Center on Japanese Economy and Business. Japan s Politics: Current Realities, Future Possibilities

Center on Japanese Economy and Business Japan s Politics: Current Realities, Future Possibilities September 25, 2008 Speaker Gerald Curtis Burgess Professor of Political Science, Columbia University Moderator Hugh Patrick Director, Center on Japanese Economy and Business; R. D. Calkins Professor of International Business Emeritus, Columbia Business School Cosponsor Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University Special Lecture Summary Report Jeffrey Lagomarsino, Editor Senior Research and Editorial Officer Center on Japanese Economy and Business Japanese translation inside

Japan s Politics: Current Realities, Future Possibilities September 25, 2008 The Center on Japanese Economy and Business (CJEB) of Columbia Business School and the Weatherhead East Asian Institute (WEAI) of Columbia University cosponsored a special lecture given by Gerald Curtis, Burgess Professor of Political Science, Columbia University, titled Japan s Politics: Current Realities, Future Possibilities. The event was moderated by Hugh Patrick, director of CJEB and R. D. Calkins Professor of International Business Emeritus, Columbia Business School. Approximately 180 people were in attendance to hear Professor Curtis s eminent views on Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda s resignation, the current Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) cabinet and its leadership under Prime Minister Taro Aso, the likely consequences of the upcoming election, and the challenges for Japanese politics in the long run. This report is a summary of Professor Curtis s presentation. Professor Curtis began by discussing the circumstances of Mr. Fukuda s resignation. Optimistic of being able to negotiate with the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) upon taking office, Mr. Fukuda did not embody the political leadership characteristics necessary to still get things done when negotiation proved impossible. In particular, according to ProfessorCurtis, Mr. Fukuda could never bring himself to speak directly and persuasively to the public. In Professor Curtis s view, this is the only way to drive policy in a time of divided government, a relatively recent phenomenon injapanese politics. Unhappy with the realization that he would be unable to accomplish anything amidst political gridlock, Mr. Fukuda resigned prior to the Diet session in the hope that his successor would get a bounce in the polls and perhaps be able to advance the policy process. His successor, Mr. Aso, failed to get the expected bounce and has been left with a monumental task of just remaining in power. Professor Curtis ventured that Mr. Aso s popularitywould continue to decline, that his tenurewould not last long, and thatjapanwould have at least two new prime ministers in the next year. The makeup of Mr. Aso s cabinet is reflective of deep problems within the LDP, according to Professor Curtis. First, the cabinet is unattractive to the Japanese public because it lacks exciting personalities, nonpoliticians, diverse political ideas, and a clearpolicy agenda. Most key members of the cabinet are rightwing politicians, hawkish on foreign policy and in favorof increasing public spending not so much to stimulate the economy as to provide pork to attain the votes necessary to stay in power. Professor Curtis emphasized that an important reason the LDP was a successful ruling party in Japan for most of the last 53 years was that it has been a catch-all party of diverse political ideologies and policyviews. But it is becoming an increasingly narrow party. The contraction of the LDP is symbolized by the decision of formerprime MinisterJunichiro Koizumi to retire from politics and the decision of the speaker of the Lower House, Mr. Kono Yohei, to not seek re-election. Professor Curtis said that Mr. Aso and Mr. Koizumi have fundamental disagreements on many policy matters and are not at all close personally. This conflict dates back to when Mr. Koizumi was prime minister and Mr. Aso, as head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications,was unenthusiasticabout postal system reform. The key reason Mr. Koizumi moved him from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs after the 2005 election was to make sure that Mr. Aso was in no position to undermine the implementation of the postal system reform. With respect to the LDP leadership s plan to use pork barrel spending to get votes, Professor Curtis said it will not make as much of a difference in the outcome of the Diet election as old-fashioned LDP politicians believe it will. That strategy used to work before the electoral system changed in 1994, when a politician could get elected with 20 25 percent of the vote and could secure a good part of that vote by doing favors for targeted constituencies. But now, in what is essentially a singlemember district system, 51 percent of the vote is required to be elected, and to win means to appeal to a majority of voters, not to narrow interests. The second problematic characteristic of the Aso cabinet, which is indicative of the LDP andjapanese politics more broadly, is the number of hereditary politicians. Twelve out of 18 members of Mr. Aso s cabinet are hereditary politicians, and while hereditary politicians are not a phenomenon unique to Japan, Professor Curtis pointed out several distinctive and alarming characterizes of thejapanese hereditary politician phenomenon. First is the sheer number of these politicians; he noted that at least 40 percent of LDP Diet members are hereditary politicians. Second, very often in Japan these politicians have pursued their career out of filial obligation, absent of any true desire to be a politician. A minority of Japan s hereditary politicians really do have a passion for politics and they tend to be quite good. In Professor Curtis s opinion, Mr. Fukuda epitomized the type of politician fulfilling a filial duty, and this was a central reason he was unsuccessful as prime minister. Professor Curtis offered the same explanation for Mr. Abe s disastrous leadership. Additionally, the LDP s past success was in part a tribute to the fact that LDP politicians always spent significant time with their constituents and understood their concerns. Today s hereditary politicians, who represent rural districts as a consequence of where their families are from, often have lived their entire lives in Tokyo and have no real connection to the communities they represent. This is a major cause of the deterioration ofjapanese political leadership and the LDP s loss of support. 2 Japan s Politics: Current Realities, Future Possibilities

Professor Curtis went on to discuss the upcoming election, noting that its timing depended on Mr. Aso s strategy. Ideally, Mr.Asowould like to hold it priorto the U.S. election on November 4 because of the fear that if Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate, wins the U.S. election, it will increase the support forjapan s Democratic Party. However, Mr. Aso may wait at least until the end of November, hoping that the longer he is in office, the higher his popularity will go. What is more likely is that the longer he delays an election, the more unpopular he will become. Professor Curtis then outlined three possible outcomes of the election. The least likely is that the LDP and its coalition partner, the Komeito, maintain a comfortable majority of seats, some 10 or 15 seats more than half of the lower house s 480 seats. If that were to happen, the DPJ would probably disintegrate.thiswould be theworst outcome forjapan, in Professor Curtis s opinion, because it would result in no political change. A more probable result is that the LDP wins more seats than the DPJ by a very narrow margin and is able to put together a coalition government with the Komeito and have a bare majority.the LDP and the DPJ each are likely to get something between 210 and 220 seats. If the gap is only a few seats, the election will be seen as a victory for the DPJ even if it does not come to power. In this case, the DPJ would remain a united and strong opposition party that could defeat everything in the UpperHouse and once again push for a new election. Mr. Aso might call for a grand coalition with the DPJ in such a situation, just as Mr. Fukuda tried and failed to do. Professor Curtis said that Mr. Ichiro Ozawa, the president of the DPJ, might be attracted once again to joining such a coalition but that opposition to it from within the DPJ would probably prevent it from happening. It is quite possible, in the analysis of Professor Curtis, that the DPJ will win a few more seats than the LDP and will form a coalition government that will drive the LDP into opposition. Professor Curtis also remarked that once relegated to opposition party status the LDP may rupture, given that it is already contracting as the relatively liberal politicians are becoming disenchanted by the recent right shift of the LDP leadership. In the case that Mr. Ozawa becomes prime ministerof a DPJcentered coalition government, he will confront huge problems and find it difficult to exercise leadership, according to Professor Curtis. Mr. Ozawa is a conservative politician who is more comfortable in backroom dealings than as the public face of his party. As prime minister, he would have to contend with many in his own party who do not agree with his policy views and will not be able to run a government simply by telling everyone what to do. There are likely to be intra-party conflicts that will inhibit the DPJ from being an effective ruling party, especially given that Mr. Ozawa prefers to surround himself with yes-men and does not take criticism well. At the same time, Professor Curtis stressed that an upside of a DPJ government would be that it would contain well-informed, interesting, and young people in key cabinet positions. There would be many new faces and generational change that would make the cabinet popular with the Japanese public. Professor Curtis also discussed the important position that the Communist Party might find itself in. Because the Komeito is likely to stay with the LDP, the DPJ probably will need the Communists vote to win in some districts and will want the Communists to vote for the DPJ candidate for prime minister in the Diet.The Communist Party has already decided not to run candidates in some single-member districts and instead has given its support to DPJ candidates. Mr. Ozawa is a former LDP member who does not get along with the left of his own party and does not want to deal with the Communists, according to Professor Curtis. Mr. Ozawa is looking for any way to avoid this, including asking for support from members of the Kokumin Shinto, a group of very conservative former LDP politicians who were forced out by Mr. Koizumi because of their opposition to postal system reform, and other former LDP members who were purged from the party by Mr. Koizumi. So the government is likely to be a hodgepodge of unreconstructed and old-fashioned former LDP politicians, former socialists, liberals, and others. If the DPJ does not win enough seats to form a government, it will win enough to ensure that the government which does emergewill be a fragile one. While ProfessorCurtis does not think there will be a stable government in the short run, he thinks a strong showing by the DPJ will be a critical catalyst to change the system of Japanese politics that has existed since the mid- 1950s. He explained that the clock has been ticking on the LDP s rule and the status quo. Mr. Koizumi s tenure was an important and refreshing intermission in the LDP s decline, but his impact was not lasting. Proof of this can be found in his tepid support of Ms. Yuriko Koike to replace Mr. Fukuda as prime minister. Mr. Koizumi realized that her chance of victory was slim, and though he gave her pro forma support, he chose not to tarnish his reputation by strongly backing a losing candidate. Additionally, most of Mr. Koizumi s so-called assassins who supported his reform agenda now stand to lose their seats in the upcoming election. These are times of creative political destruction, and Professor Curtis said this election will accelerate the process of dismantling the old system. The DPJ has made a particular habit of publicly bashing the bureaucracyand is determinedto break its power. In Professor Curtis s estimation, while it is true that the bureaucracy needs to be reformed, the DPJ has taken an extreme position that if implemented as policy would be disastrous for Japan. The idea that politiciansratherthan bureaucratsshould make policy ignores the fact that politicians need the support of experts and an administrative apparatus in order to do so. Politicians cannot make policy without such support because they do not have sufficient knowledge of the issues. Unlike U.S. House members and senators, Japanese politicians do not have policy specialists on their meager personal staffs. Nor does the country have policy think tanks on which politicians can rely. In Japan, there are virtually no alternate sites for policy formulation to the bureaucracy. Center on Japanese Economy and Business September 25, 2008 3

However imperfect, it is the only institution on which politicians can rely in making policy. Political leadership should not mean that politicians do what bureaucrats do, but that they provide leadership over the bureaucracy. It is important to maintain bureaucratic morale and try to continue recruiting bright young talent to government service. Professor Curtis went on to emphasize that Japanese political leaders need to change their view of divided government. Rather than being fatalistic about gridlock and assume that nothing can be done, leaders need to see it as a challenge and seek creative solutions. In the United States, divided government is seen as natural; if anything, Americans worry when one party has too much power. Divided government tests the skills of political leaders and rewards thosewho are able to negotiate compromises and achieve policy goals. Professor Curtis expressed the belief that political creativity would eventually come to Japan s political class even though there is yet little sign of it. He said a new approach to policy and a new kind of leadership that articulates its goals and works hard to persuade the public to support them must come if Japan is going to successfully address its foreign and domestic policy challenges. With respect to foreign policy, Professor Curtis argued that Japan is in need of political leaders who can articulate a proactive vision forjapan and who can do so in a manner that inspires the Japanese public to feel they have a stake in contributing to the resolution of major global issues. This requires a fundamental change in the way Japan has always conceptualized its foreign policy strategy. The essence of Japan s foreign policy is, and has historically been, to react to what it sees as the dominant trends of the time. Professor Curtis noted that when the structure of international relations is clearly defined, as it was during the Meiji period and in the post World War II cold war period, Japan pursues such a reactive foreign policy with great success. However, when the trends are murky and the international order is in a state of flux, a reactive foreign policy can result in dangerous miscalculations. This was the case forjapan in the 1930s and, though the situation is now very different, the dangers of pursuing a reactive diplomacy and not having a clear foreign policy vision and strategy are very great. Many conservatives in the LDP read the rise of the neoconservatives in the United States as the new dominant trend and tried to align with it. Both Mr. Abe and Mr. Aso, as well as others in the Aso cabinet, embrace this neoconservative vision and no doubt are keeping their fingers crossed that Senator John McCain will be elected the next president of the United States. But a neoconservative vision for Japan is full of dangers, not the least of which would be deterioration in Japan s relations with China and South Korea, and Asia, more generally. Fortunately, in Professor Curtis s opinion, the political strength of the neoconservatives is on the wane in the United States and is of limited appeal in Japan. But without leaders who are able to articulate a foreign policy vision, the Japanese public will continue to be anxious, hesitant, and prone to isolationism. As far as U.S.-Japan relations are concerned, a failure on Japan s part to be more proactive will not necessarily sour the relationship. It will, for the most part, simply lead the U.S. to bypass Japan in its deliberations with other countries about how to deal with pressing issues of common concern. Professor Curtis expressed concern about how Mr. Ozawa s administration would manage relations with the United States. For one, Mr. Ozawa holds the view that Japan s security policy should be determined in light of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions. This does not make much sense, since it means that Japan denies itself the right to undertake missions that serve its national interests where the UNSC has not authorized them. China, or any country with veto power in the UNSC, in effect has aveto overjapanese foreign policy. This is an untenable basis for a foreign policy, but it will take some doing for Mr. Ozawa to move away from it. According to Professor Curtis, as Japan s international power and ambition wane, the U.S.- Japan relationship is going to be increasingly difficult forjapan to manage because bilateral relations will become less of a priority for the United States. Despite the need for a fundamental change in the way Japan views its foreign policy, Professor Curtis is pessimistic that new leaders will soon arrive with such a vision. On domestic policy too, Professor Curtis asserted the need for political leaders who can articulate avision forjapan 10, 20, 30years into the future and convince thejapanese public of the correct strategy to get there. This requires bold political leaders who are frank with the public about the need to address difficult challenges such as the economic and social implications of its rapidly aging society. In the current election campaign, immigration has not been mentioned once because the public does not want to confront the matter, and politicians are notwilling to confront themwith the hard realities thatjapan faces. Nevertheless, significant immigration exists injapan, and without reform it will continue illegally, because labor markets increasingly demand it. Professor Curtis noted that Japan must find a way to legally and systematically integrate foreign workers into the economy if the country is to maintain its long-term prosperity. There is no sign of strong political leaders willing to make this case. Additionally, Professor Curtis stressed that Japan must explore policies that encourage women to both work and have more children. However, the conservative Japanese view is that women should stay home and have babies. Professor Curtis cited Singapore as an example of a government in which even older conservative politicians have acknowledged the country s demographic problem and are confronting it through a carefully structured immigration policy and, like Sweden, France, and other countries, by promoting policies that encourage working women to have more children. Japan has to do the same. There is a need forcreative policies that recognize how muchjapanese social structure andvalues have changed. But first political leaders have to recognize and publicly acknowledge the true extent of the problems Japan faces. 4 Japan s Politics: Current Realities, Future Possibilities

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