Text Fwd:[nousbases] [Article] Is Japan changing after the fall of LDP?

* Informed by Hibiki Yamaguchi through [nousbases] on Oct. 3, 2009

People's Plan Japonesia
Is Japan changing after the fall of LDP? ---Hatoyama and the DPJ’s new “politics in command”
by Muto Ichiyo
September 2009

Dear Muto san and friends in Japan, Suddenly, with the election results in Japan, there is a flood of memory about all you friends. The results look pretty unprecedented sitting here in India. But one has no idea whether it comes anywhere close to what you all have been struggling for all these years?! Or whether one should even hope for any changes; even mild. If anyone has written anything on it in English, or has the time to pen a small paragraph, it would really help to reconnect again. In admiration and with regards,

Vinod Raina Delhi, India September 1 2009 ----------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Vinod, I thank you for prompting me to write on it. The August 30 general election here has brought on the decisive downfall of the Liberal Democratic Party, ushering in a new dynamics in Japanese politics. I felt that this change of situation would require a full analysis to be shared by friends overseas, but it was a heavy task that deterred me, an old, feeble soul, from challenging. Then, your mail arrived. With your prodding I have sat up and will try a sketch, not a full analysis, of what I personally perceive as happened and happening. Your questions are directed to four people, and of course what I am scribbling below reflects only my observation.

Yes, Vinod, as you say, this is unprecedented. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) for the first time tumbled down from its position of power. And this occurred because an overwhelming majority of Japanese voters felt enough is enough after a half-century of one-party rule by the LDP. The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), the major opposition party, saw its Lower House force explode from 115 to 308 seats, and the LDP’s strength shrank from 300 to 119. The New Komei Party, LDP’s coalition partner, lost all its seats from single seat constituencies, its total seats cut from 31 to 21.

Isn’t this impressive? The voters rejected the LDP rule, particularly one led by an incredibly vulgar, insensitive politician as the prime minister, by massively voting for the DPJ. This, however, worked against the Communists and Social Democrats, the left on the political spectrum. The Social Democrats, facing the danger of being erased from the national political map, clinched an unequal partnership with the DPJ and succeeded in returning seven, the same number as before. The Communist Party silently retracted its critique of the DPJ as another conservative party and pledged to be a “constructive opposition party,” merely to say yes, yes, or no, no, depending on issues. The party barely maintained its previous strength, nine seats.

Now, Vinod, you have asked me two good questions – if what happened can mean any change, if mild, and if “it comes anywhere close to what you all have been struggling for.” My answer to the first question is yes. It does represent a major change, even a drastic change. As for the second, my answer is that we have come closer to it in the sense that political dynamism which the election ushered in has created new possibilities as well as new dangers.

Why then do I say this is a major change? Is this not a mere shift of power from one conservative party to another? It is, generally speaking. The DPJ is not a left or progressive party. Nevertheless, the dislodging of the LDP from the position of power carries a greater significance than might be apparent. I say so because the LDP was not just a strong conservative party, but rather the entrenched institutional ruling machinery of this country. You may perhaps draw a parallel with, say, the Institutional Revolutionary Party of Mexico (PRI) that ruled practically from 1920 through 2000. Or think of what the downfall of the Suharto-Golkar regime meant in Indonesia. Am I correct, Vinod, if I say that the Indian Congress Party from 1947 through 1977 was the Indian parallel to the Japanese LDP? Maybe we can put the Chinese Communist Party since 1949 in the same bracket. Their histories and colors differ, and greatly, from one to another, but they are all monster-parties fused with the state machinery. People voted for or against them, but the machineries remained immune.

The major significance of the 2009 August election is that this machinery has fallen apart. One interesting feature of this development is that more than half of those who voted for the DPJ did not support some of the main policy contents of their election platform, such as abolishing speedway tolls. First and foremost, Japanese voters rejected continued rule by the LDP machinery. You can say that in this country, too, “change” became the major slogan. But unlike in the United States, there was no personal enthusiasm for the DPL leader Hatoyama Yukio. He was not a Japanese Barack Obama.

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