Voting for a new Japan

Sep 8th 2005
From The Economist Global Agenda

Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party looks set to win this weekend’s election. Many of those who vote for the party will do so hoping that the prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, uses the opportunity to purge the LDP of recalcitrants and push through long-delayed reforms

IT IS an election without precedent in many ways, so the outcome on Sunday September 11th could yet defy the pollsters. But only days before the voting, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) held such a commanding lead in opinion surveys that it was widely expected to retain its grip on power, as it has done for all but ten months of the past half century. If you were to conclude from this, however, that the election has lost its suspense, you would be wrong.

For Japan's prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi (pictured), is taking on two very different opponents in the election that he decided to call a month ago, after his plan to privatise Japan's postal-savings bank failed to clear parliament. One opponent is the group of LDP rebels who voted against the privatisation plan in the lower house, and who therefore represent one of the most ferociously anti-reformist wings of the party. Mr Koizumi's other opponent is the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), which has improved the country's democracy greatly over the past few years by giving the LDP some competition. Ideally, Mr Koizumi would destroy the rebels on Sunday without doing too much damage to the DPJ. Neither outcome is assured.

It is clear, though, that many of Japan's voters are energised, and mostly for reform. Mr Koizumi's attack on the rebels has clearly inspired much of the country. He has sharply boosted his standing in the polls, and many young and urban voters who have shunned the ruling party in recent years now say that they support the prime minister and his purged LDP. Opinion surveys suggest that the Japanese are keener to vote this time than they have been in many years.

Mr Koizumi has appealed to modernist voters in two ways. First, he has chosen a single issue, postal privatisation, as a litmus test of reform. His opponents and many pundits, who are reading from a different syllabus, consider this an unfair test. His plan for the privatisation of the biggest financial institution in the world is greatly watered down, after all, and many economists argue that any benefits from freeing capital markets will probably accrue only slowly. Moreover, the DPJ is right in saying that its own agenda is much more reformist, on the whole, than Mr Koizumi's. And the DPJ is talking about issues, such as pensions, that worry most voters much more directly.

Yet many voters seem to understand Mr Koizumi's postal test better than the pundits do. Whether or not it is Japan's most urgent economic matter (Mr Koizumi says it is), it allows him to draw sharp lines within his own vague and cynical party, and to give Japan's voters a clear choice between two LDPs: the old one that he wants to destroy and a new one that he promises will be better.

Mr Koizumi says little about this new LDP, which will, if he wins, retain many of the familiar old members and connections. But his implicit message is that if the voters give him a resounding show of support, and help him to defeat the worst elements of the party, then it will embolden the modernisers who want to prise the LDP away from the grip of special interests. In the past it has proved difficult for voters to send that message to a faceless and unprincipled party. So Mr Koizumi has used the postal test to put names and faces to the problem.

He has also boosted the odds of his ploy working by adopting a second strategy: the “assassins”. Across the country, Mr Koizumi has enlisted popular and unforgettable candidates to challenge the old-guard LDP recalcitrants in their well-defended home districts. Many of them are women, including an economist at a foreign bank, a celebrity chef, a former Miss Tokyo University and a well-regarded cabinet member whom the media have even touted as an ideal bride for the divorced prime minister. All of them back postal privatisation.

Much of this smacks of gimmickry. But it has created a clear distinction in the public mind between the rebels, who want to cling to the old Japan, and Mr Koizumi's team, who represent many varieties of a new Japan. The tactic has also allowed Mr Koizumi to play the cool maverick, thus boosting his popularity in the way that his Lion Heart e-mail magazine and a CD of his favourite Elvis songs did after he first took office in 2001.

There is a big difference between now and then, however. In 2001, pundits worried that Mr Koizumi's popularity would wane once the media spotlight went off, and once voters started to shy away from his calls for reform. Now the worry is that he is still popular, but will not carry out as much reform as the voters want. Mr Koizumi has not changed all that much. The voters, though, have come a long way.

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