Japan’s Ruling Party Slips but Retains Power

Japanese voters rapped their leaders on the knuckles Sunday but nevertheless upheld the status quo, giving the Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner an absolute majority in the powerful lower house of parliament.

The results mean that Japan probably will continue to spend heavily to encourage a fledgling economic recovery, despite the country’s soaring national debt. And unpopular Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori probably will keep his job at least long enough to host the Group of 8 industrialized nations’ summit on Okinawa next month, though autumn will bring calls to replace him, analysts said today.

But Mori will face a far stronger opposition, as urban voters shunned the Liberal Democratic Party, or LDP, and gave the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, the DPJ, a huge boost.

Two sitting LDP Cabinet ministers lost their seats in a rebuke from voters. But two other LDP lawmakers who had been convicted of bribery were returned to parliament by ever-loyal rural constituents. Female candidates scored big gains, though Japanese women remain grossly underrepresented; they will hold just 7.3% of the seats in the lower house.

Torrential monsoon rains and widespread voter apathy dampened voter turnout to 62.5% of those eligible, the second lowest in Japanese history.

That turnout might have saved the LDP from a rout, however. The gaffe-prone Mori had come in for fresh criticism a week ago after admitting that he wished that Japan’s uncommitted voters, who make up half of the electorate, would stay home and sleep Sunday instead of heading for the polls.

The opposition pounced on the statement as alleged evidence of Mori’s “undemocratic” tendencies. But the prime minister’s instincts proved sound, as various exit polls showed that 70% to 89% of the so-called floating voters who bothered to cast ballots voted against the LDP.

Nevertheless, the rural voters, conservatives and business owners who have kept the LDP in power for all but about 11 months of the last 45 years handed the party a fresh mandate.

“We’ve been supporting the LDP since the time of my grandfather,” said Hiroshi Matsumoto, 60, who cast his ballot in the Tokyo suburb of Funabashi.

Matsumoto was one of the victims of Japan’s decade-long economic slump, which has produced record unemployment. He was forced to retire early from his job at Sakura Bank because of restructuring. Still, he said he received severance pay, has a government pension and enjoys a stable income from an apartment building he built after he was downsized.

“The LDP can turn its politics into action, and I think they can improve the economy,” Matsumoto said.

Partners Lose Seats but Retain Majority

In final results today, the LDP won 233 of the 480 seats in parliament’s lower house, down from the 271 seats it held in the 500-member parliament before Sunday’s election. (Lawmakers cut the number of lower house seats by 20 in an electoral reform in February.) The Buddhist-backed New Komeito party won 31 seats, down from 42 before the election. Together, the coalition partners will control every parliamentary committee and will be able to pass legislation unilaterally.

The DPJ surged, winning 127 seats, up from 95. The Democrats won much of the anti-LDP protest vote, but they have yet to establish themselves as an attractive alternative to the LDP, pundits and voters said.

“I don’t have very high hopes for the Democrats, but there was no one else to vote for,” said Tsutomu Kamakura, a 29-year-old “salaryman” emerging from a polling booth in the suburb of Sayama. “I don’t really think the DPJ can accomplish anything, but I want to stop the LDP.”

The fragmentation of the opposition also contributed to the LDP victory. The Liberal Party, led by Ichiro Ozawa, won 22 seats; the Japan Communist Party won 20; the Social Democratic Party took 19; and the New Conservative Party, which splintered off from Ozawa’s party earlier this year, landed seven. Independents and other small groups won a total of 21 seats.

Analysts today noted the widening political chasm between rural and urban voters.

“The country is splitting in two,” independent political analyst Minoru Morita said. Urban voters resent the government’s policy of using deficit spending to prop up the feeble economy with public works projects that mostly go to rural areas, and these voters cast protest ballots for the DPJ, Morita said. But rural voters feel utterly dependent on the LDP’s largess and voted accordingly, he said.

The LDP has for years been losing strength in Tokyo and Osaka, but today’s results show the weakness is spreading to medium-size cities that once were conservative strongholds, Tokiwa University political scientist Tomoaki Iwai said.

The LDP had hoped to benefit from a sympathy vote after the May 14 death of Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi, who had suffered a stroke. It was the LDP that set the election date for Sunday, which would have been Obuchi’s 63rd birthday.

Obuchi’s daughter, 26-year-old Yuko Obuchi, did win a seat in the new parliament. But in general, the sympathy vote did not materialize, said Iwai, who argued that the LDP would have been trounced had turnout been higher.

Dislike for Mori appeared to be a factor among people who cast their ballots for the opposition. Mori has been widely criticized for declaring that Japan was “a divine nation with the emperor at its center,” language seen as a throwback to the militaristic Imperial Japan.

“As a Japanese, he embarrasses me,” said Tatsuyuki Otoba, 51. “He’s not very bright.”

“I hate Mori,” Kamakura said. “He’s just the sugar daddy of the construction industry.”

Several LDP voters also expressed distaste for Mori.

“We feel the Japanese economy is recovering and will be much better under the LDP, but Mori himself seems very arrogant,” said Daisuke Azuma, a 34-year-old businessman.

Analysts predicted that after the Group of 8 summit, pressure inside the LDP will increase to replace Mori well before for elections for the upper house of parliament, scheduled for July 2001.

“They feel that it would be mass suicide to try to fight the upper house election with Mori at the helm, so they will want him out by the end of the year,” Morita said. “Everybody thinks that something will happen this autumn.”

Some Powerhouses Lose Their Races

A number of LDP heavyweights lost their seats, including Tokuichiro Tamazawa, the agriculture minister; Takashi Fukaya, the trade minister; and 12 former Cabinet members. Among the defeated was 11-term veteran Koko Sato, who had been repeatedly reelected despite having been convicted of bribery during the Lockheed scandal of the 1980s.

Two other incumbents who had convictions for bribery were reelected, however. They are Takao Fujinami and former Construction Minister Kishiro Nakamura, who was convicted in 1997 of accepting a bribe of nearly $100,000 in exchange for attempting to obstruct a bid-rigging probe.

Citizens groups in Tokyo and Osaka had included these candidates on lists of tainted politicians they posted on the Internet. But only a fifth of the candidates they targeted as corrupt or unworthy either withdrew from the race or were defeated.

“It’s disgraceful that people with clear criminal convictions were reelected,” complained Kunihiko Kato, a volunteer with the Osaka-based Alliance to Defeat Unsuitable Parliamentarians. “Japanese democracy is still at the nursery-school level.

“You can look at that figure and say there was no dramatic effect, but this is just a first step, and we will continue to monitor lawmakers’ behavior,” Kato promised.