Japan’s Political System Is the Crisis

There is nothing new about Japanese politicians having mistresses. Why then has Prime Minister Sosuke Uno’s affair with a geisha plunged the ruling Liberal Democratic Party into its deepest crisis since it was formed in 1955?

For one thing, the expose has upset party plans for surmounting the Recruit scandal. Although Uno’s selection as prime minister did not receive enthusiastic support within the party, it was hoped that he would restore the Liberal Democrats’ tarnished image. He had not received Recruit stocks; and being a haiku poet, he was considered to be a man of letters. The idea was to have his personal popularity compensate for his shaky support within the party.

The former geisha’s revelations shattered this scenario. Further sensational reports in the Western press about the “sex scandal” fed back into Japan. Opposition leaders accused Uno of causing an international embarrassment, and women’s groups began to mobilize. From the Japanese perspective, the issue is not so much that Uno had extramarital affairs, but that he had failed to behave according to traditional gentlemanly norms. Uno was portrayed as cheap, abrasive and hot-headed.

As he became a liability, his party suffered a shocking defeat in a by-election held in Niigata, and sharp losses in Sunday’s Tokyo Assembly elections.

The current crisis, however, goes beyond money, politics and Uno’s shortcomings. It involves a crisis of the Japanese political economy. Japan’s changing position in the world economy is forcing the Liberal Democrats to shift their mass base from farmers and small businesses to the urban middle class of salaried employees and consumers. But the political system is making this transition difficult.

Under American pressure, the government liberalized beef and citrus trade and is now trying to restructure the distribution system to increase imports. This spring, the Liberal Democrats pushed through a “consumption tax” to reform the tax system, which has favored the self-employed, and to cover the burgeoning costs of social programs. Although these reforms are ultimately in the interest of the middle class, the majority of the electorate, they have not strengthened the LDP.

The economic liberalization measures taken have not dramatically benefitted consumers. Prices on imports have not dropped in proportion to yen appreciation. Land prices have risen so rapidly that purchasing a home is now beyond the reach of most Japanese in metropolitan areas. Rather than mobilizing urban supporters, agricultural liberalization has merely provoked a farmer backlash.

Furthermore, the conservatives compromised so much with small-business groups in getting the new tax passed that it is now hard to see how the reform benefits the wage earner. Rather than correcting the inequities of the system, the consumption tax has given small businesses a windfall while burdening the consumer.

The only way that Japan can move decisively to harmonize its economy with the rest of the world is to have the interests of salaried employees and consumers more clearly reflected in the political process. This can only be done through a sweeping change of the electoral and party systems.

Malapportionment gives much greater weight to rural voters compared to their urban counterparts. The system of medium-sized districts perpetuates a pattern of patron-client politics that favors agricultural and small-business interests and causes LDP politicians to require huge amounts of money to maintain their support organizations. A shift to a system that combines single-member districts and proportional representation and establishes equality across votes would go a long way in overcoming political rigidities.

The irony is that the conservative LDP, and not the “progressive” opposition, has been the primary political force behind reform. Instead of vigorously appealing to wage earners by pushing for better and cheaper housing, lower-priced imports and domestic-demand stimulation, the left has been seeking farm and small-business support with even more protectionist rhetoric than the Liberal Democrats. The recent initiatives for major electoral reform have come from LDP ranks and not the opposition. The problem with this conservative-led reform process is that it has been too slow and too fraught with political contradictions.

With the Liberal Democrats in disarray, the opposition parties have a golden opportunity to make a breakthrough. They should overcome their organizational fragmentation and put aside their anachronistic ideological disputes. They should develop an alternative political vision that is both imaginative and realistic. As for the LDP, a defeat in the upcoming upper house elections will hopefully shock the party enough to choose a more attractive leadership and follow through on political reform.

This is a critical period in Japanese political history. Leaders on both the right and the left must have the courage to break with past practices. If not, popular cynicism about democratic politics will spread, and false and dangerous alternatives will emerge as Japan gets buffeted by foreign pressures. Much is at stake, not only for Japan, but for the world at large.