Politics Leaves Lawmakers in Japan Out of Policy Loop : Asia: Critics say the need for national change means bureaucrats must step aside. But that may not be easy.

You think Masahisa Aoki had time to wrestle arrogant bureaucrats and dream up grand policy visions during his 26 years as a Liberal Democratic politician in Japan?

Give him a break. Aoki was busy juggling visits to 90 bereaved families in three days, 17 weddings in one day and 124 New Year’s parties in one season--typical tasks for a Japanese politician.

In a society that values concrete displays of personal concern over abstract policy, politicians ignore rituals at their peril. Aoki once lost a major supporter because he did not know a voter’s father had died and he failed to send funeral money and a condolence telegram.

“People say you can earn votes by making new schools or bridges, but that’s an old story,” said Aoki, who represented Tokyo’s neighboring prefecture of Saitama until losing a reelection bid last year. “Funerals are the most important way to earn votes.”

U.S.-Japan trade frictions? Aoki was more consumed by rumors last year that his political rivals were handing out rice balls stuffed with $100 bills.

Japan’s global leadership role? Let bureaucrats drone on about that. Aoki has more colorful tales to tell about the shifty character who slithered into his office one day and tried to sell 30,000 votes for $300,000.

Here in Japan’s political trenches, it’s no contest: The grunt work of getting votes is far more pressing than crafting national policies. That, however, is precisely the problem, a growing number of critics say. As a rapidly changing world buffets Japan, raising fears that decades of prosperity may begin to decline, politicians must head off a looming crisis with wide-ranging reforms, they assert.

But, as Aoki’s experience illustrates, that may not be so easy. Compared with Japan’s elite and experienced bureaucracy, politicians are not particularly expected--or equipped--to provide policy leadership.

Those who do possess expert knowledge are said to use it more to benefit special interests. Indeed, such legislators, who are almost exclusively Liberal Democrats, are tagged with the withering title zoku giin --literally, tribal lawmakers, who rule clans of special interests that compete to carve up the public purse.

Ever since the Liberal Democratic Party, or LDP, came back to power in June in a coalition with the Socialists and the New Party Harbinger, the tribes are said to have run amok. The LDP’s powerful agricultural tribe, for instance, recently won a whopping bailout of $60 billion over six years to compensate farmers for the pain of Japan’s decision to open its rice market.

The prospect of national elections under a new redistricting plan also has created tumult in Japanese politics. Consumed with electoral survival, most politicians have little mind for dreaming up new national directions, leaving Japan in the bureaucrats’ hands.

“In this uncertain political situation, if the bureaucratic apparatus goes bad, Japan’s economic and social systems will stop functioning,” warned Takashi Imai, Nippon Steel president. “It is better not to criticize bureaucrats so much.”

Yet critics such as Karel van Wolferen, author of a piercing study of who governs Japan, argue that this nation has little choice but to turn to its elected leaders. Unless Japan rewrites its bureaucratic blueprint of relentless economic expansion, it risks alienating the world and cheating its own people of the best possible future, he says.

Bureaucrats have helped Japan amass great national wealth. But the strategy to produce and sell ever more goods abroad while suppressing the Japanese consumer appetite at home has also led to huge trade surpluses, a soaring yen and skimpy public services. Japan must share more of its national wealth by opening markets further and must shoulder more of the world’s problems, Van Wolferen and others argue. Only political leadership, they say, can shake the status quo preventing such policies.

“Without political direction, you won’t have significant changes and Japan will go on forever doing what it is doing,” Van Wolferen says. “Some people think that is wonderful and Japan will become the strongest industrial power on Earth. But many people, myself included, think many things could go wrong. . . . In the long run, it will undermine Japanese security by alienating the United States.”

But paradoxically, Japan’s political culture tends to suppress what analysts say the nation most needs today: strong, visionary leaders.

Former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, for instance, blazed a trail by trying to transform the weak premier’s post into a launch pad for presidential-style leadership. Hailed as Japan’s last truly effective prime minister, Nakasone beefed up defense spending, privatized railway, tobacco and telephone monopolies and presided over a peak in U.S.-Japan relations.

International Trade and Industry Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, a rising star in the LDP, and Ichiro Ozawa, who masterminded the LDP’s ouster from power last year and helped form the New Frontier Party, are also regarded as leaders with intelligence, political experience and policy knowledge.

Although such strong leaders push the nation ahead, they are unpopular in a political culture that values consensus, says Tomoaki Iwai, a Tokiwa University political science professor. They may draw public support--Nakasone and the Ozawa-backed former coalition government of Morihiro Hosokawa enjoyed the highest popularity ratings in recent history. But in Japan’s political world, Iwai says, they end up making too many enemies, limiting their grip on power.

Japan’s history has also suppressed the emergence of statesmanlike leaders, analysts say.

Politicians enjoyed a brief heyday of genuine power just after World War II, when the Allied Occupation reforms broke the back of the bureaucracy and put power in the hands of the people’s elected representatives, said political analyst Minoru Morita.

But the outbreak of the Korean War, along with China’s Communist regime, made Asia a top Cold War concern for the United States. U.S. officials pressured Japan to follow the American lead, effectively neutering Japanese policy-making power and instead encouraging economic development led by bureaucrats, Morita said.

Left with a reduced role to play, Japanese politicians focused on doling out public works pork and other parochial interests, analysts say.

“The Korean War and Cold War in Asia stopped Japan’s democratic reforms . . . and led to today’s system of a parliamentary Cabinet in name only, with bureaucrats holding actual power,” Morita said. To restore the balance, he said, would take “50 to 100” years. Others say changing the status quo will take changes in government structure and even more sweeping shifts in the mentality of the people.

Take, for instance, Fukushima prefecture, a picturesque resort area of hot springs and mountain peaks in northern Japan. There, as in other areas of Japan, voters value elected officials blessed with three political assets: jiban, kaban and kanban (local connections, money and a family name).

Hiroyuki Arai has none of these advantages--which is why his election to Parliament’s lower house in the summer on his second try was considered extraordinary. At 36, the energetic Liberal Democrat says he represents the silent mass of salaried workers who, like himself, lack family wealth or an illustrious lineage.

But a visit to his district found many of the old attitudes remain deeply embedded; personal ties still often outweigh policies in moving voters.

What does Kenya Yabe, one of Arai’s main supporters, want from politicians? “Someone who will stand up to the United States,” he growls. “We’re made fools of.”

But ask if Arai’s U.S.-Japan policy attracted his support and the medical doctor blinks blankly. “No. He went to high school with my son, and I thought it was pitiful that he lost in his first try,” Yabe said.

On the strength of that personal tie--and the urging of his wife--Yabe activated his network of 3,500 doctors, who in turn urged their thousands of patients to vote for Arai.

Fukushima business executives describe what they want from politicians in two words--”a pipe”--one that will run from Tokyo to their local towns and will be wide enough to funnel back a piece of the nation’s public works. Recently, for instance, one executive said he asked a politician to introduce him to a bureaucrat in order to prod a contractor to give his firm a piece of a public works contract for waste disposal.

In a society where introductions are still required for entree into closed groups, the businessman said “politicians who know how to get this work are best for us”--and his firm has prepared more than $200,000 to hand out to those willing to oblige.

To dodge the donor limits of $10,000 per candidate in the new political reform law, he said, they plan to funnel the money through several different organizations.

The need for introductions, mediators and fixers is pervasive in Japanese society--and politicians, for better or worse, end up filling it. That is one reason why a web of local connections--along with the family name and money that enhance them--has been so important for successful politicians.

Indeed, fully half of the current LDP legislators are sons or daughters of politicians. Despite occasional cries of nepotism and criticism that Parliament is losing its political diversity, inherited connections and a family name offer an overwhelming advantage.

So does money. “People are lustful creatures, and, in reality, politics is activated by money,” said Aoki, the former LDP legislator.

He said voters often expect everything from cash to free lunches to gift coupons for beer or gas. Politicians must constantly shell out funeral condolence money, wedding gifts and party fees at a minimum of $50 a pop. And to secure a post in the political party, huge sums are passed around. Aoki said he was once approached by three different candidates for the LDP party presidency and offered $20,000 by each of them for his vote.

Politicians need so much cash on hand that many instruct their tailors to sew inner pockets into their clothing--”passport size” and capable of carrying $60,000 in bills worth $100 each, said Aoki, who has written a book about his experiences. He added that it is virtually impossible to run a successful campaign without breaking election laws--though he declined, in an interview, to say whether he was guilty of doing so.

As a result of such political demands, many legislators are consumed not with brilliant policy vision but with the sheer work of raising cash.

One time-tested way has been to join a party faction and pledge loyalty to the leader, who will in turn support followers with money and political posts. The late Kakuei Tanaka, Japan’s dynamic former premier sullied by a bribery scandal in the mid-1970s involving Lockheed Corp., is said to have invented the system.

Another way is to join a political tribe and milk its related industry for contributions. The construction and transportation tribes are the most desirable because of the enormous sums said to flow between those industries and their political benefactors.

Not all tribal leaders, of course, are so craven. Sadanori Yamanaka, for instance, is the highly respected chief of the LDP financial tribe. A gruff man with graying sideburns, he is said to have mastered his field so thoroughly that, unlike most legislators, he can answer committee questions on any aspect of fiscal policy without relying on written materials from bureaucrats.

He has also demonstrated considerable political courage. In 1989, he played a key role as head of the LDP’s tax council in pushing the 3% consumption levy--and paid the price for it by suffering electoral defeat that year.

But Yamanaka, who was subsequently reelected, says that fewer than five of his fellow legislators in the 511-seat lower house have mastery to rival bureaucrats in a given policy area. And more often than not, political tribes use their knowledge to benefit narrow interests rather than the greater national good, critics say.

The recent rice bailout was “pork barrel politics run amok,” a Japan Economic Institute analysis said. It estimated that only $2.3 billion of the $60 billion allotted will go to make Japanese rice farmers more competitive, the presumed policy rationale. “Unless we can clarify the policy,” fretted Tomomitsu Iwakura, the LDP’s top agricultural staff specialist, “we will invite further public distrust.”

Such realities prompt many opinion leaders here to question whether the nation’s elected officials can forge a new direction. “With respect to neutrality and fairness in implementing crucial policies, politicians can’t be a good match for bureaucrats,” says Kojiro Shiraishi, a Yomiuri Shimbun editorial writer.

Those politicians with a genuine interest in policy get few resources. Each national legislator, regardless of seniority, long received just two staff members, although the number was increased this year to three. The annual public salary and office budget amounts to $320,000, which Aoki said was not even enough to pay for regular mailings to his 1 million constituents.

In the United States, members of the House of Representatives have $557,000 each to hire as many as 22 staff members for offices in Washington and in their home districts. American legislators also have aides who work for them on their House committees. Further, House members receive at least an additional $122,500 a year to pay for travel to and from their districts and for rent while they are in Washington. Official mailings to constituents are free.

And while congressional aides in the United States are typically young, with little political experience, about the only breeding ground for political policy specialists in Japan is the LDP. The party’s policy research council employs 30 senior staff members. It is organized into policy committees corresponding to each government ministry--a structure that encourages specialization but has also produced the notorious political tribes.

Koichi Kato, chief of the LDP policy research council, has been outspoken in urging legislators to take greater political control. The three-party coalition has an ironclad rule not to divulge information on policy debate until there is clear agreement, preventing bureaucrats from trying to divide and conquer.

But ultimately, legislators must vote themselves a bigger budget and staff to create their own, independent policies, analysts say.

Some politicians, such as Ozawa, argue that Japan also should vastly increase the number of political appointees sent to direct the bureaucracy, as in the American system. While the President may appoint more than 3,000 people, Japan’s prime minister is empowered to select fewer than 30.

That plan, however, raises protests from ministry officials. “To have large numbers of politicians working in the ministries may damage the objectivity of judgment and continuation of foreign policy,” said Kunihiko Saito, the vice minister of foreign affairs.

Some say the younger generation is producing politicians better equipped to battle the bureaucrats.

Yasuhisa Shiozaki, for instance, is as pedigreed as the most elite public official: Tokyo University, Harvard graduate school, Bank of Japan. His intellectual confidence allows him to dress down bureaucrats when others might not dare; he is less reliant on them for information, thanks to an independent network of banking and financial contacts.

He succeeded his father in politics but entered of his own volition last July as an LDP lower house member--in part, he says, to help raise Japan’s standard of living to levels he enjoyed as a high school exchange student in Marin County in 1967. Although he attends weddings and performs other expected constituent services, his passion is policy debate--from tax reform to welfare.

“Japanese politicians have to become more capable and intelligent. . . ,” Shiozaki says. “But things are changing. Younger politicians are more interested in policy-making than staying in the district and going to funerals.”

In Fukushima, Arai is trying to offer a new political style, involving voters in choices about their future. He returns to his district every weekend, working crowds and appealing for help in tackling big issues. Using a blackboard and colorful props, he explains such tedious topics as the Uruguay Round trade talks in terms the sunbaked farmers and their reticent wives can understand.

His campaign seems to be paying off. “No one has ever explained these things to us in such a concrete way,” beamed 60-year-old farmer Murakosu Hatsura recently after one such talk.

But whether Japan’s elected officials can make the leap to genuine policy leadership is still a question among those who know the country well.

“Japan has no history of politicians taking charge,” argues Chalmers Johnson, president of the Japan Policy Research Institute and author of the classic study on the role of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry in engineering the nation’s economic miracle. “The best hope is to redirect the bureaucrats into a new national role.”

With no easy solution in sight, some analysts say that only crisis or foreign pressure will move Japan to produce the leadership needed to make critical policy changes. It was the Gulf War, for instance, that pushed Japan to break a political taboo and dispatch peacekeepers to aid U.N. efforts in Cambodia and other hot spots.

“Where there is no fire, the Japanese won’t go and put it out,” said Gerald Curtis, a Columbia University political science professor.

Times staff writer Joel Havemann in Washington and Megumi Shimizu and Chiaki Kitada of The Times’ Tokyo Bureau contributed to this report.