Nakasone Maneuver Opens Japan Election Campaign

Japan’s political parties kicked off campaigns to cheers of “banzai” today after Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone called and swiftly dissolved a special session of Parliament to set up a national election next month.

A victory for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party could help Nakasone, who has spearheaded efforts to improve trade and defense relations with the United States, in a bid to remain in office beyond the end of his second term.

In an expected but controversial maneuver, Nakasone convened and immediately dissolved a special session of the powerful lower house of the Diet (Parliament), mandating an early election and also ending the term of the upper house, where a vote was already scheduled.

The move allowed the Cabinet to schedule a simultaneous election of both houses for July 6, only the second “double election” under the country’s postwar system.

It is believed that the strategy will increase voter turnout and boost the chances of the conservative, pro-American LDP, which has held power since it was formed in 1955. Party leaders hope to repeat a sweeping victory in the first double vote in 1980.

But major opposition parties, condemning the dissolution maneuver as political steamrolling, boycotted scheduled parliamentary meetings and threatened to file a lawsuit to block the vote.

Nakasone’s second term as LDP president, and hence prime minister, expires in October. Party rules prohibit a third term, but political analysts believe that Nakasone hopes to parlay a victory at the polls into more time in office to continue cherished foreign policy and domestic reform programs.

Nakasone has been in deep political trouble for failing to win support at the May 4-6 Tokyo summit of industrial nations for a halt to the rapid rise of the yen, which has caused severe economic problems in Japan.