Messy Politics But Healthier Democracy

Japan in 2010 Messy Politics but Healthier Democracy
Author(s): Frances Mccall Rosenbluth

Source: Asian Survey, Vol. 51, No. 1 (January/February 2011), pp. 41-53
Published by: University of California Press
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F R A N C E S M C CA L L R O S E N B L U T H
Japan in 2010
Messy Politics but Healthier Democracy
A B S T R AC T
The Democratic Party of Japans first full year in office was rocky, with open competition for party leadership sandwiched between diplomatic rows with the U.S. and
China. If bumps in the road are inevitable for a new party in government, the Japanese public has made an investment in the long-term health of its democracy.
K E Y W O R D S : Japan, DPJ, LDP, Kan Naoto, Futenma
INTRODUCTION
The Democratic Party of Japans (DPJ) stunning electoral victory on August

30, 2009, put to rest a widespread viewit was a fear or hope, depending on
ones point of viewthat Japanese politics is synonymous with Liberal
Democratic Party (LDP) rule. Whether because of Japanese voters conservative bent, or because of the LDPs long-standing monopoly on pork barrel
with which to buy votes, the LDP bounced back into legislative majority
after a brief stint as opposition in 1993 and 1994. But finally, the DPJs majorities, first in the upper house in 2007 and then in the House of Representatives in 2009, seemed to signify an epochal change in Japanese politics.
Then the honeymoon ended. The DPJs rocky year as the majority party
provided numerous reminders of the publics fickleness, causing some observers to resuscitate the presumption of inevitable LDP dominance. But judging
the DPJs long-term prospects from its post-victory slide in popularity would
be a mistake. However momentous the birth of a DPJ Diet majority, the real
epoch-making event was not the 2009 election but the new electoral setting,
established by rule change in 1994, from which the possibility of regular alternation in government arose. The DPJ may no longer be the publics
Frances McCall Rosenbluth is Damon Wells Professor of International Politics and Deputy
Provost for the Social Sciences at Yale University. Email: <Frances.rosenbluth@yale.edu>.
Asian Survey, Vol. 51, Number 1, pp. 4153. ISSN 0004-4687, electronic ISSN 1533-838X. 2011
by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Presss Rights
and Permissions website, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: AS.2011.51.1.41.
41
AS5101_05_Rosenbluth_Japan.indd 41
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42 ASIAN SURVEY 51:1
sweetheart, but the fundamental nature of majoritarian politics, underpinned

by electoral rules in which 300 of 480 lower house seats are contested in singlemember districts, is that a center-right and center-left party seek to build a
legislative majority around policies that a plurality of voters will prefer. The
center-right platform of the LDP, emphasizing small government, and the
center-left platform of the DPJ, which offers social insurance against economic
distress, appeal to different but mutually incompatible concerns of many voters in the political middle. Parties in single-member district systems alternate
at least in part because voters dislike the tradeoffs entailed in choosing leftleaning versus right-leaning policies and, depending on the circumstances,
may wish for the benefits that either sitting government cannot offer.
This is, of course, a stylized depiction, whereas in fact both the LDP and
DPJ are heterogeneous bodies that have not completely sorted into internally coherent parties that make programmatic sense. Because ideological
coherence has electoral appeal and is therefore a cheaper way to attract voters
than budgetary or regulatory favors, the parties may yet evolve into groupings of politicians linked more closely in some sort of political space. But
given that many electoral districts are relatively homogeneous internally (on
a rural-urban continuum) and different from each other, both of the main
parties represent diverse interests. More voters than ever consider themselves
independents, willing to vote for the party that seems to have the better
answer to the problems of the day. Against this backdrop, voters various
discontents feed the ambitions of individual party leaders to create alternative visions of the partys mission. All of this is true in Japan today, and in
2010 a weak economy and a sometimes inhospitable diplomatic environment
only added more volatility to the mix.
The DPJs year in mishaps illustrates the rich layering of inter- and intraparty competition in Japan. At years end, the DPJ remained in office,
though not without open contests for the partys reins. But rather than lament the instability of Japanese politics, one might as reasonably celebrate
the emergence of a more robust marketplace of ideas, as politicians and parties vie for the votes of a skeptical public.
T H E D O M E S T I C A N D I N T E R N AT I O N A L P O L I T I C S O F F U T E N M A
One of Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukios first challenges upon gaining office
in September 2009 was managing an inflexible U.S. stance over the fate of
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R O S E N B L U T H / J A PA N I N 2 0 1 0 43
the Futenma Marine Base in Okinawa. Home to the airborne U.S. Marine
Corps, Futenma had become a focal point of electoral competition between
the LDP and DPJ in the years leading up to the election. The LDP government, as custodians of the U.S.-Japan security alliance for many years, had
accepted U.S. strategic plans for U.S. bases in Okinawa. In the 2009 campaign, Hatoyama pledged that if elected he would put the security alliance
on a more-equal footing, restoring to Japan effective sovereignty over the use
of lands on which the U.S. maintained military bases. The DPJ also embraces the bilateral alliance as the linchpin of Japanese security, given the less
attractive available alternatives. But when the DPJ won a landslide victory
for the lower house, Hatoyama seemed to think that President Barack
Obama would want to support the DPJs campaign promise to give Okinawa citizens more say in how and where American bases were located. Having promised the Japanese people that he would work out some arrangement
with the U.S. by May 2010, Hatoyama resigned as DPJ president and as
prime minister on June 2 when the U.S. refused to alter what Washington
already viewed as a compromise.
First, some background. Futenma, located in the prefecture of Okinawa
at the southern tip of Japan, is a U.S. Marine Corps base that houses about
4,000 American pilots and aircrew who undergo training there and then
provide air support to land-based Marines stationed elsewhere in Okinawa.
Futenma, on a narrow strip of land in the middle of the city of Ginowan,
hosts fewer than 10% of U.S. military personnel stationed in Japan (who
total about 41,000). Residents of Ginowan, population about 90,000, have
complained for years about the noisy air maneuvers overhead. But this Marine base serves as a microcosm for a much bigger issue, stemming from the
fact that Okinawa hosts almost all of the American bases and their military
personnel assigned to Japan. In Hatoyamas view, the people of Okinawa pay
disproportionately for the Japanese side of the security alliancein the form
of noise, pollution, inconvenience, and periodic bad behavior by the Americans. The Japanese government has historically transferred to Okinawa Prefecture extra funds in compensation for these costs. But many Okinawa
citizens, along with pacifists and socialists who decry what they view as a
militaristic security alliance, have demanded that the U.S. Marines leave
Okinawa altogether.
The Futenma issue predates Hatoyamas election by many years. In 2005,
in response to the steady drumbeat of anti-Futenma activism principally in
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Okinawa, the U.S. and Japanese governments reached a tentative agreement

to move some troops to Guam and to relocate the rest of the Futenma personnel and operations to a property adjacent to another Marine base, Camp
Schwab, located on a less populated part of the island. But the relocation
plans sparked vociferous opposition.
The LDP government has historically been deferential to U.S. military
policy in Asia, cooperating with the U.S. by providing access to Japanese
territory for bases on agreeable terms. The DPJ is a moderate, center-left
party with relatively few radically pacifist members, but its upper house win
in 2007 rested on support of the left-leaning Social Democratic Party of
Japan (SDP), for whom demilitarization and American departure from Okinawa are key policy goals. When the DPJ gained control of both houses in
September 2009, at least some Japanese voters expected the U.S. to concede
to Hatoyamas request for a new plan that could satisfy Camp Schwab opponents. But after several months of begging the U.S. government to help
appease Japanese opponents of Camp Schwabs expansion, the DPJ government bowed to Washingtons pressure to go forward as arranged between the
U.S. and the LDP in 2005. On May 28, 2010, the Hatoyama Cabinet approved a joint statement under the names of Foreign Minister Okada Katsuya,
Defense Minister Kitazawa Toshimi, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates confirming the 2005 deal. The DPJs caving in caused the SDP to leave the DPJ coalition government in May 2010,
leading Hatoyama to resign as party chief and head of state on June 2.
The Futenma case demonstrates several interesting aspects of Japanese
politics today. First, the Japanese public has become engaged in foreign policy
debates in a way and to a degree not seen since 1960, when the U.S.-Japan
Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security stirred up great antipathy to war
among a population still angry about World War Two. Japans new electoral
rules, which force politicians to compete for voters on programmatic
grounds rather than principally with personalistic appeals, has brought foreign policy more sharply into focus in the publics eye. Hatoyama lost domestic support not so much because the voting public believed that the U.S.
should move more troops out of Japanindeed there was much debate
about how Japan should keep the U.S. committed to Japanese defensebut
because he appeared unrealistic, indecisive, and ineffectual in international
negotiations. Second, the Futenma episode involved, for the first time in
postwar Japanese history, a ruling party in Japan whose constituents
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included environmentalists and local activists, however unsuccessful they

were in the end. Third, the DPJs center-left politics notwithstanding, the
partys leaders decided to sacrifice Hatoyamas political neck rather than to
risk the security alliance with the U.S. Electoral politics and constituency
involvement have changed substantially in Japan, but the security treaty will
continue to constrain Japans policy choices for as long as the countryand
whatever government rules itdecides the alliance is worth what it costs.
F I S CA L P O L I T I C S A N D T H E U P P E R H O U S E E L E C T I O N S O F J U LY 2 0 1 0
The DPJ chose Kan Naoto as its next president, and the DPJ majority in the
House of Representatives elected Kan as the 94th prime minister of Japan on
June 4, 2010. Kan was a logical choice for the DPJ, being a charismatic
leader with roots in the citizens movement, and was well positioned to shore
up the partys damaged reputation with its populist wing. Kans daunting
task was to bring the DPJ successfully through the upper house elections on
July 11. Public support for the DPJ bounced back from a low of 21% in May
to nearly 40% in June. Although the DPJ did not come roaring into the
campaign season for the upper house elections with the 70% public support
the party enjoyed in September 2009, at least it was ahead of the LDP, whose
support remained at 20% or less during the entire first half of 2010. Interestingly, the LDP completely failed to capitalize on the DPJs embarrassment
over Futenma.
It is anyones guess how well the DPJ would have done at the polls were a
time warp to have closed the space from May to July, but much blame went
to Prime Minister Kan for suggesting, in June, that raising the consumption
tax rate from 5% to 10% might be necessary to restore Japan to fiscal health.
Kan had made similar statements when he was Hatoyamas minister of finance, and would have sounded indistinguishable from fiscal conservatives
except that Kan wanted the government to have sufficient revenues with
which to build up Japans social services. Although Kan and Hatoyama share
a vision of a Japan with a more robust welfare state, Hatoyama had repeatedly promised the tax-averse Japanese public that the governments social
services would be financed by cuts in wasteful spending rather than by new
taxes.
Tax hikes are the political kiss of death, in Japan as elsewhere. But Kan,
now prime minister, insisted that the public would want to hear tough talk
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about the danger of leaving unattended the large gap between Japans tax
revenues and expenditures funded by ever-growing issuances of government
debt. Stunningly, the size of the Japanese governments debt was twice as
much as Japans gross domestic product (GDP) in 2010, compared with
Greeces debt-to-GDP ratio of 1.23 at the height of its debt crisis, or the U.S.
ratio of 0.94 in 2010, or even the U.S. historic high of 1.21 in 1946. Kan
pointed out that a huge government debt harbors several potential dangers:
In the short run, the cost of government borrowing can increase if and when
Standard and Poors and Moodys downgrade the governments credit rating.
In the longer run, not only is the government tempted to inflate its way out
of debt, but the fear of inflation can cause investors who normally buy government bonds to turn to other instruments, which raises the governments
cost of funds. When the government has to pay higher interest rates to attract lenders, the debt grows larger while siphoning off funds that might
otherwise go to private industry. The government can soak up too much of
the available savings and crowd out private sector borrowers who need
money for productive investment. Moreover, Japans sales tax, introduced in
1989 at 3% and raised to 5% in 1997, remains the lowest in the Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) except for the U.S.,
which has no national sales tax, although many states do.
Against Kans tough talk were also legitimate economic arguments on
the other side, principally with respect to timing: Japan was arguably in
greater danger of deflation than inflation. Contrary to warnings that the
government debt would cause higher interest rates, 10-year government securities were selling at 1.3%, still the lowest among the G-7 nations. Moreover, tax hikes would likely dampen consumption needed to help get the
Japanese economy going again. As with much else in public policy, not all
good things go together, and politicians are in the unenviable position of
trying to oversell their side of the inevitable tradeoffs.
Given that there were reasonable-sounding arguments on both sides of the
debateas much within the DPJ as between the DPJ and the LDPpolitical expediency won the day. Kan buckled under party pressure from other
party leaders to reverse his stance, saying that he only meant to suggest the
need for a bipartisan discussion about the consumption tax. Whether because of the whiff of tax increases or because the public disliked the visible
party dissension on the tax issue, the DPJ won only 44 of its 54 seats up for
reelection in the upper house elections on July 11, 2010, losing 10 seats in that
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chamber. Combined with its 62 uncontested seats, the partys strength in the
242-member upper house dropped to 106. Including the three seats of the
Peoples New Partynow that it no longer had the support of the Social
Democrats after Futenmathe ruling coalition held only 109 seats, well
short of the 122 needed for a majority. Notably, however, the SDP itself lost
one of its three seats in July. With only four seats in the upper house and
seven in the lower house, the SDP was in a weaker position than even before
to bargain for policy influence.
Beginning with Hatoyama in September 2009, the DPJ has emphasized
budget reallocation above new taxes to pay for the partys ambitious social
service schemes, including the child allowance program, pensions, and employment-promotion projects. The DPJ established a procedure for public
participation in reviewing government budget allocations, called the budget
screening process. The first effort, conducted over nine days in November
2009, attracted over 20,000 voters to the gymnasium in Tokyo where the
screening took place. Live streaming of the sessions on the Internet recorded
2.7 million views. In one example, the screeners recommended slashing
funds for the promotion of next-generation supercomputer technology, on
grounds that it was unnecessary for Japan to aspire to world leadership in
super computing. Although the DPJ got credit for bringing transparency to
budgeting, the screening process yielded only 700 billion yen ($8.4 billion)
in cuts for the 2010 budget, less than half of the 1.7 trillion yen ($20 billion)
needed to fund even the DPJs child allowance plan. The party was left having made more promises than it could pay for.
O Z AWA S FA I L E D C H A L L E N G E
Kans party presidency expired in September 2010, since he was only serving
out the remainder of Hatoyamas two-year term. In a dramatic year for Japanese politics, perhaps the point of highest drama was the contest on September 14 for the partys top position between activist-turned-politician Kan
Naoto and Ozawa Ichiro. The latter was perpetually juggling his two personas, shadow-shogun with a whiff of corruption, or can-do reformer, the only
answer to Japans bureaucratic sclerosis. DPJ presidential elections take place
in quite an open way, although disproportionate weight is given to incumbent Diet members. The presidency goes to the candidate who wins a majority of 1,222 points based on ballots cast by different categories of voter. The
16/02/11 2:20 PM
DPJs 411 sitting Diet members contribute 822 points, with each vote worth
two points, accounting for about 70% of the total. The 2,400-odd DPJ local
assembly members collectively own 100 points, distributed to the presidential candidates in proportion to the percentage of votes they gain. In addition, 340,000-plus lay DPJ supporters have 300 points, each point
corresponding to one of the 300 single-seat electoral districts of the lower
house. The candidate who wins the most votes in each constituency is given
one point.
The public debates between Kan and Ozawa presented Japanese voters
with differences in policy and style. Ozawa styled himself as the fix-it man
whose experience and policy know-how were required in the partys hour of
need. Kan played on the publics distrust of Ozawas old-style politics, emphasized transparent and inclusive government, and returned to the theme
of tax reformsnot only the dreaded consumption tax hike but also a revamping of Japans corporate taxesto increase national revenue. The DPJ
needed to be a party with both a heart and a head, Kan argued, which required not only the compassion to devise programs to help societys weak
and unfortunate but also the wisdom to figure out how best to raise money
to pay for those programs.
Ozawa and Kan split support among DPJ parliamentarians almost down
the middle, with Ozawa getting 200 votes and Kan 206. As the mastermind
behind the DPJs September 2009 electoral victory, Ozawa was credited with
helping elect more than 140 freshman lawmakers known as Ozawas children. But the general public favored Kan by a margin of over three to one.
In the end, Kan won the presidency with 721 points out of the total 1,222,
while Ozawa collected 491 points.
Kan lost little time in putting together a new cabinet, shedding several
politicians close to Ozawa but also attempting to signal fundamental policy
continuity. To promote party unity, Kan did give cabinet positions to three
politicians who had openly supported Ozawa in the DPJ presidential election, though none to members of Ozawas group.
The DPJ continued to govern in coalition with the Peoples New Party
(PNP) headed by Kamei Shizuka, a long-standing opponent of postal privatization that had been spearheaded by former LDP Prime Minister Koizumi
Junichiro and embraced for the most part by the DPJ. Kan allowed the PNP
to keep the Financial Services and Postal Reform portfolio in the person of
Minister Jimi Shozaburo, but Kan has also signaled uncertainty about allowing
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the PNP agenda to control financial services and postal system policies. It is
likely that until and unless the DPJ aligns with an alternative coalition party
to create an upper house legislative majority, the DPJ will temporize rather
than innovate on the postal savings question.
Meanwhile, only weeks after a narrow defeat in his attempt to become
prime minister, Ozawa faced the grim prospect of being formally charged for
financial corruption. In October 2010, the Tokyo No. 5 Committee for the
Inquest of Prosecution overruled a decision by Tokyo prosecutors not to
charge Ozawa for his role in misreporting over $4 million in political campaign donations. Although inquest committees have existed since they were
established during the Allied Occupation to oversee government prosecutors,
they exercised no real check on the discretion of prosecutors because historically their role was strictly advisory. Prosecutors in Japan have only tried 1.5%
of all potential cases because they would prefer to avoid cases in which conviction would be difficult or politically awkward. Only since 2009, when
DPJ-led legislation made inquest committee rulings legally binding, has
their power to force prosecutors to bring cases to trial become real. (Germany has implemented similar limitations on prosecutorial discretion in
recent decades.) The 165 locally based inquest committees in Japan, consisting of 11 residents randomly chosen from voting rolls, will be playing a more
visible role in Japanese judicial politics in years to come.
CA N T H E D P J R E G A I N P U B L I C S U P P O R T ?
Kans successful defense of his party presidency, nevertheless, left open the
question of whether the DPJ could convince the Japanese electorate that it
is capable of governing, or if instead the party would limp along until the
next lower house election scheduled for September 2013. Kans greatest challenge at years end was to build public trust. The Japanese electorate had voted
against the LDP on August 30, 2009, more than it had voted for the DPJ,
and the DPJs year in office did not convince a big public majority that the
party was more capable than the LDP of restoring prosperity. After a year of
looking like a ship without a rudder, the DPJ had yet to project an image
of decisive leadership. Having lost its legislative majority in the upper house
of the Diet in July 2010, getting legislation passed with the help of coalition
partners would require compromises that could deepen the publics view of
the DPJ as a directionless party.
16/02/11 2:20 PM
In addition to these two big majoritarian parties that vie for a plurality
of seats in the single-member districts, there are a number of small parties
that survive because of Japans mixed system electoral rules. In the lower
house, 180 of the 480 seats are allocated to parties in proportion to electoral
support on party lists in 11 electoral regions. The result is that 51 of the 480
seats are in the hands of five small parties in addition to the six members
who remain as independents. Upper house electoral rules also include a proportional representation component that is permissive of small parties. In
every upper house election, held every three years, 121 of the 242 members
are elected for six-year terms: 24 politicians from single-seat constituencies,
49 from multi-seat constituencies, and 48 by proportional representation
from a single national list.
The DPJs solid majority in the lower house is an enormous asset, but
because all legislation except the budget, treaty ratification, and selection of
the prime minister has to be approved by both houses in identical form, it is
a political headache for the DPJ to be 16 votes short of an upper house majority since the July 2010 elections. The SDP took its four upper house votes
with it when it bailed out of the coalition with the DPJ after Hatoyama reneged on what the SDP regarded as a pledge to undo the agreement to move
U.S. Marines from Futenma to Cape Henoko. The coalition with the PNP,
which provides three upper house votes, still leaves the DPJ 13 votes short in
that body.
The party to watch is the New Komeito, which, along with 21 lower house
seats, has 19 upper house seats that could give the DPJ a legislative majority
in that chamber. The New Komeito is therefore in the best position to move
policy in its direction in exchange for legislative support. On policy grounds,
the New Komeito is closer to the DPJ than it was to the LDP, with which it
teamed up in the LDPs last administration. Ironically, however, it is precisely the substantial overlap of the party platforms, with their emphasis on
social security and the needs of the urban voter, that threatens many members of the New Komeito. Its representatives are justifiably worried about
their voters who, save for their loyalty to the Nichiren branch of Buddhism
(and its Soka Gakkai arm of lay activists) on which the New Komeito party
is based, would be voting for the DPJ. The New Komeitos alliance with the
LDP may have made little ideological sense, but neither was there danger
that New Komeito voters would be tempted to drift into the LDP camp. In
cooperating with the DPJ, New Komeito leaders face the challenge of
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maintaining a distinctive policy stance and an independent voter base. For

example, the Komeito has been courting the support of the large Korean
population in Japan by advocating local voting rights for long-term residents, including South Koreans, whose families have lived in Japan for generations without full citizenship. It is not entirely obvious why these urban
voters would be more likely to vote for the New Komeito than for the DPJ,
at least in the longer term.
F O R E I G N P O L I C Y: J A PA N A N D T H E R I S E O F C H I N A
Notably, 2010 was the year China overtook Japan as the second largest economy in the world, following the U.S. Of course China still lags far behind
Japan in terms of per capita income, but the aggregate numbers potentially
pack a big punch, giving new meaning to the Year of the Tiger.
Sino-Japanese relations are a subtle mix of rivalry and leery cooperation,
as evidenced by the flared tempers on both sides when, in September, Japan
arrested a Chinese fishing boat captain whose trawler collided with two Japanese coast guard patrol vessels in Japanese-controlled waters in the East
China Sea around the Senkaku/Diaoyutai Islands. These islands between
Okinawa and Taiwan, claimed by Japan, China, and Taiwan, are uninhabited but thought to be near large oil and gas deposits. Japans claim to the
islands dates to the 1895 Sino-Japanese Warand to 1972, Japan argues
when the U.S. restored the entire chain of islands to Japanese sovereignty
along with Okinawa. China has also declared the islands to be in its territorial waters and disputes Japans sovereignty claims, although it has proposed
joint resource exploration with Japan. The U.S. has not taken a formal position on the disputed territorial claims.
Following Japans arrest of the Chinese trawler captain, the Chinese government aimed a barrage of vitriol at the Japanese government for international lawlessness and a reversion to Japans imperialist impulses,
demanding an immediate apology and compensation. Beijing also imposed
economic sanctions on Japan (restricting shipments to Japan of rare-earth
elements) and detained four Japanese citizens in the northern Chinese city
of Shijiazhuang for photographing military sites. Japan quietly returned
the captain to China, but both Beijings ham-fisted response and the Kan
governments apparent capitulation came in for heavy criticism by the
Japanese public. According to Yomiuri Shimbun polls, the Kan governments
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approval ratings dropped from 63% in August to 21% by years end, while
survey respondents expressing distrust of China jumped to 87%, the largest
negative response since that question was added to the survey in 2004.1
Taken together, the Futenma/Henoko flap and the Chinese trawler incident outlined in stark relief the narrow range of Japans foreign policy options. The dominant view in Japan, dating back to the wily Prime Minister
Yoshida Shigeru who negotiated the settlement of the Occupation, is that
Japan should concede to the U.S. whatever is necessary to keep the bilateral
relationship on an even keel, but advocate as strongly as possible for Japans
interests where they diverge from those of the U.S. The U.S.-Japan Security
Treaty imposes on Japan a stiff price for Japanese security by requiring Japanese support for U.S.-led wars and international policing initiatives as well
as for U.S. bases in Japan. On the other hand, the alternatives to the treaty
either paying entirely for its own security or doing without a strong security
plan while China risesare even worse.
CONCLUSIONS
Seen from the ground, there are reasons aplenty to worry about the state of
Japanese politics. First, the two major parties remain conglomerations of
heterogeneous points of view, with the result that electoral politics does not
present voters with a crisp pair of alternatives. While some observers worry
that the DPJ and the bureaucracy are too often at loggerheadswhether
about foreign policy or the economymuch of that dissension reflects differences of opinion in the DPJ leadership itself. For a country that thinks of
itself as socially and ethnically homogeneous, electoral districts vary considerably on the rural/urban dimension, producing a wide band of legislative
opinion in both parties on many issues. Add to that the welter of small parties and the constant maneuvering around majority coalitions, and voters are
in a constant fog about what the government will or can do on any particular policy dimension. Japans economic malaise has continued for 20 years
and counting, with no end in sight. Given that the rhetorical wars within
1. Sugita Yoshifumi and Ota Kengo, Poll Shows Public Frustration with Diplomacy, Daily
Yomiuri Online, November 9, 2010, <http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T101108004191.htm>;
Distrust of China Soars, Poll Finds, ibid., November 8, 2010, <http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/
national/T101107002766.htm>; Uchida Akira, All Eyes on Sengoku Ahead of DPJ Convention,
Asahi.com, <http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201101110278.html>.
16/02/11 2:20 PM
and between parties about how to pull the Japanese out of a quadruple recession have produced poor results to date, it is little wonder that Japanese
voters lack faith in politics to provide the leadership their country needs.
Of some consolation is that because the 2008 financial crisis started in the
U.S., Japan is now not alone in having made a hash of its economy. If further stimulus is required for economic recovery in both countries, the Japanese may, in fact, have a more conducive legislative lineup to generate that
policy option than the U.S. does, after the latters November mid-term elections. But the more fundamental reason to be optimistic about Japan is that,
after half a century of more or less one-party rule, Japan is experimenting
with alternation in government. It is not so much that alternating governments are more likely to hit on correct answers; alternative policy platforms
present voters with different sets of tradeoffs that will always leave reasons for
dissatisfaction. Rather, the alternation in government is a cause for celebration because Japanese voters are now more clearly the arbiters of which policy tradeoffs they want to make, and when.
16/02/11 2:20 PM

Messy Politics But Healthier Democracy

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Japan in 2010 Messy Politics but Healthier Democracy

Author(s): Frances Mccall Rosenbluth

The Democratic Party of Japans (DPJ) stunning electoral victory on August

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sweetheart, but the fundamental nature of majoritarian politics, underpinned

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Okinawa, the U.S. and Japanese governments reached a tentative agreement

included environmentalists and local activists, however unsuccessful they

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maintaining a distinctive policy stance and an independent voter base. For

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