to attract a majority of votes (either votes of MPs, or in some recent elections for the party presidency, votes of party members at large) that is

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able to win for an agreed leader the party presidency. This necessity to form coalitions places the emphasis on compromise, and the compromise requirement is further reinforced by the fact that since any given faction coalition is likely to be a shaky and even ephemeral affair, there is a limit to which the party leadership at any given time will want to offend factions currently belonging to an opposing faction coalition. Today’s enemies may well find they are forced to be tomorrow’s friends. This consideration is relevant to any analysis of the policy implications of LDP factionalism. It is often noted that, while factions at times take different stands on policy matters, they do not seem to be primarily motivated by policy calculations. Since power seeking is the principal aim, which may only be achieved by co-operating with habatsu having a different policy perspective, and since any coalition of factions is likely to be fragile, policy considerations tend to be subordinated to the complex and absorbing process of climbing the slippery pole of power and then seeking to stay at the top of it as long as possible. The future stability of Japanese politics probably depends much on this mechanism continuing to operate more or less as described. It may be noted that what I have been describing is a consensus mechanism, but a consensus mechanism dependent upon a particular virtuous circle for it to continue. This requires (a) that no faction became so big that it can control the party on its own; (b) that policy differences between factions (or between faction leaders) do not become so strong as seriously to inhibit the cementing of coalition arrangements; (c) that personal antagonisms between factions or faction leaders do not similarly inhibit coalition formations and (d) that the lines of cleavage between coalitions of factions do not become so firm as to create an institutionalism of antagonisms which in turn might tend to force the party apart. There are indications that in recent years the virtuous circle of limited-size, compromise-prone factions banded together in temporary coalition arrangements has been coming under strain. The episode in 1979 which I mentioned earlier when the LDP put to the National Diet two rival candidates for the prime ministership, represents an extreme example of such strain. That particular crisis continued into 1980, when in May of that year abstentions by 69 LDP MPs in a no confidence motion forced the resignation of the Ohira Government. In the event, the electorate gave his party a vote of confidence in the general elections which were held as a direct result of the fall of his Government. What happened prior to the 1979–1980 crisis in the LDP was that two rival coalitions of factions, the one led by Tanaka and Ohira, and the other by Fukuda and Miki, had developed an ‘institutionalised’ set of antagonisms of the kind suggested above. The trouble stemmed back to 1972, when Tanaka had been chosen as successor to the long-serving Prime Minister Satō, over the head of the faction leader widely expected to succeed him, Fukuda. Tanaka was forced out of office in 1974 amidst allegations of financial corruption, and Miki, leader of a minor faction, was selected to replace him. During Miki’s prime

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ministership, the Lockheed scandal broke, implicating Tanaka in the celebrated attempts of the Lockheed Corporation to sell their aircraft in Japan. Miki refused to countenance a cover-up of the Lockheed affair, though counselled to do so by some of the more cautious spirits within the party, and Tanaka was arrested and put on trial, and was also forced to relinquish his LDP membership (though he continued to lead his faction and retained his parliamentary seat as an Independent). At the end of 1976 Miki in turn was replaced as prime minister by Fukuda, but a mere two years later Fukuda found himself under challenge in a party presidential election held under new rules, according to which the grass roots membership of the party voted in a primary election. The combined organizational strength of the Tanaka and Ohira factions proved sufficient to unseat Fukuda in the primary and he stepped down, to be replaced by Ohira. In all this the working of personal antagonism is clear. Fukuda had been robbed of the chance of succeeding to the party presidency (and thus prime ministership) in 1972 by Tanaka, and found it prematurely wrested from his grasp in 1978 by Tanaka’s factional ally, Ohira. Tanaka, on the other hand, had been displaced as prime minister in 1974 by Miki, who as Prime Minister had done much to ensure that the Lockheed accusations should damage him. Fukuda and Miki thus found that they had in common a mutual hostility for Tanaka and Ohira, and this line of cleavage proved unusually deep and long-lasting, erupting in the crises of 1979 and 1980. In the event the Japanese electorate, registering a sympathy vote for Ohira (who died during the election campaign), and reacting against the disorganized campaigns of the Opposition parties, rescued the LDP from its difficulties by increasing its majority in both houses of the National Diet. In a mood of intraparty reconciliation, Suzuki, the new leader of the Ohira faction, who was renowned for his emphasis on consensus, became party President. For a while Suzuki enjoyed the support of a majority of the factions within the party and past antagonisms appeared to have miraculously receded. His leadership, however, and in particular his grasp of certain policy issues (notably those in the foreign policy area) came increasingly under question, and in 1982 he decided not to contest the party presidency for a second term. The party attempted, but failed, to settle the succession through talks aimed at creating a general consensus, a primary election among party members was held and Nakasone resoundingly defeated three other candidates, thus conclusively establishing his claim to succeed. Nakasone may be seen as a paradox within the LDP. On the one hand the history of his long series of factional manoeuvrings over the years before he became prime minister earned him the title of ‘Weathervane’. He appeared to many observers as the most opportunistic, and therefore, to many eyes, the most unreliable of the LDP faction leaders. While rivalries raged between the Tanaka and Ohira combination on the one hand and the Fukuda and Miki combination on the other, Nakasone never made clear where his loyalties really lay, but rather gave his support to whichever side would appear most likely to afford him and his faction the greater advantage. In so doing, he was really following the

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dictates of ‘unprincipled’ factional advantage which I have described above, rather than indulging in the politics of personal antagonism like some other faction leaders. On the other hand, Nakasone has always been identified with a clearly articulated set of policy positions, which are those of a right wing conservative with a nationalistic outlook. Although a not entirely dissimilar world view also attached to some other LDP faction leaders (most notably, perhaps, Fukuda), their articulation was far clearer in the case of Nakasone. This combination of tactical opportunism and strategic consistency (if I can put it that way) has meant that Nakasone as Prime Minister has developed a rather different image from that when he was merely one of a number of LDP faction leaders. Nevertheless, it has been demonstrated in the past that a bold and clear policy line, whatever may be its effect on the electorate, does not absolve a prime minister from keeping the factional situation under control. The amount of grease on the slippery pole is directly related to the extent to which the party president is able or unable to satisfy the aspirations of the various factions within the party, not only his own. A remarkable phenomenon of the early 1980s is the growth in size among MPs of the faction led by a man on trial for corruption charges and not even a member of the LDP, the celebrated former prime minister Tanaka. The growth of the Tanaka faction has occurred despite the fact that plainly there is no possibility of its leader having a second term as prime minister. Tanaka’s talents, however, are known to lie in political organization, and his faction may be regarded as one of the most effective and well-oiled political machines known in Japan in recent times. It also remains most firmly under his personal control. The support given him by the Tanaka faction was undoubtedly a necessary condition of Mr Nakasone’s emergence as Prime Minister. To an extent, however, the position of kingmaker assumed by Mr Tanaka may make life difficult for a prime minister. As the press was quick to point out, Mr Nakasone’s first cabinet contains six ministers who are members of or closely sympathetic to the Tanaka faction, and this, it was suggested, was an excessive price to have to pay for Tanaka faction support. There are some signs that Mr Nakasone is sensitive to such criticism and is at pains to distance himself from the Tanaka faction in order to establish himself as a prime minister with independent credibility. Nevertheless, the size, influence and efficiency of the Tanaka faction may make it difficult to maintain the virtuous circle process of intra-party consensus-forming that was outlined above. I have dwelt at considerable length on the politics of the ruling party because it is highly relevant to the question of where power lies in the Japanese political system, and, even more significantly, of how power is reached and maintained. If there is a virtuous circle in the determination of who comes to power, and if this binds the system together rather than splitting it apart, then politics may be developed with reasonable rationality. If, on the other hand, the system is characterised by a vicious circle of mutually reinforcing political cleavages, then both the predictability and the rationality of the policy-making processes may be seriously impaired.

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I have suggested that politics at the centre in Japan is more of a virtuous circle than a vicious circle while also intimating that there are tendencies which in certain circumstances could pull it in the opposite direction. In concentrating, however, on the ruling party, we ought not to neglect the much broader political and administrative environment. This involves clashes and accommodation of interests between various bureaucracies involved in government (government ministries, agencies and sections within them), and large numbers of interest groups, as well as with the LDP and its parts. There is some evidence that the system taken as a whole is now growing more complex and perhaps more difficult to control from the centre, as Japanese society and its institutions also become more plural and sophisticated. Two aspects of this may be mentioned briefly. One is that whereas in Japan the government bureaucracy taken as a whole retains enormous political effectiveness and power (partly as a result of the long period of uninterrupted LDP incumbency), its capacity to exercise control over powerful sections of the economy is subject to challenge. For instance, many of the great industries and firms of Japan were in the 1950s and 1960s subject to substantial levels of civil service control, through an arsenal of regulations governing the allocation of foreign exchange and the like. They now have, however, succeeded in establishing a far greater level of financial independence. Although it is true that in very general terms the government bureaucracy and ‘big business’ tend to see eye to eye on many issues, and mechanisms of producing ‘consensus’ are relatively well refined, industry now has a strong sense of its own independence. Even so, comparative analysis of relations between the civil service and industry in Japan and other major countries might suggest a relatively co-operative set of interactions in the Japanese case. Secondly, the ‘democratic’ elements in Japan’s postwar settlement have gradually come to attain meaning and substance as individuals, groups and communities have come to realize that the Constitution and the political system provide them with the means to defend their rights and interests if they are prepared to use them. The environmental pollution protests which gathered momentum from the late 1960s are perhaps the best known example, though the way in which local communities exploit the possibilities of the parliamentary election system in order to obtain local benefits is another example of equal interest. The methods used may, according to some definitions, appear ‘traditional’ but they are no less effective for that. The rock-solid nature of Tanaka’s own local power base in his Niigata constituency on the Japan Sea coast of Honshu has paid evident dividends for its inhabitants in terms of roads, bridges and other amenities, and their refusal to treat his alleged corruption, however massive, as reason for abandoning him appears fully rational in terms of a calculus of local benefit. The courts are also now more widely used than previously in defence of aggrieved interests (even though Japan remains a remarkably unlitigious country), and parliamentarians are now required to represent the interests of a bewildering variety of groups, from new religions to farmers’ co-operatives to doctors to returned servicemen.

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Conversely, of course, the government itself, and in particular sections of the government bureaucracy such as the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Home Affairs, exert themselves to maximise their control over the areas of their respective jurisdictions. This trend has become particularly noticeable since the LDP victory in the 1980 elections, and is manifested in, for instance, a stress on nationalistic themes in the tightly controlled school textbooks, in an effective reduction in the autonomy of local governments, and in the increased official emphasis on national defence. Attempts to cut back administrative costs and reduce a serious budget deficit inherited from the relatively freespending governments of the early and middle 1970s have led to attempts in particular to squeeze welfare spending which, though at low levels until the early 1970s, had increased considerably from that time. I have said little in the course of this paper about Japan’s Opposition parties, and I do not propose to do so in detail, beyond remarking that the Opposition is highly fragmented, both ideologically and organisationally. In an interesting and relatively recent development, some of the major LDP factions have been establishing linkages with some leaders in the four ‘centrist’ parties. In contrast those parties which have retained a clearly oppositional perspective (the Japan Socialist Party and the Japan Communist Party) are now confined to a permanent minority position, commanding the support of little more than a quarter of the electorate. Given Opposition weakness, the politics of Japan may be conceptualised, following Sartori, as ‘predominant party’ politics. Predominant party politics, as we have seen, certainly does not mean absence of politics, but it has meant in Japan that significant politics is bounded by an Establishment whose structure and whose policies are both reasonably predictable and also capable of handling a changing environment. The question (or set of questions) with which I should like to leave you is this: The predominant-party, faction-based, bureaucracy-centred politics of contemporary Japan has emerged since the war in the particular conditions of the Japanese environment and clearly has some remarkable successes to its credit. Japan has been transformed from a shattered and defeated nation to an economic and technological giant, with a high standard of civilised living and a degree of self-confidence that would have been difficult to imagine three decades ago. Can this society continue to conduct its politics in the kinds of ways that I have described? Is the politics of factional conflict and accommodation in a predominant party capable indefinitely of maintaining political stability? Can the absence of an effective political opposition outside the ruling party, and the consequent failure of power to alternate between competing parties, be reconciled with the requirements of democracy, or is democracy a concept sufficiently flexible to accept the indefinite monopoly of power by one ruling group? Are the checks and balances provided within the present system in its actual operation sufficient to ensure that the more conservative and nationalistic line of policy associated with the present Prime Minister does not itself ultimately prove politically destabilizing and so threaten the undoubtedly democratic content of the political institutions and practices that

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have flourished in Japan in recent years? My own answer to these questions would be one of cautious optimism, but I believe that any political system (not excluding the British system, incidentally) is capable of going off the rails. I hope, therefore, that it is not too presumptuous to say that we should continue to monitor the workings of politics in Japan with a judicious mixture of good will and constructive realism.

29 The Occupation: Continuity or Change? First published in Asian and African Studies (Journal of the Israel Oriental Society), Vol. 18, No. 1, March 1984 This revolution of the spirit among the Japanese people represents no thin veneer to serve the purposes of the present. It represents an unparalleled convulsion in the social history of the world (General MacArthur, 2 September 1946). 1 The worst thing possible about Japanese politics today is the fact that the same class of people who led and guided the mistaken war policies of Japan from the start of the Showa period still continue in positions of power—overbearing in their arrogance and stubborn in their refusal to reflect upon the past. Like the suppurating roots of carious teeth, these people exude an offensive stench…. The stench of these rotting teeth rises to the high heavens (Utsunomiya Tokuma, April 1969). 2 AT FIRST SIGHT these two statements may seem little more than extreme examples of hyperbolic political rhetoric. Both, in their own ways, however, are equally astonishing. Did General MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Allied Powers, really believe that the Occupation of Japan had the momentous significance that he suggested? And did Utsunomiya, the long-serving maverick Diet Member, who for much of his career had been affiliated with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), really mean that the leaders of his own party were just as bad as those Japanese leaders who had brought war and destruction to Japan up to 1945? No doubt both these men believed their rhetoric at the time they uttered it, though whether either would have given vent to quite these sentiments after a period of mature and sober reflection is another matter. In extreme form, however, they each represent polar views of the achievements and significance of the allied Occupation of Japan. Boiled down to essentials, the first statement says that the Occupation wrought fundamental change, that Japan would never be the same again, that the experience was essentially revolutionary. The second statement, in contrast, essentially expresses the view that the old guard won out, that revolution was avoided or defeated, that continuity is more prevalent than change. Since both statements contain a strong normative, as well as cognitive, content, we can express possible positions in relation to the Occupation according to the fourfold schema illustrated in Figure 1.

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Let us discuss each of the four boxes in turn. While the above-quoted MacArthur statement, with its apparently revolutionary overtones, clearly falls into Box A, we have identified those who now occupy this position as ‘liberal optimists’ on the grounds that the Occupation did introduce a number of important liberalizing reforms and that there is a significant body of opinion, both in Japan and abroad, which regards their long-term impact as crucial in the shaping of contemporary Japanese society. 3 Box B is represented by a great corpus of Marxist and semi-Marxist writing in Japan and outside, and Utsunomiya, who obviously must take his place in Box B, is exceptional mainly in being nominally on the conservative side of the political fence. 4 Their main point is that the Occupation did not deliver what it originally promised. Whereas in its early stages it appeared to be offering a rootand-branch replacement of the previous regime and a radical restructuring of existing institutions, it ended up by backing ‘reactionary’ elements in politics, industry, the bureaucracy and other fields and laid the foundations of a conservative political establishment which only needed the various conservative political factions to unite in 1955 as a single majority party in order to create a virtually impregnable structure of political power. In Box C are included those ‘reactionary’ conservatives who in a fundamental sense never accepted the Occupation settlement and especially never accepted the replacement of the Meiji constitution by that of 1947. For them, matters such as the status of the emperor, the ‘excessive’ emphasis on human rights in the 1947 constitution and of course the inhibitions on independent defense created by Article Nine are cause for constant complaint. Although the number of those, even within the LDP, who would like to return to the Meiji

Figure 29.1

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constitution is now probably very small, the strength of revisionist sentiment within the right wing as a whole should not be underestimated. Those, however, who occupy Box C may be regarded as in general outside the mainstream of conservative sentiment, even though some would argue that it is now moving in their direction. Perhaps the most important feature of Japanese politics since the Occupation has been the resilience of what is often called the ‘Yoshida legacy.’ Analysis of the factional struggle for the party presidency and thus control over the ruling party and the destinies of the nation indicates that those factions and faction leaders regarded as inheritors of the mantle of Yoshida and his principles appear to have a much better chance of achieving and retaining office than those seen as on the outside. The protracted failure of Nakasone Yasuhiro up to 1982 to attain the prime ministership., despite charisma and ability, may well be connected with the fact that he could not be construed as having emerged from the Yoshida stable. Success ultimately depended upon being the only credible ‘savior’ of a factional alliance whose chosen leader had come under criticism and unexpectedly resigned. Box D, therefore, contains what we are loosely calling the mainstream of the LDP (and more broadly the mainstream of the political system as a whole), which seems to be a fairly clearly identifiable set of people and attitudes. We have defined Box D as consisting of those who prefer continuity to change and who regard the Occupation as having done more to foster continuity with the past than to create change or to break with the past. This argument requi:es careful elaboration and defense. If we accept the view that the inheritors of the Yoshida legacy have been the most dominant force in Japanese politics for the past twenty-five or thirty years, and if we reflect upon the marked continuities of policy over that same period, then it follows that these are deeply conservative political actors. What, though, is the character of their conservatism? Any attempt to characterize the conservatism of the mainstream risks the kind of over-generalization about Japanese politics that is all too frequent in the Western mass media. Nevertheless, some effort toward a synthesis is desirable so as to understand the fundamental connection between the Occupation and what has happened since. It seems that the conservative mainstream has rather consistently directed its policies according to the following five main principles: 1. The survival and integrity of the Japanese nation has priority over any other consideration. 2. It is essential to maintain social order, and constant vigilance is required (including quite ruthless action, if necessary) to ensure its maintenance. 3. A substantial (though limited) element of democracy may be permitted in the working of the political system provided it does not interfere with the principle of central control over the destinies of the nation and people. 4. National survival depends on the economy remaining competitive and dynamic, so that most other considerations need to be subordinated to this end. 5. A close relationship with the United States is the most expedient basis for

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foreign policy in contemporary international circumstances, but the advantages of an unobtrusive military posture outweigh the disadvantages. The first of these principles is, in a sense, the one from which all the others derive, though they are not necessarily entailed by it. There is nothing whatsoever surprising about it, and indeed most governments of most countries have national survival and integrity at the top of their lists of priorities, whether consciously or unconsciously. In the case of Japanese mainstream opinion, however, there has been a particularly well-developed sense of nationhood and nation-building which parallels and no doubt in part derives from that of Meiji Japan. The relatively relaxed attitudes found, for instance, in Western Europe and Australia toward the creation of a multi-ethnic society and to the acceptance of immigrants and guest workers scarcely find a parallel in Japan. The rest of the beliefs we have listed may well be regarded as a pragmatic response to the overriding imperative provided by the first, though the way they have turned out is no doubt conditioned by the particular political perceptions of mainstream conservative opinion. If evidence were required of the determination of the regime to maintain social order, we may cite the virtual disappearance from Japan of the United Red Army and similar ultra-leftist terrorist groups during the 1970s. The efficiency with which this campaign has been carried out by the police must surely parallel the near-extermination of the Japan Communist Party during the late 1920s and 1930s. The regime, it is true, has been markedly less intolerant of numerous, though minuscule, groupings of the ultra-right, who on occasion (for instance, in 1960–1961 or with Mishima Yukio’s Shield Society up to 1970) have made no small contribution toward political destabilization. The reasons for this are complex and involve the ideological affinity which some conservative politicians feel for such groups, the problem of corrupt connections and the fact that they attack the ultra-left. But when they are perceived as a real threat (as with the abortive plot to assassinate the Ikeda Cabinet in 1961) they are rudely dealt with. There is little reason to suppose that mainstream (as distinct from maverick) conservative opinion regards the ultra-right as much other than a minor nuisance. The maintenance of social order, however, has a much wider dimension to it than the control of terrorism. Government ministries are constantly involved in projects of social engineering whose ultimate objective is to avert social destabilization. One of the best known examples is the government programs to combat environmental pollution following years of neglect. During the 1950s and 1960s, when labor entering the cities from the rural areas was seen as likely to be docile and easily satisfied by the regular increases in wages made possible by high economic growth, little was done at the official level about the most appalling ecological and human disasters. When, however, the anti-pollution movement threatened to develop into a challenging political force capable of radically altering the balance of political stability, the government changed its policies with considerable speed. Efforts over many years by the Ministry of Education to combat the influence of the Japan Teachers’ Union (Nikkyōso) falls into the same category. The issue of the content of school history and social

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studies textbooks is most commonly seen in terms of the ministry’s seeking to distort the truth in the interests of a reactionary ideology, and there may well be substance in this. It is, however, also based on a search for the means of creating a school population more or less immune to the contrary ideology of the JTU, which the ministry regards as highly dangerous. The search for social order does not necessarily lead the government in a ‘reactionary’ direction. The constant polling of public opinion done by the Prime Minister’s Office, for instance, on a wide variety of social and political questions creates an information base about popular needs and aspirations which tells the government both how needs might be satisfied and how order might be maintained. Again, government policy toward the prefectures has in broad terms been premised on the twin aims of ensuring reasonable equality of income and earning power between the various regions and maintaining so far as possible orderly administration. These various policies are premised on the view that a satisfied population is likely to be a quiet one, though there is also little inhibition about dealing with troublemakers. The third principle is that democracy can be tolerated to the extent that is does not interfere with central control. An essential condition for the maintenance of a desired degree of such control is the continuance of an LDP majority in both Houses of the National Diet. This is the primary condition for political continuity as interpreted by the conservative mainstream, and in this they have been outstandingly successful, despite coming close to losing their majority in elections of the middle and late 1970s. In order to ensure that their majority remains intact, it is essential to prevent the formation of a new party by any dissident faction or group of factions. Factionalism is endemic within the LDP, and the danger of a split of this kind is always present. The fact that, apart from the formation of the small New Liberal Club in 1976, group defections have hitherto been avoided, is testimony to the success of the efforts that have been made over the years to keep the party together. To some extent it means that concessions have to be made to the kind of sentiment that we have placed in Box B, and in general positions of responsibility in the Cabinet and party are distributed to non-mainstream as well as mainstream factions. A further and hitherto most effective technique for staying in power has been the ability of the LDP to manipulate the electoral system. Conservative-voting rural electorates have an up to fourfold advantage over metropolitan and urban electorates in terms of the value of a vote owing to the failure of the government or its instrumentalities to redraw the constituency boundaries effectively to take account of movements of population. The multi-member constituency system has also favored the splintering of the opposition parties whereas the LDP has managed to avoid that danger and has been extremely effective in optimizing the number of candidates it puts up for election in each constituency. The revision of the Upper House national constituency may well give the LDP a further vantage point in the one place it had been slightly disadvantaged by the electoral system. 5

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The problem of central control, however, is wider than that of maintaining the LDP in power. Those Occupation reforms directed toward the decentralization of political power were the ones which fell victim most rapidly to the conservative tide of the 1950s. This was so in local government, where central control over the police, to a considerable extent over education, and—through financial control and amalgamations of local authorities—over local autonomy itself had been effectively established by the late 1950s. Central control over local government had not, it is true, been returned to the status quo of the 1930s. but by the 1960s local authorities were far more docile and cooperative with central government than the reformists of the Occupation period might have hoped. In part, this was because of the domination of local politics by conservatives of a similar political stamp to those at the center. Central control of local politics was not, however, such a conspicuous feature of the 1970s, at least in the big cities. Industrial policy, as is well known, did not favor the kind of trust-busting approach of the early Occupation reforms. The anti-monopoly law was easily emasculated, and company amalgamations were actively promoted by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI). The deliberate aim of government policy was to strengthen the national economy by the creation of industrial combines capable of competing safely in international markets with the giants of overseas industry. On the other hand, small and medium firms were also actively encouraged and constitute a vital and essential sector of the economy, even though their political weight is far less than those of the big combines, to which in many cases they are in a relationship of dependence or subordination. Our emphasis here on the principle of central control should not be interpreted as denigrating the substantial democratic elements within the system nor as underestimating the readiness of the conservative mainstream to accept them. In any case the popular support for the ruling party demonstrated in its successive election victories is an inestimably valuable source of legitimacy which reinforces its effectiveness and self-confidence. The fourth principle is that national survival depends on a competitive, dynamic economy, so that most other considerations become subordinate to this end. A great deal has been written on the singlemindedness with which economic growth and international economic competitiveness has been pursued since the 1950s, and it is unnecessary to recapitulate the argument here. Economic dynamism was also evident in the prewar period and sprang in part from an acute sense of economic vulnerability—of being a ‘have-not’ country— which required extreme effort to overcome. The good fortune of Japan during the 1950s and 1960s of existing in a relatively benign international economic environment, under American protection and with rapidly growing world trade, was taken full advantage of by a political and economic establishment which was determined to have the economy recover from its febrile and emaciated condition of the immediate postwar period. Government policies on such areas as investment, labor, taxation, and the

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environment were consciously and wholeheartedly devised with these aims in view and, of course, succeeded beyond the dreams of their promoters. The capacity of the government and industry to work together had been developed during the long period of preparations for war in the fifteen years or so up to 1945, and the lessons learned at that period were put to good effect. The fifth principle is that the relationship with the United States is an expedient basis for foreign policy, but that the advantages of an unobtrusive military policy outweigh the disadvantages. Japanese foreign policy between the Meiji Restoration and 1945 was, in the broadest terms, a search for security, power and status in a world composed of nation-states and empires. In a Darwinian international system Japan often acted as a super-Darwinist. Protectors were sought from among the great powers of the day and found for limited periods (e.g., the Anglo-Japanese Alliance), but few inhibitions were felt about carving out an empire among the weak states of her geographical periphery. Ultimately Japan acted as a highly independent national entity, working with enormous energy and considerable ruthlessness to create a Japanese sphere of influence in a world which almost no Japanese believed to owe his country a living. Japan up to 1945 was never, except briefly and superficially, part of a ‘bloc’ of nations, but plowed her own idiosyncratic furrow. The international environment at the end of the Occupation differed in certain fundamental respects from that which Japan had confronted before the war. Japan herself was immeasurably weaker, both economically and politically, than she had been, and in the perceptions of her leaders an effort not entirely dissimilar to that required after the Meiji Restoration was needed to restore her international status. Continental northeast Asia, however, was no longer a power vacuum providing cheap pickings for predatory neighbors, as it had been for long periods. The consolidation of Soviet power in eastern Siberia, the foundation of the People’s Republic of China and the division of the Korean peninsula between two belligerent and mutually antagonistic regimes (both of which, incidentally, were hostile to Japan) left little chance for Japan to take much significant part in the affairs of that region. Moreover, the gradual achievement of independence by most of the former colonies to the south of Japan brought into being a number of highly independent-minded regimes with bitter memories of Japan’s Occupation during the war but willing to interact with her at a purely economic level. That Japan should become a virtual protectorate of the United States after the end of the Occupation in 1952 was part of the package agreed to by those of the former Allied Powers who accepted the San Francisco peace settlement of the previous year. Japan now in effect became part of the ‘bloc’ of anti-Communist nations, led by the United States. Even today there is probably no real alternative for Japan, given the continued polarization of the American and Soviet camps, but plainly the nature of Japan’s affiliation has greatly changed with her emergence as a major economic power. From an early stage in the relationship it was evident that the Japanese government did not intend to spend

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the kinds of sums on armed forces that were regarded as normal in Western Europe and elsewhere, despite pressure by the Americans to do so. Moreover, official Japanese support for some American initiatives, such as the war in Vietnam, was lukewarm. One scholar has argued, after extensive interviews with the family of Yoshida Shigeru, that in the immediate postwar period Yoshida saw no alternative to a special relationship with the United States but did not believe that the security treaty would involve a permanent arrangement. Ultimately it should be possible—according to this interpretation of Yoshida’s fundamental approach—for Japan to return to a situation where her closest relations are with China. 6 However this may be (and the interpretation remains controversial), it is plain that the foreign policy priorities of the conservative mainstream have differed substantially from those of successive US governments. The present debate about Japanese rearmament needs to be seen at least as much in terms of a reluctant Japanese establishment calculating the minimum necessary response to intense and sustained American pressure for a sharply increased ‘contribution to the alliance’ as in terms of a ‘resurgence of Japanese militarism.’ 7 It must be said, however, that the consequences of cumulative Japanese armaments expansion ultimately need not depend entirely upon the nature of the motivation for it. We have been arguing that the five principles we have attributed to the conservative mainstream (Box D in Figure 1) are common to those who prefer continuity to change. To sustain this propostion it is not necessary to demonstrate that no significant changes have taken place under their rule, or that the five principles have been adhered to at all times with a dogmatic rigidity. We do maintain, however, that these principles have held in general with considerable consistency and also (which is more controversial) that a clear linkage may be traced between them and central themes in Japanese history between the Meiji Restoration and 1945. The survival and integrity of the nation, social order, central control with limited democracy and vigorous government involvement in the promotion of economic development were all features of the prewar scene. The fifth principle is of course new but the search for a protector among the major powers is not, and the enormous difference between the military dominance and expansion of the 1930s and the ‘low posture’ of the more recent period should not blind us to the continuity implied by Japan’s ability to secure a far higher degree of economic security than she ever possessed before the war, while reasonably credible military security has been provided by the United States with increasing Japanese participation. We must now return to the Occupation per se and attempt to defend our proposition that the inhabitants of Box D regard it as having done more to foster continuity with the past than to create change. It will be immediately evident that this proposition differs from the view of the liberal optimists that the Occupation was successfully reformist and that what emerged was a political system operating according to the full paraphernalia of liberal democratic practices and principles. Perhaps more

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interestingly, it differs from the view of the conservative reactionaries that the Occupation, regrettably and ineluctably, broke with the past by abolishing the central role of the emperor system, hamstringing the armed forces and unleashing a dangerous brew of popular and subversive elements into the political scene. It shares with the Marxist Left (and such conservative mavericks as Utsunomiya) recognition of the Occupation as a consolidating rather than a reformist experience, while differing from them in welcoming that fact rather than decrying it. The point is that Yoshida and his followers quite clearly recognized the aspects of the Occupation which could, with care, foresight and adequate political muscle, be harnessed to ends that were continuous with their prewar views and aspirations for Japan. We are not arguing that theirs was a completely reactionary approach, as is suggested in much Marxist and semi-Marxist literature. 8 At the same time it would be singularly naive to suppose that it was characterized by a wholehearted enthusiasm for liberalism and democracy, whatever may have been the ultimate outcome of their policies. It is this blackand-white polarization between the Occupation enthusiasts and its denigrators that bedeviled debate about it, both in Japan and abroad, during the early postOccupation years and continues to do so to some extent up to the present day. The reality, in fact, is much more complicated. The central insight of the conservative mainstream, in our view, was that the centralization of power in a prime minister and Cabinet, designated by a popularly elected parliament to which it was directly responsible and formally in charge of a powerful administrative bureaucracy with a large measure of control over the nation’s affairs, constituted in some ways a more effective political machine than that which had existed under the Meiji constitution. The ‘dual government’ or even ‘multiple government’ possibilities inherent in that constitution had created a highly unstable political system at the top level, even though the population was tightly controlled by a range of institutions deriving from and inspired by the mystique of the emperor system. It is scarcely fanciful to see Yoshida’s determination to resist the pressure of John Foster Dulles in the early 1950s for massive rearmament as having in part sprung from his memories of army insubordination and uncontrollable radical nationalism in the prewar period. The 1930s, with its assassinations, army officer revolts, failure of civilian control and constant juggling of political leaders must have struck him and his deshi as no less destructive of their cherished ideal of social order than the amateurish Communist plots of the early 1950s. In order, however, to realize their ideal of stable political control, the conservative mainstream needed to create one further crucial condition— namely, a single conservative party capable of staying in power indefinitely or at least over a long enough period to make its mark indelibly on policy. This was a much harder task to achieve than it appears in retrospect, and in fact Yoshida himself had been ousted from the prime ministership before it was finalized in 1955. The Occupation made an indirect contribution to the achievement of conservative dominance by its leniency toward the conservative forces during

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the later stages of American rule. It is the potential of the 1947 constitution to facilitate centralized bureaucratic rule without the interference of irresponsible outside elites, able, like the chiefs of staff of the armed forces in the prewar period, to claim privileged access to the emperor in certain circumstances, which may in part explain why fundamental constitutional revision (except for the controversial Article Nine) has never been so prominently on the agenda of the conservative mainstream as it is sometimes presented as being. From the point of view of a government concerned with the development and maintenance of sufficient power to conduct activist policies, particularly in the economic sphere, the political and governmental structures enshrined in the constitution have proved quite adequate. Those parts of the Occupation settlement that grossly interfered with such aims (decentralization of police organization, for instance) were speedily dismantled or modified. Foreign and defense policy is the area where the Occupation appears to have created the greatest break with the past. The elimination of the armed forces from substantial political influence for perhaps three decades can in no sense by regarded as continuous with prewar political reality. The oft-repeated arguments that neither domestic nor foreign opinion would have allowed a Japanese government of the 1950s or 1960s to embark on precipitate rearmament without unfortunate consequences contains considerable truth. Nevertheless, there is an element of continuity with the past which is frequently lost sight of. Had Japan rearmed massively in the 1950s, it would have been part of an American global alliance against the Soviet Union and China. Especially if Japan had been expected to carry out military responsibilities on behalf of the alliance well outside its own territory at a time when it was in a clearly and grossly subordinate relationship to the United States, this would also have constituted a break with tradition. Military cooperation with Britain during the First World War was hardly a parallel. We may well ask whether the Sino-Soviet dispute would have emerged to divide the Communist world so completely as it has over the past quarter century if a heavily armed common enemy such as Japan, in close alliance with the United States, had confronted them both in East Asia. If pursuit of long-term security was the common aim of both prewar and postwar Japanese governments, we venture the judgment that the postwar approach, so different in method from its prewar counterpart, has yielded on the whole much more satisfactory results. Whether it will continue to do so, or whether the methods employed are likely to suffer drastic change, is a question outside the scope of this paper. The exercise which we have attempted here may seem excessively schematic and over-generalized. Any attempt to trace the influence of a national and international experience extending over a number of years and affecting millions of people, such as the Occupation, requires going beyond the evidence on several counts. We can merely speculate on what would have happened had the Occupation never taken place or had it occurred under some different format. It is very difficult to distinguish in many cases between changes that directly resulted from Occupation reforms, those which had nothing to do with them, and

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those which stem back to a mixture of influences, that of the Occupation included. 9 The Occupation itself was a singularly confusing and contradictory experience, both for the Japanese who were at the receiving end and for the Americans who were engaged in administering it. Nevertheless, the importance of the Occupation in Japan’s modern history is great and conceivably in danger of being somewhat underestimated, given the present tendency in Japan to search for indigenous roots and long historical continuities. We have argued that one of the principal achievements (or results, to use a more neutral word) of the Occupation was to facilitate the emergence of a purposeful and highly durable political leadership group, which we have called the ‘conservative mainstream’ (not, incidentally, identical with the LDP). This group, we argue, has operated according to certain principles in which can be detected marked continuities with the broad lines of conservative political thinking since the Meiji period. The term ‘continuity’ does not imply absence of change, and indeed massive renovations have been made in most areas of Japanese life since 1945. The Occupation in general provided the opportunity for renewal rather than revolution. Two questions still need to be posed: First, is the political leadership in Japan likely to retain its sense of purpose and its dynamic responsiveness to a changing world, or do the phenomena noted colorfully by Utsunomiyia now threaten its credibility and effectiveness? Second, is the monopolization of power by one party for an indefinite period healthy for the Japanese political system, or would it be better if the opposition were revitalized into a force that could actually assume power for a period? The answers to these questions, or at least the attempt to answer them, logically belong to another paper. NOTES 1. Cited in W.MacMahon Ball, Japan Enemy or Ally?, London-Melbourne 1948, p. 18. 2. Cited in Jon Halliday, A Political History of Japanese Capitalism, New York and London, Monthly Review Press, 1975, pp. 202–203. 3. A fairly representative example is Margaret A.McKean, Environmental Protest and Citizen Politics in Japan, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, University of California Press, 1981, esp. ch VII. See also Kurt Steiner, Ellis Krauss and Scott C.Flanagan (eds.), Political Opposition and Local Politics in Japan, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1980. Both these books, but especially the latter, seem strongly influenced by the political situation of the late 1970s when the LDP had only a bare majority in the two Houses of the National Diet and ‘progressive local authorities’ dominated the local political scene in big cities. More recent trends might suggest that some of this ‘liberalism’ is overly ‘optimistic.’ 4. Since the manuscript of this paper was completed, I have received from Professor Ishida Takeshi some interesting insights into the views of Utsunomiya. Professor Ishida and others interviewed him some years ago

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before his defection from the LDP. When asked why he had not left the party, he retorted that his own position had been entirely consistent, whereas that of the LDP mainstream had changed. Not he, therefore, but the mainstream, ought to leave the party. The turning point came, in his opinion, with the Kishi government in the late 1950s, since it was Kishi who had set the party on the path of ‘money politics.’ Applying Professor Ishida’s interpretation of Utsunomiya’s position to our schema, Utsunomiya began and remained in Box A, whereas others in the LDP (according to him) expressed views consistent with Box A during the Occupation but later changed either to Box C or Box D. Utsunomiya’s view rather begs the question whether the predominant line of the LDP really changed under Kishi, or whether, as the present writer would tend to argue, the Yoshida legacy was the most crucial factor. However this may be, the Utsunomiya statement quoted above clearly belongs in Box B. 5. See J.A.A.Stockwin, ‘Japan,’ in V.Bogdanor and D.E.Butler (eds.), Democracy and Elections, Electoral Systems and their Political Consequences, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983. [Chapter 3 in this volume.] 6. John Welfield, ‘Some Historical Influences on Modern Japanese Foreign Policy’. World Review (Brisbane) 21/2 (June 1982): 5–20, esp. 19. 7. See Hideo Otake, ‘The Politics of Defense Spending in Conservative Japan’, Occasional Papers, Cornell University Peace Studies Program, no. 15 (February 1982). 8. This view is somewhat implied in J.W.Dower, Empire or Aftermath. Yoshida Shigeru and the Japanese Experience, 1878–1954, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1979. 9. See Herbert Passin, ‘The Legacy of the Occupation of Japan’, Occasional Papers, East Asia Institute of Columbia University, New York 1968.

30 Japan as a Political Model? First published in East Asia (Campus Verlag, Frankfurt), Vol. 2, 1984 JAPAN IS WIDELY talked about today as a model for other societies, including those of Western Europe. This is not entirely surprising given the extraordinary success of the Japanese economy since the 1950s and the great competitiveness achieved by many Japanese industries. More surprising is that Japan should now be seen as a model for the West, which used to provide models for Japan. An interesting reversal of roles appears to have taken place. When one surveys the contemporary literature on Japan, however, it is clear that the lessons to be learned from Japanese practice and institutions are sought overwhelmingly in the field of management. Improvement engineering, quality control circles, zero defect policies, egalitarian relationships between labor and management, permanent employment contracts, payment by seniority, enterprise unions, trading companies, planning for long term rather than short term profit maximization and maximization of market share rather than profits, cutting of inventories to the bone, subcontracting by oligopolistic large firms to dependent and vulnerable—but highly competitive—small ones, in-house training of carefully selected labor whose education has been rigorously technological—all these things are presented as a package worthy of study and emulation by hardpressed managers in recession-prone Western industries. Indeed, the impact of the Japanese model of industrial management in the United States appears already to have proved quite profound, though the response to it now combines emulation with attempts to reassert the value of ‘American’ rather than ‘Japanese’ management techniques. It is not quite true, of course, that management is the only sphere of activity considered, or that it is presented in isolation from other aspects of the entity called ‘Japan’. Many writers present cultural explanations of Japanese managerial practice, while others cite a variety of institutional and historical factors which have contributed to the system developing as it has. In particular the way the economy is managed is held up as worthy of emulation, though differences of opinion can be seen in the literature concerning the question how far the government ‘manages’ the economy and how far the economy manages itself. 1 One area, however, which in this context has been paid relatively little attention is that of politics and the political system. To some extent there is a sense in the literature on Japan as a model that politics is an epiphenomenon, in that political change, such at it is, makes little difference to the really important questions. These questions tend to be defined in terms of the functioning of the economy and the character of management practices. Implicit in this approach is

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the view that politics in Japan scarcely matters in its own terms, but is some kind of holding operation enabling the bureaucrats and economic managers to get on with the work of notching up ever more impressive economic successes. 2 The purpose of this article is to attempt in a necessarily preliminary fashion to come to grips with the question how far the politics of Japan (and more broadly the political system) deserves to be studied specifically for the lessons it can teach that might be of relevance to the politics of other countries. Just as it is hardly possible to examine the economy in complete isolation from its political context, so also we cannot study politics without also being fully aware of the close interaction between the actions of politicians and the broader social and economic order. Nevertheless, we believe that it is worth while extracting the political aspect of Japan for independent scrutiny, because though part of a larger whole, it has both interesting peculiarities and a crucial importance within the larger context. The idea that the way politics works in one country may be capable of emulation by another is itself something that deserves critical appraisal. Japan in the late nineteenth century was of course an excellent example of a borrower of political (and many other) institutions. The overwhelming self-perception of underdevelopment in Japan of that period triggered a wholesale programme of institutional borrowing. Today the West is less anxious to borrow from Japan, even though the Japanese economic impact has stimulated much discussion of ‘lessons from Japan’. Indeed Japan following the Meiji Restoration was also going through the experience of revolutionary government, whose approach to existing institutions was extremely radical. Even though today in some Western countries there is a certain kind of radical conservatism, which among other things perceives that the Western world is falling behind Japan economically, it would be silly to argue that the situation has remotely reached the point where either the need is felt or the will exists for wholesale borrowing of political ideas from Japan. Moreover, the argument is sometimes encountered that nations with long politicial traditions cannot (or should not) seek to import ‘alien’ political institutions or practices because they will prove incapable of being assimilated to indigenous norms. This argument is occasionally given rather mystical overtones, but it does contain the germ of truth that most modern political systems are both highly complex and dependent on structures of law, tradition and convention that require intricate processes of amendment in order to reform. The rarity of genuinely far-reaching revolutions in modern Western societies attests the basic validity of this point. The fundamental problem here is that wholesale innovation in a complex political system is likely to be much more difficult than it sounds. Nevertheless, virtually all modern societies as a matter of routine are constantly altering, amending and up-dating their procedures in a more or less eclectic fashion. The importation of Japanese influences as part of the process of change need pose no fundamental theoretical problem in this regard, however strange it might have appeared in the years before Japan became known as a source of organizational ideas.

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Having said this, it might perhaps be argued that the way politics actually works in Japan provides a set of negative, rather than of positive, examples to the outside world. The following statements about it together represent what one might call a ‘negative model’ of Japanese politics. 1. Although different parties (including parties of radically contrasting ideological persuasions) contest elections in Japan, the same party always manages to win a clear majority in both Houses of the National Diet, and has never lost a general election since its formation as the Liberal Democratic Party in 1955. There is none of that alternation of power which periodically breathes fresh life into the politics of some Western nations. 2. The continued political dominance of the Liberal Democratic party (LDP) has enabled the government bureaucracy, which inherited a prewar tradition of centrality in the political power structure, to consolidate its position to such an extent that Japan may be described as subject essentially to bureaucratic rule. This has been reinforced by the practice whereby numbers of senior civil servants after early retirement enter politics and occupy key political offices including high cabinet posts. 3. The National Diet, described in the 1946 democratic Constitution as ‘the highest organ of state power’, is in practice nothing of the kind. Except to a limited extent in the middle and late 1970s when the LDP had lost control of some important parliamentary committees, the ruling party is able to use its majority as a steamroller, so that effective debate does not take place. The Opposition parties, faced by a chronic situation of political impotence, take refuge from time to time in noisy obstruction, and are prone to boycott Diet proceedings. By so doing, they are capable of imposing some delay on the government’s parliamentary timetable, but they rarely have much effect upon the content of legislation. 4. An important reason why the LDP has monopolized power since 1955 is that there is a severe imbalance in the value of the vote between urban and rural constituencies, and this has been advantageous to the LDP, whose strongest support is to be found in the countryside. The imbalance, which in the House of Representatives involves approximately a 400 per cent advantage for the most favored constituency over the least favored, and around 500 per cent among the prefectural constituencies of the House of Councilors, has resulted from a failure to redraw boundaries to allow for movements of population, which have been massive since the 1950s. There have been several elections where this imbalance may well have spelled the difference between victory and defeat for the LDP. 5. Elections are extremely expensive and tend to be based (particularly in the case of the LDP) upon candidates’ personal machines which in turn are financed by intra-party factions. The multi-member constituency system which forces individual LDP candidates to contest the same electorate with each other as well as with the Opposition, is in part responsible for this situation, but personality voting seems an endemic part of voting behavior. Elections as a contest among two or more competing parties with contrasting programmes between which the electorate has to choose seems distant from the Japanese case.

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6. Political machines are also a key feature of the larger political parties (the LDP, again, being the most conspicuous example), and are generally called ‘factions’—a word which is a convenient, though possibly misleading, translation of the Japanese habatsu. A high proportion (perhaps 90 per cent) of LDP members of the House of Representatives, and a slightly smaller proportion of LDP members of the House of Councilors, are clearly identifiable as affiliated with a faction. The faction led by the former prime minister Tanaka Kakuei attracts constant attention from the scandal-hungry media because despite its leader’s court appearances on charges relating to the Lockheed bribery case, first publicized in 1976, the membership of his faction, together with his allegedly superior skill at the manipulation of power, are commonly given as the reasons for his continued success as a machine politician. 7. In consequence of the primacy of faction over party, the persistence of personality voting and the political importance of personal connections throughout the system as a whole, the writing of contemporary Japanese political history requires the skills of a Lewis Namier rather than of an A.J.P. Taylor. Rather than history developing through the grand clash of ideas and ideologies, it twists and turns endlessly through the backstage manoeuvrings of shadowy cliques and cabals. Ideas are the pretext of action; personal connections its essence. The picture which this adds up to is one of a political system in which the concepts of fair, rational democratic representation, of competition between parties’ sets of interests, and of government responsible to the people at large, is replaced by a different image: that of politics based on money, a biassed electoral system in which elections are also inordinately expensive, the primacy of personality, personal connections (often of an obscure kind), and faction rather than party, an impotent opposition, and bureaucratic dominance. Let us, however, examine the phenomena categorized above under (1) to (7) in more detail, and from a more positive point of view. By giving both sides of the coin we hope to be able to show that some careful rethinking needs to be attempted about stereotyped images of Japanese politics. 1. Although it is certainly true that the Liberal Democrats have won every general election since 1955, theirs is not a monolithic party, and indeed a quite wide variety of opinion is reflected within it on most issues. Moreover the perennial contest between factional alliances within the party ensures that power is unlikely to be monopolized over an excessively long period by one particular leadership group. Indeed, when we consider that Tanaka Kakuei, Miki Takeo, Fukuda Takeo, Ohira Masayoshi, Suzuki Zenko and Nakasone Yasuhiro succeeded each other as LDP President (and thus Prime Minister) between the resignation of Sato Eisaku in 1972, and the time of writing in 1983, we might even argue that the problem lies in instability of leadership rather than in excessive monopoly of power. This impression is reinforced when we note that cabinets are frequently reshuffled, so that cabinet ministers do not have long in one post (though there have been exceptions). Moreover, the implication that it is necessarily a bad thing that the same party always wins elections and

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continues to form the government, though implied in the view that alternating government contributes to the health of a democracy, needs to be examined critically. There are of course more than one version of this approach, but let us address ourselves to the case of Britain. In the British case there has been reasonably (but not unfailingly) regular exchange of ministerial and opposition role between the Conservative and Labor parties (and before the 1920s between Conservative and Liberal parties). At least since the Second World War it has been common to justify this essentially with three arguments: first, that since both are class-based parties representing radically different sections of the electorate, it would be destabilizing to leave the one permanently in power and the other permanently in opposition. Alternation in power thus tends to bind the fabric of society together; second, that dynamism is preserved and complacency avoided among politicians by instituting genuine competition for power, while the arrival of a new government, with different ideas from its predecessor, tends to avoid complacency within the civil service (which, in the British case, but unlike the United States) remains whichever party is in power); third, that radical changes of direction from government to government are avoided because each party is motivated to appeal in election campaigns to the ‘middle ground’ of the electorate, meaning those electors lacking strong class or party identification, and whose views are diagnosed as lying close to the midway point in a spectrum from right to left. The model here is of a society divided essentially along social class lines (though not so much along other lines), where an alternating government mechanism exists for preserving reasonable political consensus. It assumes that the major parties, though maintaining differences of ideology and policy, nevertheless agree on fundamental question such as loyalty to the existing state and certain of its key symbols, institutions and practices, the rules of political competition, the acceptance of at least the less contentious of the reforms of the preceding administration, and essential policy directions in economics, social welfare, defense, diplomacy and other key areas. This is analogous to the idea of employing two alternating teams in a factory workshop, each with its own distinctive approach to the organizational tasks involved, but both pursuing essentially the same goals, and competing with each other to satisfy their employers (read ‘electors’). The trouble with this model in Britain is that it appears since the early to middle 1970s to have ceased to work effectively. Both major parties have tended to move towards their extremes, and the consensus which they both accepted appears to have been passing through a disintegrative phase. The rise of the Liberal/Social Democratic Party Alliance, whether or not it is ultimately successful at the polls, represents a reaction by a substantial section of the electorate against the loss of consensus. On the other hand, Thatcherite Conservatives argue that a new consensus is in the process of being created, as encapsulated in the slogan ‘TINA’ (There is no Alternative), and the Labour Party now appears to pursue a new consensus on the basis of policies substantially at variance with those either of the neo-Conservative view or that

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of the consensus that prevailed into the 1970s. In the Japanese case the results of political competition have been different. Consensus on policy has been forged within the ruling LDP, acting in close conjunction with the civil service and associated interest groups. In Sartori’s terms Japan’s is a ‘predominant party system’. 3 The process, however, whereby policy is formed and develops over time does bear some resemblance to the earlier British ‘consensus’ model, except that it results from competition within a single party rather than between different parties. Indeed, the new conservatism’ evident in Britain (and elsewhere) in the early 1980s has its counterpart in the policies being pursued by the present Japanese Prime Minister, Nakasone. This has been possible, however, in the Japanese case, without changing the party in office. 2. The great importance of the government bureaucracy in the Japanese political system is widely accepted as a fact, and few analysts would dissent from the assumption that its continued eminence stems both from the failure of the Occupation to reform it significantly (whereas the military bureaucracy, which had contested its power up to 1945, was removed from the scene), and from the long period of LDP government. The argument, however, does not finish at this point. We need to raise both normative and factual aspects of the question. The notion that bureaucratic rule in Japan has produced immobilist or stultifying government (‘bureaucratic’ in a pejorative sense) would scarcely be acceptable to Chalmers Johnson, who in his important book on the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) argues that the way the Japanese economy is managed is ‘plan rational’, unlike the ‘market rational’ economies of North America and Western Europe, and the ‘plan ideological’ economies of the Soviet bloc. ‘Plan rationality’, for Johnson is a feature of the ‘developmental state’, in which ‘the government will give greatest precedence to industrial policy, that is, to a concern with the structure of domestic industry and with promoting the structure that enhances the nation’s international competitiveness’. 4 He argues with great persuasiveness and on the basis of a wealth of evidence that through a long period of trial and error going back to at least the 1920s industrial policy has been developed to a high level of effectiveness, and that the health of the Japanese economy has enormously benefitted thereby. If this is correct, therefore, bureaucratic dominance as it has emerged in Japan would appear to produce particularly happy results. Even if this is the case, however, with industrial policy, it is arguable that in some other policy areas results have not been so fortunate. In agricultural policy, for instance, the pressure from agricultural interest groups against policies that would drastically reduce protection and accelerate the flight from the land were notably successful, even though the political effectiveness of agricultural interest groups appears to have waned somewhat since the 1970s. Here is an interesting example of where interest groups have been in a sense incorporated into the decision-making mechanisms and have considerable success in foreclosing certain policy options which many would argue make sense in terms of overall

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rationality. 5 At the same time the great complexity of this issue must be acknowledged. To talk of ‘bureaucratic dominance’ is not to deny the possibility that interest groups may be incorporated into the bureaucratic process. Indeed, Johnson’s analysis in relation to industrial policy is by no means incompatible with this. In his view, industry was well integrated into the decision making processes he describes. If industry was prepared to involve itself in these processes, it was because it appreciated that ‘plan rationality’ worked. Where Johnson’s analysis has been challenged concerns in part the facts of MITI omnipotence especially in the recent period. Yamamura, indeed, in his review of Johnson’s book, comments that the book may have come out ten years too late. 6 3. The position of the National Diet clearly bears little resemblance in practice to the high-flown description of its role in the 1946 Constitution. In particular the failure of the Opposition parties (or any combination of them) to displace the LDP at any general election has meant that the cut and thrust of debate in the National Diet has an aura of unreality about it. Nevertheless, we should maintain an accurate comparative perspective when discussing this question. It would seem quite inappropriate to use the American Congress for purposes of comparison with the National Diet of Japan, because of the far greater powers granted to the former as a result of the separation of powers, and also because of the relative absence among American Congressmen of party discipline which is an essential part of the British or Australian parliaments. Although the British House of Commons in the heyday of nineteenth century liberalism is often regarded as the exemplar of the ‘Westminster Model’, in twentieth century British practice the party with the majority can with rare exceptions exercise discipline over its parliamentary members so as to ensure that its legislative programme passes into law. The National Diet has differed since the 1950s from the House of Commons in two particularly significant respects. First, one party has held a parliamentary majority without break. This has meant that the principle of ‘winner take all’ which operates in the House of Commons for limited periods (until the Opposition becomes the Government), operates in the National Diet virtually without limit. In other systems where a single party (or coalition of parties) has been continually in office for very long periods (e.g. Australia between 1949 and 1972), the Japanese situation of great policy continuity based on quasipermanent linkages and stability of mutual expectations between ministerial politicians and bureaucrats has also developed. Possibly the Japanese case is an even more extreme example because of the low expectation, even after more than thirty years in the political wilderness, of Opposition recovery. Secondly, however, the important role of parliamentary committes in the Japanese system does provide somewhat greater opportunity for genuine debate on issues than might otherwise be the case. In a sense this is an ‘American’ element in a largely ‘British’ set of parliamentary arrangements. There has been one period of a few years when the Opposition parties were strong enough to control several important committees, though the resultant impact on policy

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does not seem to have been very great. 7 4. It is extremely difficult to justify by any but partisan criteria the imbalance of electorates that has been allowed to develop. Perhaps the only thing that might be said in mitigation is that a number of other advanced democracies have also allowed a gerrymandered electoral system to persist. The extent of discrepancy from fair contest in Japan, however, has taken on the proportions of a national scandal, even though those who cry ‘foul’ are generally muted in their criticism. We do not have space to enter into the complexities of this issue, 8 but it may be noted that one of the main effects of it has been to grant to the rural areas a political compensation for the relative disadvantage they have suffered as a result of rapid industrialization since the war. They have used this to good advantage. 5. 6. 7. The interaction between expensive elections, the multi-member electoral system the kōenkai (personal support groups) of individual candidates, personal connections and intra-party factions may well be taken together. Plainly a crucial feature of politics in Japan is that it is group and personality centered. This aspect of Japanese politics may be conceptualized as politics by machine. The Tanaka example given above is exceptional in the sense that Tanaka has succeeded in expanding his faction and (apparently) his personal influence at a time when he is in trouble with the courts and his chances of regaining the prime ministership are presumably nil. It is typical, however, in that Tanaka has merely been exercising the skills of a machine politician. To succeed as a machine politician you need personal connections, the ability to organize, the ability to inspire or command loyalty from followers, skill in making deals with influential people throughout the political and economic worlds, the ability to satisfy followers and clients with largesse and to be seen as a good provider, and above all money, including the ability to raise it and the ability to control its distribution. These are the universal skills of the machine politician, whether the environment is Uttar Pradesh, Louisiana, or Niigata. In order to understand politics in Japan it is important to analyze how machine politics interacts with the political system as a whole. We believe that Japanese politics may be characterized in terms of three basic features: political machines, interest groups and bureaucracy. The relationship between and within all three is extremely complex, and it is not the case that one of the three always dominates the other two. All three interact in an environment of comparatively free competition, and in a social setting which is relatively non-ideological and emphasizes both goal-attainment and personal connections. General harmony is often promoted as a political ideal, but this in fact serves to mask a highly competitive system in which compromise tends to be the lowest common denominator of what can be agreed upon between conflicting interests. Where interests either do not substantially conflict, or where the dominant interest is in a position to suppress the weaker, an extremely dynamic policy outcome may eventuate. Policy advice, especially in key areas of economic management, is generally of extremely high quality. 9 Is Japanese politics, then, a positive model which deserves to be emulated, a

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negative model providing examples to be avoided, no model at all or some combination of these? In order to attempt an answer to this question, we shall first present a further description of the system of politics in Japan under the following ten headings: 1. The system as a whole is highly sophisticated and complex, with a notable capacity for adaptation and learning. 2. In general, political ideas and information flow freely and widely, information is vast in quantity if varied in quality, and serves a huge literate population. Many political deals are nevertheless made in conditions of secrecy. 3. Politics and government are based on a written Constitution, from which stems a large corpus of law governing the way parts of the system are supposed to function and interact. The comparatively low level of private litigation in Japanese society should not blind on to the great importance placed upon administrative law. 4. The structure of power has been very stable since the 1950s (though it was notably unstable before that), and its stability has been based on the quasipermanent ability of the LDP to win elections, the entrenched character of the government bureaucracy and the incorporation of many key interest groups into an intimate set of relationships with government. 5. There is a quite recent history of often intense political conflict (including conflict over basic issues such as the Constitution), but the ruling Establishment (for want of a better term) has been able generally to incorporate a variety of interests into the system through carrot and stick techniques: by making it much more attractive to be incorporated than to stay outside. (There are of course degrees of incorporation, but even the more radical labor unions have been more conformist since the 1970s than previously.) 6. The Establishment pays a certain price for incorporating interests in this way. The interests, once bought into the fold, are not easily or completely tamed, but exact policy benefits for themselves on a continuing basis. The resultant set of interactions and adjustments between the actors concerned can be exceedingly complicated and the process of adjustment to slow one, but the efforts put into solving the problems concerned are often impressive. 7. The system exhibits an interesting combination of capacity to resist pressure from the outside (e.g. from foreign governments) to change policies, and an ability to innovate and be flexible. Foreign beef producers among many others have found Japanese policy hard to influence because of the strong orientation towards domestic interest groups which various agencies of government and their political backers reveal. On the other hand, when interests can be mobilized in favor of policy change, or when resisting groups can be overwhelmed, change can be both sweeping and rapid. 8. Politics is highly personalized, so that especially among party politicians policy issues are filtered and (so it sometimes appears) distorted through the arcane complexities of personal connections and group loyalties. Even though the Nakasone prime ministership may constitute a partial exception, in general leaders emerge out of factional contests and deals rather than from consideration

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of their policy differences. The more scandalous aspects of factionalism receive ample media coverage and criticism, but the basic structures and practices of power attainment and maintenance apparently remain resistant to attack. 9. The general political situation is nevertheless dynamic, and the pressure for internationalization to which the economy and Japanese life generally has been subject over the past ten to fifteen years have had a gradual but significant impact on the ways in which politics is conducted. Dynamism is also necessarily imparted by the fact that elections are regularly conducted at national and local level. There is a case for saying that election results are more predictable in Japan than in many other comparable countries, but they do impart a crucial element of uncertainty and contest into the general picture. 10. Inasmuch as Japan has faced objective problems of an economic, strategic and social nature which have much in common with those faced by other advanced countries, it is scarcely surprising if policy choices bear considerable resemblance to those faced by other governments. More or less public spending, more or less taxation (and where taxation should principally be levied), centralization or decentralization in local government, more or less spending on defense (and on what kind of defense), relations with the United States, methods of controlling wage inflation, regulation of environmental pollution, energy conservation, urban planning and other issues, all have a familiar ring. Over and above these familiar problems, however, are some rather special ones occasioned by peculiarities in Japan’s industrial and management structure, as well as the current necessity to respond to intense international pressures concerning trade, defense and related issues. How far the system just described may be regarded as constituting in any real sense a ‘model’ of politics depends in part on what goals are regarded as desirable. This in turn is subject to fashion. For instance, between the Occupation period and the early 1960s, those few writers who took any interest whatever in the politics of Japan were mostly concerned with whether the Occupation experiment in democracy could be said to be working. If the answer were positive, then perhaps Japan could be taken as a model of externally imposed democratic reform. From the 1960s, with rapid economic growth, the emphasis turned from democracy to ‘modernization and Japanese history, as well as contemporary institutions and practices, were scoured for evidence of how Japan had managed to modernize with such spectacular success. When evidence of severe pollution problems, urban overcrowding and so on, began to receive international publicity in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the model turned negative, at least for some commentators, and when the Japanese economy was hit badly by the first oil shock of 1973–74, negative images concerning the environment were reinforced by doubts about long-term economic viability. When, however, Japan survived the oil shock with low unemployment and inflation at a time when other advanced countries seemed unable to control either, Japan began to be the object of attention from Western observers seeking a cure for problems of ‘governability’. When deflationary policies based on theories of monetarism became the vogue in Western countries

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and recession deepened, it was noted that monetarism as such was not quite so popular in Japan as in The West, and yet the Japanese economy was still managing modest growth. Apart from fashions of this kind, which tend to involve a process of looking to Japan for a quick fix for the problems of Western countries, there is not infrequently a ‘left versus right’ division between those who regard aspects of the Japanese political system as essentially exploitative and repressive and those who admire the way in which relations of authority and hierarchy appear to survive in the Japanese political, economic and social environment. Here again, objective analysis tends to take second place before partisan polemics on both sides. In truth, there is no easy answer to the question addressed in this article. The Japanese political system as a whole appears to be definitely non-transferable given the idiosyncratic circumstances of its development and the peculiarities of the society within which it has evolved. The same is true, however, of almost any other political system one cares to name. Political transfer of the kind envisaged can only be expected to occur in circumstances of great upheaval connected perhaps with colonization (long-term or short-term) or in the immediate aftermath of decolonisation. It is more realistic to ask what (if any) aspects (positive or negative) of Japanese politics merit particular study on the grounds that they might help us better understand the politics in our own countries, or might even give us ideas for change. Some such ideas may have struck the reader in perusing this article, though some readers may also have been struck by the relative ordinariness and familiarity of what has been described. We wish, however, to select one quite general feature of the Japanese political scene which might throw light on the working of politics elsewhere. It is this. Assuming relatively free political competition, it seems possible to conduct the politics of moderation and common sense even in the absence of changes in government over a long period, provided that the price of remaining in power is a grand coalition of interests. The essence, however, of a grand coalition of interests is moderation, fair shares, and a fairly non-ideological pragmatic approach to policy and politics. If government, from choice or necessity, should turn to confrontational policies which alienate major interests, then the basis of its power is likely to be eroded. The continued strength of the LDP has lain in its readiness to adapt, but adapting has meant broadening the coalition. The negative side of this is that it is in a sense a fair weather prescription. When economic circumstances are straitened, the government may be required to carry out policies that result in a narrowing rather than a broadening of the coalition, since important interests will have to be confronted rather than cosseted. The alternatives then are to engineer an economic recovery, reduce by various methods the effective possibilities of political competition, or risk losing power to the Opposition. For the Liberal Democratic Government of Japan the case is made a little easier by the atrophy of opposition parties left out of power for so long. For predominant party governments in some other countries in recent years

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the going has been rougher. NOTES 1. A famous example of ‘lessons from Japan’ literature is Ezra Vogel, Japan as Number One: Lessons for America. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1 979. For an analysis which emphasizes the role of government, see Chalmers Johnson, Miti and the Japanese Miracle. Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1982. This should be read in conjunction with a review of it by Kozo Yamamura in Journal of Japanese Studies, v. 9, n. 1 (winter 1982), pp. 202–17. 2. For an extreme example of this kind of argument, see Norman Macrae, ‘Must Japan Slow? A Survey’, The Economist, 23 February 1980. 3. Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1976. See especially pp. 192– 201. 4. Johnson, op cit., p. 19. 5. Aurelia D.George, ‘The Japanese Farm Lobby and Agricultural PolicyMaking’, Pacific Affairs, v. 54, n. 3 (fall, 1981), pp. 409–30. We should note here that there may be contrasting views of ‘rationality’. The agricultural lobby argues that maximising national food security is ‘rational’, even if the pursuit of self-sufficiency in food is incompatible with economic ‘rationality’. 6. Yamamura, in Journal of Japanese Studies, p. 214. 7. See J.A.A.Stockwin, Japan: Divided Politics in a Growth Economy. 2nd Edition, London, 1982. 8. For amplification, see Stockwin, chapter 6. 9. These issues will be analysed in detail in J.A.A.Stockwin (ed.), Dynamic and Immobilist Politics in Japan (forthcoming). [See Chapter 31 of this volume.]

31 —Dynamic and Immobilist Aspects of Japanese Politics—Parties, Politicians and the Political System—Conclusions First published in Stockwin et al, Dynamic and Immobilist Politics in Japan, Basingstoke, Macmillan, in association with St Antony’s College, Oxford, 1988 DYNAMIC

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IN NOVEMBER 1987 Nakasone Yasuhiro was replaced as prime minister of Japan by Takeshita Noboru, a politician of the same party that had ruled without interruption since 1955, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Nakasone had been widely regarded abroad as a thrusting dynamic leader determined to exercise personal power in order to ‘settle accounts with the postwar period’. By contrast Takeshita—little known outside Japan hitherto—comes over as a behind-the-scenes politician who hesitates to move politically until he has constructed a broad consensus of opinion behind him. Does this mean, then, that Japan has once again entered a period of immobilist politics after five years of unusually dynamic leadership? Why did an established leader who seemed to have given the government and politics of Japan a much more modern image than it had previously enjoyed have to yield office to someone whose approach appeared traditional and unexciting? This kind of question is merely one example of a much broader issue: why is Japan at one and the same time dynamic and immobilist, and what is the relationship between these two apparently opposite aspects of politics and policy making? This issue is what this book is about. The world, which has grown accustomed to the extraordinarily vigorous and innovative ways in which the Japanese have gone about developing a competitive and formidable economy over the past four decades, is often confronted with what seems like policy paralysis in many areas. Contemporary examples include slowness in the liberalization of commodity and financial markets, some aspects of defence policy (at least until the very recent past) and issues of administrative and educational reform and of agricultural protectionism. We believe that the nature of this paradox cannot be grasped adequately without an understanding of the political system as a whole. This book, therefore, is both about decision making and about the character of Japanese politics as a whole. The attempt to combine these two things rather than tackle

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them separately will make this book a wide-ranging one. Part of the problem with analysing the politics of Japan is that it is easy to fall into a pattern of assumptions based on the norms of one’s own political system. Although comparison with other systems is legitimate—even essential—if we are to comprehend Japanese politics, it is also quite crucial that we examine our own assumptions about politics and about the relation of politics to decision making. In this book, therefore, we shall address ourselves in particular to the effectiveness and responsiveness of political decision making in Japan; effectiveness, in the sense of the ability of the system to achieve goals, and responsiveness, meaning the extent to which both internal and external pressures are reacted to positively rather than ignored or resisted. We shall pay attention to the constraints and opportunities provided by the nature of the nation’s broad political and administrative arrangements. We shall concentrate on two polar possibilities of decision-making styles and outcomes: dynamism and immobilism. Dynamic decision making, in our definition, is where decision makers and the decision-making process as a whole are responsive to circumstances and demands. A dynamic decision-making process is one where in retrospect it would be possible to say that the decision makers had not simply been constrained by a complex environment, but had succeeded in transcending the limitations provided by the nature of the political system, pressures of competing demands and so on, so as to arrive at policy based on the merits of issues and incorporating structural change where necessary. Immobilist decision making, by contrast, may be defined in negative terms. It involves an inability to do more than accommodate competing pressures and effect a ‘lowest common denominator’ compromise between them. Another variant is ‘satisficing’, in other words giving everybody something of what they want but nobody everything of what they want. Where pressures are few and not particularly insistent, then this is unlikely to present a serious problem, but where politics is a battlefield between entrenched interests, then the challenge to the decision makers is proportionately greater. On the other hand a lack of challenge from the decision-making environment may also, in certain circumstances, lead to a relatively immobilist outcome or series of outcomes. Whether decision-making patterns are predominantly dynamic or immobilist obviously relates to the merits of alternation in office versus one-party dominance. We may note at this point that in many (though not all) western democratic countries alternation in office used to be regarded as generally beneficial, whereas today it tends to be regarded rather more sceptically. In this regard we could put forward two alternative, and in a sense opposite, hypotheses concerning the conditions for dynamic versus immobilist decisionmaking patterns. One hypothesis would be that where decision makers are securely in power over a long period, with little prospect of being replaced for the foreseeable future, there may be a problem of immobilism stemming from excessive stability. In such circumstances, it may be argued, the extent to which the decision makers are forced to react to outside pressures and expectations is limited

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by the weakness of the opposition to them and the entrenched nature of their own position. From this may stem a failure to respond creatively to changing parameters of the policy environment, including pressures coming from abroad, and the danger therefore that difficult but necessary decisions will be avoided. An opposing hypothesis would state that a political élite which is relatively unchecked by the necessity to respond to and accommodate an electorate whose loyalties and preferences are fickle, is likely to be dynamic rather than immobilist in its decision making because it will have a freer hand in making and implementing policy than an élite constantly faced by problems of ‘governability’. Leaving aside for a moment the Japanese case, a general argument in favour of the first hypothesis might contend that an élite with virtually unchallenged tenure of office is likely to run out of ideas and fail to plan for changing circumstances by adopting a dynamic and imaginative approach to policy innovation. Where a particular élite has been in power for a long time there is also the danger that new and radical departures of policy are difficult to adopt because they could be interpreted as implying a criticism of the policies pursued by the government hitherto. The problem may be particularly acute where the élite is sustained by a complex balance of forces, which may render it more comfortable to make do with old policies which were originally hammered out as a result of difficult and long-drawn-out processes of compromise between different interests represented in the élite. In favour of the second hypothesis it might be argued that the experience of political systems in which alternation of power of competing parties or coalitions of parties is fairly frequent has not in recent years been a particularly happy one. New policies come in with each government, but the knowledge that reasonable tenure of office cannot be guaranteed inhibits a dynamic and creative approach, producing instead a tendency to concentrate on rewarding interest groups constituting the camp of supporters of the government currently in office. Adversarial politics between equally entrenched blocks of interest groups and parties in an alternating system also seems, according to this argument, to create its own systemic immobilism, with the same old arguments and disputes recurring from government to government, and a stable afid essentially immobilist pattern of see-sawing policy reversals becoming the norm. In contrast, where power is securely in the hands of a given élite over a long period, there is at least a reasonable chance that that élite will be free of the time-consuming pressures of working for political survival for long enough to adopt dynamic approaches to policy making. When we examine these hypotheses in the context of Japan, it becomes clear that there is no simple relationship between dynamism and immobilism on the one hand and alternating government versus one-party dominance on the other. In Japan, the reins of power have remained in the hands of essentially the same ruling group for longer than in almost any other advanced country with a system of free elections. Decision making is in some circumstances highly dynamic, but is often also exceedingly immobilist. It is immobilist, however, because over the

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long period in which one party has been in power, its freedom of action has come to be seriously checked by interest groups of various kinds, factions within the ruling party, ministries and agencies of the government bureaucracy, the business world, foreign pressures and so on. Naturally, a political system where one party has been in power for over thirty years does not for that reason alone remain fossilised in an unchanging pattern of interactions, since the policy environment is constantly changing. The policy environment has become more complex over the years. Over certain areas of policy (for instance, defence, trade, finance and agriculture) the international environment has induced a relatively intensive learning process among the decision makers. In the case of Japan, however, we can fairly confidently advance the judgement that the structure of politics and administration of the 1980s shows more continuity with that of the late 1950s than is the case in the United States or France, to take two clear examples, and probably in the rest of the western world as well. From a western perspective, the political system of Japan is not entirely easy to understand. In order to come to grips with it we need to take a dispassionate look at our assumptions about the nature of politics, which include accumulated ideas about how politics ought to be arranged. Because of the widely shared understanding in modern democratic states about what is desirable in a political system, it is not always easy to perceive with clarity the actual nature of political arrangements and the ‘hidden’ assumptions on which they are based. The realization that this may be the case has led in modern times to the production of a great variety of ‘conspiracy theories’, alleging that what on paper is a benign disposition of political institutions and practices, is in practice a cover for the domination of a particular group or coalition of forces, whose ambitions militate against the common good (or simply against the interests of those excluded from power by such arrangements). It is no part of our intention to develop any kind of extreme conspiracy theory with regard to the politics of Japan or the way in which political decisions are made in Japan. We believe that too many such theories, or attitudes towards Japan implicitly grounded in such theories, are already part of the common currency of popular discourse. On the contrary, we are convinced that a dispassionate understanding of Japan is absolutely essential if Japan’s economic competitors are to come to terms with the reality of her economic power and learn to cope with it intelligently. Since the American Occupation of Japan there has been much discussion of the viability or otherwise of Japanese democracy. The proposition that Japan works as a functioning democracy has been widely accepted, but also vigorously contested, or at least questioned, by some observers. 1 Those who support it point to regularly held free elections, free and widely consumed mass media which often vigorously criticize government actions, freedom of political participation, the total absence of political prisoners and an apparently satisfied electorate enjoying a high standard of living, which—presumably as a consequence—regularly re-elects the conservative Liberal Democratic Party

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(LDP) to office. Those inclined to contest it cite above all the long and uninterrupted rule of the LDP, founded in 1955 and effectively victorious in all general elections since. They argue that an electoral system that has been heavily weighted in favour of conservative rural constituencies has gravely hindered the development of an opposition that would have been capable of replacing the LDP in government. They point to the power wielded since the war by the ministries and agencies of the government bureaucracy, and allege that the regular and routine interaction between the LDP, the government bureaucracy and a coterie of powerful interest groups centred on big business represents government by a ‘power élite’. The absence of the union movement from most central economic decision making leads to such designations of the Japanese politico-economic system as ‘corporatism without labour’. 2 Moreover, whereas those who think Japan is a working democracy tend to regard ‘consensus’, or general agreement about national goals, as evidence of a broadly harmonious, democratically oriented electorate, the critics hint at a consensus ‘created’ by Establishment manipulation of consensual norms lying deep in the national consciousness, and founded in the curious if tautological proposition that the Japanese and the Japanese nation are somehow quintessentially ‘unique’. 3 It should be noted that the critics, in this context, are by no means all to be found on the left, nor the believers in Japanese democracy on the right. The focus of this book is not primarily upon democracy as such, though much of the material we have collected does bear on the question of democracy, at least tangentially. What we are concerned with is how Japan’s political and economic arrangements affect policy making. To understand this, however, it is important to examine some basic assumptions which people make about politics, and this leads us back to assumptions about democracy. Essentially the question of assumptions boils down to questions about priorities. LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC AND AUTHORITY MAINTENANCE MODELS Most western observers are steeped in a liberal democratic mode of political discourse with strong normative elements, which predisposes towards judgements about politics of a fairly cut and dried nature. On the other hand, there is at least one alternative approach which underlies the political thinking of many regimes around the world and their supporters, which though they may or may not pay lip-service to democratic norms, in fact base their priorities on a broadly different set of assumptions. Let us therefore briefly set out these two alternatives. Liberal democratic theory, broadly speaking, assumes that it is an essential function of government to represent the people (usually defined as ‘the electorate’) in its area of jurisdiction and to act responsibly (not only responsively to sectional interests but bearing in mind the interests of the whole people). Government is defined as democratic if it has been elected on the basis of constitutional procedures which are fair and equitable in the sense that there

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is rough equality in the value of each elector’s vote and no section of the electorate is in effect disenfranchised. Most debate about the merits of various electoral systems assumes these aims, but it has long been also assumed that the representatives of the electors are not mandated by them, rather they have considerable freedom to make policy with the national (or even merely party) interest in mind during the tenure of office of a government. At the next election, however, they will be tested through the ballot box. Democratic theory can accommodate a variety of arrangements for the formation and maintenance in office of governments, as well as for the relations between politicians, representative assemblies and government ministries. It also nowadays will readily assume the legitimacy of the political party as a crucial mediator between the electorate and government. Nevertheless the principal point is that a system is judged according to how well it combines efficient and fair representation with government that is so far as reasonably possible open, accountable and responsive to members of the electorate as well as responsible to the national interest. Such a simplified account of course glosses over many important controversies that are never completely resolved in what is, after all, a set of general principles to guide a hugely complex set of human interactions. The priorities which underlie many contemporary political systems are different from those just outlined. The principal goal of a government is to stay in power, or more broadly, to ensure that a given order—often meaning a given set of sectional interests—remains in power. Heavy emphasis is placed on national goals, national integrity or the integrity of some essentially sectional ideology (such as a particular religious faith or the sanctity of an ethnic or class interest) and on the maintenance of political stability. Openness and freedoms of the citizen may be tolerated in so far as they are not regarded as dangerous, but there is no normative presumption in favour of such values except that to some extent they may be forced on the government from the outside. It may be observed that states where such principles prevail are often politically fragile, so that those in power react in an authoritarian manner as a result of political insecurity. One of the ironies of such regimes is that by their authoritarian methods they merely succeed in exaggerating the intransigence of the opposition, so that they need to become even more authoritarian to stay secure. Their motivations may be narrowly concerned with consolidating their rule, or they may be genuinely concerned with the welfare of the state, but in either case they will be interested in consolidating stability far more than with any notions derived from liberal democracy. The most successful of such regimes may create highly dynamic ‘developmental states’ (the contemporary Republic of Korea is such an example), but still remain sectional, authoritarian and illiberal. Others may relegate not only liberal democracy but also development to a position subordinate to that of staying in power. We are not seeking to argue that the second model (which for want of a better term we shall call the ‘authority maintenance’ model) is applicable as such to contemporary Japan. Our belief is, however, that a clearer understanding of the Japanese political system may be attained if we do not simply measure it against

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the yardstick of the liberal democratic model but also bring into the picture the dynamic of forces revealed in our model of authority maintenance. The application of both models in an attempt to understand the workings of the Japanese political system seems particularly apt when we consider the nation’s modern political history. Japan experienced a radical (some would say revolutionary) transformation of her society following the Meiji ‘Restoration’ of 1868, under the guidance of a determined group of leaders who represented a certain limited segment of the previous regime’s élite (largely disaffected members of the warrior class coming from particular domains in the southwest of the country), and who embarked upon a conscious programme of nation building. The regime was quite as insecure, and the tasks of nation building it set itself as great, as has been the case with many contemporary regimes in the Third World, but its developmental achievements were remarkable. Japan by the 1930s had developed from what in many ways was the medieval condition of the mid-nineteenth century to a position of major regional power with a substantial modern economic and military capacity. The political condition of Japan, however, remained unstable, and in some ways remarkably fragile, and this fragility was an important factor leading to the Pacific war. The Constitution of 1889 left a crucial ambiguity about the actual location of power, and although the system developed impressive administrative capacities and a remarkable ability to control and motivate the population, it found it difficult to incorporate new interests into political competition without destabilising the structure of political authority. Attempts to create a more responsible system of authority, through political parties actually responsible to a democratically elected parliament, were briefly successful in the 1920s, but the power of the armed forces and other groups active in politics proved too much, and what has sometimes been called the politics of ‘collective irresponsibility’ followed. Between 1868 and 1945 the number and range of those involved in politics and politics-related activities increased a great deal, but there was never any decisive break with a system whereby central political authority was monopolised by a coterie of cliques whose frequent inability to agree among themselves ought not to be mistaken for a willingness decisively to broaden the base of political participation. There is general agreement that the Japanese political system that emerged from the ruins of defeat in 1945 and the efforts of the American Occupation to reform Japan marks a decisive break from what went before, even though it would also be generally acknowledged that important elements of continuity remained. Nevertheless, as we have already suggested, the system presents something of a puzzle, with controversy appearing and reappearing since the Occupation about whether Japanese politics is really democratic or whether it is (in our terms) an authority maintenance system under the guise of liberal democracy. ÉLITISM VERSUS PLURALISM

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One recurring mode of this controversy is the ‘elitism versus pluralism’ debate. 4 Abstracting from a number of studies, the ‘elitist’ model of the Japanese political system is not unlike C.Wright Mills’s ‘power élite’ model applied to the United States of the 1950s. His idea was that there existed a ‘power élite’ of interlocking groups at the apex of three functional hierarchies (in Mills’s case the government bureaucracy, the military and the business world; in the case of Japan the government bureaucracy, the LDP and the business world). For Mills, common background, upbringing and values, frequent interchange of personnel between the three hierarchies and absence of countervailing power in labour unions, other interest groups and so on, were salient features of the American system. For those emphasising this as a key feature of Japanese political decision making, a model of mutual dependence between the three hierarchies was posited. Thus the LDP depended upon the bureaucracy for technical expertise and legislative initiative; the bureaucracy depended upon the LDP for parliamentary majorities in favour of government legislation, and for jobs on retirement; the LDP depended upon big business for electoral funding; big business depended upon the LDP for political backing, advantageous policies and political stability; big business depended upon bureaucracy for favours in the drawing up and implementing of legislation (and more broadly in the exercise of bureaucratic discretion); the bureaucracy depended upon big business for jobs on retirement. A variant on the ‘power élite’ model was the model of ‘Japan Incorporated’, which rested on the analogy between the Japanese politico-economic system and a giant conglomerate firm. The main drawback of these approaches was their extreme crudity. They left out of account other important interest groups able to affect key areas of decision making, such as those representing agriculture. They ignored the often virulent policy disputes that frequently polarised sections of the alleged ‘elite’, including different sections of the bureaucracy, business and the government party, and largely forgot about the element of power competition represented by faction fights within the LDP. They failed to address systematically the question of where power actually lay within the alleged ‘power élite’, though different writers formulated their approaches with various suggestions about which section was ultimately the most powerful. Above all, they did not adequately cope with the problem of change over time; for instance a bureaucracy armed with the battery of controls over industry that existed in the 1950s was plainly in a different position from a bureaucracy functioning in the ‘liberalized’ conditions of the 1970s and 1980s, where most controls had been abolished and the corporate sector enjoyed far greater financial independence than it had twenty or thirty years earlier. Environmental protection groups, ‘progressive’ local authorities and courts prepared to hand down huge compensation payments to pollution victims represented a challenge to the Establishment in the 1970s that it had not had to face in the 1950s and 1960s. Control of the National Diet by the LDP in the 1970s was less sure than it had been in the 1960s, and leadership of the LDP far more of a problem between 1972 and 1982 than between 1962 and 1972.

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Between 1982 and 1987, however, under the prime ministership of Nakasone Yasuhiro, the party appeared to have re-established its grip on power, even though the electorate was capable of giving the LDP a shock on occasions. 5 In response to the observed drawbacks of the crude ‘power élite’ approach, some writers attempted to counterpose a pluralist model, or at least a model with much greater elements of pluralism embedded in it than those which had prevailed hitherto. Although pluralist models of Japanese political decision making appeared well suited to the diversifying trends of the early and middle 1970s, a more up-to-date perspective suggests that progress towards pluralism has been rather limited in its scope. In particular, though, it is certainly the case that Japanese public servants engage in much bureaucratic infighting, the control over key decisions exercised by an entrenched bureaucracy remains impressive. As Alan Rix suggests in Chapter 3, the modern state as such may lend itself to the entrenchment of bureaucratic power, and indeed difficulties experienced in bringing about administrative reform (discussed by Daiichi Itō in Chapter 4) may simply be a demonstration of this very point. In the Japanese case this may be reinforced even further by a tradition of a centralising bureaucratic state concerned primarily with authority maintenance as developed from the late nineteenth century, and by an absence of truly effective countervailing power, though this is now emerging within the LDP itself. As Aurelia George argues in Chapter 5, Japan is pluralist at the level of basic political representation, but élitist in the sense that there is inequality of access among interest groups associated with the institutionalization of some groups into the centres of power, and because of the unchanging nature of the key elements at the centre. GOVERNMENT, INDUSTRY AND ECONOMIC POLICY MAKING Whether policy making in Japan is better described in an elitist or in a pluralist framework of analysis is a question which leads on to a further question, namely how far central economic policy making is in the hands of government and how far in the hands of private industry. Government guidance of the economy versus the freedom of private industry to make its own decisions without substantial government interference is the stuff of party political polemic in many western countries, and occasionally the Japanese experience has been used to bolster one or other side in the debate. From the perspectives of this debate the interest lies in whether it is the government or the market that is best at making decisions relating to economic choices. Both sides have from time to time claimed that the Japanese example supports their own position: the free marketeers do so because in Japan there is little nationalised industry (and privatization is currently in fashion), and because government-imposed restrictions on profit making are not widespread. On the other hand, those who wish to emphasise the role of government in the management of the economy can point to a battery of cases in which some section of the government (particularly the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, or MITI) has succeeded in persuading an industry or company that a government-generated

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vision of future strategy makes sense, so that there is acceptance and implementation at the micro-level of this larger strategy. 6 When the need to engage in partisan point-scoring on this issue is removed, an objective approach might suggest that what is singular about the Japanese system of economic management is the intensity and frequency of consultation within the government-industry complex as a whole, and the strategic goalorientation of Japanese government and industry. Many rigidities exist, yet, as James Horne argues in Chapter 6, information flows quickly through the system, and participants on both government and industry sides are under intense pressure to obtain results. There is, however, no monopoly of wisdom on either side, and the balance of power among all the participants is constantly shifting, even if it is shifting within relatively predictable parameters. A FUSION OF MODELS? This discussion leads us to the central paradox about the Japanese political system since the Occupation, namely that it was reformed and subsequently evolved in two ways which appear to point in quite different directions, or even to be mutually contradictory. Indeed we would go so far as to say that to appreciate the nature of this paradox is to travel far towards a basic understanding of how the system actually works. Moreover we believe that the paradox can be solved most effectively through a combination, or even fusion, of the liberal democratic and authority maintenance models. The two directions of reform and evolution were as follows. First, the broadening of the participatory base of politics. By the end of the Occupation, citizens of both sexes over the age of twenty enjoyed the vote, which a high proportion of them have gone on regularly to exercise in general and local elections; interest groups and political parties of all kinds found themselves free to operate without having to state officially that they were working in the interests of the emperor or the state (although public sector unions were forbidden to go out on strike, and had some restrictions imposed on their right to organize); an extensive list of human rights was written into the new (1947) Constitution, thus legitimising autonomous recourse to the courts by the citizen in defence of certain constitutionally guaranteed rights; censorship over the media was lifted and the press in particular became a vigorous participator in the political arena. Statist propaganda of the kind encapsulated in the prewar Imperial Rescript on Education was almost entirely eliminated; and so on. Second, the centralization of power on a particular set of élites. It seems highly significant that what is essentially a British-style set of relationships between the electorate, parliament, parties, cabinet, prime minister and the government bureaucracy should have emerged from the Occupation. The prewar system had several competing élites, not least of them the armed forces and the élites around the emperor, contesting the power of prime minister and cabinet. Cabinets were often weak and externally controlled. Perhaps more significantly,

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it was not always predictable what particular external groups they would be controlled by. By contrast, all cabinets without exception since 1955 have been controlled by the LDP. This single fact constitutes the linchpin of the political system as it has actually developed. On the basis of it a strongly clientelist mode of political interaction within a stable and well-defined group of actors has emerged. The actors comprise LDP politicians, officials of government ministries and agencies as well as influential leaders of major interest groups, particularly in industry, commerce, the financial world and agriculture. Increasingly, relations within the group are mediated by power brokers within the LDP. This group is not entirely unchanging in its composition, nor is it entirely impermeable from the outside or immune to outside influence and pressure, nor (most importantly) is it devoid of internal conflict, but its central power position remains extremely strong and difficult to challenge. In terms of the combination of our two models this means that the Japanese people enjoy a political system in which they exercise their freedom to participate in a quite genuinely democratic manner, and regularly behave through the election system in such a way that government quite strongly reminiscent of our authority maintenance model is perpetuated. Moreover the instability typical of most sectionally authoritarian political systems (including Japan’s own system before the Second World War) is greatly reduced by the clear legitimacy which a set of constitutionally democratic norms has given it. The Korean case referred to above shows clearly that even spectacular success in promoting economic development may well fail to grant effective legitimacy to a political system if it is based only on authority maintenance principles and lacks a convincing liberal democratic element in its make-up. It is interesting and important to compare the Japanese political system with a liberal democratic system where parties alternate in office with some regularity. The principal difference in effect is that in the latter, the government bureaucracy has it built into its expectations that there may at a future election be a different government in office which will mean that it will have to work on the basis of a different set of policies (though in practice much of its routine work will not change much from government to government). An even greater departure from the Japanese case is to be found in American government, where many government officials are replaced with the advent of a new administration. In Japan the ‘political class’ has not substantially changed since the early 1950s, and although it has no doubt evolved gradually with generational renewal and the acquisition of new experience, almost any international comparison indicates that its degree of stability is extraordinary. There are two important consequences of this. One is that there is a general expectation that a long-term strategic view is viable. This in turn exerts a strong pressure for policy to be treated in an incrementalist fashion, with existing policy constituting a firm baseline on which new policy is devised. An incrementalist approach does not necessarily rule out a vigorous and even creative approach to policy where that is required

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by circumstances, but there is great antipathy to change for the sake of change, or policy shifts whose rationale is ideological rather than pragmatic. Past policy—the way things have been done in the past—assumes great significance because those institutions and even individuals who are involved in the formulation and administration of a given area of policy have been involved continuously for a long time. It is therefore difficult to criticise it in root and branch fashion, because to do so would be to cast aspersions on past competence. The widespread assumption in British Commonwealth countries that the government bureaucracy serves with equal devotion governments with widely differing policy prescriptions is absent in practice in Japan, and thus the ‘departmental view has a fairly clear ride. This is one of the reasons why pressure from abroad can sometimes be more effective than political control in changing policy, by strengthening the hand of reform against resistance to change. The other consequence is that for those groups excluded from effective political influence the range of choice is not particularly wide. Since the attempt to replace the LDP in power appears, on the basis of decades of experience, fruitless, the choice is essentially between general intransigence, selective or occasional intransigence and client-like compliance. General intransigence used to be a strategy widely pursued by left-wing parties and interest groups but has now greatly receded. Selective or occasional intransigence can sometimes place the LDP on the defensive, as in the revolt that occurred against Nakasone’s proposal for a form of value added tax in early 1987, but an important feature of that episode was that the government’s own supporters deserted it in large numbers. The Opposition parties have also sometimes succeeded in placing the LDP on the defensive in the National Diet by boycotts, threatened boycotts and tactical use of committees. Thirdly, as this writer has argued elsewhere, the frustration of the Opposition parties at being permanently excluded from office have turned some at least of them from being active opponents of the LDP, seeking to replace it, into ‘supplicants’, seeking to join it, or at least to receive benefits from it. 7 When Takeshita Noboru replaced Nakasone as prime minister in November 1987, it seemed that this tendency might be enhanced, since Takeshita, unlike Nakasone, maintained extensive contacts with Opposition leaders. The problems of the Opposition parties are analytically not dissimilar from the problems of interest groups in choosing an optimum strategy with relation to government. In a political system where today’s government is tomorrow s opposition, an interest group may have a real choice between an adversarial and a co-operative attitude towards the government of the day. If it regards that government as basically hostile to its interests, it can work against the government, in order to put the opposition into power, hoping that its purposes will be the better served thereby. Where, however, as in Japan, the prospects of removing a government appear bleak, the penalties of an adversarial stance can be severe. An experienced Japanese government, confronted by an intransigent interest group, will ensure that it faces exclusion as a result of its intransigence,

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but will indicate to it that if it toes the line, things might improve. Local politics provides an interesting testing ground for the proposition that local authorities seeking to improve local facilities by following central guidelines tend in the long run to do better than those which seek above all to assert their policy independence. Since local authorities are themselves subject to re-election by their local electors, and since the central government controls a high proportion of local finances, an independently minded, ‘progressive’ local authority often has a hard time of it. Another example of the same kind of phenomenon is provided by labour unions, traditionally outside the ‘system’, but gradually more accommodating to the ruling Establishment as the penalties of acting otherwise have come to seem more damaging and the prospects of a more pro-labour government have receded. In this we are suggesting that considerations of rational interest in conditions of quasi-permanent LDP government are more important than sociological factors such as habits of deference to superiors in explaining the behaviour of such groups. Indeed political pragmatism is a noteworthy feature of Japanese attitudes to their own politics. Candidates for the National Diet, as well as local politicians, find that constituency issues loom large in the thinking of their constituents, who expect their local representatives in Tokyo to bring them tangible benefits. By and large, the LDP has succeeded in capitalising on this sentiment more effectively than the Opposition parties, essentially because being the party in government gives it incomparably more effective resources both for satisfying sectional and regional demands and for bringing intransigent groups to heel. There is, however, another side to this picture, since an interest group which proves capable of ‘infiltrating’ the system may well be able to establish a more effective and powerful position for itself than it would if it enjoyed only the intermittent opportunities for inside influence likely to be available in a system where parties alternate in power. One example of this (referred to in Chapter 5 by Aurelia George) is the Nōkyō, or Agricultural Co-operative Association. The strategic position of the Nōkyō has been built up on the basis of comprehensive organization of farmers (and more generally rural interests), an unbalanced electoral structure giving disproportionately more votes to rural electorates than to urban ones, heavy dependence by the LDP on rural votes and the election of significant numbers of Diet members (mainly but not exclusively having LDP affiliation) who are or have been Nōkyō officials. In the case of the Nōkyō, there is, to put it rather minimally, a strong presumption that policies on agricultural protection and subsidy have been strongly influenced by the entrenched position of the Nōkyō within the system. Even though international pressures have made agricultural protectionism on the previous scale much harder to maintain during the 1980s, the agricultural lobby still manages to demonstrate to government that it cannot be ignored. The perception that a given power Establishment is permanently (or nearpermanently) in office naturally creates among interest groups a different set of rational expectations than those applying when it appears that the controllers of

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the nation’s destiny are less than securely entrenched. In the Japanese case the ideal situation is to be able to function within the system. If that is not possible, then the next best solution is to be outside, but on good terms with influential sections of the Establishment, in order to be regarded favourably when relevant decisions are made. The worst position is to be in an adversarial relationship to the Establishment, because this will be used as an excuse by those in power to treat unfavourably the group concerned. We are suggesting that it is the realization of the logic of this that has led radical labour unions and others in recent years to tone down their radicalism (despite ideological scruples about ‘supping with the Devil’), in order to position themselves more favourably in relation to government policy. If we are correct in thinking that ‘infiltration’ is now seen generally as a most attractive option for interest groups, then we might expect an ever-increasing number of groups to pursue it. One further example is the Religion and Politics Research Association (Shūkyo Seiji Kenkyūkai), which, through its quite widespread influence among LDP Diet members, is able to exert a conservative influence on aspects of social policy. A priori, therefore, one might expect a gradual expansion of the number of interest groups which, having realised the realities of the Japanese political system, succeed in a strategy of infiltration. If this were so, the country might become increasingly more difficult to govern, and the ruling structure itself might be in danger of falling apart under the impact of insistent and contradictory interest group pressures working within it. In practice, of course, the obstacles to developments of this kind are considerable. Up to the 1970s the most influential part of the system of government was bureaucratic, and, despite contradictory pressures operating within the bureaucracy itself, the sense of an élite corps of ‘mandarins’ whose task is to provide fundamental policy direction as well as implementation remained (and remain) influential. In comparison with many other political systems, the role of the party in power by comparison with that of the government bureaucracy was rather weak, though it has notably increased during the 1980s with the emergence of political brokers among LDP members of the National Diet. Despite what we have said about bureaucratic influence, the Japanese political system does not operate according to the principles of democratic centralism, which in the Soviet Union and elsewhere ensure that only at the very apex of a highly monolithic bureaucratic structure can policy be effectively changed. A democratic centralist system tends to create hierarchical factions which culminate in one or other of a very small number of top leaders, but horizontal communication between factions or between bureaucratic structures is severely inhibited by both the theory and the practice of the system. In Japanese politics and administration, things are far more open than this, for obvious reasons. The flow of information and influence is far freer, even though not all of it occurs in the public eye. The scope provided by the relative openness of the system for interest groups to push their particular barrows within it both adds to its dynamism in certain respects and also brings with it the possibility of instability and even disruption. Such instability is of a different

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kind from that created by a balance of political power producing alternating government, whereby the relative influence of different interest groups fluctuates markedly from one administration to the next. In the Japanese case, the model is rather like that of a patron-client system, where some of the clients reside within the patron’s house, and others (the larger number) live outside it. Still others refuse to have much to do with the patron, but their success in exercising influence is generally slight, though they can be annoyingly disruptive and he may on occasion have to make significant concessions to them. From the patron’s point of view, it makes sense to exercise power according to certain principles. First, it is essential to maintain the exclusivity of his power: other potential patrons must not be allowed to replace him in his house. Second, like any good patron, he will make sure that benefits are distributed with reasonable evenhandedness. If he favours one set of clients more than the others, this is sure to result in resentment, protests, trouble of various kinds and in extreme cases danger to his position. Third, and finally, he must try to keep the numbers of clients actually living in his house to a minimum. It is much easier to do business with clients living beyond the gates than with those who by virtue of residing within the house have a say in the running of his household. If there are too many of the latter, they will squabble among themselves and behave in a generally disruptive manner in their scramble for influence over the patron. In practice, of course, the ‘patron’ is a combination of the government party and the ministries and agencies of the government bureaucracy. Many of its actions will not clearly or demonstrably be related to overt interest group pressure, either from within or from outside the system. There are many technical, regulatory tasks to be undertaken where decisions are made according to essentially technical criteria. Few of these tasks are conducted, however, without a fine judgement being taken about their potential effects on ‘clients’, in both the short and the long term. One important mechanism that has been developed to deal with such matters is the ‘advisory council’ (shingikai), of which some hundreds now exist. These are usually set up by particular ministries or agencies of the central government in order to advise on some area of policy within the remit of the ministry or agency concerned. Interest group representatives, as well as ‘persons of learning and experience’ are invited to sit on advisory councils. Some of them appear to be little more than fronts for the bureaucratic body which set them up in the first place, but others have rather more autonomy, and may be regarded as a way of introducing an interest group perspective into policy making without allowing the making of policy to slip out of bureaucratic control altogether. 8 This is an imperfect and possibly undesirable mechanism from a liberal democratic perspective, but it makes much sense from the point of view of what we have called authority maintenance. The difficulties which the United States and other foreign countries have experienced in prevailing on Japan to change economic policies in a more ‘internationalist’ direction owe much to this fundamental structure of decision

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making. The central policy making organs are responsive in a complex and stable way to interest groups which may be conceptualised as their ‘clients’, and in whose continued support they have invested a great deal of effort over long periods of time. Essentially, therefore, the system is much more responsive to domestic political pressure (which does not have to be expressed in a declamatory way, but is crucial nevertheless) than to foreign pressure. When foreign pressure builds up to a certain level of intensity, however, political and bureaucratic leaders become aware that some response is necessary. So far as possible the response is kept to the minimum necessary to reduce the pressure to tolerable levels, but if this is shown to be insufficient, the scope for political leadership to come into its own is much increased. Whatever one’s judgement about the effectiveness of Nakasone’s prime ministership in shaping a constructive response to foreign pressures of this kind, it seems likely that his tenure in office was prolonged beyond the time limit widely forecast in part because of a common perception that strong ‘western-style’ leadership was needed in the face of intense foreign pressure for basic changes in economic policy. Even so, there were clearly rather narrow limits to what Nakasone could achieve without alienating his and his party’s core constituencies. CONCLUSION As we have seen, the salient feature of Japanese politics since the 1950s is the dominance of a single, large, broadly conservative but not monolithic political party over the political system as a whole. By creating an environment of predictability about the political future, the unbroken success of the LDP in winning more parliamentary seats than its rivals has provided the atmosphere for the long-term view and for strategic planning conducive to dynamic policy making. This has been of particular importance in industrial management and macro-economic policy making, though it should be remembered that long-term planning is not only premised on predictability but also on a set of power relationships throughout industry favourable to larger over smaller firms, and to management over labour. In other words, we have here something approximating to our authority maintenance model, though within the context of a liberal democratic constitutional order. On the other hand, this same political system in its more than thirty years of existence, has become remarkably responsive to a variety of interest groups, many of which have become embedded into the institutional fabric of central political power. Such groups gain influence by direct representation in Parliament and through cultivating connections with LDP Diet members and their intra-party factions. The emergence of powerful political brokers in the LDP has added to the influence of interest groups within that party. This in turn leads to policy immobilism which may be seen as the reverse side of the dynamic coin of one-party dominance.

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NOTES 1. For a generally positive view, see Edwin O. Reischauer, The Japanese (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1977) Part 4, and especially p. 297. See also T.J.Pempel, Policy and Politics in Japan: Creative Conservatism (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1982). For a more critical approach, see Gavan McCormack and Yoshio Sugimoto (eds), Democracy in Contemporary Japan (Sydney: Hale and Iremonger, 1986) and Jon Woronoff, Politics the Japanese Way (Tokyo: Lotus Press, 1986). 2. T.J.Pempel and Keiichi Tsunekawa, ‘Corporatism without Labor’, in Philippe C. Schmitter and Gerhard Lehmbruch (eds), Trends Toward Corporatist Intermediation (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1979). 3. See Peter N.Dale, The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness (London and Sydney: Croom Helm, 1986). 4. For an analysis of élitist and pluralist approaches, see Haruhiro Fukui, ‘Studies in Policymaking: a Review of the Literature’, in T.J.Pempel (ed.), Policymaking in Contemporary Japan (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1977) pp. 22–59. 5. For instance the LDP was badly beaten by a Socialist in a House of Councillors by-election for Iwate Prefecture (normally an LDP stronghold) in March 1987, and the following month performed badly in local elections. In both cases the electorate was protesting against a proposal by the Government to introduce a form of sales tax. 6. See Chalmers Johnson’, MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925–1975 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1982). 7. J.A.A.Stockwin, ‘The Future of Japanese Party Politics’, Fukuoka UNESCO: Proceedings of the Fifth Kyushu International Cultural Conference, 1982 (Fukuoka: The Fukuoka UNESCO Association, no. 18, 1983) pp. 326–36. 8. See Ehud Harari, ‘The Institutionalization of Policy Consultation in Japan: Public Advisory Bodies’, in Gail Lee Bernstein and Haruhiro Fukui (eds), Japan and the World: Essays in Honour of Takeshi Ishida (London: Macmillan, 1988). *** PARTIES, POLITICIANS AND THE POLITICAL SYSTEM The political party in the modern world comes in many shapes and forms, but there are extraordinarily few political systems which lack parties entirely. One recent study suggests that, even in those cases when an attempt is made to outlaw them, they soon reappear ‘rather like bindweed in a suburban garden’. 1

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Some may argue that the pervasiveness of political parties merely reflects the fact that a term which originally had a rather narrow connotation has been extended to embrace political phenomena as diverse as the British Conservative Party, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Irish Sinn Fein, the Colorado Party of Paraguay and the Democratic Party of the United States. It is true that what are now called parties include some that shade into what would better be called pressure groups at the one extreme and government bureaucracies at the other. Some perhaps better deserve the appellation ‘faction’, while yet others might more reasonably be seen as bands of terrorists or guerrilla fighters. Nevertheless there seems little ambiguity in what we really mean when we talk about the core concept of a political party, and parties clearly remain important because they do things which are required in virtually every country’s politics. As its most basic, what a party does is to organize part of the population into a relationship with government which is more than that of simply placing pressure on government from the outside. Whether a particular government is democratic or dictatorial, in the vast majority of cases it regards a relationship with the population as necessary and the formation of a party or parties as a convenient means to this end. A party may be an instrument of oppression just as much as it may be a vehicle of representation, but what otherwise disparate parties have in common is this element of linkage between people and government. This is true of parties out of power, seeking to replace an existing government, just as it is of parties in power, since achievement of power is the ultimate aim. A party totally lacking in the aspiration to power ought strictly to be called a pressure group. 2 One of the most important reasons why parties are so all-pervasive in the modern world is that individuals qua individuals are too puny in their influence to have the chance of fulfilling political ambition in the absence of broader organization. It was not always so. Where all that mattered was the politics of a narrow and self-perpetuating élite round a personal ruler, to become part of that élite was the key. The rest of the people hardly figured politically. But this is no longer the case in the modern world. Democracy is an expression of the broader political consciousness that has come from widespread education and all the heightened aspirations that have resulted from modernising change. Modern dictatorships, however, also have to reckon with general popular awareness of political matters, and have devised ways and means of adapting the political party to their own need for popular control. It is no longer sufficient for a government, whether democratic or dictatorial, to rule through a bureaucracy. It also needs the backing of an organization or organizations linking it in a not wholly unidirectional way with the needs and aspirations of those it has to administer. What are called parties mostly perform this role, or aspire to do so. THE PREWAR SYSTEM We have dwelt at some length on the phenomenon of the political party in

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general, because we feel it essential to place Japan’s experience with parties into the broader perspective of the modern world. It is scarcely necessary to make the argument that political parties are an integral part of the Japanese political system, and that this has been so for a very long time indeed. The first organizations that may reasonably be called parties emerged during the 1870s, a very few years after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, which precipitated Japan’s modern revolution. Initially these operated locally, but when a national constitution was promulgated in 1889, part of the package was a western-style parliament (called in English ‘Diet’) with limited powers. The lower house, or House of Representatives, was elected on a highly restricted franchise, but for the first time offered the opportunity to the political parties to contest elections at national level. Because of the restrictions placed on the House of Representatives by the Meiji Constitution of 1889 and by the realities of political power at the time, parties for several years found themselves constituting the political opposition to a government made up of various non-elected elements which we need not describe. The Constitution, however, while it placed formidable obstacles in the path of the parties, did not leave them entirely powerless. They were able to exercise a certain amount of negative influence or veto power, making it imperative for government to enter into various forms of compromise with them. 3 These compromises, however, proved a two-edged sword since the price the parties paid for some access to power was a reduction in their ability to oppose the government in the interests of securely shifting the balance of political power in favour of parties as such. It was difficult to locate the real centre of power in prewar Japan. In formal constitutional terms power lay with the emperor, but in practice the emperor was advised to avoid compromising his neutrality by any substantive political intervention. The Constitution, however, gave insufficient guidance about where power was really supposed to lie in a de facto constitutional monarchy. Up to the early 1920s a small group of elder statesmen or genrō acted with reasonable effectiveness as the ultimate arbiters of power, but thereafter the sole remaining genrō, Prince Saionji Kinmochi, though he lived on until 1940, was unable to control the tempestuous storms of political ambition and conflict. 4 Always in a central policy-making position, though conspicuously lacking a policy-making monopoly, lay the prime minister and cabinet, even though as a matter of strict constitutional interpretation there was no collective cabinet responsibility because each minister of state reported directly and separately to the emperor. The cabinet’s power was further weakened by the constitutional convention that army and navy ministers should be officers of the highest rank from those respective services, and by the right of armed services’ chiefs of staff to have independent access to the emperor on matters of military importance. The withdrawal of an army or navy minister in protest against unfavourable treatment by the cabinet of the service concerned, and the refusal to supply a replacement, caused the demise of several cabinets in the 1930s. Independent access to the emperor gravely weakened civilian control and gave rise to the

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phenomenon sometimes known as ‘dual government’. Considering the limitations to which they were subject, political parties had made significant progress towards acquiring a central role in policy making by the 1920s. Not only did universal male suffrage enter the statute books in 1925, but party cabinets became the rule, although the victory was to prove temporary. In the language of the time, a party cabinet meant a cabinet largely composed of Diet members affiliated with the majority party or parties in the House of Representatives, and which would resign if defeated in that house. Most cabinets before the 1920s, however, were not of that kind. Rather, they were termed ‘transcendental’, in the sense that they were neither responsible to the Diet nor principally composed of Diet members. Transcendental cabinets, nominally chosen by the emperor, in fact chosen by complex manoeuvring among a number of politically significant élites, were the norm up to the early 1920s and again from the early 1930s to the end of the war. The political system of Japan between 1890 and 1945 went through various stages of development. In general, however, it was characterised by a relatively high degree of fluidity and instability, underpinned by bureaucratic centralization and control. The widespread discrediting of party politicians during the period of Taishō Democracy owed much to their perceived venality and lack of principle. Nationalist radicals associated with the armed forces during the 1930s were high on principle, but the regime to which their activities gave rise was also beset by problems of collective irresponsibility and lack of effective central co-ordination. Various attempts were made to overcome such problems, but for the most part such attempts only amounted to the search for a better method of arriving at compromises between considerable numbers of ambitious and competing élites. The system was in some ways highly dynamic, but at the same time included significant elements of immobilism. The designers and adapters of the Japanese political system were face to face with a complex of dilemmas which stemmed from the tasks which the state set itself after the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Even if the so-called ‘Restoration’ of the emperor did not constitute a revolution, the range and scope of socioeconomic and political reforms which followed certainly did. The predominant revolutionary motive was to build up Japan into a formidable modern power capable of protecting itself against the outside world, which was regarded both as threatening and the source of new ideas. The Meiji leaders were extraordinarily ambitious for their nation, and this led among other things to a determined programme of administrative centralization. To take one example among many, the introduction of conscription, where previously there had been more than two hundred élite domain armies, was a bold and ambitious step requiring impressive levels of administrative control. It was also far-ranging in its effects on the population. By contrast, Japan was less successful in fashioning a political system capable of combining stability with the representation of an expanding range of political demands. Indeed, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that Japan between 1890 and 1945 managed to combine the worst features of political authoritarianism and political instability. Neither

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did authoritarian control prevent chaotic and uncoordinated politics, nor did the instability of an unresolved struggle among competing élites lead to broadly representative government, though during the 1920s it briefly seemed as though it might. Strange to say, in a state heavily influenced by authoritarian habits of mind, it was the lack of constitutional or even conventional clarity about the location of power which ultimately assisted the weakening of Japan’s polity to the point where a semi-totalitarian military regime became dominant in conditions of all-out war. NEW POLITICS AFTER THE 1945 DEFEAT Whatever else may be said about the reforms carried out by the Americans during their occupation of Japan between 1945 and 1952, one thing is clear. Political parties, set free from their prewar fetters, found themselves in a position to occupy a more salient position in the political system than ever before. Or rather, from the time of its formation in 1955, one political party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), found itself in that fortunate position. The reasons for the long-term dominance of the LDP will be explored below, but what we wish to emphasise at this point is that the Occupation reforms picked out, as it were, a particular strand of prewar political development and built it up at the expense of other competing or contradicatory strands. The American purpose in doing so was, in part at least, to create a pluralistic democracy out of authoritarian Japan. This aim was not entirely unsuccessful, and, as other chapters of this book reveal, the theme of democratic pluralism has sounded quite clearly in the orchestra of Japanese politics since the Occupation. Nevertheless a distinctly more pervasive long-term effect of Occupation reforms has, in our view, been to reinforce the centralization of the political system. The strand from the prewar political system which the Americans built up into the corner-stone of the new system was that of cabinet government. On the face of it it may seem ironic that American reformers, who in other areas of reform introduced changes along the lines of American institutions and practices, should in relation to central politics have introduced a system so clearly at variance with their own. The institutional relations between the electorate, parliament (the National Diet), cabinet and prime minister strike any Japanese visitor to Britain as far more similar to those existing in the British political system than to such relationships in the United States. The American-style separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches of government virtually does not exist in Japan, just as it is essentially absent in Britain. On the contrary, both in theory and largely also in practice, the Japanese electorate elects the members of the House of Representatives (the lower house of the National Diet), a majority of whom form a cabinet, headed by a prime minister, which both develops a legislative programme and administers the various ministries and agencies of the government bureaucracy. Assuming that the government (that is, the cabinet) is able to retain its majority, it retains substantial (though not absolute) control both of the legislative process and the

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execution of policy. It follows that the winning and subsequent retention of a majority in the House of Representatives by a party or a coalition of parties is the only way of obtaining both executive power and the power to dominate the legislative process. The almost inevitable effect of this on political parties is to enforce party discipline in parliamentary voting, since a party which cannot enforce voting discipline risks being defeated in parliament and thus losing power. In Japan, with rare exceptions, 5 party discipline in voting is maintained. This is particularly interesting because, as we shall see below, most Japanese parties are famous for their internal factional wranglings. In any case, despite factionalism, the voting discipline, and indeed the central organization, of Japanese political parties is a far cry from the lax voting discipline in Congress and decentralised organization of American parties. 6 This is an excellent example of the vital importance of institutional constraints over the natural inclinations of political organizations. Why General MacArthur and his staff should have preferred a British-style rather than an American-style political formula for Japan is not altogether clear. Perhaps one reason is that cabinet government represented a vindication of the efforts of many Japanese liberals of the 1920s, who had sought to entrench party cabinets and outlaw the (to them) authoritarian principle of transcendentalism. With the important proviso that the chief executive of a transcendental government was appointed by the emperor, not elected by the people., the separation of the executive from the legislature as practised in the United States bore an uncomfortable resemblance to Japanese transcendentalism. A more straightforward explanation might be that the Americans arrived at a cabinet government solution for Japan essentially by elimination. Those bodies such as the armed forces with their capacity to bypass or over-throw cabinets, the Privy Council, the House of Peers and the élites surrounding the emperor, were manifestly anti-democratic, or least non-democratic, and therefore there was every reason to be rid of them. Even though an alternative model of democracy—the one most familiar to Americans—existed, the task of transforming Japan to that model would have involved much more far-reaching institutional change, and might also have been misinterpreted. To say that the Japanese political system as it emerged from the Occupation was close in its structure to the British system is not to imply that the practice of the two systems has been identical, or even convergent in all respects. Indeed they have come to differ from each other broadly in three ways. The first, which is discussed elsewhere in this book, 7 is the greater degree of influence and power, including the power of policy initiative, which has accrued to the Japanese than to the British government bureaucracy. This probably results from a combination of bureaucratic tradition and prestige, the Occupation’s failure to reform the bureaucracy effectively because it needed to use its services for dayto-day implementation of reform and because of the long-term political dominance of the LDP. This last is indeed the second way in which Japanese politics and British politics have most plainly diverged. Although in Britain there have been fairly lengthy periods of rule by one party (the longest being

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continuous Conservative rule for thirteen years between 1951 and 1964), no party in Britain comes close to matching the election-winning ability of the LDP, which has never been out of power between 1955 when it was founded and the present (see Table 1). 8 The implications of this are profound. Much as in other ‘one-party dominant’ political systems, when one party is perceived as more or less permanently in power, the linkages which develop between that party and significant interest groups (including parts of the government bureaucracy as institutional interest groups) 9 also become semi-permanent. In these circumstances the whole system tends to become bureaucratised, and, as we shall argue, this has happened to a considerable extent in the case of the LDP. The third difference lies in the structure of the LDP, which, though highly centralised in terms of its policy making, is also paradoxically more localised and fragmented than that of any British party. In part the divergence here results from the different electoral systems of the two countries. It seems not too contentious to say that the long-term dominance of the LDP, superimposed on the consolidation of a cabinet-in-parliament system, is the most salient feature of Japanese politics since the 1950s. It fundamentally conditions the nature of political representation, competition, leadership and policy making. The rest of this chapter will explore the implications of this basic point. At the time of the LDP’s founding in 1955, few observers were particularly sanguine about its long-term prospects. The left and right wings of the Japan Socialist Party (JSP) had just reamalgamated into a single party, and its voters were increasing in number with rapid industrialization. The LDP itself appeared to be a loose and fractious amalgam of personal factions which until recently had belonged to separate parties. It was only pressure from the big business lobby that had finally prevailed on the quarrelsome conservative politicians to pool their efforts into one party in order to have some chance of blocking the Socialist advance. In fact, however, the LDP proved able to mainTable 1 House of Representatives election results, 1958–86

LDP 22/5/58

JSP

Others Independents Total

287 (61.5)

166 (35.5)

1 (0.2)

1 (0.2)

22977 (57.8)

13094 (32.9)

1012 (2.6)

288 (0.7)

296 145 17 (63.4) (31.0) (3.7)

3 (0.6)

1 (0.2)

22740 10887 3464 (57.6) (27.6) (8.8)

1157 (2.9)

142 (0.3)

JSP 20/11/60

JCP

12 (2.6)

467

2381 (6.0) 39752

DSP 5 (1.1)

467

1119 (2.8) 38509

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283 144 23 (60.7) (30.8) (4.9)

5 (1.1)

0 (0)

22424 11907 3023 (54.7) (29.0) (7.4)

1646 (4.0)

60 (0.1)

5 (1.0)

0 (0)

22448 12826 3404 2472 2191 (48.8) (27.9) (7.4) (5.4) (4.8)

101 (0.2)

288 90 31 (59.2) (18.5) (6.4)

14 (2.9)

0 (0)

22382 10074 3637 5125 3199 (47.6) (21.4) (7.7) (10.9) (6.8)

81 (0.2)

12 (2.6)

467

1956 (4.8) 41017

KP 29/1/67

27/12/69

10/12/72

277 140 30 (57.0) (28.8) (6.2)

271 118 19 (55.2) (24.0) (3.9)

25 (5.1)

47 (9.7)

29 (5.9)

38 (7.7)

2 (0.4)

24563 11479 3661 4437 5497 (46.8) (21.9) (7.0) (8.5) (10.5)

143 (0.3)

9 (1.9)

486

2554 (5.5) 45997 16 (3.3)

486

2493 (5.3) 46990 14 (2.9)

491

2646 (5.0) 52425

NLC 5/12/76

249 123 29 55 (48.7) (24.1) (5.7) (10.8)

17 17 (3.3) (3.3)

0 (0)

23654 11713 3554 6177 5878 2364 (41.8) (20.7) (6.3) (10.9) (10.4) (4.2)

45 (0.1)

21 (4.1)

511

3227 (5.7) 56613

SDL 7/10/79

22/6/80

18/12/83

6/7/86

248 107 35 57 39 4 2 (48.6) (20.9) (6.8) (11.2) (7.6) (0.7) (0.4)

0 (0)

24084 10643 3664 5283 5626 1632 368 (44.6) (19.7) (6.8) (9.8) (10.4) (3.0) (0.7)

69 (0.1)

284 107 32 (55.6) (20.9) (6.3)

29 12 3 (5.7) (2.3) (0.5)

0 (0)

28262 11401 3897 5330 5804 1766 402 (47.9) (19.3) (6.6) (9.0) (9.8) (3.0) (0.7)

109 (0.2)

8 3 26 (5.1) (1.5) (0.5)

0 (0)

25983 11065 4130 5746 5302 1342 381 (45.8) (19.5) (7.3) (10.1) (9.3) (2.4) (0.7)

62 (0.1)

300 85 26 56 (58.6) (16.6) (5.1) (10.9)

26 6 4 (5.1) (1.7) (0.8)

0 (0)

29875 10412 3896 5701 5313 1114 499 (49.4) (17.2) (6.4) (9.4) (8.8) (1.8) (0.8)

120 (0.2)

33 (6.5)

250 112 38 58 (48.9) (21.9) (7.4) (11.8)

19 (3.7)

511

2641 (4.9) 54010 11 (2.1)

511

2057 (3.5) 59029 16 (3.1)

511

2769 (4.9) 56780 9 (1.7)

512

3515 (5.8) 60448

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For each entry: number of seats (% of total seats) number of votes, in thousands (% of total votes). Party name abbreviations DSP: Democratic Socialist Party (Minshatō) JSP: Japan Socialist Party (Nihon Shakaitō) KP: Kōmeitō LDP: Liberal Democratic Party (Jiyūminshutō) NLC: New Liberal Club (Shin Jiyū Club) SDL: Social Democratic League (Shakaiminshurengō, Shaminren) Sources: Asahi Nenkan (1977, 1980, 1981, 1984, 1987).

tain both its unity (admittedly a loose kind of unity) and much of its electoral strength, although its proportion of the total vote declined slowly but steadily throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s. In the late 1970s and into the 1980s it experienced a definite though unsteady recovery, but in the 1976. 1979 and 1983 elections for the House of Representatives it was close to losing its parliamentary majority (see Table 1). LDP DOMINANCE Several explanations may be advanced to account for the long tenure of office by the LDP. Some of the explanations overlap or operate on a different plane of analysis from each other. The first explanation holds that one-party dominance essentially stems from the fact that the LDP had remained as one party since the 1950s, whereas the Opposition has progressively fragmented. This is not quite literally true, since a small splinter group broke away from the LDP in 1976 as a result of the Lockheed scandal revelations involving the former prime minister, Tanaka Kakuei, and formed a small party called the New Liberal Club (NLC). The NLC enjoyed some initial success, but its fortunes were not maintained and after entering a coalition government with the LDP after the 1983 elections its members mostly re-entered the LDP following that party’s landslide in the double elections of July 1986. A few individuals have also resigned from or been expelled from the party. In essence, however, the LDP has held its unity to a remarkable degree. By contrast the non-conservative Opposition (that is, excluding the NLC) consisted of the JSP (166 seats), Japan Communist Party (JCP) (1 seat) and ‘other’ (1 seat) in the 1958 lower house elections; but 28 years later, in the lower house elections of July 1986, the results were: JSP 85, Kōmeitō 56, Democratic Socialist Party (DSP) 26, JCP 26, Social Democratic League (SDL) 4. In other words the number of Opposition parties with significant representation had risen from one to five and the JSP had seen its seat total nearly halved in a house whose full complement had increased from 467 to 512. There is some difficulty in the explanation that the LDP has stayed in power

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because the Opposition has fragmented. It implies, first of all, that the splitting of the Opposition vote by the appearance of new parties has only harmed the JSP. In the case of the religious Kōmeitō, however, and to a lesser extent the others as well, substantial numbers of votes have undoubtedly been taken from the LDP. 10 Particularly in the big metropolitan centres such as Tokyo and Osaka, both the JSP and the LDP (though especially the former) do badly as a result of the performance of the newer Opposition parties. Probably on balance Japan’s fragmented Opposition loses votes from being five parties rather than one, but the point is a fine one. 11 The fact that the five parties are most unlikely ever to be able to unite to form a government may actually attract more votes than are repelled by the Opposition’s lack of governing credibility, since voters can cast a protest vote without serious risk of replacing the LDP in government. 12 Secondly and more importantly, however, to say that the LDP has remained in office because the LDP has remained more or less intact while the Opposition has fragmented is to explain only at a superficial level. The real question— indeed perhaps the greatest unanswered question about Japanese politics—is why the conservatives have been so much more successful in avoiding fragmentation than the centrist and left-of-centre Opposition. This leads us to a second possible explanation, that the key factors are the constraints and opportunities provided by the electoral system. (Here we are talking largely about the electoral system for the House of Representatives.) According to this, the fact that the system is based upon multi-member (in nearly all cases three-, four- and five-member) constituencies while the voter has a single, non-transferable vote, means that it is conducive to the formation of small and medium-sized parties, even though it is less conducive than a proportional representation system would be. 13 This is because a party which can realistically expect to gather between, say, 15 and 20 per cent of the vote in forty or fifty constituencies can achieve modest but respectable representation in parliament. This closely fits the case of the Kōmeitō, whose votes are largely from members of the Sōka Gakkai Buddhist sect, which are predictable and concentrated in city areas. This means, however, that the electoral system may be conducive to three types of small party: the party that forms as a result of a group of politicians breaking away from an existing large or medium-sized party; the party that begins from scratch on the basis of a constituency that has lacked such direct representation before; and the party that existed, but with minimal success, and finds a new constituency of voters. The first of these describes the DSP, which broke away from the JSP as a right-wing splinter in 1959–60, and the minuscule SDL (which trod the same path in 1977–8), the second describes the Kōmeitō and the third the JCP. Looked at in this way, the fragmentation of the Opposition takes on an aspect less of simple fragmentation than of ‘fragmentation plus proliferation’. This means that the JSP had some problems in maintaining its own party cohesion (though it was not quite so unsuccessful as has occasionally been suggested), and that it was also unable, or unwilling, to appeal to the new constituencies that were emerging in the course of rapid industrialization from the late 1950s to the middle 1970s.

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Thus the JSP, which was quite a formidable political force in the late 1950s, was damaged at least as much by its conservatism and lack of adaptability to changing circumstances of high economic growth and post-industrial society, as by its problems of internal cohesion. In this it contrasted with most of the social democratic and labour parties of western Europe and Australasia. What then, about the other side of the coin: that of relative LDP cohesion? Here we need to take into account the impact of multi-member constituencies upon a party which since its foundation has always been big enough to run more than one candidate (often three, four or even five) in the same constituency. Where several candidates from the same party are competing in the same constituency, they naturally find themselves competing with each other with at least the same intensity as their competition with candidates of other parties. Once again we need to recall that in the Japanese system there is no vote transferability, so that candidates from the same party have absolutely no means of profiting from each other’s votes. Quite obviously this situation will tend to promote internal rivalry and conflict within the same party. In the LDP, rival candidates in the same constituency normally belong to different intra-party factions, which, as it were, institutionalise at central level the personal rivalry that takes place at the level of the constituency. The electoral system (at least that for the lower house) thus appears to imperil rather than promote LDP unity and cohesion. Despite this, and despite repeated predictions of a split, the LDP has largely remained intact. To explain this, and to explain more broadly the continued electoral success of the LDP, we need to shift our attention to several other areas of causality. One, which is widely reported in the press, is the phenomenon of factionalism within the LDP. Factions are a common feature of Japanese political life, as of the political life of many other countries, and are based on a form of patronclient relationship which has its roots in the norms of the society as such. Since the LDP was formed in 1955, its internal factions have grown into political machines commanding impressive resources and wielding surprising power. In a sense they are parties within a party, though they do not fight elections under their own labels, and it is problematic how far they are distinguishable on the basis of policy. An LDP Diet member, generally speaking, obtains from his faction funding to fight elections with a position on a seniority list which his faction leader presents to the prime minister in bargaining sessions before each cabinet reshuffle and other psychological and material satisfactions of belonging to a powerful political machine. Given the power of the factions within the party why does the party not split? Let us attempt a brief answer. No faction has ever embraced a majority of LDP Diet members. To elect the party president (and thus the prime minister while the party holds a majority of Diet seats), any faction must enter into a coalition with other factions. If a faction becomes too big, it is liable to split. Since they are essentially patronage groups, they find it advantageous to continue to operate within the only political party that in present circumstances is capable of granting access to central political power.

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Should those circumstances change, as the result of, say, the LDP losing its Diet majority and some combination of opposition parties coming to provide a credible alternative alliance, defections might conceivably occur. At present, however, the advantages of remaining far outweigh the temptations of defecting, and since policy disputes are secondary for most LDP factions, it is most comfortable to remain. Another LDP advantage, whose importance has been considerable in the past, but now appears to be declining somewhat, is the ‘negative gerrymander’ of lower house (and also upper house prefectural) electorates resulting from the failure adequately to rectify the imbalance in the numbers of electors per seat caused by shifts in population from the rural areas to the cities. At times the discrepancy at the extremes has been more than 500 per cent, though a 1986 reform made at the behest of the Supreme Court cut it back to just under 300 per cent. 14 Since LDP support has concentrated more in the countryside than in the cities, the LDP has sometimes enjoyed a seat advantage of several per cent, arguably as the result of this ‘negative gerrymander’. In some elections held during the 1970s the LDP position would have been uncomfortable indeed if the imbalance had not existed. A further reason is that elections are extremely expensive, and LDP candidates for the most part have access to much more adequate sources of funding than candidates from other parties. This is not simply a question of funding from central party coffers, since even larger sums plainly reach LDP candidates through the medium of the factions to which most of them belong, and from other sources. It is difficult to discover with any semblance of accuracy the size of these sums, because although candidates are obliged by law to report their funding, it is generally accepted that gross underreporting is general. Here we come to an aspect of Japanese political life that is worth emphasising since it touches on a salient characteristic of the society. Money is, of course, important in elections in most countries. In Japan it is important in part at least because of the weight given to mutual obligations in the course of social interaction. Thus social intercourse without exchange of gifts as a means of cementing the relationship tends to be regarded as too cold and impersonal. 15 In election campaigns this translates into the need for candidates to distribute largesse. Elections are in a sense regarded as festivals in which the candidate will provide generous amounts of entertainment, gifts, trips to Tokyo, even money. More broadly he is expected to do well by the constituency, so that a Diet member who is successful in providing his constituents with new roads, bridges and sewerage systems is most likely to be regularly re-elected. This feature of electorate expectations coincides with a low level of programmatic or policy content in campaigning, especially on the part of Liberal Democrats. In the national constituency of the House of Councillors, which is now fought under a party list system of proportional representation with the whole country as a single constituency, the LDP does markedly less well, since a personal and local appeal is impossible. There is strong evidence, therefore, that simply being the government favours

Dynamic and immobilist aspects of Japanese politics

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the electoral chances of the LDP. This is so essentially for two reasons. First, a party in government (particularly if it is favourably disposed to business interests in the first place) will be in a much better position to attract funding from business than parties which are out of power and which business believes have little prospect of coming to power. This is true also for individual factions within the government party. Second, constituencies are likely to be more impressed by LDP candidates simply because they are known to have better access to resources of funding and public works initiative than candidates from parties which are out of power. With the partial exception of the largest cities, elections thus take on a localistic and somewhat mercenary flavour, which heavily favours candidates of the incumbent LDP. Despite these inbuilt advantages, the LDP suffered a steady decline in its electoral popularity between the late 1950s and the middle 1970s. It seems reasonably clear that the underlying reason for this was the massive movement of population out of agriculture and into industrial occupations in the cities during the period of rapid economic growth. This hurt the LDP in two distinct ways. The most obvious, perhaps was that heavy industrialization took place so fast and with so little attempt to control its consequences that a massive crisis of the environment ensued. 16 By the period immediately before the first oil crisis of 1973–4, the politics of the environment and quality of life had become matters of pervading concern, with beneficial results for some of the opposition parties including the Communists. Besides this, however, the shrinking of the LDP’s rural base was hurting its electoral performance and prospects because, even though it was propped up by the ‘negative gerrymander’ mentioned above, it was doing badly in crowded urban areas, where traditional methods of campaigning made little impact by comparison with the countryside. Nevertheless the LDP proved adaptable enough to make an electoral recovery from its dangerous years of the 1970s. Laws relating to the environment were drastically tightened. The economic crisis precipitated by the first oil crisis was temporarily severe, but the government was able to project an image of reasonably competent economic management thereafter. Even the Lockheed corruption scandal which implicated the former prime minister, Tanaka Kakuei, from 1976, though it caused the party difficulties, failed to be the catastrophic political disaster that some rather gleefully anticipated. In the face of a more difficult international economic environment in the 1980s, the government even apparently gained electoral kudos from policies of financial stringency designed to cut deficit spending, even though these resulted in a more parsimonious government funding of welfare (see Chapter 8), subsidies to agriculture and so on. Attempts, however, to introduce forms of sales tax by the prime ministers Ohira, in 1979, and Nakasone, in 1987, resulted in quite serious electoral setbacks, since they were felt adversely to affect the economic interests of many groups which normally supported the LDP. The final area of causality which is often advanced to explain the dominance of the LDP is that of socio-economic change. The characteristics of the electorate in the 1980s are obviously different in several ways from those of the

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1950s, when Japan was a far poorer country than she is today. The sociologist Murakami Yasusuke describes contemporary Japanese society as a society in which the ‘middle mass’ predominates, meaning that the vast bulk of Japanese people are now reasonably affluent and regard political issues from a ‘have’ rather than a ‘have not’ perspective. 17 This implies that revolutionary, radical or class-conflict based political appeals by politicians lack persuasive power among much of today’s population, which is well off and fundamentally conservative. It follows that a ‘left-right’ or ‘conservative-progressive’ conflict as the main axis of political debate should be out of date. 18 At least three qualification need, however, to be made about this approach in so far as it is used to predict electoral trends. The first is that substantial segments of the population still remain sufficiently disaffected from the ruling Establishment to vote for parties which are, or appear to be, of the left. Plainly not a few members of Murakami’s ‘middle mass’ may be found voting for the Communist or Japan Socialist parties. Indeed, the Communists, though they account for not quite 10 per cent of the total vote, were the only major opposition party not to lose seats in the 1986 lower house elections. A rather larger proportion of voters has retained a solid allegiance to the religious Kōmeitō, which, while it can hardly be regarded as left wing or radical, represents many people who have been left behind in a highly competitive technological society. 19 The second qualification is that, as we have seen above, explanations based on the primacy of ideological or policy factors as motives for voting choices need to be modified in Japanese social conditions by the factor of personal connections and loyalties. There are plenty of examples of left-wing politicians who have developed long-standing local machines which rely principally on vote-gathering techniques traditionally associated with the Conservatives. This leads on to our third point, that if Japanese society has changed, it is nevertheless not inevitable that successful adaptation to such changes should be the monopoly of one party. The emergence of an Opposition party (or alliance of Opposition parties) capable of beating the LDP at its own game is theoretically not impossible. The advantages of incumbency, however, are exceptionally strong in the Japanese political system, so that the obstacles in the path of any Opposition should not be underestimated. THE LDP AND THE EVOLUTION OF THE POLITICAL SYSTEM Our argument so far has focused on how cabinet-in-parliament, reinforced by one-party dominance and a strong bureaucracy, has meant a stable and centralised political system. Other chapters in this book bear on this also, but what we shall explore in the remainder of this chapter is an aspect of the changing balance of forces within the political system itself. Virtually all observers of Japanese politics up to the 1970s emphasised the influence of the government bureaucracy, not only in its own natural sphere, but also by virtue of the high proportion of LDP Diet members who had retired early from senior

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positions in their ministries and entered the LDP, often rising to cabinet office. This phenomenon is related to amakudari (see Chapter 6), whereby senior retired bureaucrats ‘come down from Heaven’ to join the executive boards of companies and various kinds of institution in the public and private sectors. The influence of former bureaucrats within the LDP is still important, but there is evidence to suggest that it is declining and that the LDP is coming into its own as a more independent source of policy initiative and implementation. We shall also explore the possibility that cabinet is becoming somewhat more independent of the bureaucracy in its handling of policy. Fukui has analysed evidence suggesting that the number of Diet members who were formerly government officials in the 1980s has declined slightly over figures from the 1960s. 20 The extent of the decline, however, is not great and cannot alone be regarded as sufficient evidence for a decline in bureaucratic influence within the LDP. More convincing evidence emerges, however, when we analyse the composition of the cabinet. Fukui, in his 1970 book on the LDP, found that whereas about a quarter of LDP Diet members were former bureaucrats, when it came to the cabinet the proportion was about half. 21 The presumption was that with half the cabinet as former government officials, the influence of the bureaucracy over the cabinet must be overwhelming, and that this influence stemmed historically from the preference given to former government officials by the postwar prime minister Yoshida Shigeru and the ‘school’ of like-minded bureaucrat-politicians that he initiated. Cabinets of the 1980s plainly include a much lower proportion of former government officials, and moreover some of those so categorised may not be so close to their former ministries, or so important within the cabinet, as is sometimes assumed. Let us examine specifically the third Nakasone cabinet, formed on 28 December 1985 (see Table 2). In terms of the career backgrounds of its members, this cabinet was quite typical of cabinets during the 1980s. Based on information in the Jinjikōshinroku we have obtained the following results about this cabinet. There were six former bureaucrats (seven if the prime minister is included: see below), five former businessmen, five former local politicians, three former secretaries to Diet members, two former officials of Nōkyō (The Agricultural Co-operative Association), one former journalist and two for whom no information was available (of whom one seems to have gone straight Table 2 Third Nakasone cabinet, 28 December 1985

Position

Name

Prime Minister

Nakasone Yasuhiro

Justice

Suzuki Seigo

Foreign

Abe Shintarō

Times Category elected 15 B (?) 3 (HC) LP+N 9 J+S

Age when entered Diet 28 56 34

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Takeshita Noboru

Education

442

10 LP

34

Kaifu Toshiki

9 S

29

Welfare

Imai Isamu

5 B (Construction)

53

Agriculture

Hata Tsutomu

6 BUS

34

International Trade and Industry

Watanabe Michio

8 no info.

40

Transport

Mizuka Hiroshi

5 S, LP

45

Posts and Telecommunications

Satō Bunsei

7 LP

47

Labour

Hayashi Yu

Construction

Etō Takami

6 LP+N

46

Home

Ozawa Ichirō

6 no info (none?)

27

Chief Cabinet Secretary

Gotōda Masaharu

4 B (Home)

64

Administrative Management

Esaki Masumi

Hokkaidō and Okinawa Development

Kogarai Shirō

Defence

Katō Kōichi

Economic Planning

Hiraizumi Wataru

Science and Technology

3 (HC) BUS

15 BUS 3 (HC) b (Transport)

50

30 55

5 B (Foreign)

33

3 (HC) B (Foreign)

37

Kōno Yōhei

7 BUS

30

Environment

Mori Yoshihide

6 BUS

50

National Lands

Yamazaki Heihachirō

6 B (Agriculture)

58

Key B former bureaucrat BUS former businessman J former journalist LP former local politician N former official of Nōkyō S former secretary to Diet member HC House of Councillors Sources: Asahi Nenkan (1986) p. 87; Jinjikōshinroku [Who’s Who] (Jinjikōshinsho, 1983).

Table 3 LDP lower house members, factional affiliation and cabinet experience

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Times elected Faction

19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Total

Tanaka Cabinet experience

1

2

2

2

2

5

6 11

No cabinet experience

2

1 7

8

9

4 10 14

86

4

5

8

5

5

62

3

3

Nakasone Cabinet experience

2

1

1

1

1

3

1

5

No cabinet experience

5 5 10

Miyazawa Cabinet experience

1

1

2

1

1

No cabinet experience

4 1

4

1 7 12 10 4

6

61

Abe Cabinet experience

1

1

1

2

1

4

5

No cabinet experience

2

1

2

8

9

2

7 12

58

1

1

1

2

3

4

27

2

1

10

Kōmoto Cabinet 1 experience

2

1

1

1

3

3

3

No cabinet experience No faction Cabinet experience

1

1

1

1

No cabinet experience

1

1

1

Total Cabinet 1 experience No cabinet experience

1

4

5

5

3

3

6

9 12 23 27 5 1

1

2

7 20 32 37 23 31 47 304

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Source: Asahi Nenkan (1987) p. 110. Figures are for 1 January 1987.

into politics after taking a postgraduate degree). 22 Whether to categorise Nakasone as a former bureaucrat is problematical; he was called to military service during the war immediately after having been admitted to the Ministry of Home Affairs, and after the war served for about two years in the police authority before entering the National Diet in 1947 at the age of 28. Two others, both with a background of careers in the Foreign Ministry (Katō Kōichi and Hiraizumi Wataru), entered politics in their thirties, and so did not have time to rise to senior status in their ministries. Four others—Gotōda Masaharu, Yamazaki Heihachirō, Kogarai Shirō and Imai Isamu—became Diet members in their fifties (in Gotōda’s case, in his sixties) and so represent the classic case of those who rose to be cabinet ministers after having been very senior indeed in their own ministries. Inoguchi has pointed out that it is now very difficult for a man to have a full career in the bureaucracy and then to aspire to cabinet rank after being elected as an LDP Diet member, because of the de facto seniority rule applying to the selection of cabinet ministers. This is demonstrated most graphically in Table 3, which categorises LDP Diet members according to factional allegiance, numbers of times elected to the House of Representatives (the House of Councillors, which is elected according to a different timetable, is ignored) and whether or not they have had cabinet experience. It is abundantly clear from the table that being elected for one’s seventh term is the crucial turning point. Very few attain cabinet position before that, and nearly all do after that point. Assuming that the Diet member is re-elected every time after he first enters the Diet (true in the great majority of cases), then a Diet member elected for his seventh term in July 1986 would have been first elected in the general elections of December 1969. In other words something like a sixteen-year Diet apprenticeship is necessary, with very few exceptions, before entering the cabinet. On the other hand, those first elected in January 1967 (twenty years previously) had virtually all enjoyed cabinet experience by January 1987. Somebody retiring from a government ministry at, say, the age of fifty-five, would thus inevitably be into his seventies before becoming a cabinet minister under the present system. The reason why this is so is that the prime minister in selecting his cabinet is greatly constrained by the necessity of giving ‘fair shares’ to each of the factions making up the LDP’s Diet membership. Each faction prepares a ‘seniority list’ of its members to be presented to the prime minister before each cabinet reshuffle, and although the prime minister has some bargaining power he is nevertheless severely constrained by a combination of a seniority rule and a ‘fair shares’ rule, which means in effect that everybody has to have a turn eventually. On the face of it, this would seem inevitably to lead to a situation of frequent cabinet turnover, where few ministers have much time to learn the business of their ministries well enough to make much impact on their policies. The arithmetic of providing turns for everybody means that nobody can be allowed

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to stay in one position for very long, and this must be even more of a constraint in circumstances such as those following the 1980 and 1986 elections, where hardly any sitting LDP Diet members were defeated. The rapidity in turnover of cabinet ministers can be gauged from Tables 4–8. In the period covered by these tables, the average period in office of a cabinet minister was less than a year (Tables 4 and 5). When we examine these tables in detail, however, we find that the pattern was not uniform between different ministries. Significantly fewer individuals held the portfolios of Foreign Affairs, Finance, Chief Cabinet Secretary and International Trade and Industry than of other portfolios, and the average tenure was rather longer. At the other end of the scale, Labour, Construction and Transport showed particularly rapid turnover and short tenure. While this difference ought not to be exaggerated, it is obvious that it was the ministries most central to government policy making that enjoyed their ministers for longer and the less central ministries that enjoyed them for a shorter span. Table 31.6 takes those individuals, ministry by ministry, who have held a particular portfolio for a total of twenty months or more. It also indicates the number of ‘comebacks’ (that is, ministers returning to a given portfolio after a period elsewhere). It can be seen that in some cases (Fukuda Takeo at Finance and Kuraishi Tadao at Agriculture being the most conspicuous) individuals have been allowed to develop a degree of functional specialization through exceptionally long tenure. Even so, however, Table 6 shows that it is uncommon for anyone to remain in charge of the same ministry—even including comebacks—for much more than two years. Table 7 takes the key portfolios of Finance, Foreign Affairs, Economic Planning and Chief Cabinet Table 4 Frequency of ministerial changes by ministry, November 1964–July 1987

Ministry Prime Minister

Number of changes of minister

Number of individuals holding ministerial post

7

7 (6 since July 1972)

Finance

16

12

Foreign

16

15

Chief Cabinet Secretary

17

16

International Trade and Industry

20

19

Economic Planning (Agency)

22

19

Administrative Management (Agency)

22

22

Defence (Agency)

22

21

Education

23

22

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Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries

24

21

Posts and Telecommunications

24

24

Welfare

25

22

Justice

25

24

Home

25

24

Science and Technology (Agency)

25

24

Labour

26

23

Construction

26

24

Transport

26

24

Note: Agencies are agencies of the prime minister’s department, but in some cases virtually equivalent to ministries in their own right. Those agencies which were not in existence or were not listed in 1964 have been omitted. Source: Asahi Nenkan (1965–87).

Secretary, and lists those individuals who have held one or more of those portfolios for a total of thirty months or more. Virtually all the names that appear in this category are or have been key figures within the LDP. The evidence presented here thus suggests that despite the seniority and ‘fair shares’ rules, it is possible for some individuals of high calibre and ambition to transcend the system, at least to some extent, and attain a position of real influence—as indicated at least by length of tenure—over policy making. Even so, as indicated in Table 8, it is most unusual for any minister to retain the same portfolio when the prime minister changes. Only three examples have been discovered in the period covered, although, interestingly enough, two senior ministers retained their existing portfolios in the November 1987 transition from the Nakasone to the Takeshita cabinets. A change of prime ministers, even though both the new and old prime minister lead the same party, means a change of regime. The coalition of factions on which the new man’s power rests will be different from that of his predecessor, and a small number of key officials of cabinet and party will be his right-hand men, serving to bolster his regime and lend it its characteristic policy colouring. The tenure in office of the prime minister is a matter of considerable importance as it affects continuity of policy leadership. For the same set of reasons that foster short tenure of ministerial office, there are forces at work that tend to limit the length of time that a prime minister can be in office. The fundamental point is that attainment of the LDP presidency (and thus prime ministerial office) for its leader is the jewel in the crown of any of the intra-party

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Table 5 Average length of tenure of portfolio, by ministry, November 1964– July 1987

Average length of tenure (in months) (ignoring comebacks)

Ministry Prime Minister

37.6

Finance

16.4

Foreign

15.9

Chief Cabinet Secretary

15.6

International Trade and Industry

13.2

Economic Planning (Agency)

11.9

Administrative Management (Agency)

11.4

Defence (Agency)

11.9

Education

11.4

Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries

10.9

Posts and Telecommunications

10.9

Welfare

10.5

Justice

10.5

Home

10.5

Science and Technology (Agency)

10.5

Labour

10.1

Construction

10.1

Transport

10.1

See note to Table 2.4 Source: Asahi Nenkan (1964–87).

Table 6 Ministers holding a portfolio for a total of twenty months or more, November 1964–July 1987

Number of comebacks a

Months b

Ministry

Name

Finance

Fukuda Takeo

2

55

Takeshita Noboru

1

50

Collected writings of J.A.A.Stockwin Mizuta Mikio

Foreign

1

28

Watanabe Michio

28

Abe Shintarō

44

Aichi Kiichi

31 1

24

Shiina Etsusaburō

24

Miyazawa Kiichi

21

Gotōda Masaharu

1

30

Nikaidō Susumu

27

Miyazawa Kiichi

27

Ide Ichitarō

24

Fujinami Takao

24

Hashimoto Tomisaburō

20 1

Miyazawa Kiichi

Kosaka Zentarō

Defence Agency

36 28

1

Kōmoto Toshio

Administrative Management Agency

32

Hori Shigeru

Nakasone Yasuhiro

Education

29

Ohira Masayoshi

International Trade and Industry Kōmoto Toshio

Economic Planning Agency

35

Ohira Masayoshi

Sonoda Sunao

Chief Cabinet Secretary

448

35 27

1

22

Fukuda Takeo

21

Sakata Michita

31

Nagai Michio

24

Araki Masuo

30

Nakasone Yasuhiro

27

Gotōda Masaharu

24

Nishimura Eiichi

23

Matsuzawa Yuzō

21

Sakata Michita

24

Masuda Kaneshichi

23

Kurihara Yūkō

1

23

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449

Katō Kōichi Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries

Kuraishi Tadao

20 2

45

Abe Shintarō

21

Posts and Telecommunications

Kobayashi Takeharu

23

Welfare

Saitō Noboru

1

25

Saitō Kuniyoshi

1

24

Tanaka Masami Sonoda Sunao Justice

21 1

Inaba Osamu

20 24

Tanaka Isaji

1

22

Home

Fukuda Hajime

1

27

Science and Technology Agency

Nakagawa Ichirō

27

Sasaki Yoshitake

21

Kiuchi Shirō

1

20

Labour

Hasegawa Shun

1

21

Construction

Nishimura Eiichi

1

23

Transport

Kimura Mutsuo

21

a Ministers returning to a given portfolio after a period elsewhere. b Periods of less than a month have been eliminated. Source: Asahi Nenkan (1965–87).

Table 7 Ministers holding portfolios in Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of International Trade and Industry, Economic Planning Agency and as Chief Cabinet Secretary for a total of thirty months or more, November 1964–July 1987

Name Miyazawa Kiichi

Months 112

Fukuda Takeo

88

Abe Shintarō

67

Ohira Masayoshi

65

Kōmoto Toshio

63

Takeshita Noboru

63

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450

Aichi Kiichi

46

Sonoda Sunao

40

Shina Etsusaburō

36

Kosaka Zentarō

36

Mizuta Mikio

35

Watanabe Michio

35

Kimura Toshio

32

Gotōda Masaharu

32

Hori Shigeru

30

Source: Asahi Nenkan (1965–87).

Table 8 Ministers held over from administration of one prime minister to that of the next, November 1964–July 1987

Ministry

Name

Prime ministers

Finance

Ohira Masayoshi

Tanaka-Miki

Foreign

Sonoda Sunao

Fukuda-Ohira

Home

Fukuda Hajime

Tanaka-Miki

Source: Asahi Nenkan (1965–87).

factions which succeeds in this. Therefore lengthy tenure by the leader of a particular faction is unpopular with other factions because it causes a log-jam in the regular process of succession and checks the claims of other factions. Indeed the party maintains an admittedly leaky rule that no party president should be elected for more than two successive two-year terms. In 1986 this was waived in favour of an extra year for Nakasone, in circumstances where it was obvious that the party would have much difficulty in agreeing on a successor. Stability has alternated with instability in LDP leadership succession. The early years of the party saw what at times was an unseemly struggle between factions for the leadership, but during the 1960s the situation stabilised with the successive presidencies of Ikeda Hayato (1960–64) and Satō Eisaku (1964–72). The latter’s long incumbency was in circumstances of temporary weakening of several rival factions. His fall from office in 1972 (in some discredit over policy towards China) ushered in a ten-year period of brief tenures, when no prime minister lasted much more than two years. These turbulent years, during which Japan was rocked by two oil crises, a series of trading difficulties with the United States, worsening relations with the Soviet Union and the ending of the high economic growth rates of the 1960s, was also a period of virulent factional rivalry in the ranks of the LDP. It is difficult to appreciate this except in terms of

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personal rivalries. When Fukuda Takeo failed to win the succession to Satō, unexpectedly, in 1972, and saw Tanaka Kakuei become prime minister in his place, a bitter conflict was established which was to last a decade. Tanaka fell from office towards the end of 1974 amid allegations of corrupt dealings, and two years later was implicated in the Lockheed scandals, which led to him being brought before the courts and eventually convicted (in 1983). He was forced (nominally) out of the party, but he continued to build up his faction in the late 1970s and early 1980s until it was much the largest in the party. Fukuda belatedly reached the top of the slippery pole and became prime minister in December 1976, only to be robbed of his prize less than two years later by another faction leader, Ohira Masayoshi, who working together with Tanaka gathered enough votes in newly instituted primary elections for the party presidency (in which party members in the local constituencies were polled) to dislodge Fukuda. The latter was never reconciled to his defeat and after a poor showing for the party in general elections held in October 1979, he and his supporters refused to endorse Ohira’s party presidency. After a forty-day crisis, the issue was settled, narrowly in favour of Ohira, by a vote in the Diet in which the LDP actually put up two candidates—Ohira and Fukuda—for the prime ministership. The next year, members of the Fukuda and two other factions abstained in a no-confidence motion brought against the Ohira government by the Socialists, and the Ohira government fell from office. Perhaps surprisingly, the LDP then went on to win a handsome victory, following an election campaign in which Ohira died of a heart attack. The prime ministers mentioned so far in this period were all obvious candidates for the succession, being leaders of major factions who had clearly set their sights on the post for years beforehand. Following Tanaka’s resignation in 1974 and Ohira’s death in 1980, however, prime ministers emerged who were much less expected. In 1974 it was Miki Takeo, a minor faction leader with a distinctly left-of-centre approach to policy. As prime minister between 1974 and 1976 he was innovative in several policy areas but forced at times to rely on opposition party votes in the Diet in the absence of support from the LDP right wing. His factional position was always weak and he was eventually engulfed in the turmoil caused by the Lockheed revelations. Ohira’s successor in 1980 was equally unexpected. Suzuki Zenkō followed Ohira as leader of his faction, but previously had been generally regarded as a politician of second rank. When he was chosen as party president in a process of selection that followed the 1980 election victory, no serious observer had predicted his emergence. Indeed his grasp of certain policy areas, notably.foreign policy, proved less than adequate, and though certain important policy initiatives (notably that on administrative reform) were begun during his tenure, he often gave the impression of having become prime minister by accident rather than design. After Suzuki agreed to step down two years later, Nakasone Yasuhiro was elected convincingly in primary elections, again with the crucial backing of the Tanaka faction. In image and policy terms he proved a stronger prime minister than any of his recent successors, and effectively used the rapport he was able to

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establish with world leaders such as President Reagan and Margaret Thatcher to good effect in domestic politics. Unusually for a Japanese prime minister, he made world headlines with a series of foreign and defence policy statements and initiatives from soon after he took office. Although the election results of December 1983, following soon after Tanaka’s court conviction in October, were poor (the LDP barely scraped an absolute majority in the lower house), he retrieved the situation by entering into a coalition government with the small New Liberal Club and so ensured that the party remained in control of Diet committees. 23 Whereas most prime ministers’ popularity, as measured by public opinion polls, slumped after an initial honeymoon period, Nakasone’s remained consistently high until early 1987, and this, together with the fact of no clear successor on whom the party could agree, led to his obtaining a second two-year term towards the end of 1984. In February 1985 Tanaka suffered a stroke and was forced into semi-retirement from politics. This had the effect of somewhat weakening the Tanaka faction, whose iron unity for which it had hitherto been famous began to break down, until it finally split up in July 1987. It also tended to strengthen Nakasone’s position, by enabling him to become less dependent on Tanaka faction members to fill key cabinet and party positions. He was thus in a strong position to fight the elections for both lower and upper houses of the Diet held in July 1986, and led the LDP to its best victory since the 1950s. Thus fortified, he sought and obtained a further one-year extension of his tenure. Surprisingly, therefore, his attempt to capitalise on electoral strength and introduce a measure of taxation reform early in 1987 led to serious by-election and local election reverses, with the crucial small business element in the party’s support rising in no doubt temporary revolt. Both the LDP and the prime ministership based upon it have thus proved more effective and viable in the 1980s than in the 1970s, though neither viability nor stability should be regarded as absolute. The institution of a primary election system for the party presidency has been mentioned already, and has been the occasion for some limited strengthening of party organization at local level, though much of this remains, as it always has been, more a matter of faction and candidate-centred organization than organization controlled and directed by the party or its local branches. 24 Another area of development which appears to have strengthened the party is the greater prominence now accorded to what are termed zoku or ‘tribes’ of LDP Diet members, concerned with a particular policy area such as education, telecommunications or defence. 25 The development of zoku means that substantial numbers of Diet members affiliated with the LDP have a level of policy expertise in their specialist area, and an access to up-to-date information, that rivals that of the specialist ministries. This is extremely significant, because it suggests a relative weakening of the influence of ministries in relation to the LDP, in parallel with their weakening in relation to industry caused by industry’s greatly improved financial resources and freedom of action. We should not, however, jump too quickly to conclusions. To demonstrate that zoku make the LDP more able to stand up to the government ministries, we should

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have to show that the zoku regularly conflict with ministries and register victories. The truth appears to be much more complicated. There are cases, for instance, where ministries recognise zoku as channels for extending their own influence rather than regarding them as a threat. 26 CONCLUSION We have said little about the parties of Opposition in this chapter, not because they are an unimportant part of the system (in fact they are often able to exercise substantial veto power over some sorts of decision) but because of the ovei~whelming significance of the LDP in the Japanese political system as a whole. As we suggested at the outset, there are many types of entity described by the rubric ‘political party’ if we survey the politics of various countries. The LDP, however, has a distinct concatenation of features. It is an unusually uncompromising example of a dominant party (much more so than the Christian Democrats in Italy, for example). Despite, however, the changes outlined above, it is still relatively weak at the local level, leaving much initiative to local candidates, their support groups and the central factions which finance them. The determination of both the prime ministership and the various portfolios of cabinet is heavily influenced by intra-party factions which are hardly policy groups at all, but rather groups concerned with political patronage. As a result of this, promotion is closely connected with seniority., revealing a marked similarity to promotion patterns within the government bureaucracy itself. The comparative influence of the LDP and the bureaucracy is much affected by the following factors: rapid turnover of cabinet ministers plainly inhibits strong ministerial control, but this may be less important so far as the most important politicians and the key ministries are concerned; moreover, there is some evidence that the operation of the seniority system is now tending to reduce the attractiveness of a second, political, career to ambitious senior government officials following their retirement; the emergent policy groups in the party probably strengthen the LDP, but also offer opportunities for the ministries. Thus the Japanese political system is constantly evolving and renewing itself without fundamentally, or even very perceptibly, changing its shape. Its reliance on experience and precedent is entrenched, it is both personalised and bureaucratised, political ambition is channelled through constricting processes of promotion by seniority. But those who rise to the top in this system are no mere automata: they have proved themselves in a subtle and often unscrupulous world of political connections and policy pressures. Neither are they simply bureaucrats (though they may have been bureaucrats), but they are politicians to their fingertips and behave as such. For whatever combination of reasons, the electorate continues to vote them into office.

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NOTES 1. Alan Ware (ed.), Political Parties: Electoral Change and Structural Response (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987) p. 1. 2. For pioneering work on political parties, see Maurice Duverger, Political Parties (London: Methuen, 1954) and Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Party Systems (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976). 3. Banno Junji, Meiji kempō taisei no kakuritsu [The Establishment of the Meiji Constitutional System] (Tokyo University Press, 1971). 4. Lesley Connors, The Emperor’s Adviser: Saionji Kinmochi and Pre-War Japanese Politics (London and Sydney: Croom Helm, 1987). 5. In May 1980 69 members of the House of Representatives abstained in a no-confidence motion against the Ohira government, causing its resignation and new elections. See J.A.A.Stockwin, ‘Japan’s Political Crisis of 1980’, Australian Outlook, vol. 35, no. 1 (April 1981) pp. 19–32. [Chapter 27 of this book] 6. Alan Ware, ‘United States: Disappearing Parties?’, in Ware, op. cit., pp. 117–36. 7. See especially Chapters 3 and 4. 8. Although the LDP was returned with an absolute majority of seats in the 1983 Lower House general elections, the prime minister (Nakasone) invited the NLC to join a coalition government alongside the LDP. The main purpose was to give the government greater room to manoeuvre, especially in Diet committees. The coalition lasted until the general elections of July 1986, after which the LDP had no further need of NLC support. Following that election the NLC was dissolved and most of its members rejoined the LDP. 9. See Takeshi Ishida, ‘The Development of Interest Group Patterns and the Pattern of Modernization in Japan’, in D.C.S.Sissons (ed.), Papers on Modern Japan (Canberra: Australian National University, 1965) pp. 1–17. 10. Takashi Inoguchi, ‘Economic Conditions and Mass Support in Japan, 1960–1976’, in Paul Whiteley (ed.), Models of Political Economy (London: Sage, 1980) pp. 121–51. 11. Electoral pacts and their effectiveness or otherwise are an important part of this equation. For data on electoral pacts between opposition parties in the July 1986 elections, see Hans H.Baerwald, Party Politics in Japan (Winchester, MA: Allen & Unwin, 1986) table on p. 184. The larger the number of members elected per constituency, the more ‘room’ there is for small parties to have their members elected to Parliament. 12. The size of the LDP victory in the 1980 general elections is subject to various interpretations, including the explanation that it was caused by a sympathy vote for the prime minister (Ohira), who died during the election campaign. It can be argued, however, that in circumstances where the media were suggesting that an opposition defeat of the LDP was for once a

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real possibility, many voters were inhibited from voting for opposition parties because of the lack of unity (including policy unity) between them. 13. See Baerwald, op. cit., Chapter 2, pp. 35–88. 14. For details of the reform and the numbers of members elected in the new constituencies, see Asahi Nenkan (1987) p. 108. 15. See Joy Hendry, Understanding Japanese Society (London: Croom Helm, 1987). 16. See None Huddle and Michael Reich with Nahum Stiskin, Island of Dreams: Environmental Crisis in Japan (New York and Tokyo: Autumn Press, 1975), and Margaret A.McKean, Environmental Protest and Citizen Politics in Japan (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1981). 17. See Murakami Yasusuke, ‘The Age of New Middle Mass Politics’, Journal of Japanese Studies, vol. 8, no. 1 (Winter 1982) pp. 29–72. 18. For an early exposition of this approach, see Satō Seisaburō, Kumon Shunpei and Murakami Yasusuke, ‘Datsu “hokaku” jidai no tōrai’ [Beyond Conservative-Progressive Polarization], Chūō Kōron (February 1977) pp. 64–95. 19. A comparison of the total votes won by the Kōmeitō and the Japan Communist Party overestimates the appeal of the latter, because, while the Kōmeitō only contests winnable seats, the Communists put candidates into almost all constituencies, whether or not they have a chance of winning. 20. Haruhiro Fukui, ‘The Liberal Democratic Party Revisited: Continuity and Change in the Party’s Structure and Performance’, Journal of Japanese Studies, vol. 10, no. 2 (Summer 1984) pp. 385–435. 21. Haruhiro Fukui, Party in Power: The Japanese Liberal-Democrats and Policy-Making (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1970) table on p. 273. 22. They total more than the number of cabinet ministers because some listed two former occupations. 23. Positions on Diet committees are allocated in proportion to the distribution of party support in the House concerned. This, together with the rules about appointment of party chairmen, means that if the LDP only has a narrow parliamentary majority, it may lose control of a certain number of committees. 24. See J.A.A.Stockwin, ‘Japan: The Leader-Follower Relationship in Parties’, in Ware, op. cit., pp. 96–116. [Chapter 15 in this book] 25. Inoguchi Takashi and Iwai Tomoaki, ‘Zoku giin’ no kenkyū: jimintō seiken o gyūjiru shuyakutachi [A Study of ‘Tribal’ Parliamentarians: Those who Lead the LDP] (Nihon Keizai Shimbunsha, 1987). 26. Inoguchi and Iwai, op. cit., Chapter 1. ***

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CONCLUSIONS If there is one thing of which we hope to have convinced the reader in this book so far, it is surely that politics and political decision making in Japan are complex and sophisticated. No quick and easy theory can hope to do justice to the tangled web of interactions and developments which we have sought to analyse. At the same time we are not simply dealing with chaos. Clear patterns are in evidence and politics for the most part does not stray outside reasonably defined parameters. The politics of Japan in these senses is not utterly unlike the politics of most other advanced industrialised states in the world of the late twentieth century. Our underlying theme has been inspired by what at first sight appears like a paradox to the outside observer of contemporary Japan. Whereas Japan has become famous throughout the world for the dynamism of its industries and the rapidity with which they seem able to react to changing conditions and emerging opportunities, many areas of policy appear extraordinarily unresponsive to the need for change, or pressures for change. In other words, Japanese decision making often gives the impression of stultifying immobilism. There are those who have been known to argue that the immobilism is some kind of a ploy or conspiracy to harm foreign interests for the sake of a concerted nationalist game plan. We have turned up little in our research for this book that would give credence to such theories. What we have discovered, on the other hand, may readily be arranged under three headings: political system, political dynamics and political change. THE POLITICAL SYSTEM The first thing to be said about the Japanese political system is that it is open. Information flows extremely freely. The importance of free interchange of information between government and industry was emphasised by Horne in Chapter 6. In general it is not at all difficult to discover what is going on in Japanese politics, indeed the danger is of being swamped by information rather than of lacking information. Rix, in Chapter 10, stressed the public nature of trade disputes in which Japan has been involved, with the ever-present Japanese mass media ensuring that much of the detail of disputes is in the public domain. The mass media are free (though the extent to which they are accurate and balanced is a separate issue, not discussed in this book), elections are free (which is not the same thing as saying that the electoral system accurately reflects popular preferences) and most non-violent forms of political expression are free (though, as elsewhere, there is conspicuous political apathy among the general population). To say that politics is open and political expression is free does not

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necessarily imply the same about political access. As George argued in Chapter 5, open access to politics does not imply equal access. This, of course, is also true of other political systems, but it is true in a particular sense of Japan because of what George also called ‘the most important political fact of life in Japan’, namely that the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has never been out of power since it was formed in 1955. Japanese politics is based—apparently quite securely—upon the dominance of one party over political life. This does not mean that Opposition parties are totally meaningless or bereft of all possibility of influencing political outcomes, indeed in the field of defence policy (see George, Chapter 9) they have exercised a crucial power of veto, though its effectiveness is diminishing. They are, however, chronically out of offtce, and being out of office means that interest groups—notably labour unions—which have hung onto their coat-tails are relatively without power. Indeed it is arguable that the current parties of Opposition are out of office because they limit their appeal to narrow interest groups. This in turn has led historically, despite the important labour legislation brought down during the American Occupation period, to a conspicuously unequal balance of power in industry between capital and labour, in favour of the former. The extent to which socially and politically conservative assumptions underpin the political system was graphically shown by Collick in Chapter 8, where he demonstrated how in circumstances of financial stringency which emerged in the late 1970s it proved quite possible to trim back the state provision of social welfare from the improved, but still modest, levels attained under the prime ministership of Tanaka Kakuei (1972– 4). One-party dominance, as argued by Stockwin in Chapter 2, rests on a cabinetin-parliament system essentially of British type, and as such is markedly unAmerican in form and style. The dominance of a single party, however, has meant a stability of the system and a stability of the actors at the centre of politics, which is certainly not matched in Britain and is hard to match in any other comparable system. Stockwin maintained that a de facto seniority system operates in the distribution of cabinet and party office among LDP Diet members. This is not unlike that operating within the government bureaucracy. According to Rix in Chapter 3, in conditions of one-party dominance the structure of the government bureaucracy has been extremely stable, but at the same time its size has been carefully held in check, which can be seen as consistent with a view of the bureaucracy as an élite administrative corps in a rather Weberian sense. It is characterised by ‘complexity, authority and pervasiveness’. If one-party dominance means absence of really effective political opposition, that is true only outside the ranks of the LDP. The ministerial party itself may be conceptualised as containing its own opposition within itself. Again, this is not unknown in other systems, but in Japan it seems to be institutionalised to an extent scarcely known elsewhere. The best-known divisions within the LDP are the factions (discussed by several contributors to this book), which to an extent at least are parties within a party. The way Japanese politicians climb to

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the top of Disraeli’s ‘slippery pole’ is by way of factional activity, and factional activity also has a way of dislodging them rather easily. Several contributors have also addressed themselves to the subject of interministerial rivalries, which can be intense and long lasting, and the relatively recent phenomenon of zoku, or powerful policy groups within the LDP, often with a power-broking role, testifies to a pluralistic element within the ruling élite. Finally, certain interest groups play a central role in the political system, having a variety of methods whereby they make their views felt (see Chapter 5). George describes the relationship between interest groups and political parties as highly interdependent, extending at times to duality of function. That the LDP is closely linked to interest groups associated with big business is well known, but its connections in fact range much more widely than this suggests. Indeed Horne in Chapter 6 describes the LDP as representing a ‘collectivity of conservative interest groups’. POLITICAL DYNAMICS The model of corporatism is clearly a powerful one in the analysis of Japan’s political system, although it is unusual that labour is largely excluded from the corporatist process of decision making. In Chapter 5 George discusses the varieties of form which corporatist interaction takes. In general there is a high level of ‘interpenetration’ of the system, and what Rix in Chapter 10 calls ‘tolerance on both sides of an ill-definition of boundaries between government and private sector responsibilities’. Corporatism, however, does not of itself tell us whether a political system will tend towards immobilism or dynamism in its policy making. Much evidence of the existence of immobilist elements in the system has been presented in the course of this book, and it would be tedious to go over this ground again in detail here. Two aspects, however, will be briefly explored, one being checks and balances, and the other incrementalism. An example of checks and balances was given by George, in her discussion in Chapter 9 of how the 1947 Constitution was used to check increases in defence expenditure. Another is implicit in Ito’s analysis in Chapter 4 of attempts by the zaikai to regain some of their influence and prestige vis-à-vis the bureaucracy by using the Rinchō for this purpose. The immobilising impact of interest groups over the postal savings issue was discussed by Horne in Chapter 7. Factional conflict within the LDP has served (though not always to equal effect) to limit the tenure, and thus the power of the prime minister, while the limited tenure of cabinet office for the same reason plainly limits the capacity of a cabinet minister to control his ministry. Within the bureaucracy, interministerial clashes between the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) over GATT negotiations and over the Nippon Telephone and Telegraph (NTT) issue were discussed by Rix in Chapter 10. All these cases are of situations where one powerful political actor finds its influence limited by having to fight off or having to negotiate with other

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powerful actors. It needs to be noted, however, that the operation of checks and balances does not always result in an immobilist outcome, or if they do, the outcome may not last for ever: the Constitution is less of a check on defence development than it once was; the Rinchō was also a means of breaking out of a policy impasse; sometimes a prime minister will survive long enough in office to place his indelible imprint on events and may indeed have to resolve conflicts; some individual cabinet ministers (and some key cabinet offices) manage to overcome the limitation of tenure; amakudari can be ambiguous in its impact; while some interministerial clashes result in significant changes in policy rather than the inhibition of such changes. So far as we are talking about institutional checks and balances, we may perhaps describe the Japanese system as inherently conservative in relation to change without being reactionary. This, however, is a broad and necessarily incomplete generalization. The second aspect of immobilism to be discussed is that thought to inhere in incrementalist decision making. Incrementalism means building small increments onto an existing baseline, and is most clearly seen in the making of Japan’s annual budget. Rix, in Chapter 3, described the budgetary process as functioning to ‘filter policy’, as part of a procedural emphasis aimed at perpetuating ‘bureaucratic control over the pace and direction of policy development’. Horne, on the other hand, argued that budget making was not wholly incremental, and cites as evidence that over the decade of the 1970s budgetary allocations to agriculture declined, while allocations to welfare significantly rose. Annual rises during the 1980s above the budgetary ‘norm’ for defence and foreign aid would be further examples, though while these were initially the result of policy decisions to break away from incrementalism, the rate of increase since then suggests that a predictable incrementalist pattern of decision making may have once again asserted itself. Here again, the underlying pattern appears to be conservative, though there was sufficient flexibility in the system to permit exceptional treatment in matters of exceptional political urgency and importance. Even though immobilism rather than dynamism may appear to be the dominant theme in the discussions in this book, examples of dynamic decision making are by no means absent. Rix’s argument about the ‘energising’ function of the Japanese bureaucracy (exceptional in the literature on bureaucracy in general) relates to its prewar history of élite status, its effective reinforcement by the American Occupation, and the exigencies of economic development. But a strong élite bureaucracy does not necessarily add up to an ‘energising’ bureaucracy. Whatever the precise set of reasons for the capacity for an ‘energising’ role in political decision making developed by a ministry such as the MITI (but not confined to the MITI), one important factor in the past has plainly been the relative abstention from influence by other parts of the political system.

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POLITICAL CHANGE Although in the course of this book we have emphasised the essential, and remarkable, stability of the Japanese political system since the 1950s, it would be foolish to ignore the possibility of systemic change. Many writers thought they saw systemic change approaching during the 1970s in the shape of a declining LDP and a resurgent Opposition capable eventually of taking power. This possibility was aborted by the conservative electoral trend that became apparent in the late 1970s and the chronic inability of the Opposition parties to combine into any kind of credible alternative force. A different kind of change, however, has gradually been manifesting itself, though its progress is somewhat erratic and its implications uncertain. With the consolidation in power of the LDP, national politicians of that party have been exercising their political muscles in ways that have arguably been eroding the formerly dominant position of the bureaucracy. Evidence to this effect has been presented at various places in this book. The emergence of zoku is one example. Another is the decline of that instrument of bureaucratic power known as ‘administrative guidance’. It should be noted, however, that Rix enters a caveat here when he argues in Chapter 3 that a situation of decrementalist budgeting which began to appear in the 1980s was likely to strengthen rather than weaken the government bureaucracy. There was also evidence that the business world was prepared to flex its muscles in relation to the bureaucracy, as we saw from the Rinchō experiment, described by Itō in Chapter 4. A further possible indicator of change was the unexpected degree of personal leadership apparently exercised by Nakasone by comparison with most of his predecessors. Although it is notoriously difficult in the case of Japan to disentangle the effect of personal leadership from the influence of subordinates, there is a good case (made by George in Chapter 9) that Nakasone, with his relatively long tenure of office, exercised exceptional leadership influence in the field of defence. Even his position, however, was far from invulnerable, as the tax debate of 1987 graphically revealed, and he yielded the prime ministership to Takeshita in November 1987. Finally, foreign pressures provided a potent influence for change, of policy most obviously, but also possibly of system. Foreign, and especially American, pressures have been intense and virtually unremitting in defence and trade, as well as for the liberalization of financial markets discussed by Horne in Chapter 7. Clearly Nakasone as prime minister was inclined to play the political game according to somewhat different rules from his predecessors because he understood the political gains domestically that could be made from being seen to stand tall on the international stage. In circumstances of intense international pressure too, a leader prepared to play the card of personal charisma could expect to win support. As George argued in Chapter 9, Nakasone was willing both to break through immobilist barriers to change, and also to reverse the normal practice whereby Japanese governments respond primarily to domestic

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pressure and only secondarily to foreign pressure, to a practice which had the ratio the other way round. Even so, we should not lose sight of Ito’s remark that various participants in the Rinchō were engaged collusively in the ‘successful presentation of the political play called “foreign pressures”’. IMMOBILISM, DYNAMISM AND THE POLITICAL SYSTEM In Chapter 1 we suggested that although it was perfectly legitimate to apply a western-style, liberal-democratic model of politics to Japan, it was inadequate in some respects because it tended to lead to the wrong questions being asked. As an alternative we proposed an authority maintenance model as a standard by which to measure aspects of the Japanese system. (Not dissimilarly, Rix in Chapter 3 argued that there were risks in measuring political change in Japan solely according to the yardstick of democratization.) An authority maintenance model is one in which a regime has the goal above all of consolidating its power. We suggested that the model was quite compatible with a dynamic developmental approach, and that it may well have a long-term perspective. It may also accommodate within it a relatively diverse set of political forces, though it will not manage to accommodate all political forces that exist. There will be an opposition, but it will be largely impotent, as the regime itself becomes the pole around which significant political forces revolve. Japan, as we suggested, is a more open political system than this model would imply. There are free elections, a free press, free political participation. The regime, however, demonstrates a systemic conservatism (not only a policy conservatism) somewhat reminiscent of an authority maintenance type system. This is what gives it so much of the immobilism for which Japan has in recent years become well known. That it is also dynamic is not entirely surprising, since for instance the Republic of Korea is also highly dynamic in a policy sense. Japan, however, possesses elements in her political system which take it well beyond the theme of authority maintenance. Does the replacement of Nakasone by Takeshita, then, herald a change from dynamic to immobilist politics? It is early to say, but two points should be made. First, broad-based consensus leadership should not entail immobilism., and may even do better than so-called ‘dynamic’ policy making by a leader whose power base is weak. Secondly however, a consensus of diverse interests may be hard to maintain through traditional Japanese methods in conditions of intense foreign pressure or severe social or economic disruption. Here a more forceful approach may be required as in tackling the trade surplus or subduing an upward spiral in land prices. Finally, therefore, structural change ought not to be a taboo subject if the full potential of Japan’s capacity for political action is to be realised. Some change is, as we have seen, already taking place. Though from the present perspective it may seem impracticably ambitious to suggest it, an arrangement whereby the electorate were presented with a genuine political choice, and where therefore one party need not indefinitely remain in office, might with advantage be a

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32 New Directions in Japanese Politics First published in Ian Neary (ed.), Leaders and Leadership in Japan Richmond, Japan Library, 1996 We have swallowed the Socialists and we have them in our stomach. All that remains is for the gastric juices to digest them. 1 THESE REMARKS attributed to the former Prime Minister. Takeshita Noboru, suggest a cunning plot to restore the essence of LDP hegemony, which had been so rudely snatched away with the formation of the Hosokawa Government in August 1993. According to this hypothesis, the reform ambitions initiated by the Hosokawa coalition government (August 1993-April 1994) are close to foundering with the return of the LDP to power, in a coalition with the Socialists, at the end of June. Another way of putting the same thing is to say that Ozawa has been defeated by Takeshita: that the ambitious reformer who wanted to remake the system of politics has been defeated by the old-style politician who wishes to restore the status quo. The principal purpose of this paper is to examine this view in the light of recent and earlier events. I shall argue that despite current appearances what has happened since August 1993 means that the old system cannot be put together again in anything like the same form as before. The genie has escaped, and cannot easily be returned to the inside of the bottle. Although the process of changing the system has proved (predictably) a rocky one, the system—for good or ill—is experiencing a period of substantial change, though the end result may well not satisfy many of the proponents of reform. In arguing thus, I am conscious of having some heavyweight opinion against me, as the prevailing opinion seems to be that political reform has stalled, or even, failed. In order to come to grips with what has happened over the past year (1993–4), I want to go back into the 1980s, when Nakasone was in his own way trying to reform the way politics was conducted by setting up a range of commissions and think-tanks in order to shift policy in a range or areas including defence and education. Although he had a certain amount of success in pushing defence policy somewhat in the direction he wanted it to go, and although he was accorded a longer period as Prime Minister than any of his predecessors since 1972 and any of his successors, although he won the 1986 election with a handsome majority, ultimately his policy successes were very limited. 2 None of the four LDP prime ministers between Nakasone and the party’s loss of office in 1993 could be regarded either as reformers or even as particularly

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successful leaders. Indeed Kaifu, who in some ways may be regarded as the least unsuccessful of them, had to concentrate on exercises of damage-limitation following the comprehensive LDP defeat in the 1989 House of Councillors elections, which followed on the heels of the Recruit Scandal. Let us now go on to look briefly at the reasons for the LDP loss of office in 1993, and the subsequent political events. The collapse of the 38-year-long rule by the LDP in August 1993 was preceded by a split in the pivotal Takeshita faction of the ruling party, and a consequent weakening of central control within that party. This in turn was accompanied by a series of corruption scandals, one of which led to the disgrace and effective withdrawal from politics of Kanemaru Shin, who had been the Takeshita faction’s most dominant and effective leader. As a result, the Takeshita faction split, and that section of it led by Hata Tsutomu and Ozawa Ichirō became an increasingly dissident voice within the party. The Takeshita faction (formerly the faction of Tanaka Kakuei), which had essentially controlled the LDP for more than a decade, was fatally weakened. If erosion of the central leadership, and a crescendo of revelations about corruption, were the backdrop, the proximate cause of collapse was the decision by the Miyazawa Cabinet in the early summer of 1993 not to proceed with a plan to reform the electoral system for the Lower House, or House of Representatives. In protest, two separate groups, the larger of which was the dissident half of the old Takeshita faction, broke away from the LDP and formed new parties. The larger of the two was to be called Shinseitō (Renewal Party), and was the party of Hata and Ozawa. Ozawa, a highly controversial reformist politician, came to be seen as the brains behind new programmes of reform. The other party; more on the left, called itself Shintō Sakigake (New Party Harbinger), and was led by Takemura Masayoshi. As a consequence of these defections, the LDP lost a motion of no-confidence in its government, the Miyazawa Cabinet dissolved Parliament and held new elections in July 1993, which it lost. To general surprise, a new government was formed under the prime ministership of Hosokawa Morihiro, a former prefectural governor who had formed the Nihon Shintō (Japan New Party) of political outsiders about a year before. The government consisted of no fewer than eight separate parties. The largest of these parties was the Social Democratic Party of Japan (formerly Japan Socialist Party or JSP, though its title in Japanese had not changed, remaining Nihon Shakaitō. For consistency and clarity we shall continue to refer to it as the JSP). Although it was the coalition’s largest party; it had lost many seats in the July elections. The other main parties constituting the coalition were the Renewal Party, the Japan New Party, the Kōmeitō (a long-established party linked with the Buddhist group Sōka Gakkai), the Democratic Socialist Party and the New Harbinger Party. Of the former parties of opposition, only the Communists, with a mere 15 seats in the Lower House, remained aloof. The Hosokawa Government embarked upon an ambitious programme of reform, including reform of the electoral system, an anti-corruption law, deregulation of industry and commerce, reform of the tax system and decentralization

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of power to local authorities. By the end of 1993 the new Government found itself in difficulties, both because of divisions within its own ranks and because of pressure from the LDP, which remained by far the largest party within Parliament, though it was now in opposition. Part of the problem lay with the reactions of the JSP, which found itself badly divided on the modalities of electoral reform, as well as on other aspects of reform, particularly tax reform and liberalization of rice imports. An even more serious problem was that the new government’s Chief Cabinet Secretary, the Chairman of the New Party Harbinger, Takemura, soon found himself at odds with the Prime Minister, Hosokawa, as Hosokawa was drawn more and more into the orbit of the maverick and manipulative Ozawa, whom Takemura plainly disliked. Early in 1994 the crucial Lower House electoral reform bills were accepted by Parliament, but they had been substantially modified by comparison with the Government’s earlier proposals. Since this was such an important part of the Government’s reform programme (and because failure to effect electoral reform was the innnediate cause of the LDP’s fall from power), we need to dwell a little on the technicalities of the bill. The new electoral system for the House of Representatives was to be based on 300 single-member, first-past-the-post constituencies, and 200 seats contested in 11 regional constituencies under a list system of proportional representation. This would replace the existing system, based on a single non-transferable vote (SNTV) in multimember constituencies, which was widely held to be responsible for competitive factionalism within large parties, and thus for a great deal of corruption. It was also hoped that, by completely redrawing electoral boundaries, the gross imbalance in the value of votes that had been allowed to develop between many rural and many urban constituencies, would be eliminated. Considerations of party advantage informed much of the quarrelling that took place in late 1993 and early 1994 over the precise modalities of the new electoral law The initial proposal had been for equal numbers of single member and proportional representation seats (250–250), but pressure from the LDP and from elements in the Government (especially Ozawa) that favoured competition between large and cohesive, rather than small and fragmented parties, led to the former type of seat being increased at the expense of the latter. The division of the proportional representation seats between 11 regional blocs rather than, as in the early proposals, within a single national constituency, was also thought likely to be disadvantageous to the smaller parties, and was therefore opposed by them. The Socialists, however, were particularly enraged at the increase in the number of ‘British-type’ seats, which required a plurality of votes to win. Even though the electoral reform bill successfully passed through Parliament, the early months of 1994 saw ever increasing strains within the coalition Government. A tax reform bill, designed to reduce direct taxation but compensate this by an increase in indirect taxation (largely consumption tax) foundered on the opposition of JSP dissidents in the Upper House. An attempt

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by the Prime Minister to reshuffle his Cabinet in order to remove Takemura from his politically sensitive position likewise had to be abandoned. In addition, ancient money problems were being dragged up by his opponents to discredit Hosokawa, who unexpectedly tendered his resignation in April. He was replaced as Prime Minister by Hata Tsutomu, the head of the Japan Renewal Party, which also harboured within it Ozawa Ichirō. Although the composition of the Hata Cabinet was initially identical to that of its predecessor, Ozawa had hatched a scheme to amalgamate most of the non-Socialist parties into a single new Reform party (Kaishin), upon the announcement of which the JSP immediately pulled out of the coalition. The New Party Harbinger also distanced itself from it. The Hata-Ozawa Government lacked a majority in Parliament, and lasted a mere nine weeks. Its main task was to pass the national budget, which had been delayed in its passage through Parliament by political instability. The Socialists declared a truce until the budget was passed, but upon the budget being approved in June the Hata Government was faced with an unwinnable noconfidence motion and tendered its resignation. The subsequent outcome astonished most observers. After more than two weeks of fruitless negotiations between the Socialists and Hata Cabinet (which remained in a caretaker role), a new Government was announced consisting of the LDP, the JSP and the New Party Harbinger. It was not particularly remarkable that the LDP should have returned to office after just under a year in opposition, given the chaotic state of politics under the Hosokawa and Hata prime ministerships. What stunned observers, however, was that it was the JSP, the long-time scourge of LDP policies, that had become its principal partner in government, and most particularly that the new Prime Minister was to be a veteran Socialist, the 69 year-old JSP Chairman, Murayama Tomiichi. Murayama had been little known outside his party until September 1993, when the annual JSP Congress decided to punish its previous leaders for the party’s poor showing in the elections, and replace them with a new team, headed by Murayama as Chairman. On the face of it, the LDP/JSP/NPH combination appears like a strange fantasy out of Lewis Carroll. On closer inspection, however, it is perhaps not so weird after all, though it is certainly unfamiliar. There are a number of reasons for taking this view. Firstly, by late June 1994, it had become evident that the Hata Government was incapable of restoring its parliamentary majority. Over a period of some months, Ozawa had played a double game with the Socialists, seeking at times to attract sufficient numbers of dissident Liberal Democrats over to the coalition. The LDP faction leader. Watanabe Michio, had been very tempted by Ozawa’s overtures, but in the end could not persuade enough of his followers to join him to create a parliamentary majority for the coalition. When all these attempts failed, Ozawa tried once again to pull the JSP back and restore the coalition’s majority, but he was unable to dispel the acute Socialist suspicion that his earlier tactics had incurred. A numbers calculation, therefore, left marriage between

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Liberal Democrats and Socialists the only possible base for a government that could enjoy a parliamentary majority. Secondly; for many years the parliamentary JSP had been relatively conservative on many areas of policy though there remained a small rump of labour union left-wingers much influenced by Marxism (as well as some radical activists from citizens’ movements). The same could not necessarily be said for the party’s rank and file, but as with other Japanese parties, parliamentarians retained the predominant influence. The rewriting of the party’s basic document in 1986 had largely removed the Marxist ideological legacy from the party, leaving it able to occupy the political centre-ground on many areas of policy. The JSP ideological legacy was most apparent in matters relating to the Constitution, defence, foreign policy and the role (and legitimacy) of the Self Defence Forces, but even this had suffered some erosion with the ending of the Cold War. Thirdly, and following on from the last point, it seems in retrospect that the Cold War had been in some considerable part responsible for freezing the Japanese ideological map in an icy mould, which the demise of Cold War rivalries has gone a long way to thaw out. Now that the Constitutional axis of Japanese political competition is no longer set in the pattern of bipolar international rivalry, greater flexibility is possible in politics and new thoughts may be thought. Fourthly, although JSP electoral fortunes have fluctuated wildly since the late 1980s, the party has to some extent reestablished its position as a credible political force, and of course the emergence of a Socialist Prime Minister may well consolidate this. It has shown itself to be an indispensable element in two coalition governments, those of Hosokawa and of Murayama himself. There is a sense that after four decades in the political wilderness, the JSP is on transforming itself into some kind of Establishment party, though whether the electorate will reward or punish it for taking this path remains to be seen. Fifthly, the Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister in the Murayama Government is Kōno Yōhei, elected President of the LDP after its fall from power in 1993. Kōno himself has moderate reformist credentials, and it was he who led the one and only substantial defection of parliamentarians it experienced in its 38 years tenure of office—that of the New Liberal Club, formed as a reaction against the Lockheed scandal in 1976. The MurayamaKōno combination places the Government firmly in the centre of the political firmament. Finally, despite the drubbing that the JSP received from the electorate at the July 1993 elections, and despite the appalling strains to which the party has been subjected by its first experience of participation in government for nearly forty years, it remains the case that the party has largely held together as a single organization. This contrasts with the recent experience of the Liberal Democrats, who suffered numerous defections during 1994 in addition to the major defections of 1993, and it also compares reasonably well with any of the parties now out of power, with the possible exception of the Kōmeitō, which has a firm

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organizational base in the Sōka Gakkai. In many ways the JSP has a form of organization which is comparable to that of the LDP, in the sense that it has strength at local level, based on local political machines. The JSP is not, of course, remotely as rich as the LDP On the other hand, while much of its political weakness has stemmed from the fact that, being for ever out of power, it had little access to patronage, that disadvantage has now—perhaps temporarily—been rectified. If we have given some reasons for believing that the LDP/JSP/NPH coalition may not be quite the unnatural hybrid that many portray it as, it still remains to consider the implications for the progress of reform to the system of politics. On the one hand, there are several reasons that may be adduced in support of the proposition that the formation of the Murayama Government spells the end of serious reform. Firstly, the arguments put forward above could well be interpreted as implying that if the LDP/JSP/NPH alliance is a natural one, then the agenda is bound to be that of the largest party in the coalition, which is the one most nostalgic about the former status quo, namely the LDP Secondly, the chaotic performance of the Hosokawa and Hata governments did much to discredit reform, and ultimately led to the defeat of Ozawa, who was its most enthusiastic and resourceful proponent. Without the dynamism which Ozawa had injected into the process of reform, what hope had it of ultimate success? Thirdly, after a few weeks in office the new Socialist Prime Minister, Murayama Tomiichi, announced publicly some fundamental changes to the most deeply entrenched shibboleths of Socialist Party policy. Henceforth the Government, and with it the JSP, would regard the Self Defence Forces as legitimate in terms of the Constitution. The Japan-US Security Treaty would be accepted. The participation of Self Defence Force contingents in UN peacekeeping missions would be proceeded with. Unarmed neutralism would no longer be the basis of JSP foreign policy The controversial anthem Kimigayo and the rising sun flag would become official in state schools throughout the land. This appeared to be an astonishing climb-down from long-established JSP policy, and understandably caused ripples within that party itself. Takeshita’s digestive analogy mentioned above, was given substance by the new Prime Minister’s surprising statements. Fourthly, there was some evidence that the ever-opportunistic Kōmeitō was contemplating changing sides, so as to position itself to join the three-party coalition government. 3 On the other hand, arguments were by no means lacking on behalf of the view that the emergence of the new government did not spell the ending of reform. Firstly, the various Murayama statements could with some plausibility be regarded as a possibly belated recognition that some parts of the traditional JSP message were out of date in the post-Cold War world. A poll of JSP parliamentarians in the Asahi showed a surprisingly high degree of support for the changes, even though some who supported them saw them as a concession to

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the inevitable rather than as something to be welcomed with open arms. 4 It could be argued that by coming into the mainstream on defence matters, the JSP would be better placed to pursue peace-related causes from a standpoint of realism as well as idealism. Secondly, some of the JSP cabinet ministers (as well as Takemura of the NPH, who was given the Finance portfolio) were proving quite effective as ministers, while the Prime Minister was praised by some observers for his shrewdness and eloquence, and even for his charisma. Not all non-LDP parts of the Government appeared to be undergoing a process of alimentary absorption. Thirdly, if the Maruyama Government is to continue for a reasonable period of time, the logic of the system suggests that the presence of the JSP will at least dilute LDP hegemony. Indeed, it seems quite possible that certain ministries may ultimately become JSP monopolies, or at least become heavily influenced by JSP-related interests. Fourthly, given the fact that the Murayama Government enjoys a parliamentary majority, it seems unlikely that other parties (such as the Kōmeitō) would be allowed to dilute what in effect is a minimum winning coalition. This would, of course, cease to be the case if there were further serious defections from the LDP, but that must have become less likely now that the LDP is once more in government, and can once again enjoy the spoils of office. Fifthly, there is manifestly a constituency for political reform among many younger parliamentary members of both the LDP and the JSP, who found themselves seriously excluded from advancement under the old system of LDP one-party dominance. The government, like its immediate predecessor, has also included, it is true, some personages afflicted with unreconstructed views on sensitive issues, as shown in the recent affair of the statement by Sakurai, Minister in charge of the Environment Agency, on the subject of war responsibility. The Prime Minister acted promptly to force the offending Minister to resign. 5 Sixthly, it is important to understand that the orchestra of reform has not always played in harmony. The differences became quickly apparent in the days of the Hosokawa Government, when the tune played by Ozawa failed to harmonize with that being played by other elements in the coalition, notably the Socialists. Essentially, what Ozawa was pursuing was the goal of a party system in which a small number of large parties would be able to alternate in power, and debate on real policy issues would determine electoral outcomes. On defence and foreign policy issues Ozawa pursued the aim of a ‘normal’ state, without constitutional restrictions on the deployment of a conventional defence policy or on the ability to pursue national interests on the world stage. By contrast, many Socialists and the New Party Harbinger, among others, wished to maintain constitutional safeguards so far as defence was concerned, while on the future shape of the party system they sought to defend the rights of smaller parties by extending the proportional representation element in the new electoral system. Finally, against the expectations of some, Murayama announced, shortly after

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his administration was formed, that the electoral reform proposals would be pursued, and no attempt would be made to preserve the existing system. It had been thought among some observers that the LDP and JSP, once they were in government together, might combine to resuscitate the old system, and use it to their joint advantage. Whatever may have been the temptations of such an approach, the new government forbore to pursue it. CONCLUSION In concluding this chapter, I wish to argue the proposition that the natural condition of Japanese party politics is fragmentation, the disadvantages of which require clever organizational stratagems to avert. While fragmentation creates political instability, it is also conducive to more dynamic politics than that which follows from a successful attempt to overcome fragmentation. Japan’s first post-war decade (1945–55) provides ample evidence of both party fragmentation and of political dynamism. Many of the most important policies of the post-war era were devised (admittedly with a little help from the Americans), in this period, which was characterized by a high degree of intraparty competition. The most dynamic periods of LDP rule between 1955 and 1993 were those where factional competition was at its height. In contrast, the 1980s were a period of dominance by a particular faction and rigidly controlled seniority system for party and government promotions. It was also a period characterized by massive corruption and a great deal of policy immobilism. Party fragmentation and fluidity suddenly and unexpectedly returned with the fall of the LDP from office in August 1993, and suddenly radical change seemed possible. The startling changes in JSP policy initiated by the Prime Minister are merely the latest evidence of a transition to policy dynamism. The problem with the long period of LDP dominance, was that inter-party competition became essentially perfunctory and as a substitute intra-party competition between factions in the ruling party became the principal mechanism to keep the system dynamic. Now that the LDP has lost its secure majority in both Houses of Parliament, a new mechanism is required to try to ensure that the natural condition of party fragmentation shall not sow the seeds of political anarchy The trick, however, is to improve on the stability-creating mechanisms which the LDP so expertly perfected, in such a way as to ensure not only political stability, but also true competition and dynamism in the creation of policy To this end, reform of the electoral system is crucial. The essence of a desirable solution is one where a realistic fear of losing office acts as an effective stimulus to the party or parties in power at a particular time to take the policy needs of the electorate into account in the formulation and implementation of policy. It implies that policy rather than simply patronage should be to the fore in the minds of most politicians, and that a balance be struck between national and local concerns. It certainly involves a reduction in bureaucratic power and an increase in political power, but without a concomitant

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loss in political responsibility. Whether the proposed electoral reforms will bring about such a result is probably the subject of another paper. NOTES 1. Tokyo Insideline, no. 30, 30 July 1994. 2. Watanabe Osamu, Nakasone Yasuhiro and Postwar Conservative Politics: an historical interpretation Oxford: Nissan Occasional Papers, 1993, no. 18, Watanabe Osamu, Seiji Kaikaku to Kenpō Kaisei (Political Reform and Constitutional Revision), Tokyo: Aoki Shoten 1994. 3. Tokyo Insideline, loc. cit. 4. Asahi Shinbun, 27 July 1994. 5. Asahi Shinbun, 16 August 1994.

33 The Need for Reform in Japanese Politics 1 First published in Armand Clesse, et al, (eds), The Vitality of Japan, Basingstoke: Macmillan, in association with Luxembourg Institute for European and International Studies, 1997 INTRODUCTION AT ONE TIME it was widely believed by Western observers of Japan that since Japanese culture was situationally relativist rather than individualistic and principled, the Japanese found little difficulty in changing direction fundamentally should the situation demand it. 2 It seemed to follow from this that Japan was prone to sudden changes of policy direction, and indeed that the most fundamental structures of politics, such as the current constitution or the political system itself, might be expected to change suddenly in response to new circumstances and pressures. Examples usually cited to support this case were the conversion of dissident samurai during the 1860s from rejection to emulation of advanced Western countries; the shift from semi-parliamentary politics in the 1920s to ultranationalism in the 1930s; and the rapid conversion from Emperorcentred military rule to a broadly liberal and democratic order after 1945. Perhaps this attitude of Western observers is best summed up in General MacArthur’s derogatory (and, as we would now say, racist) remark that the Japanese: ‘are like all orientals; they have a tendency to adulate a winner’. 3 In other words, they were prone to ‘get with the strength’ and jump on to the latest bandwagon that seemed to promise success, being also in tune with their current interests, rather than stick with precepts of policy and organization derived from universal principles, sincerely and consistently held. Any comparison with the politics of major Western nations would show, of course, that consistency based on ‘universal principles, sincerely and consistently held’ was an ideal only patchily and imperfectly fulfilled in the politics of those nations. There is a whole history of venality, unprincipled adaptation to circumstances and free-for-all struggle between competing ideologies and interests for historians to document in virtually all of these countries. More to the point, however, the political history of Japan since the immediate aftermath of the Second World War presents almost precisely the oppo-site picture to that identified by Herman Kahn and others, and derided by MacArthur. Rather than the unstable politics of a people chasing new trends and fashions with little regard for consistency or principle, politics and policy in Japan since the 1950s are now more commonly criticised for being excessively

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stable, in the sense that it is said to be lacking the capacity to adapt in the face of new situations and, in particular, lacking leadership sufficiently strong and able to effect needed change. Interestingly enough, in some of the more extreme examples of Western criticism of Japanese politics for being excessively stable, there lurks the notion that somehow instability and lack of principle hides not far below the surface of excessive stability. Thus Brzezinski, writing in the early 1970s, argued that Japanese politics was ‘metastable’, that is on one plane it was extremely stable while on another it was brittle and potentially subject to radical destabilisat.ion if subjected to certain kinds of shock. 4 Twenty years later, van Wolferen maintains the apparently paradoxical position that Japan has a ‘system’ but no leadership and that this creates what he terms the problem of ‘no brakes and no pilot’. 5 In the van Wo!feren view it is excessive stability (the ‘system’) that is dangerous because there is nobody capable of controlling what the system actually does. The present writer is inclined to take a less alarmist view of Japanese politics than these views imply. The problem of perspective is a serious one confronting all observers of the Japanese political scene, whether those observers be Japanese or foreign, and it is important to avoid exaggeration. Too many foreign observers, brought face to face with a culture and body of political practice that seems unfamiliar, are prone to overstate its peculiarities. Meanwhile, some Japanese, whether concerned to insulate themselves from the outside world with notions of Japanese uniqueness, or conversely to attack their own system from an external perspective, also at times produce a distorted picture of how Japanese politics actually works. In practice, though the politics of Japan has its own characteristic features, it is neither so peculiar nor so incapable of being subjected to comparison with other political systems as the kinds of criticism mentioned above appear to imply. While every political system is different, the Japanese system has many features in common with the political systems of other major nations with productive and sophisticated economies. It is from this fundamental standpoint that this chapter is written. Having said this, we should not fall into the complacent and conservative view that Japanese politics lacks problems or has no need of reform. While from many perspectives, Japanese political stability has produced benefits for the nation over many years, the relative absence of change in the system over the same period has arguably led to a kind of political sclerosis that may need radical reform to recover. This is said in full realisation that in certain circumstances reform of a working system of government may not necessarily lead to improvement. The point is, however, that the absence of reform is not a panacea either. It has become something of a cliche in Japan that the nation enjoys a firstclass economy but a third-rate political system. Whether and to what extent this is correct is a matter for individual judgement, but the fact that it is said so widely suggests that dissatisfaction about the way politics is conducted may lead

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to serious attempts at reform in the foreseeable future. The early 1990s are a period of massive international change brought about largely by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Increasingly it is becoming evident that the question of reforming the way Japan is governed cannot be divorced from a consideration of the ways in which the international system is evolving. One of the most striking features of the international scene since the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe is the far slower pace of change in East Asia (including Japan) than in Europe. This means that, up to 1992 at least, Japan was still relatively free from the pressures affecting European nations as a result of the ending of the Cold War. All signs, however, were pointing to the emergence of increasingly pressing challenges to the governance of Japan, stemming from radical change in the international system. In the rest of this chapter we shall attempt to place Japanese politics in an international comparative context, showing that it bears basic similarity to the British system, but with certain important differences. We shall examine aspects of the various central parts of the system in an attempt to demonstrate its essential dynamics. Finally, we shall argue that while in many ways the political system established in Japan during the Occupation period and during the 1950s has served the nation well, it now stands in urgent need of reform—a task to which the new international situation lends added urgency. In arguing for reform we shall propose that of the approaches to reform that might be attempted, the one that is most likely to yield desirable results would be the creation of a system which in practice permitted alternation—or at least occasional change—in the party or parties forming the government. We do not argue that this is the only reform required, but that it might be considered as the centrepiece. JAPAN’S

SYSTEM

OF POLITICS PERSPECTIVE

IN

COMPARATIVE

Like the politics of almost any other country, the Japanese political system has emerged out of a long series of historical experiences. This is not to say that the process of development has been even and continuous, since it has been punctuated by episodes of discontinuity and new direction, such as the Meiji Restoration and the 1945 defeat and subsequent occupation. A favourite essay topic given by those who teach Japanese politics (at least in Britain) to their students is: ‘Examine the Japanese political system under the 1889 and 1946 constitutions in terms of continuity and change.’ The question is, of course, more difficult to answer than it appears to be at first sight, which is why it is such a good essay topic to set for students. A shorthand way of describing the political system under the present constitution is to say that it is a type of ‘Westminster system, with modifications’. That is to say, in formal terms, the legislative and executive branches of government are ‘fused’, in the sense that the electorate, in electing members of parliament, are also directly electing a government which both

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controls the legislative process and administers the executive branch through government ministries and agencies. In practice the link between electorate and government is strengthened by the existence of political parties. The voter, while voting for an individual candidate, is also, whether deliberately or not, giving a preference to the political party to which the candidate belongs (except in the case of candidates who are genuine Independents). In marked contrast to the system operating in the United States, there is no separate election for a chief executive, which means that Japanese political parties, just like their British counterparts but unlike parties in the United States, normally maintain., for the most part, strict voting discipline in parliament. Should they fail to do so, they risk losing office as the result of a no-confidence motion being passed against them. 6 The current Japanese system in this respect contrasts with the system that operated under the Meiji Constitution, in the sense that the elites around the Emperor, the chiefs of staff of the armed forces, the Privy Council, the (nonelected) House of Peers, the genro, the jushin, etc, contested and eroded the effective power of the elected House of Representatives. When there were transcendental cabinets, there was in effect a separation of powers between the legislature and the executive, but in the period of Taisho democracy, when party cabinets existed, Japan had, though in incomplete form, something approaching the Westminster model. Continuity. therefore. between the pre-war and post-war systems could be discovered in this area by somebody who knew what to look for. Indeed, the abolition by General MacArthur’s Occupation forces of the various elites (including those associated with the Emperor and the armed forces) which contested the’ power of the House of Representatives before the war may be regarded as perfecting and enshrining the principles of the Westminster model. It was ironic that such a result should have been produced by Americans. Having established that in its basic formal pattern the Japanese political system under the 1946 Constitution may be categorized as a ‘Westminster model’, we now need to focus on the significant differences that emerged in practice. Some of these have their origin in the pre-war system; others resulted from various political developments which have occurred since the 1950s. THE EMPEROR The first point concerns the Emperor. The current status of the Emperor is often compared with that of the monarch in a constitutional monarchy attached to a British-type Westminster system. The basic principle of such a system is that the Crown is the theoretical source of all legislation, that acts of the executive branch are done in the name of the Crown, but that in practice the monarch has hardly any scope for independent political decision-making. It is sometimes said that the only conceivable circumstance in which the monarch might be able to exercise a decisive political role would be if a general election resulted in a distribution of seats in the House of Commons such that no party held a

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majority. In that situation the monarch might have scope for initiative (though, of course, after taking advice) by inviting one party leader rather than another to attempt to form a government. 7 It was widely expected (or feared) that such a situation might result from the general elections held on 9 April 1992, but in the event the Conservative Party won an absolute, though much reduced, majority. It seems clear that even this degree of initiative is impossible on the part of the Emperor of Japan. Article 67 of the Constitution provides that, following a general election, the next prime minister is chosen by a vote in parliament. In most cases this is a formality, but where no party had a clear majority the vote in parliament would decide the issue, without any need for intervention by the Emperor. What is remarkable is that for most of the period since the war the Emperor of Japan has had a strikingly lower profile than the British monarch (or indeed other European monarchs, such as the Dutch, Belgian, Danish, Swedish or Norwegian), while the institution itself has remained controversial. This is a result of the uses to which the Emperor institution was put by the regime following the Meiji Restoration and its successors up to 1945. While the Emperor at no point had central decision-making power in practice, the Emperor institution was fashioned as the prime legitimising and mobilising instrument of power, in which potent religious symbols were used to great effect in order to foster loyalty and devotion. Degree of access to the Emperor (in practice, on most occasions, access to his immediate advisers) became the principal currency of power. The Emperor up to 1945 was thus a curious mixture of constitutional monarch (‘organ of the state’, according to Minobe Tatsukichi) and pontiff (though with more temporal power than any pope). It was this legacy from the pre-war period, combined with the particular question of the Showa Emperor’s war responsibility (which post-war governments were anxious to suppress), as well as the increasing problem of the Showa Emperor’s age after about 1970, that has led to the extraordinarily low recent profile of the Emperor. Whether or not the funeral of the Showa Emperor in 1989 and the accession of his successor will have caused interest in the institution to increase enough to bring in changes in its nature remains to be seen. SINGLE-PARTY DOMINANCE The second characteristic of the current Japanese political system which may be regarded as a departure from the norms of the Westminster model is single-party dominance. This is such a fundamental feature of the system as it has developed since the 1950s that we need to examine it in some detail. The crucial year, as everyone knows, was 1955. In that year, following a decade of fragmented party politics on both left and right, Japan acquired what at the time was heralded as a two-party system. Although it was far from evident at the time that things would work out this way, one of the two parties was to prove more resilient over the long term than the other. The success of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in

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winning every general election for the House of Representatives (in a few cases with the help of Independents) between 1955 and the present has shaped Japanese politics, which would have taken a much different form had elections turned out differently. The reasons for this internationally unprecedented 8 length of stay m office by a single political party in a parliamentary democracy requires explanation. In broad terms, four types of analysis commend themselves to our attention, though it is important to realize that the explanations overlap to some extent. The first, and simplest, approach is to argue that the electorate, expressing its view regularly in free elections, has continued to prefer the LDP over any other party or combination of parties. Indeed, when we compare the percentage of voters voting for the LDP in successive elections with the percentage voting for the British Conservative Party over a comparable period, we see that the LDP has performed steadily and effectively by comparison, though votes cast for the British Conservative Party have remained at a constant level since 1979. A second explanation, overlapping the first, is that the LDP has been consistently successful at the polls because it has succeeded in delivering rising levels of economic prosperity and growth. It is impossible to be entirely sure about the truth or falsehood of this explanation because we cannot experimentally run through a hypothetical history of Japan from the 1950s assuming the economy did not grow, or grew only fitfully, and then test how people voted. There is, however, some considerable contrary evidence from the period 1958–72, during which the economy grew at historically unprecedented rates while the LDP vote fell steadily. In the more recent period of slower growth rates, the LDP has actually performed slightly better (See Table 1) Table 1 Percentage of electorate voting Conservative in Britain, and LDP in Japan, over successive elections

Year

Voting Conservative (%)

1958 1959

Voting LDP (%) 57.8 (won)

49.4 (won)

1960

57.6 (won)

1963

54.7 (won)

1964

43.4 (lost)

1966

41.9 (lost)

1967

48.8 (won)

1969

47.6 (won)

1970

46.4 (won)

1972 1974 (Feb.)

46.8 (won) 37.9 (lost)

Collected writings of J.A.A.Stockwin 1974 (Oct.)

35.8 (lost)

1976 1979

41.8 (won) 43.9 (won)

1980 1983

42.4 (won)

45.8 (won) 49.4 (won)

42.3 (won)

1990 1992

44.6 (won) 47.9 (won)

1986 1987

478

46.1 (won) 42.8 (won)

Sources: Philip Norton, The British Polity second edition. New York and London, Longman, 1991. pp. 97–9. Asahi Nenkan, various issues.

A third possible explanation relates to certain features of the electoral system for the House of Representatives. The failure of the electoral law to provide for any obligatory process requiring regular redrawing of constituency boundaries to reflect shifts of population has led to gross distortions in the value of a vote in different constituencies. About once per decade from the 1960s onwards the number of seats per constituency has been adjusted, though to a minimally acceptable extent, to reflect population shifts. The effect of these distortions has been to favour rural constituencies, which normally support the LDP, against urban ones, where the LDP is in general less strong. The LDP has consequently enjoyed an advantage of several percentage points (seats over votes) in successive elections. It is arguable that at least in the 1976, 1979 and 1983 elections this made the difference between victory and defeat. There is another feature, however, of the Lower House electoral system which may well have given a considerable advantage to the LDP over the Opposition. The system based on a single non-transferable vote in a ‘medium-sized’ constituency (in most cases electing three, four or five members) has two particular effects. The first and most obvious is that, unlike the British system (first-past-the-post in single-member constituencies), the Japanese Lower House system is permissive towards fairly small parties. Where it is quite possible, as in a five-member constituency, for a candidate to be elected with 20 or even 15 per cent of the total number of votes cast in that constituency, a party which can muster about one-fifth of the constituency’s votes has an excellent chance of having its candidate elected. Clearly the ‘third party’ in Britain, now known as the Liberal Democrats (previously the Liberal Party), who mustered 18.3 per cent of the total national vote in the general election of April 1992 but won a mere 3.07 per cent of the total seats, would greatly benefit from the introduction of the Japanese system into Britain. The problem, however, created in practice for the Japanese Opposition by this system is that by being permissive to small parties it has been conducive to the

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fragmentation and proliferation of Opposition parties. The details of this are too well-known to need spelling out. At this point the attentive reader will naturally ask the question: ‘Why should the medium-sized constituency system have led to fragmentation of the Opposition, but not to fragmentation of the LDP?’ I believe that in the answer to this question lies perhaps the most important clue to the extraordinarily longterm electoral success of the LDP. In my opinion there was absolutely nothing that was foreordained or easily predictable about the sustained electoral performance of the LDP, because essentially it was the result of intelligent advantage taken of opportunities presented to it by the electoral system, plus superior financial resources. In a constituency where the Liberal Democrats are strong, the party may expect to capture, let us say, three out of five seats. This, however, is little comfort to a particular candidate who without his own independent effort could well lose, even though his party (in terms of votes going to other LDP candidates) might do very well. This has fostered a system where the kōenkai and general support networks of individual candidates have come to play a crucial part in the electoral performance of individual candidates. These networks are extremely expensive to maintain and lie at the root of much of the notorious corruption and nepotism of Japanese party politics—especially the politics of the LDP. But in terms of optimising electoral performance, the competition between rival LDP candidates works remarkably well. The vigorous campaigns of energetic LDP Diet candidates facing fierce competition from colleagues in their own party contrast with the lethargic approach of many an older-style candidate of the Social Democratic Party of Japan (SDPJ)—formerly Japan Socialist Party (JSP)—who, as the sole candidate of his party in his constituency, is guaranteed enough votes from party stalwarts and some protesters against the government to have himself elected, and therefore scarcely needs to campaign. 9 That a substantial advantage accrues to the LDP from the inbuilt competitiveness of that party’s candidates to the Lower House is attested by its much poorer showing in elections for the proportional representation constituency of the House of Councillors. where electors are voting for a party list and not for individual candidates. 10 Thus the LDP has maintained its integrity as a single party (with the minor exception of the defection of the members who formed the New Liberal Club in 1976) essentially because it has created an effective political machine based on intensely competitive pork-barrel politics at the local level. The pork-barrel approach pervades LDP organization at all levels; it is epitomised in the system of factions (habatsu) and policy tribes (zoku), and to be left out of it is extremely disadvantageous for the individual Diet member, as the New Liberal Club members found to their increasing disillusionment. The party stays together, in other words, because it has developed stable and sophisticated methods at various levels of materially satisfying its members while at the same time materially satisfying significant portions of the electorate. The fourth, and in some ways most persuasive explanation, for one-party

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dominance is the partial political vacuum that has existed since the 1960s at the core of the Opposition: the SDPJ (or JSP). It is tautological that a governing party will continue to govern if the electorate judges that the Opposition is unfit to govern. What is now widely forgotten in Japan is that in the middle and late 1950s the Japan Socialist Party, for all its faults (which were evident enough at that time), was widely regarded as a potential party of government. Some time in the 1960s, however, the Socialists, instead of following the example of the 1959 Bad Godesberg conference of the West German Social Democratic Party, which moved away from Marxism towards social democracy, proceeded to turn in upon themselves, to reaffirm their Marxist roots inherited from the pre-war period, and to appeal to a shrinking interest group base, largely of Sōhyō-type unionists. The result was that by the early 1970s the Socialists had lost much of their support in metropolitan areas to minor parties such as the Kōmeitō and the Japan Communist Party (JCP), though they retained a certain amount of support in country and small-town areas where public sector workers were concentrated. The twin evils of failure to maintain unity and failure to develop a broadbased appeal among opposition parties of the left and centre-left is not unique to Japan. One example that may be cited is that of Australia between 1949 and 1972, when the Australian Labour Party similarly turned in on itself and likewise suffered a split with the appearance during the 1950s of the Democratic Labour Party, a right-of-centre anti-Communist Party with Roman Catholic sponsorship and support. 11 Although differences in political circumstances, particularly between the Japanese and Australian electoral systems., mean that the parallel is not complete, the dynamics are extraordinarily similar and suggestive. In the Australian case a renewed Australian Labor Party under vigorous leadership regained power after a gap of 23 years in December 1972. In Japan the ‘Doi Takako boom’ between 1986 and 1990, even though it faded eventually without effecting a change in the party in power, was evidence of an unexpected receptivity on the part of the electorate to alternative ideas about politics and government. Comparing these four possible explanations for long-term single-party dominance: conservatism of the electorate, economic growth, the electoral system and the weakness of the Opposition, we see there is some merit in all of them and that there can be no single-factor explanation. It is difficult, however, to escape the conclusion that the extraordinarily inept performance by the SDPJ (JSP) over many years, combined with the amazing success of the LDP in its performance of machine and pork-barrel politics on a grand scale, have led to the current outcome of one-party domination. THE POLICYMAKING ENVIRONMENT AND STRUCTURE OF POWER A simple way of describing the system is to say that Japan has a strong state but a weak polity. We need, however, to qualify this generalization to some extent. The Japanese state is indeed strong but tends towards immobilism. 12 It is

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entrenched and highly effective, but finds it difficult to move outside certain long-established policy parameters and is not good at managing fundamental changes of direction or handling unexpected crises. The Japanese polity, on the other hand, is relatively weak, but exercises considerable influence over certain political outcomes, largely, however, in the negative sense of wielding veto power over certain issues and providing a moderate degree of unpredictability in an otherwise highly-structured power system. Let us take, in turn, six key aspects of the current system: Parliament; the LDP; leadership; the government bureaucracy; interest groups; and corruption. The National Diet is not an insignificant part of the system, contrary to what some assume. Comparisons with the United States Congress are largely inappropriate, because of the quite different function of a legislature in a Westminster system from that in an American-style system based on the separation of powers. In Japan the House of Representatives rarely overturns (though it may modify) legislation presented to it by the Government, so long as one party maintains a majority of seats in that house. In exactly the same way the British House of Commons (the ‘Mother of Parliaments’) scarcely ever rejects government legislation on issues where the party in office has imposed a three-line whip (i.e. important legislation). In other words, a central principle of the Westminster model, as it has worked during the present century, is that the party in office at any one time has virtually total control over the legislative programme of Parliament until the next general election. An election may, of course, be precipitated if the government party loses its majority in Parliament as the result of defections or by-election defeats, but this is rare. 13 The fact, therefore, that much legislation is actually drawn up within ministries and ‘ratified’ by the National Diet is also paralleled by a similar situation in the British House of Commons. There is no doubt some difference between Japanese and British government ministers in the extent of their influence over their ministries, and thus over the content of legislation, but that is another matter. If the National Diet is regarded in isolation it may perhaps be regarded as weak, even irrelevant. When seen, however, in relation to the political system as whole, it may be categorised as an essential ratifier (and modifier, through Diet committees) of legislation, an arena of political competition and power-broking and, in a sense, the public face of party politics. Naturally, it becomes more important when the government’s majority is narrow, and still more so when it disappears altogether, as happened in the House of Councillors in 1989. Arguably the National Diet is stronger and more important than the parliament (Assemblée Nationale) of France. The LDP is a central and integral part of the current political power structure. We venture to suggest that this is true in a sense analogous more to the position of the Christian Democratic Party of Italy than to that of the Conservative or Labour parties of Great Britain. The two major British parties are competitors for power and temporary holders of it. Even the years of Conservative Party rule since 1979 have not removed the common belief that that party remains in office

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by kind permission of the electorate. In both Italy and Japan, however, there is a sense in which that belief has been lost. The ability to envisage the ruling party being voted out of office is an essential part of the construction of an alternative. Even though LDP members of the House of Representatives have to fight regular elections in their constituencies, promotion to cabinet and party office is now determined by a de facto seniority system which mirrors that within government ministries. Hardly any LDP Diet members achieve cabinet office until they have been elected to the National Diet five times, and almost all have held at least one post by the time they have been elected seven times. Beyond that. promotion is essentially by ‘merit’, including ability in political manipulation, so that the careers of many Diet members are punctuated by the holding of cabinet office once, and once only. 14 The similarity to promotion patterns in major Japanese bureaucracies of the public and private sectors is striking. A complex structure of LDP committees hammers out policy on political issues, links in with the committee structure of the National Diet, and coordinates with both government ministries and relevant interest groups. Extremely complex linkages exist between LDP Diet members, bureaucrats and interest group leaders in industry., commerce, agriculture and the professions. Some of them, involving members of so-called zoku, merit the description of ‘iron triangles’. Few elements in this system are unique to Japan, but the element of one-party dominance in its Japanese context lends a characteristic structure of semi-permanence, turf-defence and inflexibility (though also a surprising amount of dynamism) 15 to it. To use a possibly far-fetched analogy, Japan’s political system has more in common with rail-transport than with roadtransport. Thirdly, it is commonly alleged that Japan lacks political leadership, and that in particular the prime minister is too much hedged around with restrictions to be able to lead effectively. 16 By most Western comparisons cabinet reshuffles are frequent, and appear to be determined more by the logic of factional competition than by a desire to place the best person in the right post (though it would be naive to suppose that this was the only reason behind appointments to, say, British cabinets). 17 When we analyse the position of prime minister, it is important to register the fact that a major structural change has occurred in the structure of the LDP since the 1980s, whereby a loose balance of power between five or six factions of comparable size has been replaced by a structure in which a single faction (the Takeshita faction) has become dominant. Successive prime ministers have been heavily dependent on the Takeshita faction, which has shown signs of seeking a new power balance that might incorporate some among the Opposition parties, notably the Kōmeitō. The loss of its overall majority in the House of Councillors by the LDP in 1989 made some form of de facto alliance with Opposition parties a necessity; but the implications for the future are interesting to contemplate. We may hypothesise that these moves have much to do with a perceived problem of structurally caused leadership deficiency.

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The fourth aspect of the system to be discussed are the ministries and agencies which constitute the government bureaucracy. Everyone agrees that Japan has a strong elite bureaucracy, and that the ministries (particularly the major ones) occupy extensive spheres of semiautonomous policy influence, and behave virtually as ‘empires’ in their own right. The structure of Japan’s government bureaucracy is in international terms extraordinarily stable, and it is certainly more influential by comparison with politicians than the British bureaucracy, though possibly not more influential than the equally elitist government bureaucracy of France. Its impact on policy is patent in many diverse fields, from the maintenance of high levels of inheritance tax to control of schooltextbook selection. Much controversy exists about the extent and usefulness of government regulation of economic activity, but an atmosphere of regulatory activity persists despite the enormous increase in corporate resources and power that has occurred since the 1970s. The Nakasone period of the mid-1980s saw a number of privatisation initiatives, but some analysts have observed that ‘reregulation’, albeit in a different form, tends to follow deregulation. 18 Fifthly, the activities of all manner of interests and interest groups, in Japan as elsewhere, form much of the stuff of day-to-day politics. The enormously strengthened corporate sector is, and always has been, close to government, and in general continues to support the LDP and its policies as the least unattractive political option. Like government ministries, keiretsu companies may be conceptualised as semi-autonomous ‘empires’, with their separate spheres of influence throughout Japan and indeed overseas as well. As is well known, they contribute a great deal of money to the LDP (and minor sums to other parties), and some of them make room on their boards for a certain number of retired government officials. Linkages throughout the system are cemented in this and many other ways. Many other interest groups exert influence, some of them by force of numbers in strategic constituencies. Agriculture and small and medium industry have been extremely influential through their ability to command large numbers of votes which LDP Diet members cannot afford to ignore. While Calder’s view that interest groups have grown powerful through a process of crisisprecipitation followed by government compensation is questionable as a synoptic explanation, 19 there is no doubt that government is involved in a variety of ways with many interest groups which it cannot afford to ignore. In this respect the Japanese situation is not wholly discrepant from that which may be found in a number of European countries. Finally, corruption is frequently targeted as one of the main problems with the working of Japanese politics in practice, and indeed the sums of money which pass from hand to hand in Japanese politics are, by comparison with most European countries, astounding. From time to time (for instance during 1988–89 and in the early months of 1992), political corruption becomes the subject of a relentless campaign by the mass media. At other times it fades from the headlines. In Japan ‘money politics’ (political corruption under a polite name) flourishes for several reasons: legal sanctions are somewhat lax, and loosely

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enforced; the cost of being elected to the National Diet is extremely high, partly because of inadequate public provision for Diet members, and in part because of the personality basis of elections in multi-member constituencies; myriad commercial and industrial ‘empires’ compete with one another with constant ferocity (thus assuring economic dynamism across the economy), which means that in an environment where government regulation remains an important factor the temptation to buy advantage is considerable. Many parallels may be found in similarly regulated economies. When we consider the various features of the Japanese political system outlined above, we find that it is highly complex and does not easily lend itself to quick generalisation. Broadly, however, we can say that the constitutional structure is of the Westminster type, but that political development within that structure has been rather narrowly channelled within the confines of single-party dominance and a strong elite bureaucracy. This in turn has resulted in a system which is extremely effective in certain ways but in others can be quite inflexible and prone to corruption. We should ask, therefore, how the system could be improved. PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS OF REFORM Before addressing the question of possible reform, it is desirable to point out some of the advantages and achievements of the present Japanese political system. First of all, it has brought political stability to Japan, and in this respect has performed far better than the political system under the Meiji Restoration. However much we may be inclined to complain about immobilism, inflexibility, corruption and the like, the underlying stability that has prevailed has been an inestimable benefit, which the Japanese electorate is unlikely to relinquish lightly. Any proposal for reform, to be credible, must address this question of the maintenance of political stability and ensure that stability is not jeopardized. Secondly, a key condition for stability in any political system is that forces of narrow extremism, whether of the far right or the far left, whether based on nationalistic or religious ideology or whatever, should be kept in check and so far as possible marginalised (not banned, however, which is usually counterproductive as well as objectionable in terms of democratic practice). Although the extreme right in Japan has a certain unhealthy capacity for intimidation of those who speak out on matters of principle, and infiltration of the conservative establishment, for the most part Japanese politics and government up to the present have probably not been unduly influenced by extremist elements. A third, and related point is that since 1945 the people have been fortunate that no Japanese soldiers have had to fire shots in anger and that military influence on government and politics, so destructive of both internal stability and international responsibility in the previous period, has been kept to a minimum. Whatever the international criticism to which Japan has been subject in recent years for her constitution-based reluctance to participate in military operations beyond her boundaries, it seems difficult to escape the conclusion

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that the civilianization of politics has been wholly beneficial to the political process. A fourth point which may be taken as a significant benefit of the system as it has operated since the 1950s is that it has presided over a sustained rate of economic growth which has been difficult to match anywhere else in the world. This statement may seem to beg a number of questions relating to the role of politics in economic development, to allegations about international economic policies not being in the spirit of free trade, and to how far economic growth has led to genuine prosperity and a high quality of life for the people, yet a battery of economic and social indicators suggest that the Japanese performance has considerable—some would say spectacular—achievements to its credit. Why then should we advocate the case for substantial reform of the Japanese political system or aspects of it? Our first argument, though not in itself constituting a conclusive case for reform, is that the international situation, as mentioned much earlier in this chapter, has changed suddenly and fundamentally since 1989. The ending of the Cold War, which had formed the fundamental parameters of the international system since the late 1940s, has precipitated systemic change whose ultimate implications are still far from clear. What is clear is that any idea that the demise of Communism in the former Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe would bring about the ‘end of history’ and peace throughout the world is proving a chimera. As mentioned earlier, the pace of change is proving to be much slower in East Asia than in Europe. China and North Korea are still controlled by what may still be called Communist regimes, though the rate of economic growth based on essentially capitalist principles in much of coastal China is spectacular. Whereas it took less than a year from the opening of the Berlin Wall to the formal unification of the two Germanies, Japan and Russia have yet to solve a territorial dispute over some barren islands that is seriously inhibiting Japan from contributing to the desperately-needed rehabilitation of her northern neighbour’s economy, which is perilously close to collapse. It is difficult to escape the conclusion here that the nature of decision-making in the Japanese system is contributing to a narrowness of vision that needs systemic change to remedy. Japan-US relations encompass a range of difficult questions which it is beyond the scope of this chapter to address. It is not necessary, however, to adhere to one of the more pessimistic scenarios concerning the future of relations between the two countries to believe that serious difficulties may lie ahead both in the economic and the military-strategic areas. A dangerous tendency is evident in the US to identify Japan as a kind of substitute enemy now that Russia has become a friend, so that, without serious action to make life easier for American companies operating in Japan, relations could seriously deteriorate. At present, the Mutual Security Treaty between Japan and the US in effect gives the Americans bases on the cheap, but one wonders whether current Japanese decision-making processes are really adequate to the task of doing the strategic planning necessary to give Japan an effective and balancing role (not necessarily of a military nature) in the maintenance of international stability.

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A second set of reasons for reform is that there is increasing evidence of electoral volatility which may eventually undermine some of the basic premises of the present system. As Nakamura Kenichi argues, 20 from about 1986 the elec-torate has been showing clear signs of unpredictability in its behaviour, a conclusion to which the extraordinarily low turnout in the July 1992 House of Councillors elections lends further credence. In the sophisticated Japan of the early 1990s there would seem likely to be limits to how far the electorate can be bought off in the time-honoured pork-barrel ways of factional politicians. If the LDP becomes unable to sustain a majority, however, one-party dominance, which has been the keystone of the existing political system, will become dislodged. In order to prepare for such a scenario, what is urgently needed is the creation of a party (or political bloc) capable of mounting effective and principled opposition to the politics of the LDP. Exactly what form such a formation might take is hard to say. The Japan Socialist Party under Doi Takako for a while caught the imagination of the electorate, but then was unable to shake off its old ways, with which the electorate was profoundly disillusioned. The Rengō no kai appeared for a while to have momentum, but failed badly at the polls in July 1992. The Japan New Party won a handful of seats in the same elections, but not enough really to create a springboard for a challenge to the LDP. Various scenarios seem possible involving a split in the LDP, with various coalition possibilities emerging together with combinations of other parties. None, however, look particularly credible. What is needed is the emergence of effective new leadership, both in the Opposition (principally SDPJ) and in the LDP itself. Such leadership would need to be capable of shaping a modernised political system, giving the electorate real policy choices, eliminating the pork-barrel element through serious electoral and other reform, and strengthening the capacity of decisionmaking, without, however, jeopardising stability. All this may seem rather difficult to envisage at present, but it is becoming increasingly evident that without real systemic reform, Japanese politics can hardly be expected to perform as the electorate deserves and as the health and stability of the nation requires. EPILOGUE The collapse of LDP rule in summer of 1993 was preceded by a split in the pivotal Takeshita faction of the ruling party, and a consequent weakening of central control of the party. This in turn was accompanied by a series of corruption scandals, one of which led to the disgrace and effective withdrawal from politics of Kanemaru Shin, who had been the Takeshita faction’s most dominant and canny leader. If erosion of central leadership in the LDP was the background element, the proximate cause of collapse was the decision by the Miyazawa Cabinet in the early summer of 1993 not to proceed with a plan to reform the Lower House electoral system.

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In protest, two separate groups, the larger of which was the dissident half of the old Takeshita faction, broke away from the LDP and formed new parties. As a consequence, the LDP lost a motion of no-confidence in its government, the Miyazawa Cabinet dissolved Parliament and held new elections, which it lost. To general surprise, a new government was formed under the prime ministership of a former prefectural governor, Hosokawa Morihiro. It consisted of no fewer than eight separate parties, the largest of which was the SDPJ (though that party had lost many seats in the elections). The Hosokawa Government embarked upon an ambitious programme of reform, including reform of the electoral system, an anti-corruption law, deregulation of industry and commerce., reform of the tax system and decentralisation of power to local authorities. By the end of 1993 the new government found itself in difficulties, both because of divisions within its own ranks and because of pressure from the LDP, now in opposition. Early in 1994 the crucial electoral reform bills became law, but they had been substantially modified by comparison with the government’s earlier proposals. The new electoral system for the House of Representatives was to be based on 300 single-member, first-past-the-post constituencies, and 200 seats contested in 11 regional constituencies by proportional representation. It was expected that the new system would reduce the impact of factionalism, which had been fostered by the multi-member constituencies, and also favour a more policy-oriented approach to political competition. Whether it would turn out like that, however, remained to be seen. The early months of 1994 saw increasing strains emerging within the coalition government. Mr Hosokawa tendered his resignation in April, and was replaced by Hata Tsutomu, a former LDP politician with ministerial experience, who was closely backed by the most controversial leader within the former Hosokawa coalition, Ozawa Ichiro. Although the composition of the Hata Government was initially identical with that of its predecessor, the SDPJ pulled out almost immediately, alleging that it was being marginalised by the Hata-Ozawa leadership. The Hata-Ozawa Government lacked a majority in Parliament and lasted a mere nine weeks. It in turn was replaced in June 1994 by a three-party coalition Government (SDPJ, LDP and a minor party), under a Socialist Prime Minister, Murayama Tomiichi. The Murayama Government seemed rather more stable than its predecessor, seeing that at least it enjoyed a Lower House majority, but in January 1996 Murayama was replaced as Prime Minister by Hashimoto Ryūtarō, President of the LDP, which had thus regained the top political position after a gap of two and a half years. The formation of the original coalition government in August 1993 was a surprise to most observers, but that reformist politics should be accompanied by political instability was virtually inevitable once the old LDP structure collapsed. Instability relates, however, to party politics, leaving much of the actual running of the country to government ministries, which continue to exercise a great deal of effective power whether there is a stable government in

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power or not. Even so, political change is in the air, and the old structures are undergoing a process of significant review. Younger politicians are finding new opportunities opening up for them and there is some evidence of a new vigour entering the political arena. The pattern of party divisions existing in the middle of 1990s may well not last, since the new electoral system will impose new imperatives on politicians if they wish to remain in politics and close to the seats of power. Japan has entered a vital period of political transition, which may, however, be expected to last for several years before the parameters of a new system are wholly apparent. A third possible explanation relates to certain features of the electoral system for the House of Representatives. The failure of the electoral law to provide for any obligatory process requiring regular redrawing of constituency boundaries to reflect shifts of population has led to gross distortions in the value of a vote in different constituencies. About once per decade from the 1960s onwards the number of seats per constituency has been adjusted, though to a minimally acceptable extent, to reflect population shifts. The effect of these distortions has been to favour rural constituencies, which normally support the LDP, against urban ones, where the LDP is in general less strong. The LDP has NOTES 1. This chapter was completed in August 1992, approximately one year before the collapse of the single-party dominance that had characterised Japanese party politics for some 38 years. The Hosokawa coalition government, which took office in August 1993, put in place a programme of political reform, but the advent of coalition government also ushered in a period of political instability, as three differently composed governments were formed within the space of a year. Rather than rewriting this chapter to take account of the events of 1993 and 1994, the author prefers to have it as it was written in 1992, since the argument seems particularly relevant to the new political situation as it unfolds. An epilogue will briefly outline developments since 1993. 2. For instance, Herman Kahn, The Emerging Japanese Superstate, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1970. Kahn’s thinking about Japan was heavily influenced by Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1946. 3. General Douglas MacArthur, US Senate, 82nd Congress, 1st session, Hearings before the Committee on Armed Services and the Committee on Foreign Relations, Military Situation in the Far East, Washington, 1951, pp. 310–13; quoted in Chalmers Johnson, Conspiracy at Matsukawa, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1972. 4. Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Fragile Blossom: Crisis and Change in Japan, New York, Harper and Row, 1972. 5. Karel van Woiferen, The Enigma of Japanese Power, London, Macmillan,

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1989. 6. In May 1980 the Japanese Prime Minister, Ohira Masayoshi, was unexpectedly defeated in a no-confidence motion in which a number of Liberal Democratic Diet members abstained. The previous year in Britain the Labour Prime Minister, James Callaghan, was similarly defeated by a single vote. In both these cases the government resigned as a direct result of the loss of confidence in it by parliament. 7. There is a spectacular example of ‘monarchical’ initiative over the composition of government, from Australia. Under the Australian Constitution, the Governor-General, in theory at least, holds his position on behalf of the British Crown. On 11 November 1975, the Governor-General of the time, Sir John Kerr, dismissed the Australian Labor Party Government of Gough Whitlam, who had been attempting to govern despite the refusal of supply by the Senate, in which it lacked a majority. The Whitlam Government was defeated in the subsequent general election. The episode provoked much bitterness and controversy in Australia. 8. For a comparison of single-party-dominant political systems, see T.J.Pempel (ed.), Uncommon Democracies: The One-Party Dominant Regimes, Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, 1990. 9. This point is made in Nakamura Kenichi, ‘The Changing Quality of Japanese Politics’, unpublished paper. 10. The only elections where direct comparison is possible are the double elections of 1986. In the elections for the House of Councillors, the LDP won 49.4 per cent of the total vote, but in the proportional representation constituency of the House Councillors it won only 38.6 per cent. Asahi Nenkan, 1987, p. 101. 11. See L.F.Crisp, Australian National Government, Melbourne, Longman, Green and Co., 1965, Chapter 6. 12. J.A.A.Stockwin et al, Dynamic and Immobilist Politics in Japan, London, Macmillan, 1988. 13. A British example may be found in the Labour Governments of Harold Wilson and subsequently James Callaghan between 1974 and 1979. Elected with a small majority in October 1974, the Labour Government eventually lost this majority through by-elec-tion defeats, but was able to continue to govern for a considerable period with the tacit support of some minor parties. 14. Stockwin et al, Dynamic and Immobilist Politics in Japan, p. 41. 15. Ibid., passim. especially pp. 1–20. 16. The role of the Prime Minister, Kaifu Toshiki, during the Gulf Crisis and Gulf War of 1990–91 provides the best opportunity for a case study of this proposition. 17. The French Fourth Republic up to 1958 is a good example of frequent cabinet reshuffies. There may be a parallel also in Britain, though as the exception rather than the rule. 18. Stephen Wilks and Maurice Wright, The Promotion and Regulation of

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Industry in Japan, London, Macmillan, 1991. 19. Kent Calder, Crisis and Compensation: Public Policy and Political Stability in Japan, 1949–1986, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1988. 20. Nakamura Kenichi, op. cit.

34 Deciphering Japanese Politics First published in Asia-Pacific Review, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1998 (Tokyo Institute for International Policy Studies) IF ANYTHING POSITIVE has emerged from the problems that have surfaced in the Japanese economy in 1998, it is the added sense of urgency that has been given to the task of understanding how Japan’s politico-economic system actually works. An economic boom and bust has been followed by an intellectual boom and bust. What from the 1960s was widely regarded as a uniquely successful model of political economy has suddenly come to be seen as diseased and in desperate need of radical surgery. It is acknowledged that, since the early 1990s, serious attempts have been made at reform. The fall of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) from power in August 1993 and the formation of the Hosokawa coalition government gave prominence to a reform agenda that has continued to be actively discussed, if not fully acted upon, throughout the decade. The underlying message of this reform agenda was that there were serious—even fatal—flaws in the existing system. Nevertheless, as late as 1994, David Williams, one of the most original of recent writers in English about Japan, in a forthright challenge to the Western triumphalism following the ending of the Cold War, could write as follows: In the name of a foreign idea, Japanese free-marketeers would deny greatness to Japan. In its unsettling brilliance, the achievement of Japan’s modern century represents a kind of glory unique to its millennial past. Pace thinkers such as Tachi (Ryūchirō) and Francis Fukuyama, the extraordinary character of the Meiji and Showa developmental models make Japan one of the twentieth century’s very few candidates for a place in the pantheon of classical political systems. Post-Meiji Japan has, therefore, in its own way, been one of the monuments of world history. An unblinking politics demands that we recognize this achievement. 1 Even allowing for some possible overstatement here, this passage is a salutary reminder that the Japanese system of political economy has (or has had in the very recent past) its enthusiastic advocates. This, however, confronts us with the following conundrums. First, if the system has performed spectacularly well in the past by following its own rules, how should it be that it suddenly fails in the 1990s? Second, if ‘failure’ requires reform, what kinds of reform are necessary? To be brutally specific: does reform mean the introduction of American, or more broadly Western, political forms and methods of operating? Does it mean forging some kind of compromise between Japanese and Western elements? Or

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does it require the introduction of a model that would be Japanese in form and inspiration but radically different from the ‘old’ Japanese model? Many media commentators writing about recent economic problems in Japan have to a large extent assumed that the first of these three alternatives is the way to go, citing the external pressures of a globalizing economy and the difficulties Japan faces in resisting such pressures. However, if we reflect on modern Japanese history, it seems rather more likely that the second, or even the third, alternative may be more practicable and appropriate. Japan has a long tradition of adopting foreign economic models but adapting them to Japanese purposes in such a way that the rationale they had in their country of origin is radically altered. Moreover, one of the manifest problems (although from some points of view this may be an advantage) faced by Japan as the century draws to its close is a conspicuous lack of the kind of powerful centralized leadership that could fundamentally reshape the system over a short period of time. In these circumstances, change seems more likely to come in reaction to the pressure of events (not just external pressure, gaiatsu, but also internal pressure, naiatsu), so that the deeper the crisis, the more far-reaching the required solution. These are hardly circumstances in which a wholesale move to a new system largely bereft of traditional Japanese elements seems likely. Focusing on these issues, the American political scientist T.J. Pempel has coined the phrase ‘regime shift’ as a tool of analysis. His hypothesis is that, in the 1990s, Japan is gradually moving toward a system of political economy that has substantially different parameters from the system that prevailed up until the fall of the LDP from power in 1993. 2 He argues that: …the Japanese political economy is indeed undergoing a fundamental, deep and structural set of transformations. These are occurring at what might be thought of as a middle level of politics and economics, one far deeper than the ever-recurring shifts in personalities and party strengths, but far less comprehensive than the kinds of totalistic shifts involved in, say, a transition from authoritarianism to parliamentary democracy or from a centrally planned economy to market-based capitalism. 3 What Pempel means by ‘regime shift’ is a fundamental restructuring along three dimensions: ‘the character of the socio-political coalition that rules the country…the political and economic institutions through which power is acquired and exercised, and the public policy profile that gives broad political direction to the nation.’ In each of these categories, he believes that more or less irreversible change is under way, and that the end result of this change will constitute something fundamental enough to merit the title ‘regime shift.’ Pempel argues this case with skill, clarity, and a wealth of examples ranging across the field of political economy. His article is the best piece of analysis of these crucial issues to appear recently, and his book is awaited with great interest. 5

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Nevertheless, the present writer is not wholly convinced that the rather clean break with the past implied in the notion of ‘regime shift’ is entirely appropriate. A gradual evolutionary model, in which some things indeed change., but many of the fundamental parameters of the existing system remain more or less intact, and the modus operandi of the political economy continues to be characterized by muddle, adjustment to superior forces and a relatively stable political equilibrium, appears persuasive. This view, of course, flies in the face of the widespread expectation that fairly radical change in the character of the Japanese political economy must take place in response to the apparently still deepening economic crisis. At a rather abstract level of analysis, there are various assumptions prevalent (if usually unstated) about political change. One is that expressed above, namely, that crisis tends to produce systemic change as a rational response to dysfunctionality that has become apparent in the existing system. Another is that change, when it occurs, is likely to be comprehensive. Essentially, this is because you cannot tinker with one part of an interconnecting system without then having to bring about change to the rest of it. Systemic change is thus conceptualized as rational and fundamental adaptation to altered circumstances, whereby the old society, to paraphrase Marx, is pregnant with the new. 6 There are, however, problems with this conception of systemic change. The most fundamental is the assumption of rationality. However realistic the assumption may be that individuals act in their own rational interest (and ‘rational/ let us remember, is a notoriously slippery concept), almost insuperable difficulties are introduced if we make an assumption about systemic rationality. Beyond this, however; the idea of ‘political culture’ needs to be re-introduced into the debate. Even though snares may entrap the unwary who too uncritically embrace the concept of political culture, its virtual absence from a debate that has come to be dominated by notions of rationality seriously impoverishes the quality of our analysis. No doubt the idea of political culture was earlier discredited by cultural studies specialists who were inclined to pluck so-called ‘cultural’ factors out of the air to explain a variety of contemporary phenomena. Certainly, it fell into disrepute through its association with meretricious nihonjinron-type argumentation. However, the attempt to dismiss culture altogether from the debate seems equally debilitating. Let us take a particular example to illustrate our point, that of the institution in parliamentary constituencies known as kōenkai, which is usually iranslated as ‘personal support group or ‘personal support machine.’ The best account of kōenkai—one of the classics of the literature on Japanese politics—is Gerald Curtis’s study of Satō Bunsei’s campaign in the 1967 House of Representatives elections in Oita No. 2 constituency. 7 Curtis shows that the institution of kōenkai is a more modern form of what was (and sometimes still is) known as the jiban, in other words, a candidate’s local base of support in his (or her) constituency. 8 To understand jiban, it is worth consulting an even earlier—and now alas, largely forgotten—classic on the subject, the first edition of Nobutaka Ike’s Japanese Politics. 9 Ike details how candidates cultivate their jiban by

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attending public functions, sending wreaths to funerals, or flowers when a new store opens. A candidate makes contributions to local organizations, distributes towels to school picnics and picture postcards to voters going on trips, arranges bus tours of Tokyo for constituents, helps find jobs for young people, and helps with constituents’ tax problems. He must cultivate local notabilities, including prefectural leaders who have their own followers. Officials of local groups and organizations, such as cooperatives, womens organizations, tradesmen’s organizations and the like, are often important cogs in political machines of this kind. There will be a pyramid with a number of local politicians or ‘bosses’ at the base and a member of the National Diet at the peak. 10 Curtis regards the emergence of kōenkai as reflecting the increased importance in the 1960s of organizing support directly among the electorate, rather than relying on local bosses, and he cites examples of kōenkai numbering as many as 150,000 members. 11 Nevertheless, this was essentially a matter of degree. At the time when Curtis wrote his book, a process of adaptation of longstanding forms of campaigning was under way to respond to the greater democracy of the post-war period. What it is important to be clear about, however, is that this was essentially the adaptation to new conditions of time-honored methods of electoral campaigning that reflected rather stable norms of interaction in Japanese society. It would be difficult to interpret it as a sign of a change in systems or a shift in regimes. This point may be illustrated by a hypothetical example. Let us assume that in response to democratic reforms and the great expansion of the electorate that occurred in the years following Japan’s 1945 defeat, a major political party (for the sake of argument, we shall call it the ‘Liberal Democratic Party’) had acted to strengthen its own organization in such a way as to set a clear national policy agenda and organize constituency campaigning. Let us further assume that the electoral system for the House of Representatives remained the system actually in existence between 1947 and 1994, with its multimember constituencies but no vote transferability. Now the view appears to be widespread that, under the former Lower House electoral system, party control of campaigning was impracticable, since candidates for the same party were contesting the same district with each other. In fact, however, this is far from the case. It would have been perfectly possible for the LDP, in the hypothetical scenario outlined above, to have taken control of candidate campaigning, and organized it in such a way that a given constituency would be carved up on the basis of vote strength calculations, so that Liberal Democrat supporters in one part of the constituency would be urged—or instructed—to vote for candidate X and those in another part of the constituency to vote for candidate Y. There is indeed a good precedent for this in that in the years before 1983, when the national constituency of the House of Councillors was elected on the principle of ‘first 50 past the post,’ the highly

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centralized Kōmeitō (based on the Sōka Gakkai religion) divided the whole nation into regions and instructed its members and supporters (in practice largely the same population) to vote for candidate A in region X, and so on. In this strategy, the Kōmeitō was breathtakingly successful, thus optimizing the effectiveness of its vote in having the maximum possible numbber of its candidates elected. The fact remains that the LDP never attempted an electoral strategy along these lines, and preferred to allow its candidates to compete rather than cooperate when they were running for election in the same constituency. It is arguable that, in so doing, they may have increased the total LDP vote, because added to interparty competition was a strong element of intraparty competition, and indeed, in many constituencies rival LDP candidates slugged it out with an intensity (and distribution of largesse) that probably added numerous votes to the total LDP score. On the other hand, it would have been open to the LDP to create a similar level of intensity of campaigning (and largesse) had it taken charge of the campaigning centrally and divided up constituencies in the manner suggested above. Why, then, did the party not do so? It may be suggested that it did not do so because that would have been alien to a thoroughly entrenched sense of personality and personal networking in politics. To have imposed a campaign strategy from above (as is largely the norm, for instance, in British politics) would have flown directly in the face of what, for want of a better term, we will call ‘political culture.’ The importance of political culture is also rather convincingly demonstrated by the results of the October 1996 elections for the House of Representatives, the first to be held under a wholly new electoral system, and one in which 300 seats were elected from single-member constituencies, and the remaining 200 by proportional representation from eleven regional blocks. The reform was introduced with the general expectation that it would result in the development of a wholly different style of electoral campaigning, whereby the parties would take a far more active role than in the past, kōenkai and local personal networking would be substantially replaced by policy-oriented appeals by national parties, and a two-party system would emerge in which parties would prevail and intraparty factions (habatsu) would wither and die. In practice, the result largely betrayed such expectations. Rather than superseding kōenkai, if anything the 1996 election saw the importance of kōenkai enhanced. Since candidates in single-member constituencies had to appeal to a larger number of electors. The bulk of sitting members who ran again under the new system were comfortahly re-elected, and there was not much evidence either of an enhanced role for parties as such or of policyoriented campaigning by parties. Rather than a two-party system emerging, the Liberal Democrats were allowed to regroup and strengthen their position, while the Socialists (latterly Social Democrats)—for nearly all the post-war period the largest party of opposition—were almost eliminated, and a 1990s attempt to cobble together an alternative conservative party—the Shinshintō (New Frontier Party)—out of a heterogeneous group of squabbling politicians collapsed in

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chaos a little over a year after the elections. Moreover, a curious device was introduced to ensure that a candidate defeated in a single-member constituency had a second chance in his local proportional representation constituency, with success in the latter tied by a complicated formula) to relative success in the former. In other words, the results emerging from a radically changed electoral system were so close to what might have been expected had the elections been fought under the old system as to belie institutionalist explanations and to require an explication bringing in political culture as a major operative factor. Use of the concept ‘political culture’ does not necessarily imply that reforming the system of political economy is impossible. Although the widely read writer Karel van Wolferen does not specifically make use of the term ‘polit-ical culture/he nevertheless comes close to suggesting that because the political economy of Japan operates essentially as a closed ‘system’ it is almost impossible to reform. 12 This is akin to the argument that political culture is a fixed element pervading the way people act to the extent that their behavior cannot change. This, however, is too extreme. People do change, even though they may change slowly, and the Japanese system has never acted as an entirely closed loop. Indeed, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that change has been under way in certain areas as a result of a variety of economic and demographic pressures. The best-known instance of this is the series of moves to liberalize the financial markets, known as ‘Big Bang.’ Here, the sheer need on the part of the financial services industry to survive in the face of external competition in a global marketplace has provided the biggest impetus for liberalization of what were often over-regulated practices. But in certain other spheres too, the ability of vested interests to continue to dictate policy in their favor has been diminished over the past decade. For instance, the extraordinary political weight of agriculture has been in decline, with quantities of rice now (since 1994) imported from overseas, and the electoral malapportionment in favor of agricultural areas significantly reduced in the Lower House electoral reforms of 1994. 13 On the other hand, the fascinating political history of Japan in the 1990s seems to demonstrate with some clarity that the path to reform is strewn with obstacles, and those taking the path are smitten with palsy. Some possible explanations for this will be explored later in this article. Let us, however, briefly outline the salient political events of this extraordinary decade. The story starts, in a sense, from the collapse of the Takeshita Government in 1989 and the LDP defeat in the House of Councillors elections of the same year. Although the party quickly recovered in the polls and the Socialists failed to capitalize on their brief flowering at the end of the 1980s, the myth of LDP invincibility had been broken, and that party was in a weakened condition when confronted at about the same time with a domestic and an external challenge. Domestically, it was faced with repercussions from the collapse of the bubble economy in 1991, leading to massive problems for the

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heavily regulated financial sector and difficulties for macroeconomic management. Externally, the policy challenge presented by the Gulf crisis and war of 1990–1991 was not well managed, in part because the LDP lacked a majority in the Upper House of Parliament. The most momentous political events of the decade, however, took place in 1992–1993, when, amidst financial scandals, the LDP’s dominant Takeshita faction split in two, and a year later, the party itself split, resulting in the loss of its majority in a Lower House general election held in July 1993. The fragile multiparty Hosokawa Government that followed pursued (or at least proclaimed) a reformist agenda, but perhaps its greatest achievement was to deprive the LDP of power at the national level for the first time in over four decades. Deprived of power, the LDP was bereft, saw its raison d’être shattered, and quickly began to lose members to other parties. In retrospect, the two most fateful blows to the prospect of serious political reform were struck within nine weeks of each other in the northern hemisphere summer of 1994. In April, the Hosokawa Cabinet unexpectedly resigned, and at the end of June, a new threeparty coalition government was formed by the Liberal Democrats, the Socialists, and the small Sakigake party. These events had the effect of bringing the LDP back from the political wilderness, where it had languished for about nine months, and provided it with a springboard from which, in a few short years, it was able to claw back a parliamentary majority in its own right. 14 A second effect, however, was also of crucial importance. The Socialists (later to call themselves Social Democrats) were lured into a coalition with their old enemies, the Liberal Democrats, taking the bait of a Socialist prime ministership. But this ultimately proved to be the kiss of death for their party. Having won 136 Lower House seats in the 1990 general elections, at the general elections of October 1996, fought under new rules, they were reduced to a rump of fifteen members. But even more than this, earnest if implausible attempts to cobble together new parties of opposition were spectacularly unsuccessful. By 1998, the LDP was not only back in power, but appeared to have overwhelmed the opposition. It is true that in the bureaucratic sector some change was in progress. The Ministry of Finance and some other ministries and agencies of government were suffering from serious damage to their prestige. This resulted from a series of scandals, as well as from a widespread perception that their handling of the economy in the 1990s had been inept, and that, in particular, their policies in relation to the bad debt problems of the banking world had been disastrous. During 1997–1998, the Hashimoto Government was putting in place apparently comprehensive and far-reaching policies designed to deregulate the financial sector and reform the hitherto impregnable bastions of the central government bureaucracy. The effects of deepening recession and rising unemployment on ordinary people were, however, sufficiently severe that, when given the opportunity at the polls, the electorate delivered an unpalatable verdict on Hashimoto and his government. At the House of Councillors elections held on

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12 July 1998, the number of seats held by the LDP fell from sixty to forty-four, and Hashimoto promptly handed in his resignation to take responsibility for the defeat. In sum, from this Cooks tour of the salient political developments of the 1990s, it seems much too early to say with conviction that genuine reform of the Japanese system is under way. Certainly, the pressures for reform exerted by the Asian economic crisis are intense, but Japan has a history of adapting to external pressure without allowing it to affect the essentials of the ways things are done. Of course things are always changing, but the change occurs within certain parameters that remain fairly constant. What explanations are available for this kind of systemic conservatism? The following four broad kinds of explanation are widely advanced. 1. Explanations in terms of the power of vested interests. A particular example of a piece of wide-ranging research that makes extensive use of this kind of explanation is Kent Calder’s Crisis and Compensation. 15 Calder argues, with a wealth of case-study material, that successive governments have sought to pacify turbulent or potentially troublesome interests by compensating them in various ways, thus gradually extending over time the number of interests to which government is beholden, and cramping the government’s room to maneuver. This is, of course, a problem for democratic governments in general, and may even be regarded as the key dilemma of democracy. In the case of Japan, it has a good deal of explanatory power, but not equally for all periods. For instance, although it works rather well for much of the 1970s, when the initiatives of Tanaka Kakuei as Prime Minister in spending money to satisfy welfare and environmental lobbies later created a perceived problem of government indebtedness, it seems less convincing in relation to the early 1980s, when the government managed to impose tough economic discipline, at least until this was blown out of the water by the spending frenzy of the ‘economic bubble’ later in the decade. More recently, a number of writers have focused on the construction industry as both a source of widespread corruption and of wasteful use of resources—not to speak of the unaesthetic aspects of ‘the concreting over of the Japanese countryside.’ A colorfully critical account of this phenomenon may be found in Gavan McCormack’s The Emptiness of Japanese Affluence. 16 2. Explanations in terms of excessive bureaucratic power. The perception that Japanese government ministries and agencies have more power than is normal in a parliamentary democracy is commonly found in literature on the subject. A leading proponent of the ‘bureaucratic supremacy’ view, Chalmers Johnson. wrote in 1995: The bureaucracy drafts virtually all laws, ordinances, orders, regulations and licenses that govern society. It also has extensive extralegal powers of ‘administrative guidance’ and is comparatively unrestrained in any way, both in theory and practice, by the judicial system. 17

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Not all observers are agreed, however, on whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. Johnson himself, in his earlier seminal work MITI and the Japanese Miracle, 18 argued that the Japanese bureaucratic-led developmental state model was a potential source of valuable lessons for American policymakers, even though he stopped well short of arguing that the US should adopt Japanese levels of bureaucratic domination and regulation. 19 Even though Johnson has more recently come to be widely regarded as a ‘Japan-basher,’ the most consistent line running through his opus is the perception that attempts to fit an understanding of the Japanese political economy into an American-style free market laissez faire kind of model are doomed to failure. Japan, in his view, marches according to a different drum, and will probably continue to do so. In other words, his attacks on American economic orthodoxies are at least as strident as his criticisms of contemporary Japanese practice. The 1990s have seen conspicuous bureaucratic failures and instances of corruption in ministries to an extent that would have surprised observers in previous decades. But at least up until mid-1998, it would be a brave commentator who could predict with confidence that bureaucratic dominance would soon be a thing of the past. The important thing to be clear about is that the Japanese government ministries and agencies have for a long time worked in concert with both politicians and interest groups in a complex system based on mutual dependence. Although the Hashimoto Government proposed reforms to the ministerial structure, the essence of this system appears likely to continue into the foreseeable future. 3. Explanations in terms of over-regulation of the economy. This is closely related to the previous category of explanation. Since regulations are typically applied by government ministries and agencies, there is an obvious relationship between a dominant bureaucracy and extensive regulation. During the 1990s. and in particular from the period of the Hosokawa (non-LDP) Government in 1993–1994, reduction in the number and scope of government regulations has been central to the proclaimed agenda of reform. Perhaps the most conspicuous area where deregulation appears to be making some progress is the so-called ‘Big Bang’ program of liberalizing the financial sector by 2001. Undoubtedly, this has been forced upon Japan by the external pressures of a globalized financial market. Some questions, however, remain. First, will a liberalized financial market in Tokyo in practice work just like its counterparts in London, Frankfurt, and New York? Second, how far beyond the financial market sector will deregulation and liberalization progress? The problem for the deregulatory scenario is that the answers to these questions are likely to depend to a great extent on turf battles within the government bureaucracy, and in turn on the ability or inability of politicians to impose a coherent policy agenda upon the bureaucracy. It would be foolish to assert at present that the success of such an agenda is assured. 4. Explanations in terms of lack of real political competition. The author of a widely read and highly intelligent series of manga (strip cartoon books) about the way Japanese politics actually works prefaces Volume 2 in the 19-volume

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series with the following words: The work which members of Parliament ought to perform may be subdivided into four categories: defense, foreign policy, education and economic policy. With some exaggeration we can say that everything else lies within the concern of local councillors. The fact is, however, that any parliamentary candidate who at election time concentrates on those four areas will be defeated. Unfortunately you cannot be elected without trumpeting local interests, and this is assuredly quite a problem for the electors—that is, for us ourselves. 20 Hirokane Kenshi has identified one of the salient features of contemporary party politics in Japan at the national level, namely, the dominant role of the parish pump. Several things follow from this. First of all, because candidates are so locally focused, and localities are in competition with each other for funding from Tokyo. it is difficult to maintain programmatic nationally oriented political parties. Even the LDP, for much of its existence, has functioned more as a loose coalition of local parliamentarians and parliamentary candidates, themselves attached to several competing intraparty habatsu, or factions. This has been more or less true for other parties as well, with the partial exceptions of the former Kōmeito (and its indirect descendant, Shintō heiwa) and the Japan Communist Party, both of which have tight, centralized organizational structures. It further follows from this that genuine interparty competition based on programmatic differences about most central areas of policy has been strictly limited. It is true that in the earlier post-war decades the Japan Socialist Party (JSP) provided a genuine ideological alternative to the LDP, but this was across a narrow range of issues (principally the peace constitution and rights of public sector workers), which ignored many key areas of economic policy in practice. Today, the JSP is a mere shadow of its former self, and the various attempts during the 1990s to form new parties in opposition to the LDP have hardly been crowned with success. The Shinshintō (New Frontier Party), formed in December 1994 to wrest power from the LDP, split three years later into no less than six separate entities. The Minshutō (Democratic Party), formed in September 1995 and expanded by the addition of extra splinter groups in the northern spring of 1998, has hardly caught the imagination of ihe electorate. The entrenched localism of politics is in turn part and parcel of the system of government subsidies to local areas, through various channels but not least through construction projects, referred to above. There is therefore a chicken and egg situation here, whereby so long as central government is seen as the essential provider for local districts, parliamentary candidates will have to concentrate largely on parish pump issues, but until parties become strong enough to challenge the government ministries in relation to the entrenched practices of local subsidy, parliamentary candidates will have no choice but to act as narrow local mouthpieces, as they have always been constrained to do. At

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present, the road to resolving this dilemma seems littered with mines and tank traps. Consideration of these four kinds of explanation lead us, in conclusion, to two perhaps more promising lines of enquiry. The first is an approach emphasizing contingent events, or ‘what if X hadn’t happened?’ types of analysis. Particular examples of this approach include the sudden resignation of Hosokawa in April 1993, and the train of events which ultimately brought the LDP back into government in June 1994. As suggested above, there is a case for arguing that had the LDP been out of power for a longer period, say three years, it would have atrophied in opposition to the extent that it would have been finished as the kind of central arbiter of political power that it had been for most of the post-war period. This argument has much force, but the problem with it is that there is no guarantee that the disappearance of the LDP would necessarily have changed the nature of political interaction in a fundamental fashion. Moreover, had the LDP become gravely weakened as this scenario posits, it does not look particularly probable that a system of party competition based on two or three major parties. each with a programmatic appeal and focusing on national issues, would have emerged. Even the introduction of a quite new election system failed to bring this about, as we have seen. Despite these negative aspects, however, a focus on contingent events may well be a promising analytical approach. Just as remarkably few experts on the politics of the Soviet Union expected the collapse of that system in the period 1989–1991 (even after Gorbachev became First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU)), so is there a problem for political analysis in so far as radical change is often extremely difficult to predict. On the other hand, from the point of view of any rational analysis, the regime in North Korea ought to have collapsed several years ago, but this has not happened and may not happen for quite some time. The important point here is that predictions of change based on the extrapolation of existing trends may work in many circumstances, but not infrequently may be proved wildly inaccurate by the intervention of contingent events. If applied to the issue of the prospects of politico-economic change in Japan, this may indeed prove a helpful observation. The second and final approach focuses on normative aspects of polincal change. At least since the Asian economic crisis was triggered by financial problems in Thailand in July 1997, the vast majority of media comment about prospects for politico-economic change in Japan has been based on the—usually unargued—premise that the right direction for reform is toward a more or less American-style free-market, small-government political economy, in which values of individualism generally come to prevail over communal values. Quite apart, however, from the implausibility of Japan turning itself in the short term, or even medium-to-long term, into an Asian version of the United States, it may be remarked that a number of other viable models are available, most notably— but not exclusively—in Europe, where intelligent government involvement in

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key aspects of the political economy is accepted and works reasonably well. This is not a recipe for retaining all aspects of current Japanese government behavior in relation to the lives of citizens, since much of it is marred by a practice of favoring special interests, treating citizens in a high-handed manner, and engaging in often destructive battles for ‘turf.’ There are many other problems with the present system that we have already touched upon. On the other hand, it needs to be recognized that interventionist government and communal values are longstanding aspects of the Japanese political culture. In pursuit of open democratic politics, whose rebirth from its present sad state is crucial for the political health of the nation, the potential role of a strong, able, and accountable government ought not to be undervalued. NOTES 1. David Williams, Japan: Beyond the End of History (London and New York. Routledge, 1994), p. 204. 2. T.J.Pempel, ‘Regime Shift: Japanese Politics in a Changing World Economy,’ Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Summer 1997), pp. 333–61. The argument of this article is expanded to book length in T.J.Pempel, Regime Shift (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, forthcoming 1998). 3. Pempel, ‘Regime Shift: Japanese Politics in a Changing World Economy,’ p. 335. 4. Pempel, ‘Regime Shift: Japanese Politics in a Changing World Economy,’ p. 335. 5. Professor Pempel expanded on his ideas in a paper entitled ‘Structural gaiatsu: International Finance and the Japanese Political Economy,’ which was presented to the Nissan Institute Seminar, University of Oxford, on 19 June 1998, and provoked a lively discussion. 6. An ambitious attempt to apply rational choice notions to Japanese politics is: J. Mark Ramseyer and Frances M.Rosenbluth, Japan’s Political Marketplace (Cambridge. MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1993). Although the book is certainly stimulating, much of its argument seems problematic. A more successful work, because the idea of rational choice is worn much more lightly, is Masaru Kohno, Japan’s Post-war Party Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997). In the present writer’s opinion, Kohno’s book succeeds, not because of the obeisance paid to rational choice ideas, but because he engages in good old-fashioned empirical microanalysis. 7. Gerald Curtis, Election Campaigning Japanese Style (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1971). 8. Curtis, Election Campaigning Japanese Style, pp. 49–50, 126 ff. 9. Nobutaka Ike, Japanese Politics: An Introductory Survey (New York: Alfred A.Knepf, 1957), pp. 197–200. 10. Ike, Japanese Politics: An Introductory Survey, pp. 199–200.

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11. Curtis, Election Campaigning Japanese Style, pp. 129–31. 12. Karel van Wolferen, The Enigma of Japanese Power (London: Macmillan, 1989). 13. See Aurelia George Mulgan, ‘The Role of Foreign Pressure (gaiatsu) in Japan’s Agricultural Trade Liberalization,’ Pacific Review, Vol. 10, No. 2 (1997), pp. 165–209. 14. As a result of defections from other parties, the LDP had regained a Lower House majority by September 1997. 15. Kent E.Calder, Crisis and Compensation: Public Policy and Political Stability in Japan, 1949–1986 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988). 16. Gavan McCormack, The Emptiness of Japanese Affluence (Armonk and London:M. E.Sharpe, 1996), pp. 25–77. 17. Chalmers Johnson, Japan: Who Governs? The Rise of the Developmental State (New York and London: W.W.Norton, 1995). 18. Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925–1975 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1982). 19. Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle, pp. 305–24. 20. Hirokane Kenshi, Kaji Ryūsuke no gi, Vol. 2 (17th printing), (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1998), inside dust jacket.

35 Converging or Diverging? The Politics of Japan and Britain English version of a lecture delivered at Doshisha University, Tokyo, as part of the 1998 Neesima Lectures Series (Joseph Hardy Neesima, 1843–90, was Doshisha’s founder) THE POLITICS and structures of government in Japan and Britain have often been compared, while each has on occasion been put forward as a model for the other. For Japan, the government and politics of Britain has been regarded as the key model of parliamentary democracy, and as such, an object of emulation by those in Japan who think seriously about politics. For Britain, although the idea that positive political lessons may be learned from Japan is perhaps less common than the other way round, there has been a great deal of interest from the 1960s onwards in the ability of Japan to produce rapid economic growth. A comparison between the political systems of Japan and Britain makes a good deal of sense because both are, in form at least, parliamentary systems. Given the density of contact between Japan and the United States, we most often encounter political comparisons between the political systems of those two states, but the American system is very different from either the British or the Japanese. The essential philosophy of the American system of government is the doctrine of separation of powers, whereby the three branches of government are supposed to check excessive use of power by each other. Whether and to what extent this actually happens in practice is a complex matter for analysis. The point about the American system, however, is that fundamental to that system is the idea if you allow the executive (President) in particular to become too powerful, you risk having the practice of government slide into dictatorship., and therefore the other branches should watch what the President does and act as a potent check on his power. It is for this reason that presidential and congressional elections are quite separate from each other, and that the outcome of a congressional election does not determine the choice of chief executive, as it does in both Japan and Britain. It is, I think, also the doctrine of the separation of powers that has led to the extraordinary spectacle of the Starr enquiry into the private life of President Clinton—to such devastating effect for the Clinton presidency—using procedures that are difficult to imagine in either Britain or Japan. At least in formal, structural terms, the British and Japanese systems of government and politics have far more in common with each other than they do with that of the United States. I apologise for setting out what will be entirely familiar to the audience, but the fundamental procedures in Japan and Britain work broadly as follows: At regular intervals there is a general election for the

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lower house of parliament (at this point I leave aside upper houses). The result of this election determines the composition of Parliament, and since nearly all members of parliament belong to particular political parties, the party or coalition of parties able to demonstrate a majority of seats, forms the next government. In a sense, the key to the formation of the new government lies in the choice of prime minister. In the Japanese case, who becomes prime minister is determined by a vote in Parliament. In Britain there is no vote in Parliament, but the new pnme minister is formally chosen by the Queen. Theoretically, this gives to the Queen the power to choose between rival candidates for the prime ministership, but this has hardly ever happened in modern times. (In the Japanese case, the emperor does not possess such a power, even in a theoretical sense). In nearly all cases, in both Japan and Britain, the person who becomes prime minister is the person whose party conimands a majority in the lower house of Parliament. In Japan there have, since the war, been several cases of coalition government (the governments led by prime ministers Katayama, Ashida, Nakasone (between 1983 and 1986), Hosokawa, Hata, Murayama and Hashimoto. The Hata Govermnent was actually a minority administration, lacking a parliamentary majority, but it only lasted for nine weeks, and resigned knowing that it would be defeated in a motion of no-confidence. In Britain since 1945 there have been no coalition governments, but the Callaghan Labour Government for a period in 1978 and 1979 had lost its majority and was reliant on the support of minor parties. In the end it was defeated in a confidence vote by a single vote, and resigned, leading to the formation of a Conservative Government that remained in office for 18 years. In the last year or so of the Major Conservative Government, its majority had become so small that it narrowly avoided the same fate, and with great difficulty was able to go to full term before holding a general election. There are other important points in common between the Japanese and British systems. Both are unitary, not federal states, though Britain may be evolving towards a semi-federal system under the present government, and some elements of national sovereignty have been, or are likely to be, ceded to a regional body, the European Union. Even though the progress of economic globalisation may be threatening elements of Japanese national sovereignty, clearly the process has not gone as far as in the case of Britain, for good or ill. There are four further areas of comparison between the two systems, which I need to touch on briefly. The first is the extremely important question of the set of relationships that obtain between the party or parties in power and the government bureaucracy. Constitutionally, there is very little difference. The theory of both systems is that the electorate chooses a government at regular intervals through the electoral process, and that the government currently in office has charge of the administration of the State. In an essentially Weberian sense, the government bureaucracy is a ‘civil service’ which implements policies laid down by government, as professional administrators lacking any kind of personal (as distinct from professional) interest in the tasks being performed. In practice the

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expe-rience of government in practically every advanced state is that government bureaucracies develop levels of technical expertise that politicians cannot match, and that this gives to bureaucrats power beyond what is prescribed by constitutions. At various times, this has been an issue in Britain, where agglomerations of bureaucratic power have been the target of widespread criticism. In Japan, however, the problem of bureaucratic dominance has assumed altogether more serious dimensions. This is something I want to discuss in greater detail later in this lecture. But it has close connections with the second of my three areas of comparison, namely party politics. A crude comparison often made between the party politics of Japan and Britain is that whereas Japan has a system based on single party dominance, Britain’s system is characterised by alternation of parties in power, or swing of the pendulum’. In fact, however, the contrast is not quite so sharp as that. It is true that in the Japanese case the LDP (and the conservative parties that preceded it) have been in office, either independently or having the dominant position in a coalition, for all but two and a quarter of the 53 years since 1945. In the British case, the Conservatives have been in power for roughly 35 years and the Labour Party for roughly 18 years out of the 53 years since 1945. Thus, in the period since the end of the war, the Conservatives have been almost twice as likely to be in power as Labour. Moreover, the Conservative Government elected in 1979 lasted for 18 years, during which the Conservative party won four successive elections. In other words, The period in power of the Conservatives after 1979 was just about as long as the total of the four separate spells in power of the Labour Party since 1945. The Labour Party in its whole history, has never managed to survive for two full terms in office, whereas the Conservatives survived for three consecutive terms in the 1950s and early 1960s, and four consecutive terms in the 1980s and 1990s. In this connection, however, it seems possible that history will not repeat itself. The present Prime Minister, Mr Blair, is a relatively young man, known to be determined to turn the Labour Party into a regular party of government, rather than a marginal party of government. At present, the prospects for Labour winning the next election look excellent, but we should remember the words of a former Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, that ‘a week is a long time in politics’. There are three years to go to the next election. My third area of comparison relates to the nature of political parties in Japan and Britain, and in particular the character of electoral campaigning. Although superficially political parties in the two countries look rather similar, when we probe more deeply we find some fundamental differences. Speaking very broadly, whereas British political parties are centrally directed and have a strong sense of identity based on a well-known set of policy prescriptions, Japanese parties are much more loosely articulated, and are oriented towards the promotion of local interests. Thus electoral campaigning tends to be focused on local issues, such as the provision of local infrastructure, and indeed on the cultivation of local notabilities. In Britain this element in electoral campaigning is far less important. Candidates typically attempt to persuade their constituents

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of the attractiveness of the party platform, and of the competence of their party to govern the country. Personality and local concerns are not entirely absent in electoral campaigns, but they have much lower salience than in the case of Japan. My fourth area of comparison, which I only want to flag at this point is nevertheless a matter of enormous importance in all political analysis: the location of power. Where does power lie in Britain? Where does power lie in Japan? Connected with this lies a range of questions, concerning the nature of the exercise of power, the degree of flexibility in its exercise, and its capacity to be mobilised effectively in response to crises or in anticipation of crises. At this point I shall leave these crucial questions hanging in the air. At this point, I want to leave, temporarily, the more detailed and specific questions raised by the exercise of comparison, and move to a more general level. First of all, when we compare the politics of Japan and Britain, we are comparing two systems of politics and government that are essentially democratic. In saying this, I need to make clear what I mean by ‘democracy’. To start from a negative, I do not mean by democracy a perfect system of government. There is a famous statement by Churchill to the effect that ‘democracy is the worst system of government, except for all the others’. This statement is of course ironic, but what I think he meant by it was that all other kinds of system are either variants on dictatorship, or variants on anarchy and chaos. Democracy, in contrast, is a system that makes possible the maintenance of order with freely given popular consent and the ability of the population to curb excesses of power. It is thus founded in order and consent. As he well recognised, however, since human beings are imperfect, this is not a perfect system. It may go wrong. It does not give ideal answers to all possible questions. But it is the best that we have available, and is better than ‘all the other [systems]’. Plainly, democracy is a flexible and to an extent even, vague, concept. I personally prefer an open and broad definition rather than a narrow and extremely demanding one. Perhaps the best way of expressing this is to indicate maximum and mimimum requirements for a political system to be regarded as democratic. A maximum set of requirements would be that the electorate actively chooses a government and mandates it to govern, also maintaining for itself the means to ensure that the chosen government follows the desires of the electorate, and does not branch out into directions that the electorate does not wish. The trouble, however, with this type of approach is that it probably overestimates the capacity of most electorates to understand complex issues and to exercise enlightened control over governments. It does not take sufficient account both of ignorance and sectional interest. Government by frequent referendum or plebiscite has been tried in various states, but does not have a particularly happy history. A minimalist approach would say that you have democracy where it is established that there are limits beyond which a government cannot go without

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encountering an effective adverse reaction from the electorate. This might be in relation to the emergence of authoritarian or dictatorial tendencies by a government, or in relation to perceived governmental incompetence or ineffectiveness. A very interesting example of democracy in this sense may be identified in the Japanese House of Councillors elections in July this year. Unexpectedly, the electorate punished the LDP administration of Hashimoto Ryūtarō by defeating many LDP candidates, especially in big cities, leading to the Prime Minister’s resignation. I think that this may be regarded as a ‘shot across the bows’ of the Liberal Democratic Party Government—an attempt to induce it to change direction in such a way as to tackle the economic crisis more vigorously, rather than the sign of a determination to replace that government. The future, however, will tell whether this is correct. I am of course oversimplifying here. As states around the world have experimented with more or less democratic forms of government over the past century and more, so institutional structures and practices have gradually developed, which may be seen as constituting elements of a democratic tradition. These include the establishment of the rule of law and the principle of equality under the law—something which requires the independence of the judiciary from political interference. They also involve the enshrining within the institutions and practices of govermnent of the fundamental principle of accountability. There is a great variety of ways in which accountability can be maintained, but the idea that political acts ought not to be arbitrary—that those who are involved in government are in some way answerable for what they do (or do not do)—seems fundamental to democracy as it is currently understood. It is fundamental to what I have just been arguing that democracy is a universal (or universalisable) system of government and politics. As a matter of principle, I do not agree with the argument, put forward in recent years by Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia and others, that we ought to recognise something called the ‘Asian model of democracy’, that operates under a distinct set of principles from what its proponents regard as ‘Western’ democracy. In brief, although I understand the force of some of their arguments, I think that what they are proposing ought not be called ‘democracy’, but rather ‘benevolent dictatorship’. This is because the essence of the ‘Asian model of democracy’ in the formulations that I am familiar with would remove many or most of the checks on the exercise of governmental power that in my opinion are at the core of the democratic model. Examples of this include placing so many obstacles in the way of opposition parties that they cannot function effectively, removing various guarantees of freedom of expression by such devices as making it an offense to libel the government (in other words, to criticise it), rigging elections, making the judiciary subordinate to the government and blurring the distinction between a political party which is currently in office and the permanent mechanisms of government. On the other hand, this is not to say that the way the institutions and practices of government of Japan and Britain are necessarily identical. Plainly there are differences in practice between the ways in which politics and government work

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in the two countries. In order to be able to address what is the principal question posed by this lecture (‘converging or diverging?’), it is desirable to seek an understanding of the reasons for the differences. One argument that I am inclined to reject out of hand is the kind of argumentation still sometimes met with in Japan that goes under the generic title of nihonjinron. In essence this says that there is a fundamenal cultural and historical divide between Japan and ‘the West’, and that this can never be bridged. It seems to me that much of this constitutes a shoddy form of pseudo-scholarship, and reflects a particularly unfortunate kind of insularity, which, however, is met with in many other countries as well. Having rejected most nihonjinron argumentation, I also need to counsel extreme caution in respect of the contrary approach, which is that the political economy of Japan essentially operates according to the same dynamics as Britain (or other Western states), and that exactly the same modes of analysis can be applied. A variant of the same argument says that insofar as the Japanese political economy diverges from a universal norm, it needs to be (or is bound to be) brought back towards that norm. Here, of course, we encounter a fundamental clash between globalising assumptions and particularistic ones. Japan at present, it seems to me, is facing in an acute form the dilemmas inherent in this clash. The dilemmas are especially acute because of the peculiarities of Japanese historical and cultural background, the perceived and actual effectiveness of the post-war system and the understandable reluctance to abandon it despite contemporary pressures to conform to external norms. I now want to move back to more specific issues of comparison between the political systems of Britain and Japan. Both countries in their modern history have experienced serious difficulties in making democratic systems of governance work properly. Even though the types of problems they have experienced have been far from identical, it nevertheless seems possible to analyse them under a number of common headings. Perhaps the most central task facing both states has been how to ensure that government should be in large measure both representative and responsible. Both are problematic. Let us examine the issue of representation first. In Britain and Japan universal suffrage, with men and women treated equally, has operated for many years: in Britain since 1928 and in Japan since 1946. In both countries, there have been problems with malapportionment, caused by failure to redraw constituency boundaries to reflect movements of population from rural to urban areas. In fact, in the nineteenth century in Britain, the situation was far worse than it has ever been in Japan. Before the 1885 Reform Act, for instance, there was a rural constituency in which 5,000 electors elected one Member of Parliament, whereas in Liverpool 450,000 electors chose three Members. That represented a discrepancy in the value of the vote of 30 times, whereas in Japan in the post-war period there has never been substantially more than a five-times discrepancy. In Britain, however, the 1918 Representation of the People Act established the principle of equality in the value of the vote, and this has been assured by regular redrawing of electoral boundaries by an

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impartial boundaries commission, set up in 1944. It was not until 1948, however, that university seats and a business premises qualification to vote were abolished, so that nobody could exercise more than one vote. In 1969, the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18. In Japan, the issue of malapportionment has been much discussed in recent years, and with the reform of the lower house electoral system in 1994, the situation was much improved. Nevertheless, in the lower house single-member constituencies, the value of the vote in some rural areas is about 2.4 times that of its value in some big city areas. In the prefectural constituencies of the upper house, the difference is substantially greater than that. The British experience suggests that this issue can never be resolved satisfactorily without the establishment of a boundaries commission which is both impartial and free from external interference (including interference by government, parties or other vested interests), and which works to a regular schedule of redrawing boundaries to reflect shifts of population. The electoral system itself, in the British case, has been extremely stable for many years. Since 1948 it has been based entirely on first past the post in single member constituencies. That is not to say, however, that the existing system lacks challengers. The third party in British politics, currently known as the Liberal Democratic Party, has long been in favour of proportional representation, and it is conceivable that, if the survival of a Labour government depended upon the support of the Liberal Democrats, the latter might make acceptance of the principle of proportional representation a condition of their support. Although there is hardly any support for PR within the Conservative Party, there is some support within the Labour Party, although Mr Blair appears to be opposed to it. My own view is that the current system is rather unlikely to be fundamentally reformed in the foreseeable future, because it is against the interests of the two major parties to introduce a system that would reduce their ability to form a single party government commanding a convincing majority. The fear of encouraging fringe parties by making it possible for them to obtain significant parliamentary representation through PR also needs to be taken into account. For instance, the successes at local level of the Front National in France, contrasted with the almost total lack of electoral success of the similarly inclined British National Party and National Front in Britain, is not entirely unconnected with differences in the electoral systems of the two countries. Just possibly, one contingency could adversely affect the stability of the British electoral system. If, as now seems not outside the bounds of possibility, the Scottish National Party were to acquire sufficient popularity to carry Scotland out of the United Kingdom and into independent statehood within the European Union, the balance of the party system in England and Wales would be severely affected. Scotland currently holds a total of 72 parliamentary seats at Westminster, of which the Labour Party won 56 at the 1997 general elections, and the Conservative Party none. Even though, with its current parliamentary majority of 179, it would easily survive the loss of 56 MP’s, following future elections this might be a severe problem. Conceivably, therefore, in such circumstances the Labour Party might come to look more favourably upon

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proposals to introduce some form of PR that would make its access to power possible through coalition arrangements with other parties. Even so, however, I think that this is a rather unlikely scenario. In the case of Japan, the former ‘medium-sized constituency’ system also had a long history, having been used, with occasional revisions, at every lower house election (except for the election of 1946) from the 1920s to its abolition in 1994. It has often been regarded by reformers in Japan as the ‘root of all evil’, in that it encouraged factionalism, corruption, personality voting, local political machines and a lack of focus upon matters of national policy choice. Some would also argue that it facilitated single-party dominance, by permitting division and fragmentation among the opposition parties. Corruption, however, did not simply result from the ‘medium-sized constituency’ system., but also from the serious loopholes that existed in the anti-corruption law. Single party dominance resulted from failures to adapt to new political circumstances on the part of opposition parties (especially the JSP), as well as from the electoral system, although the electoral system had a part to play in this as well. Factionalism (especially in the LDP) sprang in part from the imperative of contesting the same multi-member electorate with other candidates from the same party, but despite the abolition of multi-member electorates factions still exist and remain important, especially in the LDP. Personal support machines were usually regarded as a product of multi-member constituencies in so much as candidates were thought to need them because party branches had to divide their support between several candidates, but they still remain almost universal under the new system. So far as personality voting is concerned, there may have been some greater focus on national issues in the October 1996 elections—the first under the new system—but it is remarkable the extent to which the same candidates were elected under the new system as were elected under the old. On the other hand, there are those who argue that at the time of the 1996 elections, candidates and parties were not sufficiently familiar with the implications of the change of system to appreciate fully the possibilities of other approaches to electioneering. How far the new system proves able to generate reform in the ways elections are actually conducted remains to be seen. I suggest, however, that the most important touchstone of genuine reform will lie in how far the electorate’s voice on issues of national importance becomes capable of being clearly expressed through political parties competing on the basis of alternative policy platforms. It also relates, however, to the question of whether those elected are genuinely in control of the policy agenda. To arrive at a full assessment of the situation here, we would need to bring in the problems of policy initiative by competing bureaucratic empires, relations between ‘iron triangles’ of politicians, government bureaucrats and interest groups, and matters of this kind. This in turn relates to the question of crisis decision making and the ability of the system to respond rapidly to the need for policy change. Japan is confronted by such a crisis, just as Britain was at various times in the past, most critically in the 1970s and early 1980s. Let us now turn to questions of responsibility in government. A classic

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distinction usually made in discussions of political responsibility is between responsibility in a general sense (to act responsibly), and responsibility to specific others. In Britain, the question of whom a politician should be responsible to was resoved in a sense by Edmund Burke, who argued that national responsibility prevail over local responsibility. ‘You choose a member indeed; but, when you have chosen him, he is not a member of Bristol, but he is a member of Parliament’. In the Burkeian view, therefore, a member of Parliament is not the delegate of his constituents, but is a representative of the nation as a whole. In contemporary terms, however, the Burkeian formulation requires further elaboration. Since the early 19th century political parties have become essential elements in the political system, requiring the allegiance of nearly all Members of Parliament, and aggregating policy into alternative national programmes. So that today, we might vary the Burkean formulation and say that ‘he is not a member of Bristol, but a member of his party’. In other words, as British politics has evolved through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there has been a gradual centralising process, based on parties, whereby responsibility to party has to a very considerable extent superseded responsibility to electorate. When, as in the case of the Labour Party today, a party is securely in office at national level, it is hoped that the government formed by that party will act responsibly in the general sense. In other words, the expectation and hope is that the government will further the best interests of the nation, to the best of its ability, by proposing and implementing responsible policies in a responsible fashion. But what are the pressures and sanctions that impel a government to act in such a fashion? The answer is, in the British case, that there are very few pressures and sanctions faced by a government with a secure majority: so few, indeed, that the British system of government has been termed, with some slight exaggeration, perhaps, an ‘elective dictatorship’. First of all, there is no fixed term on prime ministerial office. A prime minister able to remain in command of his or her party and able to win general elections may remain in office indefinitely. Margaret Thatcher was prime minister for 11½ years, from May 1979 to November 1990. If degree of power is indicated by longevity in office, the British prime minister would appear to be a good deal more powerful than the Japanese prime minister. Whereas there have been 25 Japanese prime ministers between Shidehara and Obuchi (counting Yoshida twice) there have only been 12 between Attlee in 1945 and Blair in 1998 (counting Wilson twice). That gives an average tenure in office for a British prime minister over the period between 1945 and 1998 of four years and five months, but for a Japanese prime minister, of two years and two months. Of the 11 former British prime ministers since the war, six ceased to be prime minister when their party was defeated in a general election, three resigned because of age or ill health, one (Eden), partly because of ill-health and party because of the fiasco of the Suez crisis, and only one (Margaret Thatcher), because she was defeated in a party vote on her leadership. The reasons for the demise of Japanese prime ministers show a remarkably

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different picture. The only ones who ceased to be prime minister as a result of their government being defeated in a general election were Shidehara in 1946 and Yoshida in 1947, and Miyazawa in 1993, although Uno in 1989 and Hashimoto in 1998 resigned because of an adverse result in an upper house election (though their party remained in office because of its majority in the House of Representatives). Between 1955 and 1993—the period of single-party dominance—no less than 14 prime ministers resigned. Of these 10 resigned because the LDP was, for whatever reason, no longer willing to allow them to continue in office. A considerable number of these cases resulted from factional rivalry, and the assumption that the office of prime minister should circulate among the factions. Whatever the reasons, however, it is a reasonable assumption that a short-term prime ministership tends to inhibit the projection of strong and effective leadership. A similar generalisation can, of course, be made about cabinet ministers. Cabinet reshuffles are much more frequent in the Japanese than in the British system, and it is a reasonable assumption therefore that cabinet ministers in Japan are less able to affect policy than their British counterparts. There are several other reasons why those British governments enjoying secure majorities are generally able to maximise their power. One is that the tradition of political dominance over the civil service is more deeply entrenched in Britain than in Japan. Although, as mentioned earlier, excessive accumulations of bureaucratic power have at times become an issue in Britain, the view that civil servants are indeed the servants of their political masters is strongly embedded in the British tradition. A determined prime minister—and indeed a determined minister—is normally able to override any bureaucratic objections to the implementation of government policy. Another reason is that the prerogatives of opposition parties in the British system, while they exist, are not particularly strong in most circumstances, unless the government is in danger of losing its parliamentary majority. The norm is that of majority decision-making, and so long as the party in office is able to maintain its majority, the opposition is unable to affect policy to any great extent. (In recent years, it is true, the role of committees in the House of Commons has been enhanced, and these can sometimes amend the detail of proposed legislation. Also, the House of Lords, which has a built-in Conservative majority, has recently defeated some items of government legislation coming to it from the Commons. But its powers in this respect are limited, and the Government proposes to abolish the right of hereditary peers automatically to vote in the Lords). Generally speaking, the opposition parties in the Commons can complain about government policies, but they can do little about them. The idea, sometimes met with in Japan, that the government ought to listen to the views of the, opposition and modify its policies accordingly, is much less common in Britain. On the other hand, the ‘elective dictatorship’ of a British government is modified by a certain number of considerations. Of these, the most important is of course the prospect of the next election. Unless the government can win the

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next election, it will no longer be able to govern, and from a seat in Heaven it will be cast into outer darkness. It thus needs to convince the electorate that it is continuing to perform successfully and that its policies are working— particularly its economic policies. I previously mentioned that historically the Conservatives have been notably more successful than Labour in convincing the electorate to grant them several successive terms in office, rather than a single term from time to time. Mr Blair is now determined to break this syndrome and convince the electorate of the essential long term responsibility of Labour governments—that is, responsibility in the sense of handling the nation’s economic and other affairs in the interests of the whole nation. This, I think, is the essence of the idea of ‘New Labour’: that there is a responsible third way between Thatcherite free market neo-liberalism and old-style Labour policies favouring policies of high taxation strong trade union rights. The implications of this, however, has been a certain policy convergence between the Conservatives and Labour in Britain, though in my opinion it is far from a complete convergence: The Labour agenda remains substantially different in many areas from those of the Conservatives. Besides the political discipline imposed on the government of the day by the need to win the next election (perhaps a little less severe in Britain than in Japan because the maximum term in office of a government is five years, not four), further discipline is imposed by the need to keep the party as united as possible behind the government s programme. In practice, in Britain just as in Japan, different political tendencies naturally emerge within any political party. In the Conservative governments of the early and middle 1990s, the electorate was treated to a dreadful object lesson in what happens to a party when it proves unable to stay united on policy, and be seen to be united. Admittedly, the Major Government elected in 1992 had a narrow parliamentary majority, which narrowed further as that Government lost successive by-elections, and this made disunity a more serious matter than it would be in a government like the present one, which enjoys a huge majority. But the perceived importance of maintaining party unity is demonstrated by the importance accorded to the Whips’ office in all the major parties. Great pressure is exerted on Members of Parliament thought inclined to differ from the party line, especially if they might fail to vote along the lines that the party has sanctioned. Closely connected with the last two points, British governments need to expend great effort on keeping the press and electronic media on their side. This in the past has been a great problem for the Labour Party, because the bulk of the British press has traditionally supported the Conservatives. It is widely believed that the failure of Labour to win office in 1992 was caused in large measure by the strident anti-Labour position taken by the Sun and other tabloid newspapers, and particularly the parts of the press controlled by Rupert Murdoch. This no doubt explains efforts by Blair to cultivate the press (including Mr Murdoch) before the 1997 general elections, and thus the support for Labour given on that occasion by the Sun and other papers. Electioneering in Britain is a highly media-conscious activity, and enormous efforts are made by

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political parties to cultivate the mass media, which are inclined to take a far more partisan approach to parties and their policies than is generally the case in Japan. In two other respects the notion of an ‘elective dictatorship’ existing in Britain needs to be modified. The first concerns relations between Britain and the European Union. The development of EU legislation over the past four decades has imposed certain constraints on freedom of policy making by British governments. Interestingly enough, the Blair Labour Government appears to be rather less unhappy with that state of affairs than were its conservative predecessors. One important reason for this is probably that while post-Thatcher Conservatives were (and are) dominated by free marketeers keen to reduce the scope of state interference, Labour is rather happier with the notion of government programmes for various purposes, and finds Europe a useful ally in some of its projects. It is interesting, also, that the Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, on taking up his position, abdicated responsibility for the setting of interest rates to the Bank of England, which is now free to set interest rates in accordance with its own judgement. I believe that this was a move designed to remove the suspicion that Labour would use its control of interest rates for partisan or sectional ends, and irresponsibly from the point of view of the economic health of the nation. The final constraint on governmental power in Britain is inherent in the Blair Government’s policies of decentralisation, particularly in respect of Scotland, and to a lesser extent, Wales. (Northern Ireland, where devolved government is also in the process of being established, is a much more complicated case, which I do not propose to treat here). So far as Scotland is concerned, the establishment of a Scottish Assembly with limited tax-raising powers will inevitably take powers away from Westminster, and from the Government’s point of view risks placing a great deal of power in the hands of the Scottish Nationalist Party, which is becoming the principal opposition to Labour in Scotland. As I mentioned before, if a Scottish Assembly is merely the prelude to the formation of an independent Scottish state, then this would constitute a most serious blow to Labour. That need not happen, but there is a real possibility that it may happen. Let us now move to consider whether the term ‘elective dictatorship’ applies in any sense to Japan. In my opinion, the Japanese system too contains within it strong elements of ‘elective dictatorship’, but in a rather different sense than in the case of the British system. We need to remember that in the British case, the dictatorial element is tempered by the absolute need of the party in power to win the next election, and its need to maintain party unity. These in practice have been substantial limitations on the freedom of action of a government, but in a very positive sense, since they provide a real stimulus for a government to perform well. In the Japanese case the long period of single-party dominance by the LDP created an ‘elective dictatorship’ in a very obvious way, in that a single party

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maintained a parliamentary majority continuously over an unusually long period. This in turn was (and to an extent is) linked in with a government bureaucracy lacking many of the restraints on the independent use of its power that exist in the British system. It may be useful to consider what has happened to British government during periods when one party has managed to win successive elections. The most conspicuous recent example of this has been the 18 years of rule by the Conservative Party, first under Margaret Thatcher and then under John Major. In the earlier part of that period, the government was innovative and able to change economic policy in ways that are widely considered to have been beneficial to the health of the British economy. What had been termed the ‘British disease’ was no longer so widely discussed after some years of Thatcherite medicine. Later in the 18-year period, however, the Conservative Party came to be badly divided over policy towards the European Union and other issues, so that factionalism and leadership challenges came gravely to weaken the effectiveness and popularity of the government. So far as relations between the Conservative Government and the civil service were concerned, however, there was never much question of government ministries acting outside policy specifically laid down by the government of the day. Indeed, during the Thatcher period, the Prime Minister’s inherent suspicion of civil servants meant that they were kept under a tight rein, and were required to toe the Government’s line quite strictly. Over 18 years, however, much as in Japan, what appeared to be semipermanent linkages were established between ministers (more broadly, the Cabinet), and departments of government. Thus whereas, in the British case, a long period of single-party dominance led to a tight relationship between ministers and civil servants in which ministers were generally dominant, in the Japanese case the relationship was similarly tight, but the relative weakness of political control facilitated the perpetuation of bureaucratic empires, with a considerable amount of independent power. We should remember that whereas in Japan cabinet reshuffles take place at least once a year, making it difficult for a given minister to master the departmental brief sufficiently fully to be able to impose his or her will on the department concerned, in Britain ministerial tenure is in general much longer, and although the ‘Yes, Minister’ phenomenon has some validity, ministers are regarded as servants of prime minister and cabinet rather than servants of particular ministries. In so far, therefore, that there is an ‘elective dictatorship’ in Japan, it is likely to be good at pursuing long-established policy, but much less effective in responding to new situations and crises by proposing and implementing a radical and coherent programme of reform. In the final section of this lecture I want to focus more specifically on the question of convergence and divergence between the Japanese and British system in the 1990s. In earlier periods, when the British economy was not doing well, aspects of the political system were sometimes blamed for this, particularly the apparent fact that governments of whatever party seemed unable to overcome the

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stultifying power of vested interests, which held back economic growth. At that time, there were those who pointed to the Japanese system, which was demonstrating extraordinary success in its developmental aims. Single party dominance, weak opposition parties and a weak labour union movement, a powerful and self-confident government bureaucracy with developmental but market-conforming policies and effective powers of persuasion and even compulsion, consensus decision-making based on shared national goals—these were regarded as the secret of Japanese success, which Britain might do worse than to copy. In the event, Britain did conform during the 1980s and early 1990s to one aspect of the Japanese system of the time, namely single-party dominance, but notably failed to emulate bureaucratic dominance, although power was certainly centralised, by reducing the powers of local government. Today, in the late 1990s, the boot is rather on the other foot. The capacity of the British system to change direction sharply and decisively as the result of a crucial general election victory by the Labour Party on 1st May 1997, together with the capacity of parties to appeal to the electorate on the basis of clearly set out policy platforms and prime ministers to exercise leadership, are now widely seen as indicating the effectiveness of the British way of organising government and politics. Conversely the conspicuous failure of successive Japanese governments since the late 1980s to handle macroeconomic policy successfully has greatly tarnished the reputation of the Japanese politico-economic system. Particularly since the onset of the Asian financial and economic crisis in 1997, the reputation of the Japanese Establishment has sharply declined. During the 1990s, however, serious attempts have been made to reform the system. The reform programme of the Hosokawa Government in 1993 has served as a model for later reform attempts. Even though the only major and substantive reform carried out under the auspices of the Hosokawa Government was changing the electoral system for the House of Representatives, its proposals for deregulation and decentralisation have been taken up, with more or less enthusiasm, by later administrations. It seems clear that in intention at least, reform of the House of Representatives election system from the ‘medium constituency system to the mixed’ system was designed as a move in the direction ofthe norms obtaining in British electoral politics. That is to say, as a result of changing the system, the importance of party was to be enhanced at the expense of the role of faction, policy was to prevail over personality as the principal factor influencing voters rather than one dominant party and a weak, fragmented opposition, there should be two principal major parties, giving the electorate a choice of policy platforms and realistically capable of alternating in office. For reasons that I hope to touch on in my second lecture, those aims have been only very impeffectly realised, at least on the evidence of the House of Representatives elections of October 1996. Nevertheless, a start has been made, and it seems possible that later elections may create further convergence in the British direction. On deregulation, it seems to me that so far rather little of real substance has

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been achieved. Deregulation tends to a matter for power struggles between different ministries, and there are occasions where deregulation leads to reregulation under different regulatory authorities. I don’t want to enter into rights and wrongs of this here, but simply to emphasise that I cannot yet see convincing evidence of a radical rolling back of governmental controls at the present time. In this sense, Britain has a much more deregulated economy than Japan, and I do not see much evidence of a convergence by Japan in the British direction. So far as decentralisation is concerned, i t is true that in Japan some local authorities and regions are developing a greater sense of self-awareness than previously. Nevertheless, it does not seem that the situation is radically changing, and in particular, the influence of national ministries in the regions and prefectures remains strong. By contrast, in Britain in the 1980s and early 1990s, there was a very substantial reduction in the power of local authorities, by such devices as rate capping and abol iti on of the metropolitan authorities, such as the Greater London Council. The Conservative Governments ofthat period were also totally opposed to any devolution to Scotland or Wales or to any other regions. Under the Blair Government, the emphasis of policy has changed. Following referenda in Scotland and Wales in 1997, Scottish and Welsh assemblies are being set up, and the Scottish assembly is to have some power oftaxation. Moreover, a London authority is being re-established and there is to be an elective mayor of London. As mentioned earlier, however, Scottish nationalism is currently riding high and the emergence of Scotland as a separate nation state within the European Union has become a real possibility. If this were to happen, it would profoundly affect the political balance within England and Wales, and constitute the most major constitutional change for many decades. Thus if Japan is moving slowly and unsurely towards decentralisation, Britain, following a period of radical centralisation, is changing internally in rather complex ways towards a more decentralised political configuration. At the same time we need to consider the context of the European Union membership, which has to some extent been eroding national sovereignty from the outside. My conclusion has to be that political reform in Japan has been slow and fitful by comparison with that in Britain, and that from the point ofview ofthe result of Asia, and by extension the rest of the world, the failure of politicoeconomic reform is becoming increasingly worrying. There is a sense of complacency in the Japanese politico-economic Establishment about the extent of the crisis and the necessity to do anything about it. Now that the Japanese economy is severely contracting, consumer confidence is at an all time low, and the willingness or ability of firms to invest has greatly declined, the impact on the rest of Asia is grave indeed. Perhaps the one thing that might precipitate radical reform of the Japanese system might be a further worsening of the economic situation, leading to a severe defeat of the LDP at a general election. The results of the July House of Councillors elections might point in this direction, though one ought to be cautious about extrapolating from an upper house election, where the electorate

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knows it can punish the LDP without bringing about a change of government, to a lower house election where so much more is at stake. Nevertheless, I believe that there is now a real possibility that the next lower house election might produce a surprising result, even though the opposition parties scarcely seem ready to take over the reins of government. What is needed in Japan is a much stronger, more united and better led version of the Hosokawa Government, devoted to radical reform on several fronts, and able forcefully to challenge vested interests, including bureaucratic vested interests. The examples, both of the Thatcher Government in the early 1980s and the Blair Govermnent since May 1997 are in my opinion useful examples for Japanese decision makers to consider. The current air of complacency within government seems increasingly dangerous, both for Japan and the outside world, and it is up to the Japanese electorate to give that message forcefully to the politicians.

36 Do Political Parties Matter? Reflections on Japan and Europe English version of a lecture delivered at Doshisha University, Tokyo, as part of the 1998 Neesima Lectures Series (Joseph Hardy Neesima, 1843–90, was Doshisha’s founder) POLITICAL PARTIES are now an almost universal feature of political systems, and the rare examples of party-less political systems are widely regarded as freaks. On the other hand, many different kinds of political entity are designated ‘party’. A fairly standard definition of ‘party’ is that a political party is a political organization competing for government office at national level, on the basis of a policy programme which is presented to the electorate in campaigns for national elections. Such a definition has the effect of distinguishing a party from an interest group, on the grounds that an interest group seeks to influence government policy without taking office itself. It also distinguishes it from a government ministry, in the sense that whereas a ministry implements policies laid down by governments, parties are in the business of formulating policy and seeking the endorsement of Parliament for that policy. According to the same logic, parties are also different from companies. Companies create a product, from the sale of which they seek a profit. In other words their principal aim is to make money. Parties, by contrast, though they need sources of income in order to remain solvent, do not have money-making as their primary aim. Finally, parties, according to the definition I am using, are not the same thing as factions. This is perhaps a more difficult distinction to make, because in the history of thinking about parties in Europe, historically ‘faction’ and ‘party’ were terms used almost interchangeably. Moreover, when, during the nineteenth century, they came to be generally distinguished from each other, a great part of the distinction was a moral one. Another interesting and important point about political parties is that they appear to be a modern phenomenon. Although it may be possible to identify bodies analogous to parties in European antiquity, they do not easily fit into modern definitions of what is meant by party. It seems reasonable to suppose that the institution of political party is a product of the modernization processes that are such a central feature of the history of the world in the past 200 hundred or so years. Indeed, the near-universality of parties throughout the world today strongly suggests that they are an enduring feature of the modern world. If this is so, we need to ask what are the particular features of the modern world that require political parties. I suggest that two features are crucially important: complexity, and representation. Indeed, the two are closely

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interlinked. In days when kings ruled small agrarian states, it was possible to carry out the functions of government with a small group of advisers based on a court (or power could be devolved to retainers, as in feudalistic systems). In modern states, however, the functions of government have become far more complex, requiring a competent bureaucracy, as Weber correctly understood. But in addition, modernization processes have created mass society, whereby governments simply cannot afford to ignore (though they may try to suppress) the aspirations of huge numbers of their citizens. Indeed the whole paraphernalia of the modern state, with its concepts of citizenship, the national flag, universal taxation, a complex and universalistic legal system etc. presupposes that the interests of the totality of the population have to be taken into account. Even though formal methods of representation, through democratic systems of election, are today far from universal, parties exist even in states where such systems are absent, perfunctory or rigged. What I have said so far strongly suggests that political parties are a universal institution, based on the common imperatives of modern, or modernising society. We may even be able to reinforce this view by pointing to the fact that, for instance, in Japan, just as in most European states, the vast bulk of politicians belong to political parties, and the number of genuine ‘Independents’ is small. There are, it is true, some so-called ‘Independents’ elected in each general election in Japan, but many of them are close to particular political parties and some join those parties once they have been elected. Under the former House of Representatives electoral system, an average of about 10 Independents were elected at each election, most of them being aspirant Liberal Democrats refused party endorsement, who on election were received into the LDP as fully-fledged LDP parliamentarians. In the British case, at the most recent general election, one Independent was elected. He was a television journalist called Martin Bell, elected for the constituency of Tatton, near Manchester. But the circumstances of his election were quite peculiar. The sitting Conservative member for this constituency was facing corruption charges, but it was a seat that both the Labour Party and the Liberal Democratic Party thought they were unlikely to win. Those two parties, therefore, refrained from putting forward a candidate in the constituency, and in this situation Martin Bell, who ran on an anti-corruption platform, was elected. In fact, however, he was given tacit support by both the then opposition parties. I have described this case because, although there have been a number of cases in recent years where candidates elected under the label of a particular party have subsequently left that party and remained in Parliament as Independents, nevertheless the election of Martin Bell in 1997 is the first time since 1945 that an Independent has been elected at a general election. In the case of Japan, whereas under the former lower house electoral system it was not impossible to be elected as an Independent, it has become more difficult under the new system. The threshold of votes needed in the single-member constituencies is very much higher than it was under the former system, and in the PR constituencies only party lists are permitted, though some of them may

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be groups of candidates who are essentially Independents, who have grouped themselves under a so-called party label in order to qualify for candidacy. It is true that in upper house elections (particularly the most recent one in July this year), numbers of Independents are elected, but that house is much less central to the governing process. What I should like to stress here is that even in Japan, where personality factors clearly play a much greater part in elections than they do in either Britain or many other European states, party affiliation is in practice nearly essential for a successful parliamentary campaign. Having said this, however, we need to acknowledge that both parties and party systems differ substantially between different states, and that the significance of these differences relates to the particular kind of politicoeconomic system that exists in a particular state. For instance a ruling Communist Party in the former Soviet Union or one of the states whose systems were modelled on that of the Soviet Union, was a substantially different kind of political institution from those on which the definition I gave earlier was based. Most crucially, the CPSU owed its position to elections that were little more than endorsement ceremonies. In effect, the CPSU (and similar parties in Eastern Europe and elsewhere) functioned as parallel bureaucracies to the state bureaucracy, exercising guidance and control through the ultra top-down mechanisms of ‘democratic centralism’. Another kind of example was a party such as Golkar in Indonesia under Suharto where a single party has been nominally in power for a very long time, but is little more than a front organization for the ruling power group. Elections are held, but a range of devices are employed to ensure that the ruling party always wins. In any case, however, the real centre of power lies elsewhere (in the armed forces, the immediate family of the President etc.) than in the ruling party. In this kind of case it seems reasonable to argue that the party concerned exists essentially to legitimise the regime. It would be difficult to argue, however, that a party such as Golkar has mattered in the sense in which, say, the French Socialist Party or the German Christian Democratic Party matter at the present time. Part of the definition of ‘party’ I suggested at the beginning of this lecture was that a party is a political organization competing for government office at national level. There are, however, political parties in many countries, of which it could well be said that they are in no position to compete for government office in any realistic sense (though they may put up a front of doing so). Parties of this kind may be divided into a number of categories. The first would be the case of a party in a nondemocratic state, which, because measures are put in place by government to ensure that one particular party always wins elections, is forced into permanent opposition. For such a party, two principal strategies are open: one is to accommodate itself to the regime, and hope to receive benefits from the regime for its supporters thereby; the other is to act as a party of protest, criticising the regime in so far as it is allowed to do so. In some cases, the role of party of protest is transmuted into that of underground party illegally fomenting insurrection. Whichever strategy is chosen, the situation for such a

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party is unenviable, and the motivation for anybody with political ambition to join the ruling party is overwhelming. Another kind of party that can hardly be said to be campaigning for government office is a ‘single-interest’ party, that is to say, an interest group transformed into a party. Although, as suggested earlier, the fundamental distinction between an interest group and a party is that whereas a party is seeking govermnent office, an interest group seeks to influence government policy without seeking office itself, there are instances where this distinction is not maintained, and interest groups put forward candidates in national elections under a party label. An example of this is that of Green Parties in various countries, where the promotion of a particular, rather than overall, agenda is pursued through the ballot box. There is, however, a tendency for Green Parties in Europe gradually to develop rather more general platforms, covering most aspects of economic policy, not just policy relating to the environment. The likelihood of single-interest parties forming and contesting elections in a serious fashion is greatly enhanced where election systems based on proportional representation are in place, given that the vote threshold for election is relatively low in such systems. Another type of case where our definition is not precisely followed is in the case of local parties and particularly parties seeking greater autonomy or even full national statehood for their regions. Parties in the Basque region of northern Spain are one example of this. Another is the Scottish and Welsh Nationalist Parties, though they are somewhat different from each other. In the case of the Welsh Nationalist Party (Plaid Cymru), the goals sought are cultural as much as political, with greater recognition for the cultural identity of Wales and the Welsh language being pursued, whereas the party seems uncertain that it wants independent statehood. With the SNP, however, the situation is very different. The SNP is clearly and consistently pursuing independent statehood for Scotland, within the framework of the European Union. This creates a certain difficulty for our definition, in that the SNP is not pursuing (nor could it possibly hope to achieve) government office at national level (the nation being the United Kingdom). On the other hand, it is indeed seeking government in a nation-state yet to be created, namely Scotland, and prepared to participate in elections for the newly created Scottish Assembly, with the express aim of creating a majority for independence. The distinction made in the definition between a political party and a government ministry generally holds within Europe, and it is difficult to think of an example, outside Communist systems, where a party actually usurped the role of government bureaucracy. On the other hand, the French system under the Fifth Republic, established by General De Gaulle, enhanced the role of what have been called ‘techno-bureaucrats’ at the expense of parliamentarians, so that much decision-making centres on civil servants. This argument should not be taken too far, however, because even in France civil servants operate within the parameters of direction from ministers, who, though not parliamentarians, are responsible to Parliament. In many political systems, the distinction between

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party and ministry, politician and bureaucrat, is not always as clear-cut as the definition appears to imply. In Europe, the distinction between a political party and a company normally applies, whereas in Japan not only parties, but also factions and the political machines of individual politicians often have the air of money-making operations. The ‘product’, at least in the case of the personal machines of parliamentarians, often seems to consist of the provision of material benefits to the constituency and its inhabitants. Of course, we are not attempting to argue that the exchange of material benefits for votes is the sole purpose of these organizations, but the similarity between political organizations and companies does appear to be rather stronger in the Japanese case than in the political systems of Europe, though Italy may be an exception. When we turn to the final element in the definition, that between a party and a faction, we of course enter a universe of discourse of particular relevance to the politics of Japan. As suggested earlier, although parties and factions were hardly distinguished from each other in eighteenth century Britain, By the late eighteenth century a moral distinction was being made. At this point I should like to pursue this distinction a bit further. The key figure here is Edmund Burke. His famous and important definition of ‘party’ is as follows: ‘Party is a body of men united, for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest, upon some particular principle upon which they are all agreed’. He went on to argue that parties are the ‘proper means’ for enabling such men ‘to carry their common plans into execution, with all the power and authority of the state’. He is clear in the distinction he makes between party and faction, as shown in the following: ‘Such a generous contention for power [the party’s]… will easily be distinguished from the mean and interested struggle for place and emolument’ [i.e. what factions are all about]. In the context of the politics of his day, Burke was attacking those at the King’s court who were arguing that the whole concept of party was seditious. In Burke’s view, the court was in effect a faction, being narrow and concerned mainly with the personal interests of its officials. The fact that the court was decrying the idea of party was in his eyes evidence that they wished to prevent the emergence of coherent and organized opposition—and that could only be created by the emergence of parties. A parliament without ‘connections’—that is, a parliament of Independents, could never hope to be able to combat the narrow factionalism represented by the court. He placed great emphasis on the necessity for a coherent party structure of like-minded men, able to put forward programmes in the national interest. It is important to understand that this was in its day a radical argument, having a profound impact on the ways in which people conceptualised political endeavours. From then on, the conceptual apparatus was available to justify the formation of political parties, pursuing the national interest according to principles shared by their members, but able to avoid the danger of being thought of as narrow and selfish factions, concerned merely with ‘place and emoluments’.

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Burke’s idea was quintessentially pluralistic (different parties could contend) and responsible (parties should have the national, not just sectional, interests at heart). It is interesting to contrast it with the ideas that came through revolutionary traditions in Europe, in particular the French and Russian revolutions. The French revolutionaries made little or no distinction between party and faction, intensely disliking both. Lenin, in the Russian revolution, promoted just one political party—the Bolsheviks—and was prepared to suppress the others. He inveighed against factionalism, but in the interests of constructing a monolithic political party that would embody the total wisdom of the revolution. In the event, that party became not so much a political party as a bureaucracy designed to do the bidding of a tiny elite of individuals who were in no real sense answerable to anybody, least of all to the electorate. What then, of the relationship between party and faction in Japan? I want to argue that the Burkean distinction between party and faction, though in certain respects it is appropriate to an analysis of the Japanese political situation, nevertheless requires a degree of re-formulation in order to deal effectively with Japanese reality. This is an important question in terms of my topic, because it bears crucially on the amount of power able to be exercised by political parties within the Japanese system. A great deal has been written about factions (habatsu) in Japanese party politics. One school of thought holds that factions are a cultural phenomenon, and that it is natural in the Japanese cultural context that factions should form in political organizations such as parties, just as in many other sorts of organization. I think that it was the former Prime Minister, Ohira Masayoshi, who was quoted as saying: ‘Where you find three politicians, there will be two factions’. But in fact, Japan is far from unique in having factions as a normal part of political life. Even in the politics of the former Soviet Union, whose ruling party, the CPSU, officially adhered to a Leninist ban on factions and factionalism, the principal method of advancement was through factional activity. Sovietologists who studied the politics of the Kremlin, found that a new CPSU general secretary would tend to promote to politically powerful positions those who had been his henchmen at earlier stages in his career. The most crucial stage in a political leader’s career tended to be that of regional party secretary, when he would have been able to establish a factional group of supporters around him. Many examples of political systems where factions are ubiquitous may be found in non-Communist states whether of the third world or in more economically advanced states. An interesting example from Europe is that of Italy, where the former Christian Democratic Party, for instance, always contained within it a number of competing factions, each being led by a powerful political personality. Another generalization sometimes made about factions in Japanese politics is that they were essentially a product of the former electoral system for the House of Representatives, which divided parties along factional lines by enabling different candidates from the same party to run against each other, as well as

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against candidates from other parties. Indeed, the belief that this was the case, and that the abolition of the system would result in politics based on party rather than faction, was one of the main reasons used by those who wished to change the system in the period 1993–1994. It was thought moreover, by the reformers that a reduction of factionalism would result also in a reduction of ‘money politics’. This argument, however, really only applied fully to the LDP. If we examine House of Representatives elections from the 1970s to the 1990s, we find that the smaller parties (Kōmeitō, DSP, NLC, JCP) almost never ran more than one candidate in any constituency. The only exception is the Communists in Kyōto, who had sufficient strength to run two candidates in some elections. The Japan Socialist Party ran two candidates in a restricted number of constituencies, but by the 1970s this factor was hardly a prime cause of intra-party factionalism (it had been in the 1950s and 1960s). For the Liberal Democrats, however, the multi-member constituencies were a major causal factor in the maintenance of factions. For instance, if we take the general elections for the House of Representatives held in 1986, there were 17 constituencies where the LDP ran one candidate, 46 where it ran two candidates, 53 where it ran 3 candidates., and 12 where it ran four candidates. In nearly all cases the LDP candidates contesting the same constituency belonged to different factions. It seems reasonable to argue, therefore, that the former ‘medium-sized constituency’ system of election was important in reinforcing the system of factions within the LDP, but had very little impact on other parties. When the electoral system was changed in 1994, it was widely expected that the change would deal a blow against factions and that henceforth decision-making would be concentrated in the central party organization rather than in factions. Assuming that this were to take place, the way would then be open for a fully democratic process of policy-making and appointment to political office, in which party interest (and thus, in the Burkean sense, national interest) would prevail over narrow factional interest. So far, however, this aim has only been realised to a limited extent. Admittedly, there has so far only been one election fought under the new system, that of October 1996. Part of the reason for this probably derives from the hybrid nature of the ‘mixed’ system of election introduced in 1994. Candidates were allowed to stand for election both in the single member districts and in the regional constituencies elected by PR, and a candidate who failed to be elected in a single member district could nevertheless find a seat in a regional constituency through the device of sekihairitsu, provided that his party ranked its candidates as equal in the PR constituency. This in a sense imported back into the new system an important element of the old. A candidate who, under the old system, failed to gather the largest number of votes could still expect to be elected in second, third, fourth or fifth (in a few cases, sixth) position. Under the new system, the ‘also ran’ possibilities only extended to second position, but it meant that defeat in a single-member district did not necessarily mean defeat. This in turn tended to perpetuate the reliance on personal support machines

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(kōenkai), which had always been the basis of the factional system in the sense that kōenkai-based campaigning militated against party-based campaigning. Indeed, there is plenty of evidence from the 1996 elections that kōenkai have become more, rather than less, important under the new electoral system than they were under the old. This is because the number of votes that must be won in order to be elected for a single-member seat has increased, and for whatever set of reasons, the old habits of personal, rather than party-based, campaigns still persisted. About a year after the 1996 elections, the LDP regained its House of Representatives majority, and the period of coalition government has now come to an end. Although there was evidence that, during the period of coalition government from 1994, LDP factions had become markedly less important in the distribution of cabinet and party posts, today they appear to have revived. The appointment of Obuchi as Prime Minister in July was determined essentially through a process of factional bargaining, subsequently legitimised through a party vote. The logic of faction persists in the determination of who is allocated the top jobs in government. On the other hand, there is also some evidence that changing the electoral system may be having a delayed effect on campaigning., and that in future elections a rather more party-based campaigning strategy may prevail. In any case, the widespread perception that the current ways of politicians and bureaucrats have been ineffectual in solving the current financial and economic crisis, may come to create such a backlash against the LDP in a future election that more drastic change eventuates than that experienced hitherto. Let us, however, return to our previous discussion, concerning distinctions between the concepts of ‘party’ and ‘faction’. I suggested that Edmund Burke’s seminal distinction might not be entirely appropriate in the Japanese case. The question essentially boils down to whether an LDP habatsu really fits the Burkean definition of a faction as a body engaged in ‘the mean and interested struggle for place and emolument’. I would argue that in two senses at least, habatsu fit the Burkean model rather well. They struggle within the party for place (cabinet and party position) and outside the party for funding, which though it may not be quite the same thing as emolument, could be interepreted as similar in spirit. Moreover, ‘mean’ and ‘interested’ do express some at least of the atmosphere prevailing in the way habatsu scheme for advantage, often to the detriment of the wider interest. On the other hand, there are senses in which habatsu are not quite the same thing as ‘factions’ in the sense in which that motion has been understood in the Burkean tradition. The concept of ‘faction’ in the European, as in North American, political thinking has been closely associated with political groupings that are rather ephemeral, loosely organized and concerned with immediate benefit for their members, but scarcely concerned with the long term. In British political parties in practice, factions have either been of this ephemeral kind, fitting closely therefore to the way in which Burke thought of them, or else they have been ideological in their inspiration, such as the Eurosceptic tendency in

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the Major Conservative Government in the aftermath of the Maastricht Treaty, or the loosely organized left wing groups in the Labour Party today (‘Old Labour’). By contrast, factions within Japanese political parties have been rather different, and I think it is important to attempt with as much care and precision as possible to identify the nature of these differences. First of all, however, in my opinion LDP factions since the late 1950s have exhibited some particular characteristics, that may result from the aspect of the former electoral system which I mentioned earlier, or may derive, rather, from the fact that the LDP has occupied the central positions of power. However this may be, intra-LDP factions have been characterised by longevity, structure and organization (offices, in-house publications, substantial funding), and in considerable measure, legitimacy. For instance, the offices of LDP factions normally have journalists assigned to them from the major newspapers. All this suggests a considerably greater degree of structure and permanence than is normally the case with British political factions, or indeed factions in other European countries, though in this respect as in others, Italy approximates rather more closely to the Japanese model. Does this, then, mean that we ought to regard Japanese habatsu as ‘parties within a party’? At least in European terms, the relative permanence and longevity of LDP factions might suggest that they had more in common with parties than with factions. Indeed, when we look back to the 1950s, which was the formative period both of the LDP and the Japan Socialist Party (JSP), it would be easy to develop an argument that ‘faction’ was more substantial and long-lasting than ‘party’. After all, the divisions within the JSP that were the stuff of the internal politics of that party in the late 1950s went back three decades, to the late 1920s which saw the emergence of three basic ideological factions: the semi-Marxist Rōnō-kei on the left, the Nichirō-kei in the centre, and the Shamin-kei on the right. One could be forgiven for feeling that loyalty to one or other of those three traditions at that period meant more to most members of the JSP than loyalty to the party itself, which functioned rather as a loose amalgam of ideological groupings. Much the same could be said about the LDP at that period, although the party was able to develop much more structure and organization of its own as the years went by. Ought we therefore to conclude that habatsu are really parties, and that it is a peculiarity of the Japanese case that parties exist within parties: in other words that there is an extra layer of political organization called party (seitō) which tends to obscure the real parties, which are the habatsu? Unfortunately this neat solution does not really work. Habatsu lack certain of the essential attributes of political parties, even though they may possess others. They do not put forward candidates for election under their own label. You do not for the most part encounter election posters announcing that so-and-so is the candidate of the Obuchi faction. What is announced is the name of the candidate and the name of the party. By comparison with most European countries the name of the candidate tends to be given more prominence than the name of the

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party, but so far as the name of the habatsu is concerned, it is nowhere to be seen. Secondly, habatsu for the most part do not issue to the general public any policy documents of their own, as distinct from policy documents from the party of which they are a part. It is true that it may be possible to detect from the appeals of candidates from different factions in the same party evidence of those candidates’ factional affiliation, but the habatsu do not act as parties in the sense of issuing appeals qua habatsu. Thirdly, parties, for the most part, have maintained tight voting discipline within Parliament, although party decisions on which way to vote may be influenced by behind-the-scenes dialogue and bargaining between habatsu or their leaders. There have, it is true, been episodes where the various habatsu within a party fail to reach agreement, and a disruptive situation results. A conspicuous example was the forty-day crisis in October-November 1979, when the LDP put forward two candidates, Ohira and Fukuda, as candidates for the prime ministership, for a vote in Parliament. Such was the level of dissension between certain LDP habatsu at that period that the following year the Ohira Government was defeated in a no-confidence motion, at which three factions which opposed him abstained from voting. I think it is quite probable that the LDP would have split at that point had it not been for the fortuitous circumstance of the death of the Prime Minister during the election campaign, which shocked the party into closing ranks, and shocked the electorate into supporting the LDP against a motley collection of opposition parties at the subsequent election. In more recent memory, factional discord during 1992–3 did actually produce a serious split in the party and a spell in opposition. Historically, however, these have been highly exceptional episodes, tending to demonstrate the rule that the LDP has generally been highly successful in maintaining voting discipline within Parliament. Fourthly, and interestingly, throughout its long period in office when the now superseded lower house electoral system was in operation, the LDP developed a remarkably skilful capacity to control endorsements for election candidacies. Its success until the early 1990s is graphically demonstrated by the progressive reduction in the number of ‘dead votes’ achieved in successive general elections. This could only be accomplished through an ability to override factional interests, which would normally lie in expanding the number of candidates, and ensuring that the number of endorsed candidates in a multimember constituency was kept down to a number that would be sure to prevent excessive vote splitting and consequent tomodaore (more than one candidate being defeated in the same constituency). Finally, it is important to understand the significance of the fact that there is actually a third layer of organization operating in addition to the party and the faction, namely the constituency kōenkai, of the individual candidate. This has meant that, even though the candidate belongs to a habatsu, serving as a focus for his activities centrally, and may be reliant upon his habatsu for a substantial part of his electoral funding, when he is in his constituency he is independently

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in charge of his own kōenkai. The picture I have given here in relation to the LDP up to the 1990s is of a complex structure of organization based on a distribution of power and function between party, faction, candidate and personal support machine. If we were to shift our attention from the LDP or to other parties, including the various parties that have appeared in the 1990s, such as the Shinshintō and the Minshutō, the picture that emerges is somewhat different, but different largely in terms of the fact that the LDP has been the party of power, and its structures have necessarily been more complex than those of other parties. What seems incontrovertible is that a classic dichotomy between the idea of a party as a fully legitimate part of the political process, oriented to pursuit of power, and if successful in attaining power, governing in the national interest, as against a faction as a narrowly-focused, essentially ephemeral, group of politicians attempting to maximise selfish interest in an irresponsible fashion, does not entirely fit the Japanese case. The essential problem with this approach is the particular sort of dynamic to be found in Japanese party politics, whereby a number of sorts and layers of organization coexist and interact, the whole involving a good deal of dispersal of power. Indeed, in order to give a full description, we would need to bring in the whole structure of party and parliamentary committees, interactions between the LDP (and its various parts) and the government bureaucracy (and its various parts), together with a host of other organizations in the private and public sectors. Plainly, this is beyond the scope of this lecture, but it is worth making the point that political parties in Japan have a tendency to be ‘penetrated’ by other organizations (the bureaucracy, agricultural, professional and business interests groups in the case of the LDP, labour unions, citizens movements and religious groups in the case of opposition parties). By analogy, we might even suggest that parties have been penetrated by factions and factions have been penetrated by parties. In other words, the notion of organizational autonomy is significantly less well developed in the case of Japanese politics than it tends to be in the politics of many European countries. There may be a cultural factor operating here, in the sense that clear lines of organizational distinction seem more natural in parts of Europe (though there is much variety within Europe) than in Japan. My discussion so far has been leading up to the question that I set myself in the title of this lecture: ‘do political parties matter?’. To some, this may seem a strange question, in that democratic constitutions normally, in practice, grant to political parties the opportunity to form governments and thus determine policy. There are, however, in parliamentary systems a number of obstacles to the projection of party power that are commonly met with, and conversely, conditions that need to be met for parties to be able to maximise their capacity to influence events. Let us first look at conditions for the exercise of power by parties. First of all, although it is commonly assumed that in order to control or influence policy a party must first win a parliamentary majority, this is by no means necessary in all circumstances. A recent example in Japanese politics is

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where the Democratic Party (Minshutō) headed by Mr Kan Naoto, leading an opposition party alliance, was able to exercise substantial influence on the fonnulation of the new banking reforms by virtue of having a veto in the House of Councillors. But in this case a further condition needed to be fulfilled, namely that the Democrats had formulated a set of policy prescriptions that were relevant to the huge problems that needed to be addressed, and at the same time challenged the cosy, but economically disastrous relationships that the LDP and sections of the bureaucracy maintained with banking institutions and other interest groups. Politically speaking, the DPJ-led alliance was positioning itself to capitalise electorally on the unpopularity of the LDP Establishment in the face of financial and economic crisis. What was crucial was that the opposition should have a credible alternative set of policies to present to the electorate (something that has rarely been the case in the past), with the additional bonus that it proved possible to force the main elements of these policies upon the LDP Government. A somewhat analogous example from British politics, though more indirect in the nature of its influence, was the Social Democratic Party, formed in 1981, as a pro-European, economic realist alternative to the Labour Party which was passing through a phase in which it was increasingly influenced from the Left. The SDP entered into an electoral alliance with the Liberals, boosted the centrist (Liberal-SDP) vote to 25 per cent at the general elections of 1983, and by splitting the opposition vote, ensured the Conservative victories of 1983 and 1987. But most crucially, the split in the Labour Party, leading to the formation of the SDP and its alliance with the Liberals had a catalytic effect upon the Labour Party, so that under its successive leaders Kinnock, Smith and Blair, it gradually reformed itself into an electorally credible party of modernising reform. Conversely, it is possible to find examples of parties which are in office, but find it difficult to achieve much with the power they have been granted. I am inclined to argue that this was the case with several British governments of the 1960s and 1970s. It is important not to overgeneralise here, because certain important achievements were brought about during that period, including membership of the European Economic Community (later European Union), but on both sides of politics there was an atmosphere of drift, and a sense that all that governments needed to do was to defend the status quo. There is a term that was coined to describe the period, namely ‘Butskellism’, derived from the names of prominent Conservative and Labour leaders of the late 1950s and early 1960s: Butler and Gaitskell. Essentially they both converged on a Keynesian economic consensus, so that whichever party was in power, it did not seem to make a great deal of difference to policy. By the 1970s, however, three interrelated developments had made this Keynesian consensus less tenable. Inflation had become a serious problem, in part because of the first oil crisis, social charges, and thus taxation, were becoming too high to be sustainable, and vested interests, including trade unions, were coming to constrict economic options in various ways. The election of the first Thatcher Government in 1979 marked a

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sharp break with the Butskellite consensus. I am not arguing, of course, that British governments of the 1960s and 1970s did not matter, since they performed many political and administrative functions over those years, but I would argue that they mattered substantially less than governments that preceded them and governments that succeeded them. The Attlee Labour Party Governments between 1945 and 1951 pioneered the National Health Service, seminal education reform and many reforms in the areas of social welfare, housing, transport, the reorganization of industry and foreign policy. The Thatcher Conservative Party Governments from 1979 were of great importance in breaking with the Keynesian consensus and creating the conditions for enhanced economic performance. The Blair Labour Party Government from 1997 also matters in the sense that while accepting the need for balanced budgets, relatively low taxation and the discipline of the market, it takes a creative and vigorous approach to social issues and to constitutional reform. In other words, Britain after the Attlee, Thatcher and Blair governments was (or will be) a markedly different place from what it was before they existed. Similarly in France, the decade of De Gaulle from 1958 marked huge changes in the way many French institutions operated (marked, of course, by the transition from the chaotic Fourth to the more ordered fifth Republic), as to a lesser extent did the left wing coalition under Mitterrand in his early governments from 1981, and perhaps also the contemporary Socialists under Jospin. In Germany the Christian Democrats under Adenauer and Erhard engineered the post-war economic miracle, the Social Democrats under Brandt in the early 1970s pioneered Ostpolitik, and the Christian Democrats under Kohl from 1989 grasped the window of opportunity presented by Gorbachev’s refusal to guarantee Honecker’s regime in East Germany, and achieved the reunification of Germany. This is what I mean when I raise the question; ‘do parties matter?’—or by extension: ‘do governments matter?’. I want now to try to apply these criteria to Japan, and seek an answer to the question: ‘do political parties matter in Japan?’. I want to argue that they have not mattered as much as they should, that this is the result of structural factors inherent in the politico-economic system as a whole, but that they need to matter a great deal more. Indeed, without greatly strengthened political parties, I believe that it will be extremely difficult for Japan (and consequently the rest of Asia) to extricate itself from its current extremely serious and growing economic crisis. Only with strengthened political parties may it be possible for Japan to resume her rightful place as the economic leader of Asia and a major international actor. (Incidentally, one piece of evidence for the drop in the prestige of Japan recently is to be found in the sharply dropping number of applicants for Japan-related courses in British universities). Let us return to Burke’s definition: ‘Party is a body of men united, for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest, upon some particular principle upon which they are all agreed’. He also said that parties are the ‘proper means’ for enabling such men ‘to carry out their common plans into

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execution, with all the power and authority of the state’. Now few would dissent from the judgement that by far the most important ‘political party’ in Japan over the past four decades has been the LDP. But is it really to be considered a political party in the full sense? I want to argue that in terms of Burke’s definition it is not, and that if it cannot reform itself it ought to be superseded by the development of parties that more fully behave as parties ought to behave. Indeed, I am tempted to apply the Burkean definition to the LDP in a mode of caricature, by amending it in the following fashion: ‘The LDP is a body of men (and hardly any women) loosely grouped together by their separate endeavours for the local interest and group endeavours for sectional interests, upon various principles worked out behind closed doors by government ministries, the lowest common denominator among which is agreed on the principle of consensus. The LDP is the proper means for enabling such men to carry into execution the various plans of the bureaucracy, sectional interests and local constituencies, with all the power and authority of the state.’ Now this is, of course, a caricature. No doubt the LDP is rather more effective, at least on occasion, than this suggests. But let us look, for instance, at the way in which the budget is compiled in Japan, by comparison with the way it is compiled in Britain. In Japan, there is a more or less set timetable for the compilation of the budget, taking place over several months, and a great deal of this process is determined in a fairly predictable fashion by the relative power positions of various government ministries and agencies, each pushing its own programmes and projects. At one stage in the timetable, room is made for a political input, whereby pressure from within Parliament can vary the amounts determined by negotiation between the Ministries, but within a rather narrow band. At the end of the process, the budget is announced, but many of the details of it have been generally known for a considerable period. There is also a ‘second budget (zaitō) which gives ministries greater flexibility in responding to changing circumstances etc. By contrast, in the British system, there is also negotiation between ministries, and ministries press their favourite programmes, but a far more important factor is the platform (statement of policy priorities) of the current government, and ministries (including crucially, the Treasury Department) need to devise their proposals with this in the forefront of their minds. Crucially, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, particularly if, as at present in the person of Gordon Brown or earlier, during the Major Government, in the person of Kenneth Clarke, he is a powerful and ambitious politician with a clear political agenda and good understanding of economics, takes charge of the process and puts his personal stamp on the budget within the parameters of his party’s economic and social agenda. The annual budget is only one, though an important, part of the political process. But when we examine it we see how divergent the British and Japanese political process really are, despite all the constitutional similarities. Even though the party in power has at its disposal various methods of influencing political decisions, such as the activities of zoku giin, or the committee system of Parliament and that of the LDP, the ruling party frequently finds itself in the

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position of petitioning one of the ministries or agencies of government, in order to be able to prevail on a matter of policy. For reasons which are very familiar, the powers available to the party or parties that form the government are seriously limited, and indeed Cabinet itself appears to have only limited power. This is a problem that goes beyond the question of parties and concerns the structure of government as a whole. In my opinion reform is desperately needed, and I am sceptical of the capacity of the LDP to react sufficiently creatively to the need for reform to be able to throw over its old connections and habits of action. The political system is in urgent need of reform, and in my opinion a necessary, though not necessarily sufficient condition of such reform is the replacement of the party in power. This is a task that only the Japanese electorate can perform and I hope that it will not be too long before they are given an opportunity to do so.

Part IV Political Factionalism

37 Faction and Ideology in Postwar Japanese Socialism First published in Papers on Modern Japan, 1965. Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University JAPANESE POLITICS have often been characterised by weak leadership, despite a governmental system which in most periods has been highly centralized. In part, this is attributable to the recentness of a feudal age in which ‘clan’ loyalties predominated. This type of localized, affective loyalty, based in turn on a code of ethics which prescribed strong filial piety in a patrilineal, stemfamily system, is still very prevalent in the political structures of contemporary Japan. The 1947 American-sponsored Constitution placed sovereignty in the hands of the people to be exercised through its representatives in the Diet, and the Executive was made responsible to the Diet alone. Despite the great power which a prime minister at the head of a majority party government should be able to exert under such a system, most postwar prime ministers have been comparatively weak and their position insecure. Their power has been limited, not by the machinations of a network of extra-parliamentary ‘imperial advisers’, but by struggles for party leadership between rival faction leaders within their own party. Essentially the same situation confronts the leader of any Japanese political party, even those of the left which repudiate the ‘feudal’ heritage of the conservatives and place great emphasis on ideas. The intention of this paper is to analyse the relationship between faction and ideology in the main Opposition party, the Japan Socialist Party (JSP). 1 It will be the contention of the paper that even within a party emphasizing its popular appeal and using emotive policy issues as its main weapons of opposition to the Government, the intra-party pressures against dynamic outward-going leadership are extremely strong. A typical factional struggle in a Japanese political party has been described as a constant struggle between the factions to improve their relative positions, and with this aim to ‘bind one another in complex alignments and contractual obligations ramifying in various directions so that they form an overlapping and interlocking web’. 2 It should be noted that one faction seldom gains complete control over a party; indeed, nemesis seems to be in store for factions which become too powerful in relation to others in the same party. Such a situation is a temptation for an aspiring leader to break away and set up a faction of his own. The system operates at two levels, that of the faction and that of the alliance of a group of factions. If one such group manoeuvres itself into a position where it can divide among its constituent units the most important party offices, it is

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labelled the ‘main current’. If it is excluded from most of these offices by an opposing group of factions, it is known as the ‘anti-main current’. The dynamics of the system are manifested in erosion of and addition to membership at both these levels. In order to better their position factions may change their allegiance from one aggregation of factions to its rival, and there is thus usually a rough balance between main current and anti-main current, although the composition of each may change over time. The membership of a faction itself fluctuates, tending to increase when its star is in the ascendant and to dwindle when its fortunes are bleak. 3 Sometimes a faction may voluntarily dissolve, but this is unusual. More often a faction may split, either because of the initiative of an aspiring leader, or, less commonly, as a result of a party split. From time to time some political upheaval will destroy for a period the established guidelines of factional alliance, and a period of intense manoeuvring will take place before a new balance is finally established. In the ruling Liberal-Democratic Party (LDP) this process has little to do with differences in ideology. Although differences in political philosophy between factions and their leaders are not lacking, the process of factional manoeuvre is scarcely affected by these considerations. Each faction leader has his own jiban (‘sphere of influence’ or ‘constituency’, but perhaps more accurately translated ‘political machine’)—a network of influential people and interests which contribute funds and deliver votes—but it is unusual for a faction to be tied to a particular interest. Large business concerns, for instance, spread their contributions over a number of factions in the LDP, and even make contributions to the JSP, presumably as a kind of insurance. 4 In the JSP the additional element of ideological differences complicates the issue of factionalism. The existence of an ideological spectrum from right to left has tended to stabilize the process of factional manoeuvre in the sense that alliances cannot take place between factions at opposite ends of the spectrum. The postwar history of the Party indicates that relative factional stability can be attained by two possible types of factional balance: (i) a grouping of left wing factions opposed by a grouping of right wing factions; (ii) an alliance of centre factions with extremes of right and left individually opposed to the ‘main current’. The first has been the more prevalent, and was carried to extremes during four years of the postwar period (1951–55) when left and right factions existed as separate parties. The second only existed in ‘pure’ form between 1955 and 1959. There have also been periods which may be called transitional. 5 It is possible, however, to make another, long-term division in postwar JSP history, with the dividing line placed at about 1960. This may be called a division between generations of leadership. The leaders of Japanese socialism in the twentieth century may be easily divided into three such ‘generations’, each corresponding with a particular burst of activity and organization between which, for various reasons, new leaders were not thrown up. The first consisted of those leaders concerned in the embryo left wing movements at the turn of the century, the second were the leaders of socialist groups in the comparatively

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‘liberal’ era of the 1920’s (particularly after the grant of manhood suffrage in 1925), and the third were those leaders whose minds were formed under the stimulus of post-World War II democratic reforms. In the period from 1945 to 1960 by far the most important of these ‘generations’ was the second. 6 When the JSP was founded in late 1945, it was composed of a number of factions, the most important of which were the personnel of the three separate parties into which the socialist movement had split in 1926. The differences between these three factions were both personal and ideological. Although all three had been reunited in a single socialist party between 1932 and 1937, they had never been welded into a really solid unit. 7 Of these the most right wing was the Nishio faction, whose ideology was that of gradual social reform through democratic processes, and unbending opposition to communism. 8 It showed great consistency in its adherence to these principles. This was principally because of two factors: firstly Nishio himself, a powerful leader of long standing, created a very active group with strong personal loyalty to himself, and had the solid support of certain right wing trade unions; 9 secondly, the faction’s position on the extreme right of the postwar Socialist Party deprived it of leadership after the immediate postwar period (when the faction took a leading role in the coalition governments of 1947–48), and thus it did not have the motivations for compromise of principles which a share in Party leadership gave to the other factions. The most left wing faction of the original three was a Marxist group called the Suzuki faction. It also held over a long period a consistent ideological position and was loyal to an established leadership which enabled it to play the part of a ‘main current’ faction for much of the 1950’s. Its Marxism was of a peculiarly ‘national’ kind which enabled it to avoid close association with the Communist Party. The division between the Suzuki faction and the Communist Party was derived from an intense ideological debate in the late 1920’s on the nature of revolution as required by the stage of Japanese society. The Communists (tutored by the Comintern) maintained that despite the Meiji Restoration of 1868 Japan was still, in essence, a feudal society, and that therefore a ‘bourgeoisdemocratic’ revolution must precede the final proletarian-socialist revolution. The dissident Marxists, on the other hand, held that Japan since the Meiji Restoration was already a ‘bourgeois-democratic’ society, and that a one-stage proletarian revolution should be the Marxist goal. 10 The Suzuki faction, heir to this independent tradition of ‘national’ Marxism (‘national’ both in the sense of independence from Moscow’s dictates and by the fact that Japan was said to be at an ‘advanced’ stage of development) was able successfully to capitalise on ‘national’ feeling in postwar Japan in a way that for the most part eluded the Communist Party. 11 The faction was powerfully supported in the trade union movement, and this served to strengthen its position in the Party. The third faction was a centre group, the Kawakami faction. Since it derived from a group of Socialists who in 1926 had opposed the left-right split in the movement and had founded a centre party to reunite it, the faction had a tradition of compromise. A number of other factors contributed to its lack of

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cohe-sion and relatively inconsistent treatment of principle in the postwar period. Firstly, it contained a number of leaders of comparable stature. Secondly, the ideological background of its leaders was said to be intellectually broad, deriving partly from Marxist and partly from democratic-socialist roots. 12 Thirdly, it had weak trade union support. Fourthly, and perhaps the most important, was the position which the faction occupied on the ideological spectrum of the party. During 1954 and 1955 it took the initiative in attempts to reunite the Left Wing and Right Wing Socialist Parties, against the opposition in its own Right Wing Party of the more extreme Nishio faction. Thus it secured for itself a position within the leadership group of the united Socialist Party born towards the end of 1955. The weakness of its cohesion was, however, demonstrated when part of its membership broke away to join the Nishio faction in founding the right wing Democratic Socialist Party in 1959 Besides these original ‘founding’ factions of the JSP, 13 there were three factions which came into existence after the war, all of the left. The most important of these was the Wada faction. Founded by a group of ex-bureaucrats, this faction adopted an ideological position identical to that of the Suzuki faction. The factional rivalry between the two was nevertheless intense. Excluded from the ‘main current’ by the dominant Suzuki faction, it generally sought (before 1961) allies on the far left. This is a good indication of the purely factional struggle for influence in the Party—closely resembling that of the Liberal-Democratic Party—which lay underneath the ideological differences characterizing a Socialist movement. The Nomizo faction was the only example within the party of a faction representing a non-labour interest, that of the Japan Farmers Union. The lack of importance attached by the Party as a whole to agriculture was shown in the weakness of this faction, whose membership remained at five or six members in the Diet. 14 Finally, a faction known as Heiwa Dōshikai occupied an ideological position on the extreme left of the Party. It could be considered a primarily ideological group, devoted to promoting views close to those of the Communist Party and strongly opposed to the ‘national’ Marxism of the Suzuki faction. The extreme position taken by this faction deprived it of the chance of participation in any conceivable ‘main current’, although its ideological influence in the Party was not entirely negligible. 16 In its ideological consistency, and consequent exclusion from the central councils of the Party, it may be compared to the Nishio faction on the far right. The interplay of faction and ideology in the JSP resulted, after the 1955 reunification agreement, in a factional balance resting on the leadership of two factions, those of Suzuki and Kawakami, whose views on ideological issues covered a ‘moderate’ field of opinion. Because of leftist trends in the trade unions, and because of the greater strength and cohesion of the Suzuki faction, the JSP under its ‘moderate’ leadership moved steadily towards the left. The continuance of this trend precipitated the Nishio faction (and part of the Kawakami faction) out of the party in October 1959. 17

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This right wing secession was in a sense a turning point in the Party’s factional and ideological development. Since, on previous form, greater ideological harmony might have been expected to result from the departure of the Party’s ‘right wing extremists’, it is desirable to explain why this did not turn out to be the case. On the one hand the factional balance which had been established by the unification agreement of 1955 was upset, and a transition period could be expected before the achievement of a new balance. On the other hand the monopoly of power by the second ‘generation’ leaders, who had dominated their factions, and thus the Party, since the war, broke down at about the same time. Nishio left the Party in October 1959, Suzuki retired from Party leadership in February 1960, Asanuma (one of the top leaders of the Kawakami faction, who had held the Secretary-Generalship of the Party since 1955 under Suzuki) was assassinated in October 1960. In this situation what amounted to a new ideology, challenging established orthodoxy, was introduced into the Party. This was the theory of ‘Structural Reform’. The chief sponsor of this theory was a hitherto little-known member of the Suzuki faction, called Eda, who had risen, by a series of chances, to the highest office in the Party. The implications of Structural Reform were that the Party and the trade unions could, by slow and steady pressure, with strategic withdrawals where necessary, force changes in business and Government policies towards labour. Eventually an atmosphere favourable to labour would be created, and Socialist revolution could take place.18 This contrasted with left wing theories hitherto, that all efforts should be concentrated on the achievement of revolution as such, since partial reform was largely futile. 19 The difference thus lay in the greater flexibility of method which Structural Reform implied, combined with inflexibility in the final aim of socialist revolution. There were a number of reasons why 1960 was an opportune time for the introduction of a new type of thinking in the JSP. Electoral stagnation, 20 economic prosperity which a new conservative prime minister was putting to his electoral advantage, and the failure of militant and uncompromising struggles to achieve their aims 21 indicated that a more flexible approach might be wise. 22 Secondly, this was a good time for a second-ranking party-politician such as Eda to make a bid for long-term leadership of the party. As has already been indicated, the existing balance of factions had broken down and important members of the top leadership had gone. The nature of Structural Reform itself was such as to make it possible for Eda to associate it with himself without fear of usurpation by other established ideologues. For one thing, it was initially uncertain to members of the Party whether the new theory was to the right or to the left of existing orthodoxy. 23 In that it provided for greater flexibility and compromise in labour’s dealings with Government and capital, it was clearly a move to the right. On the other hand since it had been taken from Togliatti’s ideas in the Italian Communist Party and was also championed by a dissident faction of the Japanese Communist Party (some of whose members subsequently

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became ‘Structural Reformers’ in the JSP), it appeared to be an import from the left. (Later it came to be generally regarded as a step to the right). The tactics employed by Eda in the subsequent struggle for power are of great interest. Paradoxically his own position within the Suzuki faction had not been that of heir-apparent to the faction’s leader. That position belonged to one Sasaki, a skilful behind-the-scenes factional manipulator. Sasaki, for his own reasons, had allowed Eda to be preferred to himself as the faction’s candidate for the Secretary-Generalship in March 1960, and Eda’s temporary accession to the Chairmanship in late 1960 was an event that no one could have foreseen. Eda thus proceeded to attempt to consolidate his position, not on the basis of the strength of his faction, upon which he could not rely, but upon the appeal of a body of ideology which he sought to popularise within the Party without the backing of a faction. In this he was aided by two factors. Firstly, the theory had been discussed by some Party officials as early as the end of 1958, although it gained no publicity at the time. By 1960 it had gained the enthusiastic endorsement of a body of younger officials in the Party secretariat. The officials may be considered to belong to the third ‘generation’ of leadership—those whose minds were formed in the early postwar years. Although Eda did not belong to this ‘generation’, the fact that he was not a member of the top leadership which had been monopolized by the second ‘generation’ probably made him an attractive leader for them. Secondly, a very important aspect of the situation was the personality of Eda himself. He first made a name for himself as a national figure by his dynamic performance in the television debates between the leaders of the main parties preceding the Lower House general election of November 1960. From then on, by assiduously keeping himself in the public eye, he gained for himself a personal ‘charismatic’ reputation which did not depend on the far more usual ‘slippery pole’ of factional manoeuvre. 24 By gaining control of the publicity organs of the Party he was able to obtain a platform for his own ideas and for the projection of his personality. An example of Eda’s methods which in the end fatally misfired was the socalled ‘vision’ controversy of 1962. In a speech at Nikkō in July of that year, Eda said that Japanese Socialists should seek to create a society inspired by four ideals: a uniformly high standard of living, as in America; a comprehensive system of social security, as in the Soviet Union; British standards of parliamentary democracy; and Japan’s pacifist Constitution. 25 In the subsequent controversy Eda and his supporters maintained that such a ‘vision’ of socialism was necessary to attract votes to the Party from wider strata of the society, while his opponents attacked it as an opportunistic betrayal of socialist principles. The denouement of this controversy was apparently paradoxical. At the Party’s annual Congress of November 1962, a resolution strongly critical of Eda and his views was passed by a small margin. Eda therefore stood down from the Secretary-Generalship. Two days later, in the election of a successor, Eda’s closest ideological associate, Narita, easily defeated the candidate from the antiStructural Reform group within the Party. 26 The lesson of Eda’s defeat and the success of Narita seems to be that Eda’s

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bid for power by methods that were new to the Party had the effect of making factional alignments much less predictable than they had been when the Party’s factions could be confidently ranged along an ideological spectrum, according to which alliances and hostilities were formed. By 1962, it seems that divisions involving theory and policy could take place on a plane which did not coincide with factional differences. Thus the defeat of the ‘vision’ did not necessarily entail that the post of Secretary-General would fall into the hands of the factional grouping opposed to Eda. The first vote concerned ideology, the second followed factional alignments built up over the preceding period. These factional alignments are perhaps to be seen as an attempt to create a new factional balance to replace the balance which had broken down by 1960. The important point is that in ideological terms the new balance involved alliances between strange bedfellows. In 1960 the most powerful faction in the Party was the Suzuki faction. When Structural Reform was first officially introduced to the Party in its election statement for the November 1960 Lower House general election, the initial reactions of the faction and its acknowledged leader, Sasaki, were guarded, but the differences between Eda and Narita on the one hand and the rest of the faction on the other gradually hardened, until towards the end of 1961 the two proponents of Structural Reform (with one or two sympathisers) seceded from the faction. It is difficult, however, to call Eda and his friends a ‘faction’, and Eda did not (until much later) attempt to create his own autonomous faction. The Suzuki faction under Sasaki thus sought allies on the left. The most dogmatic opponent of Structural Reform was the extreme left wing Heiwa Dōshikai. Despite the fact that the Suzuki faction and Heiwa Dōshikai maintained different brands of Marxism, and had long been ideologically opposed, 27 (although there was a precedent also for temporary common action 28 ) the two factions now came to form the basis of an ‘anti-main current’. This alliance occasionally proved embarrassing. Thus in January 1962 Suzuki, who had retired from the leadership of his faction but maintained close liaison with it, headed a Party delegation (in which Heiwa Dōshikai representation was strong) to Peking. Despite prior assurances that he would not do so, Suzuki reaffirmed the ‘Asanuma statement’ of 1959 that ‘American imperialism is the common enemy of the Japanese and Chinese peoples’. 29 Suzuki’s action caused a furore in the Party, and six months later Suzuki denied that he had been responsible for the statement, which he said had been made on the initiative of the Heiwa Dōshikai members of the delegation. The motives for this retraction remain obscure, but it is reasonable to infer that it reflected a desire on the part of Suzuki to assert the independence of his faction in the face of ideologically militant and embarrassing factional allies. 30 Among the opponents of Structural Reform could also be numbered the small Nomizo faction, which opposed the ‘main current’ on the grounds that it paid insufficient attention to the demands of agriculture. Of the factions which came to support Eda, the Kawakami faction was in a weak position after its split in 1959. It played a secondary role within the

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Structural Reform camp in return for the support of the other main-current factions for the Chairmanship of Kawakami. The Wada faction, on the other hand, after an initial period of jockeying for position, moved from its former alliance with the extreme left wing groups into an alignment with the ‘Structural Reform’ leadership, which apparently placed it well to the right of centre. Undoubtedly the main motive of its actions was to put Wada in a position where he would have a good chance of being elected to the Chairmanship. It also indicates (as does the leftist alliance of the Suzuki faction) that the process of factional manoeuvre after 1960 tended to become more like that which was typical of conservative parties. There were strong ideological differences between different factions within the Party but factional manoeuvre and the composition of main currents and anti-main currents had come to take place on a different, and often conflicting plane from these. While the leaders of the Socialist groups of the 1920’s continued to govern JSP factions, factional and ideological conflicts would generally follow the same groove, but after 1960 this was scarcely the case. Prewar Socialist factions were small groups, consisting in most cases of the close personal following of a single leader, whose ideological teachings they existed to implement. The JSP as formed after the war was an uneasy coalition of these elements, which retained their strong separate beliefs and loyalties, together with much of their original membership. If we look, however, at the Party as it functioned after 1960, we may distinguish two types of faction, those whose Diet membership is stable and small, and those where it is fluid and large. Different faction lists generally agree on the number of members in the Nomizo faction (closely associated with agriculture) and in Heiwa Dōshikai (distinguished from the rest of the Party by its pro-Communism). These small, stable factions have clearly defined aims. They are not in a position seriously to contemplate control of the Party. On the other hand the main contenders for Party leadership have been three factions (Kawakami, Wada and Suzuki) with a large but most ill-defined membership, and one (the Eda ‘faction’) which is so small that it can hardly be called a faction at all. The striking characteristic of this latter group of factions is that each possesses a ‘hard core’, or closely cohesive leadership group, which competes for effective control of the Party with thard cores’ of other factions. The uniqueness of the Eda faction has been that it was nothing but a ‘hard core’. The fact that Eda was able for a while to gain the allegiance of a ‘main current’ without the backing of a substantial faction may indicate that such backing is no longer essential to a leader able to control the Party by force of his ideas and his personal popularity. Nevertheless, the defeat of Eda in 1962 perhaps indicates the limits of such an approach to leadership in the Japanese context. Eda was not a successful charismatic party leader in the way that could be said of Nenni of the Italian Socialist Party. Nenni’s personal success in leading his party from a close alliance with the Communist Party in the immediate postwar years into participation in a left-of-centre coalition government in the early 1960’s

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depended on certain social and political conditions not present in Japan. 31 Nenni exercised his hold over the mass following of his party (which was as much split into factions—though of a different kind—as the JSP) by his almost unchallenged position as a veteran party leader and by his reputation as a hero of the anti-fascist resistance during World War II. In contrast) the JSP did not have a similar ‘heroic’ experience to which it could make reference. Large sections of the movement had, passively or actively, cooperated with the militarists, and those who had not (including especially the Communists) had spent the war in prison or in exile, without being able in any way to influence the course of events. Eda was an unknown politician when circumstances thrust leadership upon him, and his temporary success was due to his ability to seize in an enterprising manner opportunities which arose as a result of the realignment of factions currently taking place. Again, the organisational character of the two parties was markedly different. The personal membership of the Italian Socialist Party was about half a million, 32 whereas that of the JSP never exceeded 60,000, 33 of which it is claimed that not more than five to ten thousand were active members. 34 Moreover, whereas the Italian Socialists were well entrenched in local administration in many areas of Italy, the JSP was always conspicuously less successful in local elections (especially in elections for city, town and village councils) than in the national elections. 35 Here we come upon a fundamental difference between the organisation of the two parties. However oligarchic the structure of the Italian Socialist Party might be, it possessed a dedicated grassroots following among the working class, prepared to identify itself with the party as well as to vote for it. This was not, however, the case in the JSP. There seem to be two main reasons for this difference. Firstly, the roots of socialism in Japan were principally intellectual. Because of persecution and generally unfavourable political conditions, those leaders who tried to organise socialist movements with a mass backing before World War II had little success, and the socialist parties which proliferated after 1925 remained little more than intellectual discussion groups or personal support groups of a particular leader, or both. In Italy, on the other hand, there were widespread working class socialist traditions, which survived the fascist suppression. Secondly, the Japanese tradition of fragmented elitist leadership discouraged the formation of a mass base even for a left wing party. As was pointed out by Duverger, strong leadership founded on charismatic appeal is more feasible in a ‘branch’ party with a mass base than in the ‘caucus’ party which he considered to be typical of bourgeois political parties. 36 By analogy a party which is a loose amalgam of Japanese-type factions must be a particularly hard organization on which to impose strong leadership. This account of faction and ideology in the JSP thus suggests the following conclusions: The JSP (like Japanese government as a whole) is a highly centralized organization, in which little effort is made to foster mass participation.

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At the same time it is a coalition of several factions engaged in an unceasing struggle for power. The realignment of factions which began in 1960 differed from previous periods of transition in that the main current and anti-main current which were formed as its end-product were not simply distinguishable as a left wing group confronting a right wing group (although they were often so called). One leading member of the present main current (Katsumata, of the Wada faction) was recently quoted as saying: ‘Except for the Kawakami faction both main current and anti-main current are of the left. The main current, however, should be called the ‘modern’ group and the anti-main current the ‘conservatives group’. 37 It is quite arguable that the long term effect of the introduction of Structural Reform into the JSP may be to modernize its ideological outlook. The events of the past four years, however, give little indication that the dynamics of the factional system are to be modernised. Rather, the factions seem to have shaken off ideological restraints and to have become similar to conservative factions. As Eda found, an attempt to play the game by different rules holds little prospect of lasting success. NOTES 1. At the Lower House general election of November 1963 the JSP elected 144 members (out of a total number of 467 seats) with 29.03% of the votes, while the Communist Party elected 5 members with 4.01% of the votes and the right-socialist Democratic Socialist Party elected 23 members with 7.37% of the votes. 2. K.Kawai, Japan’s American Interlude, Chicago, 1960, p. 115. 3. Thus, for instance, the Kawakami faction of the JSP lost the allegiance of a number of its rank and file members during the Occupation, when its top men (including Kawakami himself) were subject to the Purge. (Information supplied by Kawakami’s son, interviewed 13 March 1963.) 4. See ‘How the Eight LDP “Divisions” Raise their Funds’, Seikai Orai, February 1963 (as translated in American Embassy, Tōkyō, Summaries of Selected Japanese Magazines, 11 March 1963), and F.C.Langdon, ‘Organised Interests in Japan and their Influence on Political Parties’, Pacific Affairs, Autumn 1961, pp. 271–278. 5. A rough classification along these lines may be made as follows: 1945–49

Right=main current Left=anti-main current.

1950–51

Transition (increasing left wing influence).

1951–55

Separate left and right wing parties.

1955

Reunification.

Faction and ideology in postwar Japanese socialism 1955–59

547

Left and right moderates=main current. Left and right extremes=(fragmented) anti-main current.

1959

Extreme right forms separate party (including some moderates).

1959–61

Transition; splits within factions, and new balance forming.

1962—

Right=main current (?) Left=anti-main current.

6. See G.O.Totten, ‘Problems of Japanese Socialist Leadership’, Pacific Affairs, June 1955, pp. 160–169. 7. Accounts of the prewar socialist movement are given in K.Akamatsu, Nihon shakai undo shi, Tōkyō, Iwanami Shinshō, January 1952, and M.Kono, Nihon shakai seitō shi, Tōkyō, Chūō Koronsha, September 1960. 8. See Nishio’s autobiography: S.Nishio, Taishū to tomo ni, Tokyo, Sekaisha, October 1951. 9. Especially the textile workers’ and seamen’s unions. 10. For an account of the controversy in the 1920’s see Shakai Keizai Rōdō Kenkyūjo, Nihon minshu kakumei ronsō shi, Tōkyō, Itō Shōten, March 1947. 11. The JSP policy of neutralism, initially sponsored and consistently championed by the Suzuki faction, was in part a manifestation of left wing nationalism in this sense. 12. See K.Yanada, Nihon Shakaitō, Tōkyō, Hōbunsha, November 1956, p. 88. This view was confirmed in interviews during 1962–63 with JSP members. 13. A fourth ‘founding’ faction has been ignored, since it seceded from the party in 1948. 14. A list of faction membership in early 1963 is to be found in Nihon Seikei Shimbunsha, Kokkai Binran, Tokyo, January 1963. Faction membership lists are occasionally drawn up by national newspapers, although widely differing estimates are often given. 15. Literally ‘Peace Comrades Association’. 16. This faction has frequently disputed basic tenets of the party’s policy in relation to e. g. neutralism, Soviet nuclear testing (in 1961), and the SinoSoviet dispute. 17. For a detailed analysis of the Nishio split, see D.C.S.Sissons, ‘Recent Developments in Japan’s Socialist Movement’, Far Eastern Survey, March and June 1960. 18. For an early statement of Structural Reform, see ‘Kōzō kaikaku ron no tatakai’, Shakai Shimpō, 1 January 1961, p. 1. 19. See for instance the periodical, Shakaishugi, passim. 20. In the 1958 Lower House elections the Socialist percentage of votes was 32.94%. In 1960 it had dropped to 27.56%. If we add, however, the 8.77% obtained by the newly formed Democratic Socialist Party, we see that the

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total Socialist vote had risen to 36.33%. (At the Lower House election of November 1963 the JSP won 29.03% and the Democratic Socialist Party 7.37%.) 21. Especially a prolonged strike at the Miike coalmine in Kyūshū and the campaign against the revision of the Japan-United States Security Treaty. 22. See S.Eda, ‘Shakaitō kōryo to kōzō kaikaku ron no rosen’, Keizai Hyōron, supplement on Japanese progressive parties, June 1961, pp. 2–9, at pp. 2–3. 23. See for instance ‘Shakaitō no kōzō kaikaku’, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, 7 January 1961. 24. He was widely known as the ‘Madam-killer’. 25. Eda’s ‘Nikkō speech’ and the most important articles in the subsequent controversy, are reprinted in translation in Japan Socialist Review (English Language), 1 December 1962, pp. 9–40. 26. For details, see Asahi Shimbun (morning edition), 28 and 30 November 1962. 27. Ideological differences between them had nearly split the Left Socialist Party in 1953. 28. In the period leading up to the secession of the Nishio faction in 1959. 29. This was a remark made informally by Asanuma, but seized upon by the Chinese press, which apparently quoted it out of context. Although it subsequently damaged the Party’s reputation in Japan, for reasons perhaps of ‘face’ it was not repudiated. 30. For an account by one of the delegation’s members of what transpired during its visit to Peking, see M.Chiba, ‘Chūgoku to Shakaitō no tachiba’, Hokkaidō Shimbun (evening edition), 17 January 1962. 31. For a stimulating discussion of the Italian Socialist Party’s post-war path, see R. Zariski, ‘The Italian Socialist Party: A Case Study in Factional Conflict’, American Political Science Review, June 1962, pp. 372–390. For a close analysis of the changing composition of the ruling group in the party over the period 1947–62, see A.Landolfi, ‘Partito Socialista italiano: struttura, organi dirigenti, correnti’, Tempi Moderni, January –March 1962, pp. 3–45. See especially pp. 31–34. 32. For figures, see loc. cit., p. 13. 33. For recent official membership figures, see Kokumin Seiji Nenkan, Tokyo, JSP, 1962, p. 529, and Ibid., 1963, p. 674. 34. F.Taguchi, Nihon no kakushin seiryoku, Tōkyō, Kōbundō, November 1961, p. 18. 35. Despite the fact that the JSP attained 33% of the total vote in the Lower House general election of 1958, its results in the 1959 local elections were as follows: Percentage of seats Prefectural councillors

21.2%

Prefectural governors

5.0%

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Municipal district, town and village councillors

4.2%

Municipal district, town and village mayors

1.4%

In all these categories except the first, the proportion of independents was extremely high, but few of these were of Socialist persuasion. Source: Kokumin Seiji Nenkan, 1962, p. 501. 36. See M.Duverger, Les Partis Politiques (Paris, 1951), pp. 67–72. 37. Quoted in Mainichi Shimbun (morning edition), 30 April 1964.

38 A Comparison of Political Factionalism in Japan and India First published in The Australian Journal of Politics and History, Vol. XVI, No. 3, December 1970 MOST STUDIES of political factionalism begin with attempts to define the terms ‘faction’ and ‘factionalism’. The resultant definitions are then regarded as having universal validity, irrespective of time, place, or political culture. The use of this procedure, in our opinion, leads either to the unwarranted universalization of causal relationships having limited scope, or to generalizations which are too broad to be of much practical value. It is true, of course, that definitions are normally generalizations based on a variety of relevant observed phenomena, and purport to capture what is essential to the concept being defined. This involves no great difficulty where a given usage of a term is generally accepted and where those who use it are consistent in their terminology. Where, however, there is wide divergence between the uses commonly made of a term, where, in other words, it is relatively speaking ‘undefined’, there is considerable danger in beginning from a stated definition. In such a case it is the definition itself that has to be justified and should rather be an end-product of the investigation. Even so, the definition may still be quite justifiably challenged by somebody who simply prefers to use the term in a different way. This is not, of course, to say that argument on the subject is therefore pointless, since there may be substantive points to be made in support of either side, or indeed of both. Much of the argument will be concerned with the usefulness of the respective definitions. The question of whether they ‘fit the facts’ may well be a secondary one, since there is disagreement about which facts the term itself is supposed to fit. The term ‘faction’ lies in this limbo of serious and fundamental semantic disagreement. In part this may be because it is only relatively recently that it has come to the attention of scholars as a potentially useful tool for social and political analysis. 1 It may be argued that the concept has an often unrecognized potential for the unravelling of certain problems of political analysis, and that it can fruitfully be used to illuminate a complex and coherent set of political phenomena which are of considerable practical importance especially in certain types of political systems. There is a particularly striking similarity between what is generally known as ‘political factionalism’ in Japan and in India, despite the obvious dissimilarities of their two political systems. It is the primary aim of this paper to explore these similarities (as well as the differences), in the belief that the general patterns of factional behaviour in the two countries are an important aspect of their political

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systems, and may possibly have application to other political systems as well. First, however, it is necessary to elaborate the initial problem about definitions, by discussing two ways in which it has been and can be approached. Many studies of factionalism have taken their starting point from Lasswell’s classic definition of ‘faction’, published before the war in the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences. 2 This definition consists essentially of four elements: 1. That factions are parts of larger units. 2. That they work for the advancement of particular persons or policies. 3. That they arise in the course of the struggle for power and thus differ from each other, not on fundamental principles, but on details of the application of these principles. 4. That factions are impermanent, whereas parties are ‘rather permanent’, and that therefore past a certain point a ‘solidification’ of factional divisions turns the factions concerned into parties in their own right. There are a number of difficulties with this approach, but we wish to concentrate on the fourth element in it, which has proved especially influential. At first sight the permanence/impermanence dichotomy is an attractively simple way of distinguishing parties from factions. It implies, essentially, that parties, being permanent, develop regular organization, and a political programme or set of aims which they can realistically seek to implement over a period of time. Factions in contrast, being relatively evanescent (or intermittent), can manage little in the way of permanent organization, and are therefore quite ineffective except in the very short term. A number of writers, particularly anthropologists, studying village society in various parts of the world, have attempted to use this distinction as a key to understanding factionalism. For instance, Raymond Firth agrees that the term ‘faction’ is not clearly defined, but thinks that an important feature of factions is that they ‘tend to become activated on specific occasions and not as a regularly recurring feature’. 3 Firth also ties this in with his concept of factions as having certain organizational characteristics which distinguish them from ‘corporate’ groups—notably the looseness and informality of their organization and the structurally diverse nature of their recruitment. 4 Some other anthropologists have taken over the permanence/impermanence dichotomy and have refused to apply the term ‘faction’ to most of the groupings in the societies they are studying. They reserve it for temporary coalitions of forces within a more permanent group—coalitions that evaporate once a particular issue is settled. 5 A number of political scientists have also adopted this criterion as a major orientating beacon for their research into factions. 6 This is, of course, a perfectly legitimate procedure, both because definitions are not by their nature falsifiable, and also because many groups commonly called ‘factions’ do have the characteristics referred to. The existence, however, of contrary examples in common usage and experience, should give some cause for reconsideration. It would seem that in two quite different sorts of situation the permanence/impermanence dichotomy

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breaks down, at least so far as usage is concerned. One is typical of the very early stages of the development of political parties, when parties themselves, if they exist at all in any real sense, have a very low degree of institutionalization. This is a situation in which ‘factions’—in the sense of small particularistic groupings jockeying for power—are likely to flourish. Here the ‘faction’ may be more substantial and even more permanent than the ‘party’ of which it may (or may not) be a part. (Huntington acknowledges the existence of what he calls ‘preparty factions’). 7 A second example of relatively permanent ‘factions’ is provided by Japan. Here political factions in many cases are relatively highly institutionalised, having, for instance, in the case of the twelve or more factions of the ruling Liberal-Democratic Party (LDP), permanent offices, regular publications and even moderately sophisticated organizations of their own. Moreover, some factions—particularly those of the Japan Socialist Party (JSP) during the 1950s—had existed virtually intact since the late 1920s, despite the fact that the JSP was only founded in 1945. Now it would follow from Lasswell’s definition that ‘factions’ having this degree of permanence should be called ‘parties’. There may indeed be some sense in this. One recent writer has developed a gaines theory approach to factional coalitions within the LDP which implies a close similarity between the ‘factions’ of the LDP and the ‘parties’ of Fourth Republic France and contemporary Italy.8 This theory, however, is forced to play down the fact that there is a great difference in sociological background between a Japanese faction and a French or Italian party. Moreover, it seems reasonable to suppose that the politics of a country whose political parties are loose coalitions of organized and cohesive factions will be very different in style from the politics of a country where factions are ephemeral and loosely-organized sub-units of highly structered parties. If we define ‘faction’ in such a way as to exclude the former, we may well overlook significant similarities between ‘factions’ in the two situations. In this writer’s opinion, the similarities are more interesting than the differences. The second definitional approach to the distinction between ‘party’ and ‘faction’ is to regard any sub-unit of a larger group as a ‘faction’ of that group. 9 (This is subject to the proviso that it be not simply the instrument of the larger group, as in the case of a local branch of a party. It would of course be possible for a local branch to constitute a ‘faction’ from the point of view of the party, but only if it were to some degree at least ‘insubordinate’. In some political parties it is not uncommon for local branches—or sections within local branches—to be affiliated with party-wide factions. A branch which is itself a faction would probably be something of a rarity). From this point of view, while the Bevanites were a ‘faction’ within the British Labour Party during the 1950s, the Labour Party itself (or any other party) would be a ‘faction’ from the point of view of the state. 10 This may not be so strange as it sounds, when one considers that for some contemporaries of Edmund Burke (though not for Burke himself), as similarly for the traditional

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leaders of many backward states in the world today, the terms ‘faction’ and ‘party’ differ little, each bearing the pejorative connotations of divisiveness, self-seeking and threat to an apparently insecure national unity. The extent to which political parties are accepted as legitimate naturally depends upon how far they are regarded as integrated into the political structure of the state. A governing party may have become so far identified (at least in the eyes of its leaders) with the state itself that it may be virtually meaningless to regard it as in any sense ‘factional’ from the state’s point of view. On the other hand, a revolutionary party is the extreme case of factionalism from the perspective of the state. Following this line of reasoning we are led to an explanation of the fact that in most western political systems ‘faction’ remains a pejorative word, while ‘party’, though it used to bear such a connotation, no longer does. The key point is that whereas parties have been ‘domesticated’ and (to use Huntington’s term) ‘institutionalized’, intra-party factions have not, and are therefore still widely regarded as excrescences upon the smooth surface of the body politic. 11 In some non-western politics, on the other hand, the form of factional organization which prevails is well grounded in the indigenous norms of social interaction, and therefore tends to be regarded in a different light. For this reason, as we shall argue, there is less point in attempting to develop a general theory of factionalism of the kind outlined above than there is in comparing factional behaviour as it occurs in political systems having a common element in their political cultures. The importance of political factions within Japanese political parties has been noted by many political scientists and historians, both western and Japanese. 12 There is fairly general agreement among these writers that the social origin of political factions must be sought in the ‘traditional’ 13 Japanese family of the period before industrialization. The pattern of social relationships typically embodied in the ‘traditional’ family was strongly influenced by the Confucian virtues of filial piety, mutual obligation and intense group loyalty and exclusiveness. Vertical loyalties (especially between father and son) were more important than horizontal loyalties (e.g., between husband and wife), and relationships were strongly affective, rather than instrumental. During what we may for convenience call the period of modernization (c. 1868 to the present day) the ‘traditional’ family was brought into service as a model for a variety of group relationships which did not embody actual blood ties. Two examples were the ‘emperor system’ (i.e. the Japanese family painted on a national canvas) and industrial firms, many of which operate virtually as ‘pseudo-families’. (Thus permanent employees may not leave and will not be dismissed; there is strict progression up the ladder of advancement according to seniority; bonds of affection—often cemented by generous fringe benefits—tend to develop between employer and employees, etc.). The proved extensibility of the family system as it was known in the pre-modern era depended in part upon its viability and tenacity as a form of social organization, and in part upon the conscious policies of Japanese governments between 1868 and 1945, which found it a convenient tool for the purposes of social discipline and national integration. An

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indigenous social pattern was pressed into service as a state ideology, and therefore probably the natural evolution of the former was somewhat retarded. The political faction in Japan is frequently described in terms of ‘oyabunkobun’ relationships, that is, relationships between ‘quasi-parents’ and ‘quasichildren’, 14 the whole being characterised by affectivity, hierarchy, mutual loyalty and obligation, and group exclusiveness. To use a perhaps not wholly inappropriate terminology, it is a Gemeinschaft rather than a Gesellschaft. Members of the faction are said to experience a gratifying sense of ‘belonging’, which may be expressed in terms of some definable ideology or purpose, or may simply be a question—as one writer puts it—of ‘cameraderie’. 15 The common sociological origin of Japanese political factions is shown in the recurrence of identifiable roles for instance those of ‘administrator’, ‘theoretician’, ‘policy-specialist’, ‘agitator’, as well as the all-important role of leader. 16 That the faction’s leader is also its king-pin is shown by the fact that a grave crisis usually besets a faction when its leader either retires or dies. Often there will be a struggle for leadership between two or more second-ranking members of the faction (sometimes referred to as ‘quasi-cousins’), 17 and in order to prevent the faction from splitting a new leader will have to give good evidence that he is able to perform the functions of leadership as effectively as his revered predecessor. The frequency with which unbridgeable cleavages develop within a faction upon the departure of its leader is in part a result of the fact that a new leader does not necessarily inherit the sources of patronage that were available to the previous one. (This is particularly true of the sources of political funds, which tend to run dry upon the death of a faction leader). This is not so surprising when one considers that the leader was the original magnet around which the faction members came together. The death of the leader is rather like the switching off of a magnetic field. Nevertheless, it would be quite erroneous to treat Japanese political factions entirely in terms of a ‘pure’ type based on the traditional Japanese family. For one thing, factions are well integrated into the complex pattern of Japanese politics, and are subject to a wide variety of pressures to which in large measure they have had to adapt. The functions actually performed by political factions in Japan are not entirely irrelevant to the needs of a complex and sophisticated political system. 18 This is not, of course, to argue that they are a necessary feature of that system, nor that the functions which they perform could not be performed if they did not exist, but merely that factionalism is not unaffected by the political system within which it operates. For instance, most factions have a ‘hard-core’ of devoted followers, and a ‘periphery’ of the less committed). Secondly, although factionalism is a clearly recognizable pattern in Japanese politics, there is no lack of variety if one compares different factions and the things they do. This is indeed a rich field for investigation. The difficulties inherent in any attempt to understand the nature and significance of Japanese political factionalism may be appreciated if one examines the controversy to which its existence has given rise, both in Japan itself and among Western observers. Undoubtedly, it has had more critics than

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defenders, not only among Western (mainly American) political scientists and others, but also among articulate Japanese, who tend to be quicker to point out the demerits than the merits of their political institutions and practices. The Japanese vernacular press, which cultivates an obsessional interest in the more murky details of factional intrigue, loses no opportunity to condemn factionalism in all its aspects, although in some ways it also panders to it. The standard criticisms are as follows: (1) Factionalism inhibits promotion according to ability. Cabinets., for instance, are formed at the end of a complicated bargaining process within the ruling LDP. Each intra-party faction puts forward a ‘slate’ of candidates for desired Cabinet posts, chosen according to the relative seniority of individuals within the faction, or according to whose ‘turn’ it happens to be for high office. The Prime Minister is guided in his choice by considerations of the relative strength of the various factions and the delicate necessity of reconciling the principles of rewarding the loyalty of those factions that supported him at the last biennial party presidential election, and of seducing some at least of those factions that voted against him in case any of his erstwhile supporters should defect at the next election. 19 (2) Factionalism embodies ascriptive group relationships having little relevance to objective policy issues. Policy is therefore decided on grounds which do not necessarily reflect a rational scrutiny of matters of policy. (3) The almost constant necessity of reconciling the interests of the various factions weakens the central party leadership and diverts its energies towards unproductive activities. (4) As a result of the persistent personal-loyalty nature of the vote at general elections, elections do not reflect a true measure of the electorate’s opinion about the comparative merits of either parties or factions. (5) The prevalence of factional interests within political parties encourages corruption and venality among politicians, as well as among public servants and businessmen, etc. with whom they establish connections. (6) Political factionalism, by encouraging party weakness, promotes the dependence of parties upon outside organizations (bureaucracy, big business, trade unions, etc.) which take advantage of their weakness. It is evident that much of this criticism is based on the norms of strong, broadly aggregative political parties, functionally differentiated from other structures, and operating according to criteria that are essentially objective and rational. This was a view permeating the institutional reforms of the American Occupation. The above criticisms are often voiced in the expectation that the Japanese political system is (or ought to be) evolving towards these norms. A few writers, on the other hand, have attempted to develop a line of reasoning more favourable to factions by arguing that they are in fact functional in relation to the system in which they operate. Michael Leiserson’s interesting comparison between the workings of the Japanese party system and the fragmented multi-party systems of Fourth Republic France and post-war Italy was mentioned above. In equating the Japanese factions with French or Italian

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parties he describes each of the three political systems as consisting of an ingroup sub-system of warring parties (factions) and an out-group subsystem. Governments are formed by compromises arrived at within the confines of the in-group sub-systems (the LDP in the case of Japan), while the out-group subsystems are permanently debarred from participation. 20 This approach has the advantage of attributing to Japanese political factions a degree of legitimacy which they have de facto but not de jure, although there are some important differences between Japanese intra-party factions and French or Italian parties which Leiserson seems to neglect. He rightly focuses attention on the misleading nature of the frequently-made comparison between the Japanese and British party systems, a comparison which inevitably results in a very unfavourable treatment of the Japanese factions. The compar-ison with France or Italy, however, may also not seem particularly flattering to the Japanese party-system. A more limited defence of Japanese political factions would have to make the following points: (1) Factions can be seen as democratic inasmuch as they severely limit the possibilities of autocratic rule by party leaders. (2) They are an important channel of interest articulation. (3) The corruption associated with the factional system is not ‘massive’, but fairly limited, and does not result in administrative breakdown. (4) At least within the LDP, factions are concerned principally with the interests of their members, especially the provisions of electoral funds and Cabinet and party posts. Separate cross-factional groups have been developing on a number of policy issues. Thus immobilism does not result. (5) The spreading of responsibility for decisions is a longstanding Japanese political tradition, and weak personal leadership of parties is not merely a result of factionalism, but reflects a preference for consensual decision-making. (6) The fact that voters tend to vote on ‘personality’ grounds for individual candidates (who are affiliated to factions), rather than for candidates because they represent particular parties, has resulted in comparative electoral stability and the avoidance of violent swings. This account of attempts to evaluate Japanese political factionalism in terms of various political norms has demonstrated that it is an integral part of contemporary Japanese politics, and suggests that any judgement upon it must be tempered by a thorough consideration of aspects of the Japanese political culture, in which it originated. We are not suggesting, however, either that factions in Japan are an immutable form of political organization, or that they make for the best possible political system for Japan. They are, however, part of that system, and have certain effects upon it. Some fundamental points about Japanese political factions (including some not already mentioned) may be summarised here: (1) Factional memberships are variously recruited. Between the 1870s and the 1920s their basis was often regional, but in recent years most intra-party factions have included members from various parts of the country. Group loyalties

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formed early in life (e.g. to fellow students in a particular year in a particular college) may serve later as the basis of a faction; or at least of its ‘hard core’. (2) Factions perform both psychological quasi-familial and instrumental functions for their members. The instrumental functions are: (a) the achievement of a degree of control over sources of power (particularly the central party organization, and in the case of the LDP, the Cabinet); (b) the achievement of political office and prestige (status) for the individual; (c) the channelling of funds, particularly for electoral purposes; (d) the advancement of ideologies (more important in the left wing parties than in the LDP); (e) the advancement of policies (a very secondary function, especially in the LDP); (f) the channelling of outside interests (again, a secondary function). (3) The peculiar Japanese electoral system for the Lower House (a single nontransferable vote in 3–5 member constituences) tends to perpetuate factionalism by pitting members of the same party against each other in the same constituency. The abolition of this system would perhaps eliminate one of the functions currently performed by factions (the channelling of electoral funds), but would leave the others intact. It would thus modify, but probably by no means eliminate, factionalism. (4) Since the formation of a quasi-two-party system in 1955 factionalism has proved more disruptive of the left wing parties than of their right wing opponents. One reason for fragmentation on the left is no doubt the relatively greater importance of ideology within left wing parties. Ideological differences between factions make compromise between them more difficult, and hence parties tend to split. At the same time it is commonly observed that factions in the LDP are much better organized, cohesive, wealthy and powerful bodies than those in the left wing parties. This is because they are perpetually involved in a battle for the control of the Prime Ministership and the lesser Cabinet posts— positions of supreme power within the political system—and thus are in a position to attract huge funds from business and significant support from the bureaucracy. Despite the existence in its midst of these leviathans, however, the LDP has never suffered any significant defection since its formation in 1955. The sociological basis of factionalism in many parts of India appears to be similar to that in Japan, but at the same time the much greater complexity of Indian society and politics means that direct comparisons cannot easily be made without a good deal of qualification. Nevertheless, the similarities are important, and suggest common features in the politics of the two societies. Let us look first at the most obvious differences: Politically, Japan is a unitary system, whereas India is a federal system. Japan is ethnically, socially and linguistically homogeneous, whereas India has great ethnic, social and linguistic diversity. Japan has a sophisticated industrial economy and a high average standard of living, whereas India has vast unsolved economic problems and a low average standard of living. Both have been governed by ‘dominant’ parties for most of the post-war period, but the Indian Congress Party has now fallen

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apart, whereas the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan manages to contain its internal conifict. Both countries fall geographically in ‘Asia’, but their historical experiences are divergent. What matters most for our purposes is that anybody seeking to come to terms with Indian politics has to take into account a complexity of groupings, many of which have no real counterpart in Japan. In some (but not all) parts of India the most important of these is caste, and its political offshoot, the caste association. In Japan, it is true, there are the ‘outcastes’ (Burakumin or Eta) comprising between one and two million people concentrated in the southwestern part of the country. They have sometimes been compared with castes in India, but they have little significance for Japanese politics as a whole. 21 It is not only caste, however, that matters in India. Regional, linguistic, ethinic and communal groups play a big political role both at the federal and at the state level. Another difference is that the formal institutions of Indian politics are more decentralised than those of Japan, and federalism ensures that state politics in India have a degree of autonomy and individuality that is notably lacking in Japanese local politics. 22 This, of course, has the effect of multiplying the causes and types of conflict in Indian politics so that it would appear in toto to be more difficult to manage than political group conffict in Japan, at least at the present time. On the other hand, the similarities are also apparent. The stock criticisms of factionalism found in Japan are easily paralleled in India, but are extended to the effects of caste, regionalism and communalism. The same may be said of the possibilities of defending aspects of factional behaviour as functional within Indian politics. What the Rudolphs call the ‘paracommunity’ (a term used by them to designate caste associations, but also extensible to factions) in their words ‘…by providing a structure for the pursuit of political power, social status, and economic interest, makes secular concerns and representative democracy comprehensible and manageable to ordinary Indians.’ 23 On the social and psychological level, as well as in terms of organizational structure, Indian parallels with Japanese factionalism abound. Weiner speaks of the psychological need felt by many Indians to be members of a tightly-knit face-to-face group. 24 The ties welding the group together frequently have a long history. Thus Weiner writes: ‘Frequently a group of students who are members of one of the politically dominated student organizations will later become a faction within a political party.’ 25 Again, the Indian faction operates as an authoritarian hierarchy as in the Indian joint family. 26 Relations within it are cemented by strong bonds of affection, and it is exclusive both in the sense that it is difficult to enter and in the sense that ‘(t)here are few multiple group memberships.’ 27 The position of the leader of an Indian faction is crucial, and is described by Brass as being similar to that of a guru in relation to his disciples. 28 Moreover, as with Japanese factions, there is an important distinction between the ‘hardcore’ membership, which ‘remains with the leader through thick and thin’ since they ‘are attracted to the leader by the character of his personality’, 29 and

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the ‘periphery’, whose ties with the faction are looser, and which may change its allegiance to another faction. The social diversity of recruitment also seems to be an important characteristic of Indian factions. According to Brass, factional membership tends to cut across other social categories such as caste, although ‘the inner core of a faction is also likely to be somewhat more socially homogeneous than the outer circle.’ 30 As Weiner says, speaking principally of local level politics, ‘For though language, caste, religion and tribe divide men, politicians of diverse ethnic and occupational background will often join together in a common desire for patronage and power. In this sense, politics is often a great unifier. In fact it can be argued that if political parties did not exist at the local level in India, struggles might be exclusively ethnic.’ 31 This suggests the interesting hypothesis that what are primarily personal-loyalty groups, despite (or perhaps because of?) the ascriptive and personal nature of their recruitment, are most adaptable to instrumental uses related to personal advancement within the political process than groups simply recruited on the basis of caste, religion, etc. It is certainly true that in a highly personalised politics in which loyalty and esteem play a big part, the reverse side of group cohesiveness tends to be a touchiness towards other groups. As Brass argues, those who are used to commanding the complete loyalty of their followers are quick to take offence when those outside their circle do not offer them sufficient respect. Trivial misunderstandings between faction leaders can lead to a lifelong enmity. 32 Numerous examples could be cited from Japanese, as from Indian politics, to back up this assertion. On the other hand, until the recent split in the Indian Congress Party, the longstanding co-existence of different factions within Congress might have indicated that given the right circumstances factionalism need not prove fatally disruptive to the parent party, although, as in Japanese parties, it may have resulted in a certain imnmobilism with regard to policy. Weiner (writing in 1957) suggested that with long experience Congress had built up a fairly effective machinery for dealing with factional disputes. 33 The question of techniques for managing factional disputes is beyond the scope of this article, 24 but it may be noted in passing that techniques for minimising the disruptive nature of factionalism in the Japanese ruling party have gradually been developed through an increasingly sophisticated central party machinery, and consequently, the pattern of factional discord has been somewhat less fluid and unpredictable than it was in the early days of the party. At the same time, as we have seen, the factions remain individually very strong, and campaigns allegedly attempting to abolish them have so far come to naught. 35 In Congress, the trends have been in the opposite direction. At one time, under Nehru, party management was sufficiently powerful and skilful for the disruptive potentialities of factional conflict to be kept in check. Thus in 1957 Weiner could argue that the secret of faction management within Congress lay in treating ‘…factional disputes for what they are: not disputes between interest groups over pieces of legislation, but conflicts between factions who want more

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status and prestige by holding more important positions in the government and the party.’ 36 This passage sounds somewhat ironic today. In 1969, following a protracted leadership struggle between Nehru’s daughter, Mrs Indira Gandhi, and a powerful alliance of senior Congress leaders (most of whom had individual states as their bailiwicks, and who were known collectively as ‘The Syndicate’), Congress split into two separate parties. Despite frequent forecasts of her imminent fall from power, Mrs Gandhi continues, at this writing, to head the federal government based on her own wing of Congress but which needs to rely on opposition (i.e. non-Congress) parties for part of its parliamentary support at the federal level. The reasons for this breakdown in Congress unity are complex and can only be treated briefly here. Three factors, however, may be suggested in partial explanation. One is that the changes of leadership from Nehru to Shastri and then from Shastri to Mrs Gandhi involved successive realignments which tended to exacerbate intra-party factional conflict. Both Shastri and Mrs Gandhi were selected as compromise candidates whom party king-makers expected to be able to control. When Mrs Gandhi in particular began to assert personal leadership she found that the price of such assertion was the total alienation of certain powerful party leaders. This is somewhat reminiscent of Japanese conservative politics in the early 1950s, especially under Yoshida. Satō’s ascendancy, however (1965–?), appears to have placed LDP leadership on a more stable footing, at least for the time being. A second factor is that the Congress Party’s promise in the mid-1960s was not matched by its performance. A combination of economic failures and widespread evidence of self-serving activities by prominent Congress politicians (as well as a good deal of complacency in the party itself) marred the popular prestige of the party that Gandhi and Nehru had led in the struggle for independence. The Japanese conservatives, too, have suffered from persistent allegations of corruption (most dramatically in the ‘Black Mist’ scandals of 1966), but have been saved from the potential electoral effects of such allegations by the country’s rapidly rising level of general prosperity. A third factor accounting for the Congress decline and ultimate split seems to have been the results of the 1967 general elections in which Congress lost control of six states. The heterogeneous coalitions of parties which replaced Congress rule in these states had at least, and for the first time, achieved a measure of credibility as alternative governments. This presented Congress factions at the state level with an alternative course of action from the traditional one for them of competing for ‘spoils’ within the Congress party. Now they could consider defection as a rational alternative, because there was a good chance of their participating in an alternative government on advantageous terms if they did so. The political advantages of such a course might outweigh those of remaining within Congress. Moreover, the opposition parties themselves had discovered that there was a good chance of dislodging Congress from power in individual states if they were to enter into electoral alliances against Congress

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rather than fighting among themselves as had been their custom. What is remarkable is the rapidity of the Congress decline once opposition credibility had been established. In Japan such a development has not yet occurred, no doubt mainly because the LDP has had economic growth on its side. But if the opposition parties were to do substantially better at the polls than at present seems likely, an LDP decline might be similarly precipitate. Current fissures between and within Japanese opposition parties might also be speedliy papered over should the chance of forming an alternative government become real. The viability of such a government when in power, however, might well prove as dubious as that of the recent leftist coalitions in West Bengal and Kerala, or the more heterogeneous coalitions in some other Indian states since 1967. When one turns from Congress to left wing parties in India, it seems clear that factionalism has been even more disruptive. The Communist party of India has now split into three separate parties, the CPI, the CPIM and the CPI(ML), or Naxalites. In addition, there are a number of other ‘Communist’ parties with seats in state legislatures, such as the Revolutionary Socialist party which operates principally in Kerala and West Bengal. Recent Indian experience, as suggested above, does not indicate that holding political office serves to reduce factional conflict substantially among Indian left wing parties. Indeed, the main factor seems to be that where essentially personal cleavages are reinforced by ideological differences, factionalism is much more disruptive than where they are not. Left wing parties, in India as in Japan, have a choice of being relatively tolerant of factional differences based on ideology or to be highly intolerant of them. The Japanese Socialist party (which has reached a state of virtual immobilism) is an example of the first, and the multiplicity of ‘one-faction parties’ now to be seen in certain Indian states, of the second. 37 The functions periormed by Indian political factions appear to have much in common with those performed by factions in Japan. Apart from the psychological supports given, especially to members of the ‘hard-core’, by factional membership, the functions performed are primarily political. The payoffs of successful factional activity, whether at the local or national level, are political office, status and prestige, a share in political finance. (Ideology, policy, etc. is more often a secondary than a primary consideration.) As Weiner points out, the style of factional activity appears modern, but its roots are ancient. 38 This may explain its resilience, both in India and Japan. Rosenthal makes a fourfold division of Indian factions (based on his research into Indian city politics) as follows: (1) Factions based on a personal following. (2) Political machines for the collection and distribution of rewards. (3) ‘Primordial’ groups, based on blood, caste, religion, language, etc. (4) ‘Ideational groups’, sharing a common set of principles. 39 This approach has the advantage of separating out conceptually four possible motives for factional organization. Rosenthal agrees that they may overlap. As

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we have seen, (1) and (2) very frequently go together, and indeed both Indian and Japanese experience would suggest that factions based simply on the personal following of a leader may (given the social norms of these societies) very easily take on the additional attributes of political machines. There are many examples of ‘primordial groups’ in Indian politics, but many of these are themselves divided by bitter internal factionalism, thus suggesting that the ‘personal-loyalty faction may be a more potent political instrument for contemporary purposes.’ 40 ‘Ideational groups’ are common on the left, but also usually have ‘personal-loyalty’ characteristics. In conclusion, we may make some general observations on the basis of our comparison of political factionalism in Japan and India. First, we have isolated patterns of political organization in the two countries, which bear a close resemblance to each other—a similarity which might perhaps be traced back to a common element in their respective political cultures. It seems relatively immaterial whether or not we confine the term ‘political faction’ to the type of group whose common characteristics we have been discussing. For convenience we have preferred to do so, and thus we should, for instance, exclude Rosenthal’s ‘primordial group’ from our category. Political factions—in the sense in which we have used this term—typically exist within a larger unit such as a political party. This, however, need not necessarily be the case. As Rosenthal very cogently points out, neither Brass nor Weiner deal with the problem of political groups which act as factions within parties at one time and as parties in their own right at another. 41 Examples abound, both in Indian and Japanese politics, of political factions in this category. Factions, as we have seen, may be more permanent than parties. This suggests that in neither Japan nor India is the primacy of the party over the faction necessarily assured. Although a dominant party may be able to ‘manage factionalism even where its internal factions are extremely powerful, by evolving a mechanism for satisfying their demands, there are circumstances in which this may prove very difficult. If the above analyses of Congress and LDP politics is correct, it should be necessary to amend the often-held view that the internal cohesion of a group increases in proportion to increases in the degree of external threat, and decreases when the external threat decreases. 42 Such a view presupposes that the group which is threatened attracts loyalty from its members over and above what is necessary for the satisfaction of their own interests. Where such loyalty is weak, and where sub-group loyalties are strong, an increase in the external threat may actually promote disruption within the group. Political factions in the two countries have proved reasonably flexible channels for expanding political participation. Their persistence within political parties may be criticised on the grounds that were discussed above, particularly in relation to Japan, although as we say, such criticism may sometimes be taken too far. Moreover, in so far as they cut across social, regional, occupational or caste cleavages, they may play an integrative role in the political system. Whether or not the processes of political modernization (whatever that may

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mean in particular contexts) will lead to a diminution of political factionalism in the two countries is highly problematical. Huntington’s view that factionalism is a feature only of the early stages of political development, and that the development of political parties typically goes through the four stages of ‘factionalism, polarization, expansion and institutionalization’, scarcely seems to be justified by either the Japanese or the Indian case. 43 It is, of course, possible to counter that in view of the prevalence of political factionalism both political systems are at an early stage of political development, but this argument would appear to be circular. NOTES 1. There appear to be three major reasons for this: (1) In ‘advanced’ political systems, parties predominate as structures for aggregating and clarifying demands, and for forming governments, whereas factions are seen as being characteristic of ‘backward’ polities. (2) Western democratic theory (as well as Marxist-Leninist theory) regards parties as legitimate, but factions as illegitimate. (3) Factions are often viewed as temporary, evanescent phenomena, but parties as permanent, and thus more worthy of study. The idea of a political faction (whether as part of a political party or independent of political parties) as a type of political structure to be studied for its own sake seems to spring from the increased interest in recent years in the politics of new states, as well as from anthropological studies. 2. ‘The term “faction” is commonly used to designate any constituent group of a larger unit which works for the advancement of particular persons or policies. The faction arises in the struggle for power and represents a division on details of application and not on principles. The position of the faction is that of the qualified dissenter who embraces collective goals subject to reservations. Thus a faction presupposes some measure of unity in fundamentals. The term itself drops out of usage when certain lines of cleavage have become rather permanent features of the life of the group; these divisions are accepted as parties’. Harold D.Lasswell, ‘Faction’, Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences (1931), vol. 5, pp. 49–61. 3. Raymond Firth, ‘Factions in Indian and Overseas Indian Societies: Introduction’, British Journal of Sociology, vol. 8, (1957), pp. 291–5. 4. Ibid. The question of diverse recruitment is an important characteristic of factionalism which we shall discuss later in this paper. It is not necessarily dependent on the permanence/impermanence dichotomy. 5. See for instance Jeremy Boissevain, ‘Paries, Factions and Politics in a Maltese Village’, American Anthropologist, vol. 66, no. 6, part 1 (December 1964). pp. 1275–87. 6. For instance B.D.Graham, ‘The Succession of Factional Systems in the Uttar Pradesh Congress Party, 1937–1966’ (mimeo, n.d.); S.P.Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1968), pp. 412–20.

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7. Huntington, op. cit., p. 414. 8. M.Leiserson, ‘Factions and Coalitions in One-Party Japan: An Interpretation Based on the Theory of Games’, American Political Science Review, vol. LXII. no. 3 (September 1968). 9. The writer is grateful to Mr. F.G.Castles for suggesting this approach to the problem of definition. 10. One may stretch this definition even further, and say that the state is a ‘faction’ from the standpoint of ‘the community of nations’, or of the United Nations. This, however, may be held to imply that the nations of the world are in fact a ‘community’ or are united in any real sense. There is an interesting analogy here between nations as ‘factions’ in this sense, and powerful cohesive factions coexisting within a political party which has a low degree of internal authority and institutionalization. Both are real situations. 11. It may not be entirely fanciful to suggest that this is why (Western) scholars have developed the permanence/impermanence dichotomy as a key to the understanding of political factionalism. 12. See for instance Robert A.Scalapino and Junnosuke Masumi, Parties and Politics in Contemporary Japan (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1962); M.Leiserson, op. cit.; George O.Totten and Tamio Kawakami, ‘The Functions of Factionalism in Japanese Politics’, Pacific Affairs, vol. 38, no. 2 (Summer 19615); Lee W. Farnsworth, ‘Social and Political Sources of Political Fragmentation in Japan’, Journal of Politics, vol. 29, no. 2 (May 1967), pp. 287–301. 13. ‘Traditional’ is here put in quotation marks, since the reality was neither static nor lacking in variation from place to place. 14. A typical example would be a boss-henchman system in the labour market, among criminals, on. etc. See J.W.Bennett and Iwao Ishino, Paternalism in the Japanese Economy (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1963). 15. Tamio Kawakami, Gendai Seijika no Jōken (Tokyo, Shunshusha, 1968), p. 96. 16. Ibid. 17. Itokobun. 18. One may compare the way that caste in India has been adapted for political purposes in the form of the caste association. See L.I. and S.H.Rudolph, The Modernity of Tradition: Political Development in India. Chicago and London, Chicago University Press, 1967, pp. 29–36. 19. For an analysis of this process, see Leiserson, op. cit. 20. Ibid. 21. W.H.Newell, ‘The Comparative Study of Caste in India and Japan,’ Asian Survey, vol. 1, no. 10 (December 1961). 22. The student of Indian politics is familiar with such doughty local bosses as Kamaraj from Madras and S.K.Patil in Bombay, exercising great influence in New Delhi. The most powerful politicians in Japan, in

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contrast, more frequently owe their influence to their connections with the central government bureaucracy. 23. L.I. and S.H.Rudolph, op. cit., p. 36. 24. Myron Weiner, Party Politics in India (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1957), p. 237 25. Ibid., pp. 237–8. 26. Ibid., p. 238. 27. Ibid. 28. Paul R.Brass, Factional Politics in an Indian State: The Congress Party in Uttar Pradesh (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1965), p. 55. 29. Ibid., p. 156. 30. Ibid. There is some evidence that this is also true of Japanese political factions. 31. Myron Weiner, Political Change in South Asia (Calcutta, Firma K.L. Mukhopadhyay, 1963), p. 128. See also Myron Weiner, Party Building in a New Nation: The Indian National Congress (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1967), p. 150. 32. Brass, op. cit., p. 55. 33. Weiner, Party Politics in India, p. 243. 34. See B.D.Graham, op. cit., and B.D.Graham, ‘Change in Factional Conflict: The Case of the Uttar Pradesh Congress Party, 1964– 1965’ (mimeo, n.d.). 35. H.Fukui, Party in Power. The Japanese Liberal-Democrats and PolicyMaking, Canberra, A.N.U. Press, 1970. 36. Weiner, Party Politics in India, p. 243. 37. For a searching analysis of how opposition parties operate in Uttar Pradesh, see Angela S.Burger, Opposition in a Dominant Party System, Canberra, A.N.U. Press, 1969. 38. Weiner, Party Building in a New Nation, p. 151. 39. Donald B.Rosenthal, ‘Factions and Alliances in Indian City Politics’, Midwest Journal of Political Science, vol. 10 (1966), pp. 320–49. 40. See F.G.Bailey, ‘Politics and Society in Contemporary Orissa’, in C.H.Philips (ed.), Politics and Society in India (London, George Allen and Unwin, 1963), pp. 97–114, at pp. 105–6. 41. Rosenthal, op. cit., p. 322. 42. See for instance Bernard J.Siegel and Alan R.Beals, ‘Pervasive Factionalism’, American Anthropologist, vol. 62 (1960), pp. 394–417. 43. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies, pp. 412 ff.

39 Factionalism in Japanese Political Parties First published in Japan Forum, Vol. 1, No. 2, October 1989 ONE THING the Recruit scandals of 1988–9 have demonstrated rather graphically to the world is that Japanese politics appear to be inextricably linked with the politics of intra-party factions. Gifts of unlisted shares to politicians, who in due course were able to sell them at a huge profit when they came on the market officially, were particularly welcome because of the insatiable need of funds by faction leaders and their supporters. During the late 1980s four of the five major factions of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) have each accounted for a larger (or at least, similar) number of Diet members than any of the Opposition parties. Among them, these five factions have tightly controlled the power structure of the party, creating what amounts to a seniority system in the allocation of party and Cabinet posts, and dividing power among them in a remarkably predictable manner. When, as a result of the Recruit scandal, the prime ministership of Takeshita Noboru had collapsed, and a successor was being sought, the most favoured candidate, Itō Masayoshi, made it a condition of his acceptance that he should be allowed to bring about such reform of the electoral system and other aspects of political interaction that the factional hegemony within the LDP would have been seriously threatened. Although his own reluctance to take on prime ministerial burdens on age and health grounds was also a significant factor, ultimately the radicalism of his proposed reforms proved more than the party’s power brokers were prepared to stomach. In the July Upper House elections the electorate delivered a severely adverse verdict on the LDP’s ‘money politics’ revealed as a result of the baleful generosity of the Recruit Company, 1 and there is little doubt that the LDP has in 1989 suffered a substantial loss of popularity. 2 This must seem to many LDP leaders to be a cruel irony, because since that party’s sweeping victory in the 1986 double elections, its intra-party factions have acted with a degree of cooperation and agreement about the sharing of spoils which is in marked contrast to the factional politics of the 1970s. Not only had the number of factions declined, but they had streamlined their operations and no longer engaged in the kind of public infighting which characterised LDP politics in the previous decade. 3 The fall of the Takeshita Government despite what could well seem to the party as conspicuous policy successes (sensitive handling of the emotive transition from the Shōwa to Heisei eras, and the long delayed introduction of a form of tax on consumers), was a retribution which many LDP Diet members clearly regarded as both shocking and undeserved. The possibility that Kaifu Toshiki, made Prime Minister after the brief Uno interregnum, will be able to

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introduce reforms that might threaten the factional system seems rather slight. The party, which has made many adjustments to changing external circumstances in order to retain power over three decades, is balking at the demand that its ‘life-blood’ of factional money politics should be substantially modified. Of course, the electorate might force the party’s hand against its will. The purpose of this article is not to explore in detail either the Recruit scandal or current factional politics in the LDP. Rather, it is to penetrate the ‘deep structure’ of Japanese intra-party factionalism and attempt to place it in a broader conceptual context. We shall argue five principal propositions: (1) that factions have become institutionalised as the principal mechanism for distributing political power within the LDP, but not the principal channel for determining policy; (2) that LDP factions are now substantially different types of organisation from factions in other parties; (3) that there is a close relationship between the factional system within the LDP and the multi-member constituency system in elections for the House of Representatives; (4) that the LDP factional system has both contributed to and depends upon the maintenance of a high level of political stability. Conversely, a breakdown in political stability could result from the operation of factionalism in the LDP, but might also in turn threaten the integrity of the factional system; (5) that the emergence of an alternative to factional power-broking is conceivable, but would represent a most radical change in the way Japanese politics works, and would not necessarily lead to a more ‘liberal’ system, though it is possible that it might do so. Before proceeding any further, it is necessary to consider what we mean when we speak of ‘faction’. The Japanese word that is being translated when we say ‘faction’ is habatsu, or more simply ha, as in Takeshita-ha (Takeshita faction’). Whereas the mass media generally refer to a faction by the name of its leader, factions normally refer to themselves by often fancy and euphemistic names, such as Kōchikai, which is the name of the Miyazawa faction. This has the effect of stressing continuity. The Kōchikai has been in existence for close on 30 years, whereas Miyazawa Kiichi has been its leader for less than a decade. Such a name also suggests that the organization has an associative and club-like character, and de-emphasizes the implication that it is a boss-henchman type of group. Since there is a possibility that prevailing Western and Japanese views of what constitutes a faction (or habatsu) may differ, we should examine the classic definition of ‘faction’ provided by Harold Lasswell, in the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences of 1931. In essence, the Lasswell definition consists of the following elements: (a) faction as a part of a larger whole, so that if it splits away from the parent body, it can no longer be a faction of that body; (b) faction as a grouping of people; (c) faction as either dissenting in part from the current leadership of the parent

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body, or, if it happens to control that leadership, dissenting in part from the views of other factions within the parent body; (d) faction as a temporary, ephemeral grouping, seeking essentially short-term advantage, which is the raison d’être of its factional activity. Such a group typically has little or no effective organization. A Japanese definition of faction, based on Japanese experience, might well contrast quite sharply with the approach taken by Lasswell. We suggest that the following elements might well enter into a ‘minimal’ Japanese definition: (a) faction as a semi-permanent grouping, with a history and even a tradition to which its members can relate; faction as an integral part of the parent body (i.e. party’), but in competition with other factions within the same parts’ (as well as with other parties, or even with factions in other parties); (b) faction as a focus of loyalty for its members which may be weaker or stronger than party as a focus of loyalty for the same members; (c) faction as a mechanism for more or less institutionalized maximizing of political advantage within the party (and within the broader political arena), in terms particularly of distribution of posts and accumulation of funds. When we compare these different approaches to definition, it is apparent that we are up against four different sorts of discrepancy; faction as ephemeral against faction as semi-permanent; faction as a group with weak organization versus faction as a group with strong organization; faction concerned principally with opinion or policy, as against faction concerned mainly with distributing power and ‘spoils’; faction as subordinate to party, versus faction as comparable to party as a focus of loyalty. It is not, of course, necessary to regard Harold Lasswell as having said the last word about what constitutes a faction in Western countries, and the dichotomies we have suggested no doubt exaggerate both the degree of uniformity of pattern within ‘the West’ and the extent of difference between ‘the West’ and Japan. Party factionalism in Italy, for instance, possibly has more in common with that occurring in Japan than with that found in Britain. Nevertheless, there is a tradition of writing about factions in British and American political thought which generally cleaves closer to the Lasswell model than to that which we have postulated for Japan. Moreover, one meets a widespread normative assumption that factions are reprehensible forms of organization: they are selfish, they are disruptive, they tend to destroy the solidarity of the parent organization (i.e. the party) for narrow, temporary gain. This assumes, of course, that it is possible to find a larger political purpose (often identified as that of the nation) that is represented by modern parties, and contrasts with the essential venality of factions. 5 In Japan there is also much criticism from the mass media and from academics about factions and factionalism, and the reasons adduced are not so different (may indeed be influenced by’) those to be found in traditions of Western political thought. This does not lessen the importance of Japanese factions as an integral part of the system of politics, just as factions exist within Western political parties despite strictures against them in the media and elsewhere.

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In order to allow the argument to progress, we now propose to clarify what ought not to be regarded as a faction. This includes a party branch (assuming that the branch has not been organized as a dissident, or disruptive element with the party’)? a political party itself, a village (as distinct from a faction within it’), a club (as distinct from a faction within it), a pressure group, a government ministry (as distinct from a faction within it’). This list could obviously be extended further. From this it would seem to follow that dissidence, in the sense of both recognisably separate existence within the parent body and partial disaffection from (or competition with) its leadership or other groups within it, is a necessary hallmark of faction. In some political systems the behaviour of factions and the behaviour of formally constituted parties are hard to distinguish from each other, both being characterized by boss-henchman relations, but it would be extremely confusing to make no distinction between party and faction on these grounds alone. A faction, therefore, we shall regard as a more or less separate and dissident (or competing) group within the parent body. There seems no need to introduce sociological characteristics (patron-client relations, etc.) into the definition of ‘faction’. Whether it is a boss surrounded by henchmen, or whether it is a group of loosely related individuals pursuing power or a set of ideas does not matter, so far as the definition is concerned. Both will be regarded as examples of ‘faction’. Similarly, whether the group is ephemeral or long-lasting does not definitionally concern us. We consider it a faction of the parent body until and unless it defects altogether and sets up on its own. Finally whether factionalism is good or bad (disruptive force or dynamic force, etc. is not a definitional problem, but an evaluative one. Unfortunately, the two things have not always been clearly separated. In summary then, we are defining ‘faction’ as a recognizably separate grouping of people organized within a parent body, operating up to a point in an unsubordinate or competitive manner. In this article the particular sort of parent body we are concerned with is party. A political party is, of course, a type of political organization with a particular set of characteristics. Typically, it is pursuing the aim of winning or more or less controlling governmental office in a nation state, either through elections or through other methods such as revolution. Admittedly there are so-called parties with no realistic prospect of winning office, or even of gaining representation in Parliament, such as Britain’s Monster Raving Loony Party or Japan’s Aikokutō (Patriotic Party’), but such parties occupy a definitional no-man’s-land between party, pressure group and publicity group. A political party is essentially concerned with the pursuit of political power, and presents policy programmes, mobilizes support, organizes branches, fights elections and so on, with that end in view. Not all nation states in the contemporary world contain political parties, but the vast bulk do, even though organizations identifiable as parties range from the shadowy to the irremovably entrenched. Despite a view sometimes met with in Japan that intra-party factionalism is a

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phenomenon confined to that country (or that Japanese factionalism is somehow ‘unique’), it is encountered in one form or another in nearly all of those countries that maintain political parties. Intra-party factionalism in Japan may indeed have peculiar characteristics, though not, we would argue, to the extent of invalidating comparison with other systems. Factions, like parties, are concerned with the obtaining of spoils, which means essentially that they pursue advantage from the game (or business’) of politics. Spoils include power, in the sense of control of government office, but they also include political funding. In competitive systems votes are an essential resource both for election of members of Parliament and in the struggle to obtain government office. Policy and ideology are also resources which may be used in such competitions not only by parties, but by factions within them. Policy and ideology may well overlap with spoils, since a faction may be advocating a certain ideological line and set of policies, and at the same time wholeheartedly pursuing political office with an eve to the spoils which office will bring. It should not be assumed that political factionalism is confined to openly competitive political systems. In the Soviet Union, despite an explicit Leninist ban on factionalism with the Communist Party, factionalism is commonly observed to exist. Leadership aspiration may be converted into reality only when the aspirant leader has proved himself sufficiently adept at the distribution of patronage to subordinates that he has a ‘faction’ of supporters whom he places in strategic positions and who back him in his claims for high office. 7 This indeed suggests that the closing off of formal channels of competition may actually tend to promote the kind of informal competitive methods embodied in factionalism. Conditions tending to promote factionalism within political parties include sociological factors and the environment of political institutions and practices. Where prevailing modes of social organisation include a strong emphasis on relations between leader and followers, on group (especially small group’) solidarity, factionalism is likely to be a normal form of political organization. The institutional environment is important in determining the degree of factionalism that prevails. It is likely to be affected one way or the other by the electoral system, depending on how far the system of elections rewards intraparty solidarity. In general, factions appear where parties are poorly institutionalized, since where party institutions are strong and well co-ordinated, there is likely to be less opportunity for the development of unauthorized structures than where party organization is weak and ineffectual. On the other hand, as in the case of the Japanese LDP, factions themselves may become institutionalized to the point where de facto they may be considered virtually part of the party’s own set of institutions, even though in other ways they retain the characteristics of factions. Political systems are not immutable, and we may ask whether factionalism is likely to become more or less prominent over time, and what are the conditions tending to affect this. This most obviously connects with how far politicians find

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factional behaviour advantageous, if we assume that they are rational beings. In turn, however, it links up with questions of institutionalization and political development. The expectation that factionalism will tend to disappear, being replaced gradually by more institutionalized forms of political organization, is well entrenched in the literature of modernization. Japan, however, provides us with an interesting counter-example, since party factionalism has persisted and shows little sign of abating. Benjamin and Ori suggest that since there was a high level of organisational complexity in pre-industrial society., older models of political organization, such as faction, survived into the contemporary period. They hypothesize that this may have resulted from the unusually rapid pace of modernization that Japan experienced. 8 This is an interesting approach, though as they themselves agree, factions would have been unlikely to survive as they have without pragmatic advantages attaching to membership. These issues relate to the normative ones we touched on above. Are factions good or bad? As we have seen, Western political theory tends to regard party as (at least ideally) a body of people working for the common good, but faction as selfish, disruptive and fractious. This is not wholly a normative issue. It should be possible to inspect whether factions fragment rather than integrate the parties of which they form a part. In some cases fragmentation and disruption is obvious enough, as for instance in the post-war history of the Japan Socialist Party. In other circumstances factions may paradixically help to bind a society together by virtue of their pragmatism. If factionally-inclined politicians are prepared to ignore ethnic, religious, language or other communal divisions and recruit faction members without regard to such divisions because political advantage lies in doing so, this may ultimately have the healthy effect of breaking down the social entities which have divided society and putting the system together in a new and more flexible way. Something similar may be said about political divisions based on entrenched ideology. Where politicians in pragmatic pursuit of political gain and political power construct factions with scant regard for ideological niceties, the overall effect on the political system may in the end be a healthy one. 9 In any case the negative argument here regards factionalism as contributing to breakdown, whereas the more positive argument sees it as creating dynamism and change. In between these two arguments lies the possibility that factions may act as efficient pragmatic power brokers which collectively keep the party on the rails. What, then, are the characteristics of factions and factionalism in contemporary Japanese political parties? In what follows we shall attempt a brief sketch of the contemporary situation, under a number of headings: DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE PARTIES The LDP is both the greatest haven for factions, and the party that has most conspicuously avoided damaging splits, though internal strains have surfaced with some regularity. It has also virtually monopolised government office since

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it was formed in 1955. Because the LDP is the only party big enough to put up multiple candidacies in most Lower House constituencies, the multimember constituency system has a far greater effect in promoting factionalism in the LDP than in any other party. Factions and their members command enormous sums of money, spoils of office are available on a scale unimagined by any other party, and the LDP has much the most institutionalised system of factions and factional alliances. A distinction may be made between large, power-oriented factions, and small peripheral ones. Most of the latter had disappeared by the late 1970s, so that the number of factions has substantially declined. In the late 1980s, it was normal to speak of a five-faction system in the LDP, although there were also a couple of minor groupings. Until the Recruit scandal, the five factions were generally successful in managing power distribution with reasonable harmony. The party least dissimilar to the LDP in its internal factional system is the Japan Socialist Party (JSP). Traditionally, JSP factions have been ideologically based, though ideology is closely bound up with the kind of structural features of leader-follower loyalty noted in the case of the LDP. With the JSP’s gradual decline culminating in its poor performance in the 1986 elections, there has been a gradual shift from long-term ideological factions to factions which are more ephemeral and insubstantial. The Democratic Socialist Party (DSP) is too small to contain factions of much consequence, but several factions do nevertheless exist. The Kōmeitō and Japan Communist Party (JCP) differ substantially from any of the parties mentioned hitherto, because in both cases party organization is strong and centralized, and factionalism is largely suppressed (though the JCP has a past history of quite virulent factional conflict on both an ideological and personal basis). INSTITUTIONAL ENVIRONMENT The most important feature of the institutional environment which tends to perpetuate factionalism is the electoral system, which, however, affects only the larger parties, and today has little effect on any party other than the LDP. The reason for this is as follows: the electoral system for the House of Representatives requires the voter to cast a single, non-transferable vote in a constituency which in nearly all cases elects three, four or five members. Candidates declared elected in, say, a five-member constituency are simply those five candidates who win the largest number of votes. In this system a large party can expect to have more than one member returned in many constituencies. It follows that rivalry will be a feature of the situation between the candidates standing for that party in the same constituency. For instance, in a five-member constituency in which the LDP vote as a whole is predicted to total around 60 per cent, the LDP may be likely to put up four candidates, of whom three may realistically be expected to win (depending in part on the number of candidates put forward by the Opposition parties). In some countries such an electoral system might perhaps see the party

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organization take over the whole organization of the campaign. In Japan, however, each LDP candidate will be running essentially for himself, having constructed a personal support machine which he will fund with money partly raised by himself and partly received from the intra-party faction to which he belongs. The party campaign, in other words, is fragmented, and although the party organization has a considerable role to play in propaganda, in ensuring that too many candidates do not stand, and in some other functions, campaigning is to a very large extent a matter of personal machines and intra-party factions. Despite this fragmentation, the LDP does well in elections where it can mobilise votes on the basis of the kind of personal appeal that such campaigns facilitate. LEADERSHIP The role of a single leader is normally crucial in a faction. The leader typically dispenses funds for electoral purposes to his members and bargains with the party president for an adequate share of cabinet (if the party is in power) and party posts on behalf of members of his faction. The members in turn back him in intra-party rivalries and power struggles. There are occasional examples of factions led by more than one person in some kind of committee arrangement, but these are usually temporary and uncomfortable situations. Some faction leaders are famous for the charismatic leadership they are said to exercise, but others appear, at least to the outside observer, to be relatively colourless, Curtis argues that LDP factions in the 1980s are generally more ‘collegiate’ in structure and their members less dependent on funds from their faction leader than in previous decades. 10 STRUCTURE Factions typically include a core of wholly committed members and a peripheral membership of those whose interest in the faction is essentially pragmatic. Among the second group, but rarely among the former except in the case where the faction splits, there is some possibility of change of factional allegiance, or even in some cases overlapping factional allegiance. Factions differ in the extent to which subordinate power centres (or potential power centres) are permitted by the leader to exist with the faction. ORGANIZATION The extent of organization differs according to the size of the faction, the party to which it belongs and other factors, but in the case of the larger factions of the LDP, organization may comprise a well-appointed headquarters, staff, publications (usually in-house only), large-scale funding, as well as complex and continuous relationships with other groups and individuals including those outside the party. On the other hand a faction in virtually all cases differs from a

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party in that it does not fight elections under its own label, but fights them under the label of the party of which it is a part. In the case of the LDP, however, electoral campaigning often emphasizes the personality of the candidate as much as or more than it promotes the visibility of the party. RESOURCES The principal resources available to factions and their members fall into three areas. The first is funding, collected by the faction leader, or increasingly by the members themselves, and used by faction members to satisfy their need for money to fight elections and more generally service their constituencies. Sums required can reach huge totals in an election year, and the superior fund raising ability of LDP faction leaders over the leaders of other parties (or of faction leaders in other parties) gives a marked political advantage to the LDP. In the case of the LDP repeated attempts to centralise provision of funding for electoral purposes have never succeeded in substantially reducing the proportion provided through factions. The second resource available to a faction is the ability to bargain within the party over the distribution of posts (in the case of the LDP including cabinet posts). Factions typically present seniority lists to the party president and bargain over the number of posts to be allocated, also expressing preference for particular posts. The third resource concerns the mobilisation of votes in party presidential elections. The supreme political position in a party is naturally much sought after, and in the case of the major parties is determined by election, though the electorate varies. In the case of the LDP the totality of Diet Members affiliated with the party plus a small number of local representatives used to constitute the relevant electorate, but in the 1970s a primary election among grass roots party members was introduced, provided that certain conditions were met concerning the number of candidates and the number of Diet members who were their sponsors. Although the primary election was introduced as a measure to reduce the impact of factionalism, it had the effect rather of extending the influence of the factions which had existed largely among LDP Diet members, down to the grass roots level throughout the country. The JSP decides the party chairmanship (as well as other posts) at the annual party congress, to which local branch representatives come as delegates, though in practice it is often decided largely behind the scenes and endorsed at the congress. THE SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECT It is difficult to deny that factionalism in Japanese political parties reflects a set of sociological norms of behaviour that derive from a natural emphasis on the group, personal connections, mutual obligations and leader-follower ties. We would argue nevertheless that even despite these sociological norms factions

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would not have attained the degree of importance that they have were it not for an institutional environment which rewards factional activity in various ways. One implication of the group-centred, leader-follower character of factions is that in pursuit of political ends they tend to be highly pragmatic, and generally uninhibited by the niceties of ideological consistency. There are, however, exceptions to this among left-wing parties in particular. PRIOR LOYALTIES An important question, which is nevertheless extremely difficult to answer with any confidence, is whether loyalties to party or loyalties to faction are regarded by the faction member/party Diet member as the more important. The fact that the LDP has largely avoided defections from its ranks, whereas the Opposition parties have fragmented and proliferated since 1959, suggests that party has attained greater salience in the case of the LDP than in the case of the Opposition. In the LDP, however, factional rivalries have proved disruptive sufficiently frequently to cast doubt on this proposition. The key factor may well be that whatever the case about prior loyalties, a Diet member will stick with his party if to do otherwise would cost him severe political harm. For the party in power, defections may mean forfeiting that position of power, and for most Diet members, that is likely to be sufficient incentive to remain within the party fold. We are back, once again, with the factor of institutional constraint. CONCLUSIONS Factions appear to be a permanent feature of most Japanese political parties, but in the LDP, where the stakes are extremely high and the electoral system favours intra-party factional competition, factions have become so well institutionalized that they are arguably sui generis. The most crucial point about them is that for the most part policy matters are secondary factional concerns, so that policy and power-broking are separated from each other as a result of the factional system. Factions are not parties, and do not fight elections under their own labels, but faction struggles are widely reported in the media, and it is reasonable to suppose that much of the electorate has some idea of the factional affiliations of people they are voting for. There is a strong personal element in voter choice, and to this extent party preference gives way to personality preference. The life of a faction goes through various stages, which relate to its size, its capacity to develop significant bargaining leverage, and the capacity of its leader, but the most traumatic event in the history of a faction is the death or retirement of its leader, after which there is always a danger that the faction will split as rivals branch out on their own pulling with them their own following. There are also stages in the development of factionalism within a particular party. Periods of stable factional balance are followed by periods of fluidity and change, or search for a new balance.

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It is extremely rare for a faction on its own to attain a majority position in a party, and multi-faction systems are the norm within parties that permit factions to exist. Power is almost always achieved by a coalition of factions, which means that compromises must be made. If the minority factions are left out of the power system altogether (as happened in the JSP during 1982), great instability is likely to result. Conversely, with an all-party factional coalition, such as existed in the LDP in the middle and late 1980s, it is easy to achieve stability, but there is the danger of over-confidence and complacency, which were factors contributing to the damaging Recruit scandal of 1988–89. Although factions appear to be a permanent feature of the Japanese political scene, so also are parties, and factions need parties as an arena in which to operate. Parties aggregate policy in a way that factions with their more limited vision would find it hard to do on their own. Parties and factions, therefore, are in the Japanese case not simply aspects of the same thing. A party is a political organization designed to appeal to the electorate with a programme, a set of candidates, and a role to play in the process of seeking power and (if successful) forming a government at the national level. A faction is a political machine within a party, concerned with the more limited aims of furthering the interests of its members within the arena of the party to which it belongs. Even though a party is essential to a faction, the faction will not necessarily stick with the party in all circumstances. Though there are policy constraints, basically a faction is a pragmatic organization, which will go where its interests lie. It will not form an alliance or join a party if the result of that would be to exchange a ruling party situation for a situation in which it would be excluded from office. But it will think carefully about alternative power opportunities if it is likely to better its prospects thereby. A severe defeat of the LDP at the polls could possibly destabilize its intra-party factional system despite the remarkable stability which it attained during the 1980s. A split in the LDP is a possibility not to be ruled out entirely. Factions are thus essentially political machines with certain fairly defined and limited aims. They are not merely a traditional survival, nor simply the ephemeral, disruptive and selfish element posited in Western political theory, but an integral part of Japan’s politics, as they are of the politics of many other countries. They are essentially instruments for the attainment of a share in power by groups which band together for the purpose. In Japan they are at least as important as political parties, but they are not the same as parties and complement them rather than substitute for them. We should not necessarily expect that the ending of the faction system would result in more ‘liberal’ politics. NOTES 1. A forthcoming issue of Journal of Japanese Studies will include predictions by several political scientists of the results of the summer 1989 half-Upper House elections, checked against the actual results.

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2. This is attributable to the imposition of an unpopular consumption tax, and to the lifting of protection on certain agricultural and other products by the Takeshita Government. as well as to the Recruit scandal. 3. See Gerald L.Curtis, The Japanese Way of Politics. New York, Columbia University Press, 1988, especially chapter 3. 4. Harold Lasswell, ‘Faction’, in Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences (1931), vol. 5, pp. 49–51. For a longer discussion, see J.A.A.Stockwin, ‘A Comparison of Political Factionalism in Japan and India’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol. XVI, No. 3 (December 1970), pp. 361–74. [Chapter 38 of this volume.] 5. See for instance Madison: ‘By a faction I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.’ The Federalist Papers. New York, Mentor, 1961, p. 78. 6. An example is the party system of the Philippines before Marcos abolished competitive elections. 7. See for instance T.H.Rigby, ‘Politics in the Mono-Organizational Society’, in Andrew C.Janos ed., Authoritarian Politics in Communist Europe: Uniformity and Diversity in One-Party States. Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley, Research Series, No. 28, pp. 31–80. 8. Roger Benjamin and Kan Ori, Tradition and Change in Postindustrial Japan: The Role of the Political Parties. New York, Praeger, 1981, pp. 80– 1. 9. The counter-argument is, of course, that as a result, policy may become ideologically incoherent. In some circumstances this may not be a bad thing. 10. See Curtis, chapter 3.

Index Abe Shintarō, 363, 366 Abegglen, James, 298 Ackroyd, Joyce, 3 Adenauer, Konrad, 511 Afghanistan, 338, 367 Akao Bin, 175 Albania, 127 Anpo kyōtō, 115 Andō Jinbei, 283 Asanuma Inejirō, 174, 519 Ashida Hitoshi, 487 Asukata Ichio, 279, 358 Attlee, Clement, 494, 510 Aurell, Paul, 5 Australia, 1, 9–10, 13, 67, 142, 155, 159, 208, 351, 277, 294, 314, 319, 348, 355, 383, 396, 425, 464 Australian National University (ANU), 1–3 Ball, George, 231 Banno Junji, 12 Bell, Daniel, 302 Bell, Martin, 501 Bellah, Robert, 299 Benjamin, Roger, 546–7 Bereaved Families Association, 46 Blair, Tony, 488, 491, 494, 495, 499, 510 Brass, Paul, 535–6, 540 Brezhnev, Leonid, 187 Brittan, Samuel, 180, 183, 331 Brown, Gordon, 512 Brzezinski, Zbigniew, 345, 458 Burke, Edmund, 493, 503, 504, 505, 506, 529 Burks, Ardath W., 297 Butler, Rab, 510 Calder, Kent, 467, 480 Callaghan, James, 487 Canberra, 1–2 Carter, James, 338 Chen Yi, 97 China, People’s Republic of, 8, 25, 95, 97, 98, 101–11, 115–8, 127–37, 145, 149, 169,

Index

579

175, 195, 204, 282, 301–2, 316, 338, 386, 388, 469 China, Republic of, see Taiwan Churchill, Winston, 489 Clarke, Kenneth, 512 ‘Clean Government Party’, see Kōmeitō Clinton, William, 498 Coates, David, 331 Collick, Martin, 444 Cominform, 105, 130, 148 Conservative Party, 76 consumption tax, 234, 244, 283 Co-operative Party, 182 Curtis, Gerald, 45, 476, 549 Dahl, Robert, 158, 222 Dai Nippon Aikokutō, see Great Japan Patriotic Party De Gaulle, Charles, 502, 510 De Grazia, Sebastian, 182 Democratic Party (first post-war decade), 145, 198 Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), 52, 58, 69, 74, 78, 86, 88, 482, 508, 509 Democratic Socialist Party (DSP), 21, 28, 38–9, 40, 97, 121, 126, 147, 153, 162, 180, 181–2, 184, 198, 200, 202–3, 205, 215–, 216, 217, 220, 225, 229, 233, 236–7, 238, 242, 246, 254, 262, 263, 280, 283, 295, 307–8, 310, 314–5, 319, 328, 339, 424–5, 449, 504, 518, 548 De Vos, George, 297 Den Hideo, 181 D’Hondt system of proportional representation, 68, 191 Doi Takako, 11, 75, 78, 235, 241–51, 251,, 257–8, 263, 268, 269–71, 276–88, 465, 470 Dōmei union federation, 19, 28, 148, 159, 282, 307 Dore, Ronald, 242, 299 Dōshisha University, 278, 285 Dower, John, 345 Dulles, John Foster, 387 Eda Saburō, 7, 28, 113–4, 115, 118–20, 150, 266, 295, 308, 328, 419–21, 522, 523 Eda Satsuki, 266, 271 Eden, Anthony, 494 Eisenhower, Dwight, 494, 227 Emperor, 460 Environment Agency, 454 Ezoe Hiromasa, 225 Firth, Raymond, 542 France, 143, 183, 209, 222, 254, 277, 304, 315, 405, 467, 492, 503, 511, 529, 532–3 Frank, Isaiah, 331 Friedman, Milton, 187 Fujimaki Shinpei, 8 Fukuda Takeo, 196, 317, 329, 339, 342, 357, 361, 363, 376, 433, 438, 508

Index

580

Fukui, Haruhiro, 10 Fukuyama, Francis, 474 Gaitskell, Hugh, 510 Gandhi, Indira, 536 genrō, 350, 418, 460 Gensuikyō, see Japan Council against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs George Mulgan, Aurelia, 12, 346, 409, 413, 444, 445, 447 Germany, 220, 234, 248, 250, 253, 263, 268, 269, 272, 373, 464, 511 Giscard d’Estaing, Valery, 183 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 483 Gotōda, Masaharu, 432 Great Britain, 182, 207–8, 211, 216, 218, 220, 225, 237, 241, 248, 253, 267, 269, 276, 314, 319, 323, 326, 329–31, 332, 379, 394, 396, 411, 416, 420–1, 451, 459, 461–3, 466, 486–98, 503, 510–, 529, 533, 545 Great Japan Patriotic Party, 174–5, 545 Gyūho, see ‘cow-walking’ hakuchū period, 220 Hamada Kōichi, 362 Hashimoto Ryūtarō, 53, 58, 61, 62, 65, 471, 480, 481, 486, 488, 493 Hata Tsutomu, 58, 450, 451, 453, 471, 487 Hatano Akira, 158, 163 Hatoyama Ichirō, 145 Hatoyama Yukio, 78 Hayashi Shigeru, 6 Hellmann, Donald, 9 Hirano Rikizō, 182 Hirokane Kenshi, 482 Hogg, Quentin (Lord Hailsham), 183 Honecker, Erich, 511 Horii Toshikatsu, 303 Horne, James, 410, 444, 445–6 Hoshutō, see Conservative Party Hosokawa Morihiro, 11, 51, 55, 57, 67, 74, 75, 278, 284, 285, 449–53, 470, 474, 479, 481, 483, 487, 498 Huntington, Samuel, 530, 539 Hussein, Saddam, 257, 262 Ichikawa Fusae, 36 Ike Nobutaka, 295, 476 Ikeda Hayato, 145, 228, 295, 328, 383, 438 Imperial Rule Assistance Association, 144, 194 India, 541–55 Indonesia, 134, 502 International House of Japan, 6 Iran, 338 Ishibashi Masashi, 27, 200, 263, 277, 279, 281

Index

581

Ishibashi Tanzan, 145 Ishikai, see Japan Medical Association Ishikawa Masumi, 285 Isomura Hisanori, 284 Italy, 208, 222, 304, 307–9, 441, 466, 503, 505, 507, 519, 522–3, 529, 532–3, 544 Itō Daiichi, 408, 445, 446 Itō Hirobumi, 144 Itō Masayoshi, 234, 358 Itō Shigeru, 271 Iwai Akira, 120 Japan Communist Party (JCP), 8, 9, 17–9, 21, 22, 28–9, 38–9, 40, 52, 78, 79, 80, 97, 101–11, 117, 120–1, 126–39, 140, 145, 147–8, 149, 155, 159, 163, 169, 180, 187, 193, 199, 200, 203, 215, 217, 220, 226, 229–30, 232, 233, 236, 237, 245, 246, 254, 262, 267, 276, 280, 281, 295, 301–12, 317–8, 319, 367, 378, 382, 424, 427, 528, 504, 517, 548 Minseidō, 109, 126, 141, 305 Japan Council against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, 107, 115, 131, 132 Japan Dental Association, 45 Japan Medical Association, 28 Japan New Party (JNP), 277, 449, 470 Japan Renewal Party, 73, 449, 451 Japan Socialist Party (JSP), 6–8–9, 17–9, 21–2, 24, 25–7, 28–9, 36–8, 43, 52, 53, 58, 62, 69, 74, 78, 79, 80, 93–9, 101, 104, 113–25, 126–9, 131–3, 144, 145–6, 147, 149, 153, 159, 160, 162, 180, 193–4, 198–9, 212, 215–, 217, 220, 225, 226, 230, 233, 234, 236, 238, 241–51, 253–60, 262–73, 276–88, 296–7, 298, 302–3, 307–10, 314–8, 326, 327–8, 344, 355, 356, 357, 378, 421, 424–5, 428, 438, 449–55, 463–4, 470, 478, 482, 507, 515– 42, 529, 537, 547, 548, 550, 551 Heiwa Dōshikai, 116, 518, 521, 522 New Wave Society, 242, 247–9, 251, 256–7, 262–73, 286 Nichirō-kei, 507, 517–8 Rōnō-kei, 507, 517 Shakaishugi Kyōkai, 28, 198, 255, 270 Shamin-kei, 507, 517 Social Democratic Forum, 272 Structural Reform, 7–8, 107, 114, 296, 519, 521, 523 Japan Teachers Union, 169, 382 Jiyūminshutō, see Liberal Democratic Party Johnson, Chalmers, 396, 481 Johnson, Lyndon, 481 Joint Services School of Languages, 3 Kahn, Herman, 333, 345, 457 Kaifu Toshiki, 56, 243, 247, 249, 257, 258, 263, 268, 270, 281, 283, 449, 543 Kaishintō, see Progressive Party Kakizawa Kōji, 181, 188 Kan Naoto, 271, 509 Kanemaru Shin, 449, 470 Kasuga Shōjirō, 105–6, 130

Index

582

Katayama Tetsu, 198, 487 Katō Kōichi, 432 Katsumata Seiichi, 120, 523 Kawakami Jōtarō, 9, 97, 113, 114, 120, 121, 172, 202, 517–8, 521, 522, 523 Kawashima Shōjirō, 157 Keidanren, 159, 195, 226, 348 Kennedy, John F., 295 Kenseikai, 193 Khrushchev, Nikita, 120, 132 King, Anthony, 325, 329–31 Kinnock, Neil, 510 Kishi Nobusuke, 114–41, 145, 172, 227–8, 234, 296, 315, 348 Kobayashi Takeji, 156–7, 164 Kodama Yoshio, 176–7, 352 Kohl, Helmut, 511 Koizumi Junichirō, 12 Kokumin Kyōdōtō, see People’s Co-operative Party Kokumin Seiji Kyōkai, see National Political Association Kōmei Party, see Kōmeitō Kōmeitō, 17, 21–2, 28–9, 38–9, 40, 46, 66, 76, 78, 80, 122, 126, 133, 149, 153, 162, 164, 180, 186, 200–3, 206, 215, 218, 221, 226, 229, 233, 236, 238–, 243, 249, 255, 263, 270, 280, 284, 305, 307–8, 309, 310, 314, 315, 317–8, 319, 367, 425, 428, 450, 453, 454, 464, 467, 477, 482, 505, 548 Kōmoto Toshio, 196, 239, 362, 364 Konno Yōjirō, 134 Kōno Yōhei, 73, 181, 453 Korea, Democratic People’s Republic of (DPRK, North Korea), 134, 269, 278, 385, 469 Korea, Republic of (ROK, South Korea), 115, 117, 122, 269, 278, 344, 358, 372, 386, 407, 411, 448 Korean War, 94, 95, 129, 148 Kuraishi Tadao, 157, 433 Kurile Islands, 94 Kuroda Ryōichi, 159 Kuwait, 257 Kyōdōtō, see Co-operative Party Kyōgoku Junichi, 295 Kyoto, 17–9, 21–32, 162, 504 Kyoto University, 23 Labour-Farmer Party, 145, 155 Lasswell, Harold, 306, 528–9, 543–4 Lee Kwan Yew, 187 Left Socialist Party, 95–6, 113, 155, 193, 198, 302, 307, 421, 518 Leiserson, Michael, 306, 307, 532–3 Lenin, Vladimir, 183, 504, 544, 546 Levine, Solomon, 298, 331 Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) 8, 11, 18–9, 21–2, 28–9, 33–4, 36–8, 40, 43, 46, 52, 53, 56, 58, 62, 66, 68, 73–88, 126, 144, 147, 149, 153, 159, 164, 168, 177, 180, 182, 184–6,

Index

583

187, 190, 193, 194–8, 203–5, 211–2, 215, 216, 218, 220–1, 225, 226–9, 232, 234, 235, 237, 238–9, 241–7, 250–1, 253–, 258–60, 262, 263, 266, 267, 268, 278–80, 283, 295, 296, 298, 304, 307, 310, 314–21, 324, 326, 327, 329, 339–41, 343–51, 355–69, 392–7, 400, 402, 404, 407–8, 410–3, 419, 421, 424–40, 449–55, 460–7, 477, 478–9, 481–2, 487– 9, 498, 500, 504–8, 511, 516, 529, 532–3, 534, 542–3, 546, 547–54 Liberal Party, 65, 67, 75, 76, 78, 86, Liberal Party (immediate post-war) 144 Lipset, Seymour Martin, 302 Lockheed scandal, 325, 333, 352, 362, 428, 439, 453 Lockwood, William W., 295 MacArthur, Douglas, 95, 129, 145, 294, 380, 421, 457, 460 McCormack, Gavan, 481 Mackintosh, John, 331 Macrae, Norman, 344 Mahathir, Mohammad, 490 Major, John, 499, 509, 518 Maki, John M., 296 Malaysia, 501 Mao Tse-tung, 106, 130, 137 Masumi Junnosuke, 315 Miki Takeo, 342, 348, 357, 361, 364, 376, 394, 438 Mills, C.Wright, 408 Ministry of Education, 233, 378 Ministry of Finance, 480 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 446 Ministry of Home Affairs, 378, 430 Ministry of International Trade and Industry, 385, 396, 409, 446 Minobe Ryōkichi, 21, 24, 140, 155, 157, 162–3 Minobe Tatsukichi, 461 Minseitō, 144, 193 Minshutō, see Democratic Party, Democratic Party of Japan Mishima Yukio, 169, 177–8, 383 Mitterrand, François, 511 Miyamoto Kenji, 102, 106, 130, 134, 136, 204 Miyazawa Kiichi, 56, 57, 278, 450, 470, 494, 543 Mizutani Chōsaburō, 23 Mori Yoshirō, 76 Morris, David, 239 Morris, Ivan, 176 Mouer, Ross, 350 Murakami Yasusuke, 428 Murayama Tomiichi, 53, 59, 61, 67, 452, 453, 454, 460, 487 Murdoch, Rupert, 495 Nakagawa Ichirō, 342, 357, 361, 364 Nakamura Kenichi, 470 Nakane Chie, 163, 349

Index

584

Nakasone Yasuhiro, 187, 196, 198, 226, 232, 234, 263, 277, 279, 282, 285, 349, 357, 364, 370, 371, 372, 376–7, 382, 394, 395, 399, 402, 409, 412, 415, 428, 429, 434, 438, 439, 447, 449–, 467, 487 ‘Nara Treaty’ (Australia-Japan), 10 Narita Tomomi, 22, 27, 114, 118, 120, 279, 285, 520 National Diet Library, 6 National Police Agency, 168 National Political Association, 195 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 549–50 Nenni, Pietro, 522 New Frontier Party, 51–2, 65, 69, 74, 495, 520 New Liberal Club, 38, 39, 73, 180, 185, 203–4, 207, 211, 212, 215, 237–8, 246, 254, 280, 324, 339, 363, 384, 424, 439, 505 New Party Harbinger, 52, 58, 62, 73, 75, 449–50, 451, 454, 479 New Zealand, 129, 207 Nihon Kyōsantō, see Japan Communist Party Nihon Shakaitō, see Japan Socialist Party Nihon Shintō, see Japan New Party Nikkeiren, 159 Nikkyōso, see Japan Teachers Union Ninagawa Torazō, 17–9, 21–32, 162 Nishimura Eiichi, 95 Nishio Suehiro, 98, 114, 203, 517–8, 519 Nishizawa Ryūji, 136 Nissan Motor Co. Ltd., 10 Nōkyō, 196, 346, 413, 429 Nomizo Masaru, 518, 522 Nozaka Sanzō, 105, 106, 130, 136 Obuchi Keizō, 65, 76, 494, 506, 508 Ohashi Kazutaka, 17–9, 21–32 Ohira Masayoshi, 188, 339, 340, 341, 355–69, 376, 394, 428, 438, 504, 508 Okada Haruo, 119 Okawa Mitsunori, 262 Okinawa, 8, 22, 94 117, 118, 132 Okita Saburō, 341 Okubo Sadayoshi, 163 Okuda Azuma, 28 Okuno Sōsuke, 368 OPEC, 331, 338 Ori Kan, 546–7 Ota Kaoru, 119, 303 Ozaki Yukio, 316 Ozawa Ichirō, 52, 68, 75, 249, 270, 284, 449, 450, 451, 453, 455, 470 Pempel, T.J., 475 People’s Co-operative Party, 198 Progressive Party, 144

Index

585

Reagan, Ronald, 439 Recruit scandal, 56, 225, 232, 233, 238, 263, 277, 450, 542, 551 Red Army, 173, 382 Reischauer, Edwin, 295 Religion and Politics Research Association, 413 Rengō, 244–56, 263, 280, 282 Right Socialist Party, 95–6, 113, 155, 193, 198, 302, 307, 421, 518 Riggs, Fred W., 296 Rix, Alan, 409, 444, 445, 446, 447 Rosenthal, Donald B., 538 Saionji Kinmochi, 418 Sakigake, see New Party Harbinger Sakisaka Itsurō, 98 Sakurai Shin, 454 SALT II, 338 Sartori, Giovanni, 11, 207, 309, 395 Sasaki Kōzō, 29, 113–4, 115, 116, 117–8, 120, 132, 150, 308, 519, 521 Sasebo, 521 Satō Bunsei, 476 Satō Eisaku, 8, 21, 115, 145, 155, 163, 311, 315, 356, 371, 394, 438–, 536 Satō Noboru, 7, 97 Scalapino, Robert, 104, 295, 301–12, 315 Seiyūkai, 144, 192 Self-Defence Forces, 26, 187, 199, 219, 249, 257, 271, 294, 371, 451, 453 Shakai Minshutō, see Social Democratic Party Shaminren, see Social Democratic League Shastri, Lal Bahadur, 536 Shidehara Kijūrō, 493 Shiga Yoshio, 101–2, 106, 130, 132, 135 Shimanaka Incident (1961), 172, 173 Shin Jiyū Kurabu, see New Liberal Club Shinohara Hajime, 283 Shinseitō, see Japan Renewal Party Shinshintō, see New Frontier Party Shintō Sakigake, see New Party Harbinger Sissons, David, 2, 6 Smith, John, 521 Social Democratic League (SDL), 38, 39, 180, 186, 198, 205, 215, 247, 254, 271, 424–5 Social Democratic Party, see Japan Socialist Party Social Masses Party, 193 Sōhyō union federation, 28, 97, 113, 114, 120, 127, 146, 150, 159, 199, 282, 303, 309, 464 Sōka Gakkai, 17, 38, 66, 76, 109, 149, 153, 162, 199–200, 215, 228, 254, 296, 307, 425, 449, 452, 477 Sone Eki, 95 Sowden, Peter, 11

Index

586

St John Stevas, Norman, 330 Steiner, Kurt, 157 Steven, Rob, 345 Storry, Richard, 3, 10 Sugimoto Yoshio, 350 Suzuki Ichizō, 102 Suzuki Mosaburō, 113, 517–8, 519, 521, 522 Suzuki Zenkō, 46, 188, 196, 232, 357, 361, 368, 372, 376, 394, 439 Tabata Shinobu, 285 Tachi Ryūichirō, 474 Tagawa Seiichi, 181 Taishō Democracy, 418, 460 Taiwan, 117, 344 Takabatake Michitoshi, 279 Takahashi Kōhachirō, 6 Takano Minoru, 97 Takeiri Yoshikatsu, 23, 27, 202 Takemura Masayoshi, 450, 454 Takeshita Noboru, 225, 232, 233–4, 244, 279, 402, 412, 434, 447, 449, 454, 466, 470, 476, 542–3 Takeyama Yutarō, 156 Tanabe Makoto, 269–71 Tanaka Kakuei, 21, 182, 196, 198, 231, 316, 320, 339, 344, 348, 357, 359, 362, 366, 376–8, 393, 397, 418, 438, 439, 444, 450, 480 Tanaka Naoki, 286 Tanaka Takao, 46 Thatcher, Margaret, 211, 235, 439, 493, 494–6, 499, 510 Tito, Josip Broz, 107 Togliatti, Palmiro, 106, 114, 129, 519 Tokuda Kyūichi, 105, 130, 136 Tokyo University, 80–3 Tsurutani Taketsugu, 188 Ueda Tetsu, 277 Uezumi Minoru (Mitsuharu), 281, 282 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), 8, 93, 96–7, 98, 101–11, 115–6, 126–9, 132, 133, 134, 148, 169, 175, 203, 227, 260, 281, 293, 301, 326, 337–9, 367, 386, 388, 416, 438, 458, 469, 482, 502, 505, 546 United Nations, 98, 270, 272 United Kingdom, see Great Britain United States, 8, 94, 96–8, 98, 106, 113, 117, 121, 126, 131, 132, 134, 208, 226–7, 254, 257, 260, 270, 277, 293–5, 302, 309, 324, 327, 328, 331, 337–9, 350, 355, 368, 372–3, 382, 385, 391 395, 399, 405, 415, 417, 420–, 438, 459, 465, 469, 474, 480, 483, 486–, 506, 532 Uno Sōsuke, 244–56, 262, 277, 280, 494, 543 Utsunomiya Tokuma, 380, 388 U-2 Incident, 228

Index

587

van Wolferen, Karel, 457 Vietnam, 101, 115, 118, 121, 126, 132, 134, 135, 136, 140, 303, 338 Vogel, Ezra, 299 Wada Hiroo, 98, 114, 120, 121, 518, 521, 523 Ward, Robert, 332 Watanabe Michio, 182, 452 Watanuki, Jōji, 233 Weber, Max, 331, 487, 501 Weiner, Myron, 535, 538 Williams, David, 470 Wilson, Harold, 488, 492 Yamagishi Akira, 282 Yamaguchi Fusao, 8 Yamaguchi Tsuruo, 269–71 Yamamoto Kōichi, 119, 122 Yamamura Kōzō, 396 Yanagida Hidezō, 27 Yano Junya, 202, Yasukuni Shrine, 187, 368 Yosano Akiko, 243, 276 Yoshida Shigeru, 24, 145, 382, 386–7, 429, 492, 536 zaibatsu, 294 Zengakuren, 140–2, 172