NEWS ANALYSIS : Japan Reform: Right Move, or a Move to the Right?

Japan’s new landmark political reform package will bring on many changes--but not the purported one of ferreting out entrenched corruption among politicians, bureaucrats and industry.

Instead, the most likely effect of changes to the election system and political donation rules will be a further concentration of power in the hands of party bosses.

That is the growing consensus among many political analysts, as the initial flush of victory has given way to a more sober reckoning of what, exactly, the Parliament passed late last week and what effect it will have on politics here.

“I don’t think the general public thinks that passage of these bills will bring a rosy picture,” said Kojiro Shiraishi, an editorial writer specializing in politics for the Yomiuri newspaper. “No way. They know the reality of the Japanese political world, which is money-tainted and controlled by bosses.”

A close look at the legislative package, an eleventh-hour compromise between Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa and Liberal Democratic Party President Yohei Kono, shows that it contains few of the safeguards commonly used against political corruption.

The package was passed without an implementation date; that date and details agreed to in the compromise are expected to be approved in the current parliamentary session.

Most importantly, there is no broad public disclosure of campaign contributions and spending.

Although the threshold for reporting donations was lowered from $14,018 to $4,672, a donor may still easily split a gift exceeding that amount into smaller sums to escape reporting.

Full disclosure of all contributions and greater restrictions on campaign spending are critical to ferret out the shady deals between politicians and industry that have given rise to more than 15 major scandals in the last three decades, many analysts acknowledged.

But they said Japanese do not demand public disclosure by their officials to the same extent as Americans because the “right to know” is not as established here.

For instance, in a recent ruling that barely caused a ripple, Japan’s Supreme Court decided that a governor was not required to publicly disclose how he spent his public expense money.

His right to privacy overrode the public’s right to know, the court ruled.

Analysts said such attitudes stem from Japan’s legacy of centuries of feudalistic rule, which instilled a “government is god” attitude among the populace, and what Yomiuri research fellow Tatou Takahama called a social predilection to see, hear and speak no evil.

Another glaring omission in the reform package, critics said, is the absence of a special enforcement body, akin to the Federal Election Commission or the California Fair Political Practices Commission, to monitor campaign contributions and investigate suspect deals.

Although prosecutors here take on the more spectacular cases, such as the wide-ranging bribery investigation into the construction industry, the vast majority of campaign reports are simply rubber-stamped by Japan’s election commission, said Shigeru Arisue, political secretary to Hiroyuki Arai, an LDP legislator who voted for the reform package.

“What is really needed is a much more aggressive election commission, with the same power as prosecutors and police--but I’m afraid that might lead to fascism,” he said.

Hosokawa’s decision to seek compromise by dropping the ban on contributions from corporations and labor unions and allowing individual politicians to accept up to $4,672 from each donor came in for particular criticism.

“Treachery,” the Nihon Keizai business newspaper called it, while the Mainichi newspaper declared that Hosokawa’s “unprincipled compromise is unacceptable.”

Many of the Socialists, meanwhile, were outraged.

Hosokawa countered that the corporate donation concession would expire after five years and that contributions could be funneled to politicians through just one supporter’s group, instead of the unlimited number now allowed.

But Japan’s media had a field day describing ways to circumvent the restrictions: funneling money to individual politicians through the party, which may accept unlimited donations, or by giving services and items, such as office space or cars, which are not restricted.

But the package will make politicians take responsibility for violations committed by their staff--previously a giant loophole allowing them to shift the blame.

Penalties have also been beefed up, although they would not take effect as long as a case is pending; cases can take years to resolve.

And changing the electoral system to have 300 districts represented by one instead of multiple legislators will eliminate the common practice of members of the same party running against each other, theoretically decreasing the need for campaign money and avenues for corruption.

What, then, do analysts see as the real agenda behind the reform package, if not to clean up corruption? Brute power politics.

The end of the Cold War, a generational changing of the political guard and the downfall of political kingpin Shin Kanemaru has kicked off a fierce scramble to realign alliances here.

One of the grittiest street fighters is Ichiro Ozawa, chief of the Japan Renewal Party who left the LDP when Kanemaru, his mentor, was arrested for tax evasion last year.

He is aiming to reshape Japan into a strong nation capable of taking decisive action internationally, including military ventures.

Some analysts see the political reform as an Ozawa victory, because changing the election system is expected to help usher in a two-party system weighted toward conservatives.

That would further smash the Socialists, who have acted as a brake on the kind of military forays Ozawa favors.

Limiting contributions to individual politicians but not parties will strengthen the power of party bosses to dole out money in exchange for policy compliance.

The result, law professor Shigeo Hagiwara said, will be a “very dangerous centralization of political power” that will allow party leaders to take quicker, but less democratic, action.

Chalmers Johnson, a University of California professor and trenchant observer of Japanese politics, concurred.

“Japan has taken a major lurch to the right,” he said, adding that Americans must see beyond the illusions of reform and analyze whether the trend is in the United States’ national interest.

But in the shadowy world of Japanese politics, nothing is ever certain.

Other observers said the reform package was a defeat for Ozawa, who was said to be aiming to enact it without LDP participation to force a splintering of that party between reformers and the old guard.

Rumors are mounting that the LDP’s Kono decided to compromise to foil Ozawa and may eventually join Hosokawa’s Japan New Party and Masayoshi Takemura’s New Party Harbinger, along with a group of LDP reformers, to form a new coalition.

In any case, the various scenarios have very little to do with rooting out corruption--a conclusion the long-suffering Japanese public seems to have already made.

In a poll published Tuesday by the Asahi newspaper, only 23% of those surveyed said the reform package will improve Japanese politics; 63% said it will not change; 57% disagreed with the decision to allow corporate donations.

Still, two-thirds said they valued it despite the problems and considered the package “one step forward.”