TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/080789/08078900.032

Text File | 1990-09-17 | 10KB | 184 lines

WORLD, Page 24

JAPAN

A Mountain Moves

Angry voters warn the ruling party to clean up its act or

lose power

By Jill Smolowe


    Whether it was just a minor rumble or a major tremor on the
political Richter scale, last week's vote for the upper house of
Japan's parliament was certainly a shock to the Liberal Democratic
Party, which has ruled the country for 34 years. In the most
devastating setback in its history, the L.D.P. claimed only 36 of
the 126 seats up for grabs, while the underdog Japan Socialist
Party took 46. Declared exultant J.S.P. leader Takako Doi: "I truly
felt the mountains moving."

    The vote gave the combined forces of Japan's opposition parties
control of one of the houses in the Diet for the first time.
Although the L.D.P. maintains control of the more powerful lower
house, and therefore of the government, the defeat threw into
question the party's continued dominance. Prime Minister Sousuke
Uno promptly resigned his post after only two months, saying, "The
entire responsibility for the defeat lies with me."

    Uno's willingness to shoulder the party's disgrace did not
disguise it. If Japanese analysts could not agree last week on the
potential consequences of the voter backlash, they did concur on
the causes of the L.D.P. rout. The vote amounted to a referendum
on the party's arrogant and scandal-tainted performance in recent
months. The downslide began with a bribery and influence-peddling
scandal that forced the resignation of Prime Minister Noboru
Takeshita last April. The L.D.P. further alienated voters,
especially women, by imposing a controversial 3% consumption tax.
In agreeing to liberalize agricultural imports, the party angered
farmers, long the chief pillar of its support. The final straw came
just weeks after Uno was named Prime Minister, when his supposedly
spotless reputation was soiled by revelations of a paid affair with
a geisha. "Along the way," says Katsuhiko Shirakawa, an L.D.P.
legislator, "we lost sight of what the public was demanding."

    During the campaign, the L.D.P. repeatedly demonstrated just
how out of touch it had become. One L.D.P. legislator suggested
that the consumption tax would be less painful if it were an even
4% instead of 3%. Another party member said farmers were only
intelligent enough to do manual work. Credit for the greatest
blunder, however, went to Agriculture Minister Hisao Horinouchi,
who said, "It is wrong for women to come to the forefront of
politics." Pausing just long enough to take one foot out of his
mouth and insert the other, Horinouchi then attacked Doi, the
popular Socialist leader. "British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
is an exception, but she has a husband and children," Horinouchi
asserted. "Doi does not. Can such a person serve as Prime
Minister?"

    Seizing on voter disillusionment, the J.S.P. mounted a
stunningly effective campaign. Its trump card was Doi, a
charismatic politician whose forthright statements and energy
offered a refreshing change from the dour-faced, dark-suited
politicians fielded by the L.D.P. Campaigning vigorously, Doi and
her opposition colleagues promised to rescind the consumption tax
and oppose further liberalization of farm imports. "The people are
aware of how politics affects their daily life," Doi said during
a campaign tour. "It's the politicians who are behind the times."

    While such sloganeering proved effective on the hustings, the
Socialists will have to offer voters something more than the
rhetoric of protest if they hope to build on their success.
"Casting the protest vote is no longer enough," concedes Masao
Kunihiro, a newly elected J.S.P. legislator. Like the Solidarity
movement in Poland, the J.S.P. and its allies may discover that it
is far easier to belittle the old than construct something new. The
Socialists are already having trouble rallying opposition parties
behind a single agenda. The J.S.P., for instance, stands alone in
calling for an unarmed, neutral Japan and opposing both the
U.S.-Japan Security Treaty and Japan's Self Defense Force. Doi has
worked hard to play down these positions, but further moderation
will be required if she hopes to establish broad support.

    In a 45-minute interview with TIME last week, Doi set out her
agenda for the coming months. She called on the L.D.P. to dissolve
the lower house and hold new elections. She planned to act on
demands by voters to strengthen the lax laws on political ethics
and campaign contributions that allowed the Liberal Democrats to
peddle influence with near impunity. As for relations with its
chief ally, she said Japan has given in to U.S. demands too often.
Washington, she said, "can't just bring requests to Japan in order
to resolve its own deficits. We should agree to disagree and debate
vigorously."

    The J.S.P.'s first major test will be to produce, as promised,
an alternative plan to the unpopular consumption tax. Last week
the Socialists had little problem persuading the other opposition
parties to introduce a bill in the upper house to kill the tax. But
the parties were unable to agree on an alternative source of
revenue for the government, which needs the money for funding
welfare programs, especially the soaring costs of providing care
for Japan's aging population.

    The outcome of the tax debate will be of keen interest to the
newest force in Japanese politics: women. As traditional keepers
of the household ledgers, women felt the pinch of the consumption
tax most acutely. In the recent election, that issue galvanized
them not only to throw their votes to the Socialists but also to
enter the political arena in record numbers. Female candidates
increased their numbers in the upper house from 23 to 33; they now
account for 13% of the chamber's seats. Half of those elected were
Socialists like Doi. The J.S.P. leader, however, downplayed her
role. "It wasn't my popularity," Doi said. "I just happened to be
a woman."

    Perhaps most telling of the times, roughly half of the new
female legislators have no political experience. They wooed voters
by calling themselves "ordinary women" and "mothers and
housewives," and campaigned on such issues as education, welfare
and ridding the political system of corruption. "Let the voice from
the kitchen be heard in government," said Nobuko Mori, 57, a
winning candidate from western Okayama.

    The voters seemed ready to embrace that message, but women
still have far to go. They hold less than 2% of the seats in the
lower house. In nearly a century of parliamentary government, only
three women have held Cabinet posts; none do so at present. Yet
women's eyes have been opened to new political opportunity. "I feel
like our long-term movement has finally flowered," said Michiko
Matsuura, president of the League of Women Voters of Japan.

    If the Socialists must consolidate their power, the L.D.P. must
work double time to recapture the loyalty of its straying core
supporters. The most immediate concern is to find a replacement for
Uno. As the search began last week, assertive Young Turks were
working to put forward one of their own. But the Old Guard
resisted, still bound by tradition, faction loyalty and a
determination not to relinquish power. In a seeming capitulation
to the young, however, the party agreed at week's end to leave the
selection of a new leader to a party vote, rather than the
back-room politicking that gave rise to leaders like Uno. "Our
defeat was caused by the public's distrust of us," said party elder
Takami Eto. "We must now rebuild that trust by operating more in
the open."

    But will a revamping of party practices be enough to lure back
voters? Of key concern are the farmers who deserted the party in
droves, complaining that the L.D.P. had capitulated to foreign
trade pressures by opening Japan to food imports. Charged Masatoshi
Wada, a leader of the 10,000-strong Shuso Agricultural Cooperative:
"The L.D.P. promised to fight against liberalization at any cost,
and then gave up the fight. We can no longer trust them at their
face value."

    The farmer backlash is bad news for the U.S. and Japan's other
trade partners. The L.D.P. will now think long and hard before
opening markets any further. In coming months Japan and the U.S.
are to start talking about changing Japan's arcane
retail-distribution system, which American businessmen perceive as
a primary obstacle to getting their goods into Japanese stores. The
L.D.P., hardly a speed demon in trade talks, will now be forced to
move even more slowly, both to protect itself politically and to
accommodate the strengthened voice of the protectionist J.S.P.
Hiroshi Nukui of the Socialists' policymaking board gave Washington
a hint of what lies ahead. "We value U.S.-Japan ties," said Nukui,
"but we're not going to just follow in the U.S.'s footsteps the way
the L.D.P. did."

    Such rumblings indicate that the days of clubby back-room
politics are threatened. A maturing electorate has already shown
itself willing to risk its habitual reliance on single-party rule.
The emergence of a strong Socialist opposition is certain to
disturb the Japanese political debate, complicating management of
the country's economy and its relations with foreign nations. It
is also likely to plunge Japan into a long period of uncertainty
as the country wrestles with political instability for the first
time in decades. At the very least, the Liberal Democrats cannot
hope to regain their majority in the upper house for at least six
years. Some analysts believe the defeat may even prove salutary.
Says an American official: "The voters were sending a specific
message: Clean up your act, not We're through with you."

    If the Socialists force elections in the parliament's lower
house before next year, as they hope to do, there is also the
remote possibility that for the first time in party history, the
L.D.P. will be banished to the back benches. To avert that
prospect, warns L.D.P. legislator Shirakawa, "we need to find the
reasons for our losses and then show the people that we have
corrected them." That is a tall order to fill, and the L.D.P. has
no time to lose.


-- Barry Hillenbrand and Kumiko Makihara/Tokyo