TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/080789/08078900.032

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 10.3 KB | 197 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 24

JAPAN

A Mountain Moves


Angry voters warn the ruling party to clean up its act or lose
power

By Jill Smolowe


    Whether it was just a minor rumble or a major tremor on the
political Richter scale, last week's vote for the upper house
of Japan's parliament was certainly a shock to the Liberal
Democratic Party, which has ruled the country for 34 years. In
the most devastating setback in its history, the L.D.P. claimed
only 36 of the 126 seats up for grabs, while the underdog Japan
Socialist Party took 46. Declared exultant J.S.P. leader Takako
Doi: "I truly felt the mountains moving."

    The vote gave the combined forces of Japan's opposition
parties control of one of the houses in the Diet for the first
time. Although the L.D.P. maintains control of the more powerful
lower house, and therefore of the government, the defeat threw
into question the party's continued dominance. Prime Minister
Sousuke Uno promptly resigned his post after only two months,
saying, "The entire responsibility for the defeat lies with me."

    Uno's willingness to shoulder the party's disgrace did not
disguise it. If Japanese analysts could not agree last week on
the potential consequences of the voter backlash, they did
concur on the causes of the L.D.P. rout. The vote amounted to
a referendum on the party's arrogant and scandal-tainted
performance in recent months. The downslide began with a bribery
and influence-peddling scandal that forced the resignation of
Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita last April. The L.D.P. further
alienated voters, especially women, by imposing a controversial
3% consumption tax. In agreeing to liberalize agricultural
imports, the party angered farmers, long the chief pillar of its
support. The final straw came just weeks after Uno was named
Prime Minister, when his supposedly spotless reputation was
soiled by revelations of a paid affair with a geisha. "Along the
way," says Katsuhiko Shirakawa, an L.D.P. legislator, "we lost
sight of what the public was demanding."

    During the campaign, the L.D.P. repeatedly demonstrated
just how out of touch it had become. One L.D.P. legislator
suggested that the consumption tax would be less painful if it
were an even 4% instead of 3%. Another party member said farmers
were only intelligent enough to do manual work. Credit for the
greatest blunder, however, went to Agriculture Minister Hisao
Horinouchi, who said, "It is wrong for women to come to the
forefront of politics." Pausing just long enough to take one
foot out of his mouth and insert the other, Horinouchi then
attacked Doi, the popular Socialist leader. "British Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher is an exception, but she has a
husband and children," Horinouchi asserted. "Doi does not. Can
such a person serve as Prime Minister?"

    Seizing on voter disillusionment, the J.S.P. mounted a
stunningly effective campaign. Its trump card was Doi, a
charismatic politician whose forthright statements and energy
offered a refreshing change from the dour-faced, dark-suited
politicians fielded by the L.D.P. Campaigning vigorously, Doi
and her opposition colleagues promised to rescind the
consumption tax and oppose further liberalization of farm
imports. "The people are aware of how politics affects their
daily life," Doi said during a campaign tour. "It's the
politicians who are behind the times."

    While such sloganeering proved effective on the hustings,
the Socialists will have to offer voters something more than
the rhetoric of protest if they hope to build on their success.
"Casting the protest vote is no longer enough," concedes Masao
Kunihiro, a newly elected J.S.P. legislator. Like the
Solidarity movement in Poland, the J.S.P. and its allies may
discover that it is far easier to belittle the old than
construct something new. The Socialists are already having
trouble rallying opposition parties behind a single agenda. The
J.S.P., for instance, stands alone in calling for an unarmed,
neutral Japan and opposing both the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty
and Japan's Self Defense Force. Doi has worked hard to play down
these positions, but further moderation will be required if she
hopes to establish broad support.

    In a 45-minute interview with TIME last week, Doi set out
her agenda for the coming months. She called on the L.D.P. to
dissolve the lower house and hold new elections. She planned to
act on demands by voters to strengthen the lax laws on political
ethics and campaign contributions that allowed the Liberal
Democrats to peddle influence with near impunity. As for
relations with its chief ally, she said Japan has given in to
U.S. demands too often. Washington, she said, "can't just bring
requests to Japan in order to resolve its own deficits. We
should agree to disagree and debate vigorously."

    The J.S.P.'s first major test will be to produce, as
promised, an alternative plan to the unpopular consumption tax.
Last week the Socialists had little problem persuading the other
opposition parties to introduce a bill in the upper house to
kill the tax. But the parties were unable to agree on an
alternative source of revenue for the government, which needs
the money for funding welfare programs, especially the soaring
costs of providing care for Japan's aging population.

    The outcome of the tax debate will be of keen interest to
the newest force in Japanese politics: women. As traditional
keepers of the household ledgers, women felt the pinch of the
consumption tax most acutely. In the recent election, that issue
galvanized them not only to throw their votes to the Socialists
but also to enter the political arena in record numbers. Female
candidates increased their numbers in the upper house from 23
to 33; they now account for 13% of the chamber's seats. Half of
those elected were Socialists like Doi. The J.S.P. leader,
however, downplayed her role. "It wasn't my popularity," Doi
said. "I just happened to be a woman."

    Perhaps most telling of the times, roughly half of the new
female legislators have no political experience. They wooed
voters by calling themselves "ordinary women" and "mothers and
housewives," and campaigned on such issues as education,
welfare and ridding the political system of corruption. "Let the
voice from the kitchen be heard in government," said Nobuko
Mori, 57, a winning candidate from western Okayama.

    The voters seemed ready to embrace that message, but women
still have far to go. They hold less than 2% of the seats in
the lower house. In nearly a century of parliamentary
government, only three women have held Cabinet posts; none do
so at present. Yet women's eyes have been opened to new
political opportunity. "I feel like our long-term movement has
finally flowered," said Michiko Matsuura, president of the
League of Women Voters of Japan.

    If the Socialists must consolidate their power, the L.D.P.
must work double time to recapture the loyalty of its straying
core supporters. The most immediate concern is to find a
replacement for Uno. As the search began last week, assertive
Young Turks were working to put forward one of their own. But
the Old Guard resisted, still bound by tradition, faction
loyalty and a determination not to relinquish power. In a
seeming capitulation to the young, however, the party agreed at
week's end to leave the selection of a new leader to a party
vote, rather than the back-room politicking that gave rise to
leaders like Uno. "Our defeat was caused by the public's
distrust of us," said party elder Takami Eto. "We must now
rebuild that trust by operating more in the open."

    But will a revamping of party practices be enough to lure
back voters? Of key concern are the farmers who deserted the
party in droves, complaining that the L.D.P. had capitulated to
foreign trade pressures by opening Japan to food imports.
Charged Masatoshi Wada, a leader of the 10,000-strong Shuso
Agricultural Cooperative: "The L.D.P. promised to fight against
liberalization at any cost, and then gave up the fight. We can
no longer trust them at their face value."

    The farmer backlash is bad news for the U.S. and Japan's
other trade partners. The L.D.P. will now think long and hard
before opening markets any further. In coming months Japan and
the U.S. are to start talking about changing Japan's arcane
retail-distribution system, which American businessmen perceive
as a primary obstacle to getting their goods into Japanese
stores. The L.D.P., hardly a speed demon in trade talks, will
now be forced to move even more slowly, both to protect itself
politically and to accommodate the strengthened voice of the
protectionist J.S.P. Hiroshi Nukui of the Socialists'
policymaking board gave Washington a hint of what lies ahead.
"We value U.S.-Japan ties," said Nukui, "but we're not going to
just follow in the U.S.'s footsteps the way the L.D.P. did."

    Such rumblings indicate that the days of clubby back-room
politics are threatened. A maturing electorate has already
shown itself willing to risk its habitual reliance on
single-party rule. The emergence of a strong Socialist
opposition is certain to disturb the Japanese political debate,
complicating management of the country's economy and its
relations with foreign nations. It is also likely to plunge
Japan into a long period of uncertainty as the country wrestles
with political instability for the first time in decades. At the
very least, the Liberal Democrats cannot hope to regain their
majority in the upper house for at least six years. Some
analysts believe the defeat may even prove salutary. Says an
American official: "The voters were sending a specific message:
Clean up your act, not We're through with you."

    If the Socialists force elections in the parliament's lower
house before next year, as they hope to do, there is also the
remote possibility that for the first time in party history,
the L.D.P. will be banished to the back benches. To avert that
prospect, warns L.D.P. legislator Shirakawa, "we need to find
the reasons for our losses and then show the people that we
have corrected them." That is a tall order to fill, and the
L.D.P. has no time to lose.


-- Barry Hillenbrand and Kumiko Makihara/Tokyo