Japan’s Election Campaign Opens--Minus Uno

An 18-day campaign for a crucial election for the upper house of Parliament opened Wednesday with Prime Minister Sosuke Uno shunted to the sidelines.

As leaders of four established opposition parties took to street corners to condemn a new consumption tax, “money politics,” an influence-buying scandal and farm imports, Uno was forced to deliver his kickoff speech inside the headquarters compound of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

It was the first time in memory that a prime minister had failed to deliver a street speech to launch a national campaign. Moreover, no dates have been set for Uno to make speeches before he leaves next Wednesday to attend the annual economic summit of seven industrialized democracies, to be held in Paris on July 14-16.

It also is the first time since the Liberal Democratic Party came into existence in 1955 that the ruling conservatives face a parliamentary election as the underdogs.

Few Speaking Invitations

Only one of the opposition leaders, Tatsuzo Fuwa, chairman of the Communist Party, referred to a series of allegations about Uno’s sex life that began emerging shortly after he took office June 2. But the lack of speaking invitations stood as mute testimony to Uno’s tenuous standing among voters and his teetering position at the helm of the ruling party.

At party headquarters, Uno cited the conservatives’ achievement in transforming Japan into “one of the leaders of the world.” Referring to the advocacy of socialism by Japan’s No. 1 opposition party, Uno said that “the only countries in the world that are prospering are those with free economies.”

“If you make a mistake in determining the path Japan should follow, Japan will be isolated from the free world,” he warned voters.

Uno pledged to reject an opening of Japan’s rice market to imports and promised to revise the highly unpopular consumption tax that the Liberal Democrats rammed through Parliament last December. Along with other tax reforms, it went into effect April 1.

“The people still don’t understand that 2.6 trillion yen ($18.6 billion) worth of tax reductions were carried out, after subtracting the additional costs of the consumption tax,” the prime minister complained.

On Tuesday, the Liberal Democrats overruled a recommendation by the Agriculture Ministry to cut the price that the government pays farmers for rice by 2.6%. Price supports for rice were reduced in both 1987 and 1988, angering farmers--one of the party’s chief support groups.

Socialist Party chairwoman Takako Doi, fresh from her party’s surprising surge in Sunday’s Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly election, promised to seek abolition of the consumption tax and create “an agriculture with a future” for Japan’s farmers.

Leaders of the other three established opposition parties recalled the ruling party’s election promise three years ago not to impose a consumption tax and, like Doi, vowed to abolish it.

A record 285 candidates filed to run for 76 seats at stake in individual constituencies, while 40 political parties, most of them new, one-issue gadfly groups, registered for the proportional representation ballot that will determine another 50 seats.

Among the mini-parties are the Sports and Peace Party and the Assn. to Halve the Number of Parliament Members.

With 73 incumbents not up for reelection, the Liberal Democrats need to win only 54, or 43%, of the 126 seats at stake to clinch a majority in the 252-seat chamber. But political analysts and opinion polls generally foresee a conservative defeat.

With special interest groups, such as farmers and shopkeepers, in rebellion and consumers and salaried workers angered at the party, conservative strategists fear a widespread protest vote. Magnifying the danger is the fact that the House of Councilors, as the upper house is formally called, has no power in electing the prime minister, enabling voters to slap the ruling party in the face without stabbing it in the heart.

Cool to Socialists’ Ideas

As much as they disapprove of the Liberal Democratic Party, voters do not seem ready to replace it with a Socialist government. Positive support for such Socialist policies as abolition of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, unarmed neutrality and a socialist economy is all but non-existent.

However, losing control of the upper house, in which the party now holds a 16-seat majority, could hasten dissolution of the powerful lower house, resulting in a general election.

Under Liberal Democratic control, the upper house functions largely as a rubber stamp of decisions by the House of Representatives. But under opposition control, it could block all legislation except treaties and the national budget.

The Liberal Democrats lack the two-thirds majority in the lower house needed to override upper house rejection of legislation. The conservatives’ holding of 294 seats represents 57% of the lower house.

Defeat in the upper house election would be certain to spur calls in the ruling party for Uno to resign. The party lacks provisions in its rules to oust him in midterm.

Otherwise, an election for the lower house, which would decide the future shape of Japanese politics, is not scheduled until 1990.