On October 19, 2021, local time, Tokyo, Japan, the election of the 49th House of Representatives of Japan was announced on the 19th, and the 12-day election campaign officially began. Nine political parties in Japan's government and opposition competed fiercely over COVID-19 countermeasures and economic policies, and party leaders of various parties took to the streets to give speeches. (IC photo/figure)
There are 315 new early polling spots in Tokyo, shopping malls in Osaka City are launching "voting coupons", and local employees in Gunma and Ota prefectures have cut tens of thousands of voter voting pencils... Japanese society is preparing for the 49th House of Representatives election.
On October 19, 2021, the 12-day election began. This is the election of the Japanese House of Representatives after three years, and the final vote and opening will be held on October 31.
The House of Representatives election, which is key to determining the position of Japan's next ruling party and prime minister, is a test for Japan's new prime minister, Fumio Kishida, and his new cabinet of the Liberal Democratic Party.
<h3>Post-pandemic economic recovery remains the focus</h3>
As of the evening of October 19, 2021, nine political parties in Japan have sent a total of 1,051 candidates to run, and they will compete for 465 seats in the House of Representatives, including 289 constituencies and 176 proportional representatives.
In the last House of Representatives elections, the ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and the Komeito Party won 305 seats. When new Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was elected president of the Liberal Democratic Party, he set the goal of winning more than 233 seats, or more than half of them.
After Kishida's dissolution of the House of Representatives on October 14, Japanese government and opposition parties sent their leaders to their constituencies to solicit votes or give speeches on the streets. According to the Asahi Shimbun, in the first street speech, the parties continued to argue about the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic recovery.
On October 17, Kishida, who is a people-friendly line, arrived in Sendai City, Fukushima Prefecture, holding a transparent umbrella, to deliver a street speech in which he reiterated the "new capitalist" economic policy of promoting economic growth and increasing wages, and mentioned the importance of agriculture to local development. During this time, Kishida went to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant of Tokyo Electric Power Company in the drizzle to investigate the discharge of nuclear reactor emissions.
"There are still many issues left, and there must be no such accidents." He told Japanese media reporters at the scene in the drizzle that the nuclear sewage problem should not be postponed. He wrote down the "Voice of the Nation" in a dilapidated blueprint, as he promised in his September campaign that the LDP would listen to the voice of the people.
But Kishida's approval rating was slightly more modest. A poll by the Japan Broadcasting Association (NHK) in early October showed that the new prime minister's approval rating was only 49 percent, lower than when Suga was just taking office.
On October 19, Kishida, who set the first stop for the elections as Fukushima Prefecture, pulled out a small note in a street speech promising to "let the Japanese economy achieve a virtuous circle of growth and distribution." To this end, Kishida Fumio set up a new "New Capitalism Realization Meeting" in the Japanese government on the 20th.
In contrast, opposition parties have long raised the banner of electoral "alliance". On September 8, the Constitutional Democratic Party, the Social Democratic Party, the Communist Party of Japan and the United New Election Group signed an agreement to reach consensus on policy objectives such as reducing consumption tax, reducing carbon emissions, gender equality, administrative transparency, and COVID-19 countermeasures, and planning to jointly promote the implementation of the 49th House of Representatives election.
The opposition coalition is unabashed in criticizing kishida's cabinet performance. In a street speech on October 19, Yukio Edano of the Founding Party of the National Democratic Party accused the Kishida cabinet of "insufficient awareness of crisis management" of North Korea's ballistic missiles, and Kazuo Shiho, chairman of the Communist Party of Japan, criticized that "the Kishida regime does not increase taxes on the wealthy, and it is absolutely impossible to eliminate the gap between the rich and the poor."
The 49th House of Representatives election appeared to be a "short-term showdown" after Kishida took office, but behind it was a trial by Japanese voters against the Self-Aligned regimes such as Abe and Suga. Masamichi Ida, a professor of political science at Meiji University in Japan, believes that if the LDP does not win at least 233 seats in this election, Japanese politics will maintain a "single-party majority" and the LDP will rely more on the ruling alliance with the Komeito Party.
<h3>Will the Self-Defense League continue? </h3>
"I want to form a third-party team to investigate scandals such as the Abe government's Morita Gakuen and cherry blossom viewing parties." On October 19, 2021, the head of the National Democratic Party, Yukio Edano, shouted on an NHK program that if the regime changes, it will be the time to investigate a series of "power and money politics".
On September 15, the LiMin Party (KMT) launched the slogan of "opposition parties fighting together" to conceive a mechanism for cooperation among opposition parties in this election. On October 13, the party unveiled a campaign platform called "Regime Policy 2021," with "Change, for Your Politics" as its campaign slogan, proposing to "revive" Japan's middle class and improve people's lives through measures such as lowering the consumption tax.
The First Opposition, the Kuomintang, tried to attract voters with "reform" policies, but Japanese voters were unmoved. In a Telephone Poll conducted by the Japan Broadcasting Association on October 17, 38.8 percent of respondents chose to support the Liberal Democratic Party, while only 6.6 percent chose to support the Li People's Party.
Since its founding in 1955, the LDP has had a near monopoly on Japan's prime minister. Despite the occasional "loss of the horse's heel", the party has always been able to rise to the top of the center of power again and sit firmly in a high position.
"If you want to go fast, you have to go alone; if you want to go far, you have to go together." The inadvertent proverb in Kishida's first policy speech hinted at the stabilization alliance between the Liberal Democratic Party and the Komeito Party, a secret to the LDP's long reign.
At the end of the last century, Japan's political arena was frequently changed, and the political arena was turbulent. In 1993, Ichiro Ozawa led 44 LDP MPs to quit the party and convened eight opposition parties. At that time, under the slogan of "non-free people and non-communism", he founded the New Progressive Party and ended the 38-year long-term rule of the Liberal Democratic Party. The following year, Japan reformed the electoral system, implementing an electoral system in which small electoral districts and proportional representatives were held in the elections of the Senate and the House of Representatives.
The small electoral district system is prone to a two-party system, and the proportional representation system is prone to a multi-party system with many small parties; under the influence of the two, Japan's political party system will shift from the LDP's "one-party dominance" to "multi-polar multi-party."
The keen Liberal Democratic Party is feeling the crisis: it will be difficult to secure more than half of the seats in the House of Representatives and the Senate without the assistance of other parties. In 1999, in order to continue the "one strong" pattern, the Liberal Democratic Party chose to form an alliance with the Komeito Party.
Although the Komeito Party is an opposition party, it is the third largest political party in Japan after the Cadet Party. It is based on the soka gakkai, a religious group, and is one of eight opposition parties convened by Ichiro Ozawa in 1993. During the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the party's popular policies is to "give 100,000 yuan in subsidies to each Japanese."
Bipartisan cooperation has filled the gap in the votes of both sides. On the basis of voters, the LDP won in rural constituencies, and the Komeito Party, based on the emerging Soka Gakkai, had more members in urban areas; judging by the vote location, the Komeito Party had a higher support rate of 15% in western Japan and only about 11% in the east.
Because the Self-Referencing Alliance is unbreakable and the sense of existence in the hearts of the opposition voters is low, The Japanese political arena has always been in a pattern of "one strong and many weak." Yasushi Kondo, a professor of political science at Nagoya University in Japan, believes that in order to balance and limit power, "it is a top priority in Japan to cultivate a qualified opposition party."
<h3>"Looking at the opposition, I can only choose the Democratic Party</h3>."
The strength of the LDP is at the root of the weakness of the opposition parties. Japanese politicians often ridicule the "May Five-Year Plan system" as "a semi-party system," that is, the Socialist Party only issues a "soft" criticism in the Diet, never tries to propose feasible policies, and will never launch a campaign to win a majority of seats.
The "May Five-Year Plan System" laid the political model of "one strong and many weak" in Japan, so that only four prime ministers came from other political parties after the war.
In the mid-1950s, just emerging from the shadow of World War II, Japan was in a state of economic depression, waste and leftist ideology, and leftist forces, mainly socialist, were integrated in an attempt to challenge the original political model.
On November 15, 1955, under the leadership of former Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, hundreds of conservative Japanese politicians came to the Diet Building, raised their right hands under the banner of "New Party Formation Congress", and took the oath while witnessing the "merger of the Liberal Party and the Democratic Party".
At this point, the LDP became the first party in the House of Representatives to have a majority of seats, competing with the opposition Japan Socialist Party. The LDP's control of parliamentary seats continued until 1993.
Although other political parties have broken the phenomenon of the LDP taking the political arena, the time is very short. In September 2009, Yukio Hatoyama led the Democratic Party to win the House of Representatives election. However, the Democratic Party of Japan has experienced an unstable "three years and three phases" in Japanese politics. At the beginning of his rise to power, the Democratic Party promised to let the US Military Putenma Base move out of Okinawa Prefecture, but the US side refused, which greatly disappointed the people. In the later years of the administration, due to the poor handling of the aftermath of the 3.11 earthquake in Japan, the Democratic Party of Japan directly stepped down in the face of scolding.
During his reign, Mr. Abe often ridiculed the "nightmarish Democratic government" and "that dark and depressed era," implying the fragility of the opposition regime. A Yomiuri Shimbun poll found that even in 2019, when Mr. Abe was plagued by scandals, his cabinet support fell by 10%, but among Japanese under the age of 30, the LDP still has a 60% support rate.
"Looking at the opposition now, I can only choose the Liberal Democratic Party." At the time, some young people gave reasons.
Former Democratic Party Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda also pointed out the problem of the opposition in a 2019 interview with NHK, "The opposition parties are falling apart and pulling each other apart." "Over time, it will be difficult for any new opposition party to attract the attention of voters, let alone compete with the LDP at the level of parliament."
Shinki Fujipaira, executive director of the U.S.-Japan Relations Program at Harvard University's Weatherhead Center for International Studies, said that although Japanese voters know that the LDP's "one power is dominant" flawed, "voters still appreciate capable bureaucrats."
<h3>The "change-prone" Liberal Democratic Party is prone to long-term rule</h3>
The LDP is more like a "party within a party", with the major factions like different "small parties" in Western countries. There will be some overall objectives within the LDP. For example, the establishment of a rapid, export-oriented economic growth model; administrative reform, streamlining bureaucracy, privatization of state-owned enterprises, and promoting tax reform for an aging society; Alliances with the United States in foreign and defense policy, etc.
The "change-prone" Liberal Democratic Party is prone to long-term rule. If voters get tired of the "old version" of the party, it will shift course. There is no unified, unambiguous ideology or political philosophy within the party, and positions are varied. In the recently concluded LDP presidential election, candidates have taken a different political stand: Sanae Takashi, 60, is a hardline right-wing conservative; Fumio Kishida, 64, is a moderate who talks about "new capitalism"; Seiko Noda, 61, supports more rights for women and other groups; and Taro Kono, a 58-year-old "popularity king" who wants to eliminate Japan's nuclear power industry.
The members of the conservative faction in the party are "all-encompassing": there are both "bureaucrats" represented by bureaucrats or conservative politicians, and there are also "party faction" grassroots politicians who have entered the political arena from the grass-roots level.
Nick Kapoor, an associate professor of history at Rutgers University in the United States, said of the LDP, "They don't necessarily like each other, and they may not get along well, but they are thus formed into a big party." ”
Takeo Fukuda and Kakuei Tanaka, as representatives of the "bureaucratic faction" and the "party faction" in the "Kakufuku War" of the 1970s and 1980s, the former came from a political family and was a hereditary politician who graduated from the law department of the University of Tokyo, and the latter was born in rural Niigata Prefecture, Japan, with only a primary school degree.
<h3>The "politics of power and money" in the Tokyo Vault</h3>
In Japan, voters can easily guess who the ruling party of the next government is, but they cannot expect that the party bosses will pass the power to the next president.
The power within the LDP is not uniform, and it generally belongs to 5-7 "faction valves". In the early days of Japanese politics, it was popular for party leaders to organize centralized meetings in the name of seminars, which were later extended to the relationship of protection and loyalty between factional leaders and followers, which was called "factional politics".
At present, there are 7 main factions of the LDP: Abe Shinzo has the largest number of Hosoda factions, with a total of 96 members of parliament, officially known as the "Kiyowa Policy Research Association"; 53 Aso factions, 52 Takeshita factions, 47 second-order factions, 46 Kishida factions, 17 Ishibara factions, 10 Ishihara factions, and 64 other unaffiliated factions.
The factional struggle has been reflected in the previous LDP presidential elections. At elections, bigwigs of the same faction would gather at high-end restaurants near Akasaka and Nagatacho to privately discuss the faction's main promoters. Other men opened a suite in a hotel not far away, which served as a "war room" where the two sides were connected by a telephone line. Members of Congress who wish to vote for a factional candidate will go directly to the designated private room.
All members of Congress, local party offices and party members have the opportunity to vote for candidates from all factions, but members of Congress have the largest number of votes. Shinzo Abe's party rival Shigeru Ishiba, who stormed the LDP's presidential election four times, lost the election with a lack of votes from members of Parliament.
Buying votes is not uncommon in factional struggles, with wallets (campaign funds), turf (a fixed constituency of the Political and Business Alliance), and signboards (family fame) being the three elements of Japanese elections, collectively known as the "Three Vans" (三ばん政).
"When I accompanied the LDP politicians on a tour of the constituency, I saw them in brown paper bags of tens of millions of yen... This is just a fraction of the cost of 'bribing' MPs in order to climb to the position of LDP president. Karel Wolflun, a 25-year-old Dutch journalist based in Japan, wrote in his book The Mystery of Japan's Power Structure.
One of Tanaka Kakuei's cronies, the late Member of parliament Tatsumi Ozawa, once revealed that Tanaka Kakuei used to give gifts to other legislators on holidays, in addition to the same faction of the valve members, there are other members of the faction, the number of about 200 people.
The "politics of power and money" between the LDP and the bureaucracy and vested interest groups is often criticized. In 1988, the "Rikulut Case" broke out in The Japanese political arena, that is, the Rikulut Company sold a large number of original shares at preferential prices or disguised gifts to political dignitaries, and the main leaders of the Liberal Democratic Party and several major factions were involved in the case. The case forced former Prime Minister Takeshita to step down, and 12 politicians involved resigned. Takeshita's biggest faction within the Liberal Democratic Party also declined.
The Abe-era cherry blossom viewing scandal and the refusal of Suga's cabinet to appoint members of the Japanese Science Committee have all become "targets" for party factions. For example, Shigeru Ishiba, a reformist faction in the party and an old enemy of Shinzo Abe, advocated the investigation of the Moritomo Gakuen and cherry blossom viewing scandals. He said after Kishida won the LDP presidential election that Kishida could not go against Abe's wishes, just a continuation of Abe's cabinet, "I don't know if I should use the word 'puppet', but maybe he is a puppet? ”
Southern Weekend contributing writer Gu Yuebing