Winds of Change Ruffling Japan’s ‘Windless’ Election District : Campaign: For the first time in years, incumbents are being challenged. It is a symbol of the ruling party’s task in Sunday’s voting.

It may not be a revolution brewing, but a few mild gusts are blowing in Japan’s “windless election district.”

This drab city, about an hour’s bullet-train ride northwest of Tokyo, is the center of the strange political phenomenon of Gunma-sanku-- the No. 3 district of Gunma prefecture (state).

Here, the same four men--three conservative Liberal Democrats and one Socialist Party stalwart--have kept a grip on this district’s four seats in the lower house of Parliament since 1963. The lack of change is what inspires pundits, and even locals, to adopt the “windless” label. But if Gunma once symbolized the stasis of Japanese politics, now it offers a showcase on the histrionics of potential political change.

As the Sunday election approaches, hand-wringing over whether the ruling Liberal Democratic Party can keep its 35-year monopoly on legislative power is very much in vogue. And this is where the pundits like to point. For the first time in recent memory, the Gunma-sanku incumbents are actually being challenged for their seats.

One of them, Yasuhiro Nakasone, a former prime minister tainted by fund-raising scandals, is said to be seriously worried that his distinguished career as a statesman may end in humiliating electoral defeat.

Another, the Socialist Party’s secretary general, Tsuruo Yamaguchi, has reluctantly endorsed a rival opposition candidate in a strategy to knock Nakasone out of Parliament. But aides say Yamaguchi fears the plan may backfire: Splitting rural Gunma’s limited progressive vote could deprive the Socialist leader of his own seat.

The spoiler is Kenichi Shiraishi, 46, a veteran telecommunications union official, who is running under the banner of the labor federation Rengo with the backing of four moderate opposition parties.

“My slogan is, ‘Make a clear distinction between black and white,’ ” Shiraishi said in an interview the other day. “I’m the one in the white hat. I don’t need to say who’s wearing black.”

Yet Nakasone, too, was wearing the obligatory white gloves of the ethically pristine politician when he opened his campaign with rare public appearances one recent Saturday. He also was wearing the traditional white candidate’s sash while describing the Gunma contest as a microcosm of the 1990 election.

“All the nation, all the world, is watching Gunma-sanku ,” Nakasone intoned from a stage before throngs of supporters in the Takasaki Wholesale Center auditorium. “Will the conservatives win or lose? Japan’s destiny is tied to this district.”

Nakasone, 71, one of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s factional bosses who served as prime minister from 1982-87, nominally resigned from the party last year to atone for his murky role in the Recruit Co. influence-peddling scandal. Prosecutors said they found no evidence that he broke any law, but he still carries the stain of scandal as he fights for his seat as a so-called “independent” candidate.

Matters were made worse when the influential Asahi newspaper published a report on New Year’s Day alleging that a former Nakasone aide earned about $840,000 in ethically questionable stock transactions. Nakasone answered the charges by suing the Asahi for libel.

The progressives are not alone in condemning the former premier. Last Sunday, an enraged right-wing extremist burst into Nakasone’s campaign headquarters and fired three shots from a handgun, hitting a television set, a campaign poster and a good-luck daruma doll. Nakasone was out campaigning, and no one was injured in the bizarre incident.

But the old-guard politician also is under attack from more moderate conservatives. Detecting a growing intolerance for Nakasone’s sullied image at the grass-roots level, a former Nakasone protege in the Gunma Prefectural Assembly, Kunio Sato, 46, also declared as an unaffiliated candidate for the lower house and campaigns on an anti-Nakasone platform.

The turncoat Sato is likely to have far more impact on campaign rhetoric than on the ballot box, though.

Largely because of Nakasone’s notoriety, Gunma appears to be one of the few constituencies in Japan where political ethics is being raised as a major election issue, despite the widespread fallout of the Recruit scandal. After representing the district for 16 terms, however, Nakasone may well possess a resilient base of support.

“I think he’s a fine politician,” said Hideo Aoki, 62, a local businessman. “All this talk about corruption is nothing more than allegations. I don’t believe it.”

Gunma-sanku ‘s top vote getter, by all accounts, will be a Liberal Democrat exercising one of the time-honored traditions of Japanese politics--inheriting his father’s Parliament seat.

For the past 30 years or more, the big question around election time here has been which of two rival Liberal Democratic Party factional bosses will draw more votes, Nakasone or Takeo Fukuda, another former prime minister who usually came out on top in the “Fuku-Naka war.” Fukuda, 85, is retiring this year and handing his political mantle to his eldest son, Yasuo, 53, who served as his father’s personal secretary for many years.

The transfer is hardly unusual. More than 40% of the ruling party’s members of Parliament belong to a kind of political aristocracy, having inherited political machines from their fathers. In some cases, the job is passed down through several generations, or handed over to widows or adopted sons. Opposition lawmakers engage in the same practice, though not as frequently.

Following Yasuo Fukuda in the local straw polls is Keizo Obuchi, 52, an uncontroversial former chief Cabinet secretary belonging to yet another faction of the ruling party. Only Fukuda and Obuchi are assured of winning, the pundits, candidates and voters seem to agree. Nakasone, Yamaguchi and Shiraishi will fight for the remaining two seats. Shiraishi is the dark horse. Sato and a seventh, Communist candidate are dismissed out of hand.

If Gunma-sanku and its 542,230 voters are a bellwether for the entire election, then all the fuss over the “winds of change” could very well fade away Monday, when the ballots are counted, with very little difference on the political map.

“It’s going to be a tough election,” said a Nakasone aide. “But then, elections are always tough.”