Japan braced for political earthquake

[frigidmagi]

BBC

The small, white van flies around the narrow country roads with its four huge tannoys blaring out the electioneering message "Vote Kazumi."

Suddenly it screeches to a halt, the door flies open and Kazumi Ota leaps out, running to meet a voter to shake hands and bow vigorously before racing off to greet the next potential supporter.

Opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) candidate Kazumi Ota
Kazumi Ota, Japan's youngest female MP, epitomises energy and vitality

Her assistants, in matching Kazumi colours, desperately try to keep up with her pace and energy, but are left to dish out the leaflets and get back to the car before the whole convoy tears off to surprise another sleepy village in rural Japan.

Ms Ota is 29 years old and was the youngest member of parliament when she won her seat four years ago.

She sums up the message the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) wants to get out - it is all about being young and energetic.

It is about change in a place where MPs used to be old and stuffy - certainly not women - and even passed their job from father to son.

"Japanese people, by nature, don't like change and are conservative," said Ms Ota.

"The country used to be well off but now there is inequality and a gap between rich and poor is taking hold. That's why they want change."

The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has been almost continually in power for five decades, but the polls say the opposition will win a landslide victory on Sunday.

Colourful past

In Japan, the politicians and the bureaucrats who have wielded the real power have developed a cosy self-serving relationship. There is even a word for it: "shigarami".


Night work used to be looked down on as just for drop-outs, but now it's more accepted and accessible
Manami Moriyama, former hostess and author

"I'm young, I'm a woman and I don't have shigarami ties," said Ms Ota.

"In Japanese politics the old generations have not handed over to the young generation and that should happen now."

Ms Ota's own story tells how Japanese society has already been changing and politics is only now catching up: she used to be a hostess girl - a job once seen as seedy and underground but now accepted.

"Night-work used to be looked down on as just for drop-outs, but now it's more accepted and accessible," said Manami Moriyama, 35, herself a former hostess who now writes books glamorising her old job.

"Students can do it part-time, you can earn good money when there are so few other jobs around. It's exciting and glamorous."

Japan was once the bastion of the so-called "salary-men" - hard workers who had jobs for life in a conservative society where individualism was scorned.

Dressing up

Now, you only have to wander the streets of Tokyo to see how that pent-up repression has boiled over into the wackier side of Japanese pop culture where the geek is king.

Cos-play is popular - dressing up as a favourite animation cartoon, or anime, character.

Two Japanese girls dressed as cartoon characters
Many enjoy adopting the character - and costume - of anime personalities

Bo Peep-meets-French-maid is a current teenage favourite, but it is not just the young - big-eyed anime models wear school uniforms with short skirts and tight tops.

Danny Choo is the 30-something son of the famous luxury shoemaker Jimmy Choo, and he runs an internet business from Tokyo which appeals to anime geeks the world over. He says it gets 20 million hits a month.

His cos-play is a Star Wars Stormtrooper and he happily puts it on for a stroll around town.

"When I watch anime I feel like I am in a completely different world," he said.

"I guess it's something you have which takes you away - I wouldn't call it escapism, but it lets you indulge another world."

It's the side of Japan which has been breaking free from the customs and traditions of old.

Time for change?

Salary-men used to be happy with the security their lives had, but with jobs no longer for life and unemployment at the highest level ever things are changing.

For two decades it has been hard but this recession was the tipping point - by next year China's economy will have overtaken Japan, and almost a third of all people will be pensioners. That is where the call for change comes from.

A woman walks past a screen in the Japanese capital
Tokyo remains a mix of tradition and technology

Masaru Sato is 65 years old and does not blame the state for his circumstances after losing his job 10 years ago.

With the job came a house but with unemployment comes a neatly kept blue tarpaulin tent in a Tokyo park.

He makes a little money recycling and has signed off from society. He may have lost his right to vote, but doesn't mind.

"It won't make much difference whoever wins the election, but we should give the opposition a chance," he said.

"I am looking forward to what new things the DPJ can do. The ruling LDP will probably split - it's just a club for the privileged - their lives are so different from ours and they just do what the bureaucrats tell them to - is there any other country like that?"

People no longer accept the unacceptable - from the homeless on the streets, up to the unchallenged towers of bureaucracy.

If Japan does vote for change, it will be a momentous shift after decades of hidden dissent - think the British Labour Party's victory in 1997, or the rise of Barack Obama.

Japan has had four LDP prime ministers in the three years it took to select the new US president.

On Sunday it will choose a fifth and politics will be shaken up, but whoever it is, the challenges will be just as big.

Change... It ain't just happening in the States.

[The Minx]

Update: the elections are over, and it was a landslide for the opposition.

Link

TOKYO, Japan (CNN) -- Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso announced his resignation as head of the party that has governed Japan for decades following its apparent landslide defeat in elections Sunday.

Japan's voters, fed up with the party that has governed the country for decades, gave the opposition an enormous landslide victory in parliamentary elections Sunday, exit polls suggest.

The polls indicate the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) may have won a 3-to-1 victory over the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Aso congratulated the DPJ in a televised appearance as the country waited for official results. What do you think of the outcome of the Japanese election?

Yukio Hatoyama, the DPJ leader, was restrained in his first public comments since the vote.

"I hope this victory will be for the people of Japan," said the man who is poised to be Japan's next prime minister.

In Washington, the White House issued a statement Sunday saying that U.S. President Barack Obama looks forward to "working closely" with the new Japanese prime minister.

"We are confident that the strong U.S.-Japan Alliance and the close partnership between our two countries will continue to flourish under the leadership of the next government in Tokyo," the White House statement said.

Hatoyama, who has been touting an Obama-style message of change, was mobbed at street rallies by supporters during the campaign -- the kind of support the opposition has never seen before. Video Watch report on why voters are looking for change »

He pledged to raise the minimum wage and discourage hiring through agencies or on temporary contracts.

That message is gaining traction in a country that is witnessing historic highs in unemployment and experiencing ramifications like homelessness for the first time.

Voters at polling stations told CNN they wanted change and wanted to give new leaders a chance, even if they were not sure what policies would replace the ones that have run the world's second-largest economy for more than a generation.

Lines at polling places spilled out into Tokyo streets Sunday as Japanese citizens showed up in what seemed to be record levels.

Masayuki Nakamura, who voted for the DPJ, said he did so because he was frustrated with the lack of an economic policy as Japan emerges from its worst recession since World War II.

"Maybe with this change of party, something will change," Nakamura said. "That's what I'm expecting. The money's been going the wrong way. I hope the money will now go toward jobs and creating a safety net."

Before the election, poll after poll suggested the vote would oust the ruling LDP from power.

The LDP has been in nearly continuous control of Japan's parliament for more than 50 years. But the country's economic crisis has disgruntled many who are displeased with how slowly the country is emerging from the downturn.

Polls show the opposition, the DPJ, will snag more than 300 of the 480 seats up for grabs in the lower house of Japan's parliament.

If the DPJ does win a majority, it will be the first time it will govern the country.

Although a victory for the opposition would be of tremendous significance politically, it is too early to tell what practical impact it will have.

Outgoing Prime Minister Aso's approval ratings dwelled in the teens, and his stimulus packages, while credited with lifting the economy slightly out of recession, are not being credited with helping households feel more secure about a lasting economic recovery.

[SirNitram]

Now they have to actually come up with a policy platform and clear idealogy, instead of just 'opposition to the decades-long one-party government'.

[frigidmagi]

The polls indicate the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) may have won a 3-to-1 victory over the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Aso congratulated the DPJ in a televised appearance as the country waited for official results. What do you think of the outcome of the Japanese election?

Holy Fuck! Elections like that have never happened in Japan before.

[frigidmagi]

Now they have to actually come up with a policy platform and clear idealogy, instead of just 'opposition to the decades-long one-party government'.

They got better. They have a plan.

Opinion polls suggest a landslide win for the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) on August 30. It wants to shift priorities by shifting 3pc of Japan's GDP from public works to social spending.

The DPJ thinks two policies of the Liberal Democrat Party, in power for all but a year since 1955, are counterproductive. The first is the easy transition senior bureaucrats make after retirement to top positions in major private companies. The result is an easy consensus between government and industry. The second is the substantial share of government spending - 6.5pc of GDP at its 2001 peak - dedicated to rural infrastructure.

Those policies worked superbly until 1990. But they have been much less successful since the Japanese financial bubble burst. A partial reversal of them under Junichiro Koizumi in 2001-06 produced the only signs so far of sustained economic revival.

The DPJ now wants to go further than Koizumi. It plans to prohibit senior bureaucrats from moving to private employers on retirement, sharply cut infrastructure spending and redeploy the savings to transfer payments for families with children and pensioners. Japan's voters seem to think the DPJ's alternative worth trying.

The electorate is probably right. A reorientation of Japan's economy towards domestic consumption and away from infrastructure and exports might well stimulate higher growth and a better economic balance. Interest rates high enough to give Japan's savers a decent return on their money would also help.

The problem is Japan's government debt, which the International Monetary Fund expects to reach 217pc of GDP by the end of 2009. That's a level close to the highest ever successfully handled - Britain's debts in 1815 and 1945. It is made more manageable by Japan's low interest rates and high savings rates, but urgently needs to be put on a downward trajectory.

Total debt, not the composition of public spending, is the central question of Japan's economy. It's not yet clear whether the DPJ has the answer.

[Mayabird]

I'm not going to believe changes are coming until I see them. The bureaucracy is very entrenched and powerful and it won't like intrusions on its influence. Koizumi actually had pretty extensive plans for reforms but couldn't get any of them implemented properly (and most of them implemented at all) because of all the resistance he met.