A Clear Message From Japan’s Voters

Last Sunday’s landslide victory for Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone’s Liberal Democratic Party underscored the fact that conservatism is alive and healthy in Japan.

Three of the last four elections, dating back to 1976, had raised doubts about this and about the durability of the Liberal Democrats, who are the country’s conservatives despite their name.

The Socialists, the largest of six opposition parties, immediately reacted as if the landslide would raise the curtain on an era of foreboding rightist trends. Their chairman, Masashi Ishibashi, called the result “frightening.”

Previously, the best year for the Liberal Democrats had been 1980. Then, the threat of an opposition-led coalition, the death of Prime Minister Masayoshi Ohira and the first-ever simultaneous election for both houses of Parliament came together and the voters handed the Liberal Democrats a comfortable majority in the lower house, which elects the prime minister.

Last Sunday, however, no crisis faced the nation. No fear of an opposition-led coalition drove voters into the conservative camp. And no pressing issue drew lines of battle between conservatives and the six opposition parties, who regard themselves as “progressives.”

Yet voters turned en masse to the conservatives, electing 304 of them to the 512-seat lower house, a gain of 46 seats. The conservatives, seven seats short of a majority going into the election, came out with a 48-seat cushion. In the 252-seat upper house, too, the Liberal Democrats padded their majority to 17, six more than after the last election three years ago.

Kiichi Miyazawa, chairman of the ruling party’s executive board, called the election result a product of Japan’s postwar success.

“Our country has freedom and is at peace,” he said. “Moreover, it is prospering. Compared with other countries in the world, Japan is doing very well. The voters gave their approval to that fact.”

The pre-World War II brand of authoritarian conservatism Ishibashi is still worrying about--after more than four decades of peace and democracy--was an aggressive product of poverty. Today’s conservatism is a passive product of affluence.

Japan’s modern conservatism, however, has not yet overcome the wartime liabilities inflicted upon it; there remain important constraints on its influence.

Even today, displaying the national flag and singing the national anthem--reminders of militarism to some Japanese who remember the war--often stir controversy. The idea of amending the postwar Constitution, imposed under the U.S. occupation, is still taboo. Rational debate on national defense remains elusive.

The increases in defense spending Nakasone has put through--while contrasting with a freeze on nearly all other budget items--have remained modest in deference to widespread public opinion against any move toward a significant military buildup.

Even with an overwhelming parliamentary majority, those constraints will remain. In addition, neither Nakasone nor any other leader will be in a position to embark on a program of aggressive conservatism, if only because the Liberal Democrats’ majority is likely to be trimmed in the next election.

Nakasone’s personal popularity appears to have boosted the conservatives’ fortunes. But their victory was attributable mostly to skillful strategy and a one-time technical advantage.

Just as conservative runners-up in the last election provided most of the gains for the Liberal Democrats this time (38 of 41 losers in the 1983 election, who spent the last 2 1/2 years campaigning, won their races this time), the opposition will enjoy the “runner-up’s advantage” the next time around.

Japan’s success and a broad consensus on major policy--such as the importance of maintaining close relations with the United States--have already dimmed distinctions between the Liberal Democrats and much of the opposition. The main difference now lies in the attractiveness of candidates.

Most conservatives, indeed, no longer bother to campaign on policy issues. Typical was Hirofumi Nakasone, 40, the prime minister’s son, who won a seat in the upper house in his first bid for elective office.

While his father was talking about reforms at home and more active diplomacy abroad in his nationwide campaign, Hirofumi was telling voters in Gumma prefecture that he would become an effective lobbyist to the central government, which dispenses public works funds.

The underpinnings of today’s conservatism lie mainly in social change. It was no accident that both the Communist Party and the the Komei Party, despite their contrasting leftist versus middle-of-the-road philosophies, held their own even in the midst of the conservative landslide, while the Socialists and their moderate cousins, the Democratic Socialists, were swamped.

The Communists and the Komei Party have built up their own organizations of supporters from a variety of backgrounds. The Socialists and the Democratic Socialists have tied their fortunes to a falling star, labor unions. Not only do they rely on unions to drum up votes; most of their candidates are drawn from the ranks of labor.

Yet as more and more jobs have opened up in non-unionized service industries, the number of union members has fallen below 30% of the labor force. Union members’ consciousness of their position in society also has changed. More than 80% now identify with the middle class.

The Japan Federation of Iron and Steel Workers Unions, one of the largest of the federations belonging to Sohyo, the trade union council and main prop of the Socialist Party, learned from a survey that the most popular political group among its members was the Liberal Democratic Party. More than half of its members favored capitalism. Only 8% supported socialism.

The outcome left the Socialists with a record low of only 86 seats--16.8% of the lower house seats, less than half of the strength (35.8% of the seats) they had at their peak in 1958 when many political analysts predicted that Japan would eventually be ruled by a Socialist government.

Socialists now have fewer seats (127 versus 140) in both houses of Parliament than the Liberal Democratic faction led by former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka.

Sunday’s election made it clear that the conservatives will rule Japan, with moderation, at least until the Socialists, as the No. 1 opposition party, bring themselves into the modern era, or until an alternative to the Liberal Democrats appears. Neither development, at the moment, is in sight.