Reply With QuoteGanbatte, Yokokume-San!!!
I wish him success.
Thanks for the post/thread, Ordie!
Japan’s Political Dynasties Come Under Fire
Source:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/wo...gewanted=printJapan’s Political Dynasties Come Under Fire but Prove Resilient
By MARTIN FACKLER
YOKOSUKA, Japan — By almost any measure, Katsuhito Yokokume should have at least a fighting chance in the coming parliamentary elections, which could decide Japan’s future.
A truck driver’s son who graduated from the nation’s top university, Mr. Yokokume, an energetic 27-year-old lawyer, is a candidate for the main opposition Democratic Party, which has ridden rising popular discontent with the long-governing Liberal Democratic Party. Yet, on a recent chilly morning of greeting voters with deep bows and handshakes at a train station, he got the same apologetic but blunt rejection he gets every day.
“I’m sorry, but this is Koizumi country,” one commuter explained.
He was referring to Junichiro Koizumi, the popular former prime minister whose family has represented this naval port an hour southwest of Tokyo for three generations. In announcing his retirement last autumn, Mr. Koizumi anointed his son, Shinjiro, as successor — making the son’s election as a fourth-generation lawmaker all but a foregone conclusion here.
Such family dynasties are common across Japan, the product of more than a half-century of Liberal Democratic Party control that allowed lawmakers to build powerful local political machines and then hand them down to children and grandchildren.
Now, as the party faces its biggest challenge since its founding in 1955, such de facto hereditary control of parliamentary seats is coming under unprecedented criticism here. But it is also showing stubborn resilience.
Such inherited seats have fallen under increasing attack by voters and many political scientists. They say the practice has helped create an inbred version of politics that has contributed to the leadership paralysis gripping this nation, slowing its response to the current financial crisis and Japan’s longer economic decline. Political analysts have also thrust into public view the fact that powerful political and business families exert more control here than this proudly middle-class society likes to admit.
This has fed a fear of rising social inequalities, and the feeling that unseen barriers are preventing new talent, new ideas —literally, new blood — from entering politics, and from helping Japan find a way out of its morass.
“It takes a blood test to get elected these days,” said Sota Kato, a senior fellow at the Tokyo Foundation, a private research organization. “It is a symptom of how Japanese society has lost its postwar dynamism and become more rigid and less democratic.”
While second-generation lawmakers are common elsewhere — they make up some 5 percent of the United States Congress, Mr. Kato and others said — they are unusually numerous here. Some 40 percent of Liberal Democratic lawmakers are descendants of lawmakers. Of the past seven prime ministers here, all but one were the sons or grandsons of former lawmakers.
The issue was thrust into public view recently by the back-to-back resignations of two prime ministers, Shinzo Abe and Yasuo Fukuda, the grandson and son, respectively, of former prime ministers. The fact that both men stepped down so quickly in the face of falling approval ratings was widely criticized here as a weakness of character seen in “botchan” or “brat” politicians.
Despite such public disgust, it is unclear whether this will influence the coming elections, which must be called by early September and which polls show the Liberal Democrats could lose. The opposition Democrats, for one, also have their share of second-generation or higher lawmakers: 20 percent.
Also, as Yokosuka shows, old practices die hard. Often, the families’ founding members are still revered in their districts for bringing public works projects that helped raise living standards.
“Sure, we’re tired of all these brats,” said Keiko Nomura, 53, who owns a shoe shop in Yokosuka. “But Japan still has money, and Japanese basically hate change.”
Mr. Koizumi’s decision to hand his seat to his son was greeted with disappointment in urban areas, where the criticism of hereditary seats is highest, and where the former prime minister was widely popular for his vows to change the Liberal Democratic Party’s entrenched ways.
The younger Mr. Koizumi has kept a low profile since his anointment, and both Koizumis declined to be interviewed.
Despite the fact that Shinjiro Koizumi has yet to announce a political platform, his father’s supporters say they are enthusiastic to vote for him. They say he inherited his father’s telegenic charisma. Perhaps more significantly, he will also inherit his father’s roughly 5,000-member support group, which financed and organized his election campaigns.
“Kids are usually stupid by the third generation, but this one’s different,” said Kazuhiko Ozawa, a former chairman of Yokosuka’s Chamber of Commerce who helped lead the elder Mr. Koizumi’s support group.
By contrast, Mr. Yokokume, his opponent, runs his quixotic campaign out of a grimy one-room apartment, which he shares with two election staff members sent by the Democratic Party. He said his budget was $20,000 to $30,000, a full two digits less than what the Koizumi campaign is likely to muster.
Mr. Yokokume said he was hoping to benefit from some kind of negative reaction to hereditary politics. Still, he is reluctant to criticize his opponent directly for fear of offending Japanese sensibilities that frown on self-promoters. Instead, he limits himself to giving his personal narrative of being a self-made success, noting that he was a law major at the prestigious University of Tokyo who passed Japan’s highly competitive bar exam.
“I leave it to voters to make the comparison” with the younger Mr. Koizumi, who graduated from the less well known Kanto Gakuin University, he said. Mr. Koizumi also has a master’s degree in politics from Columbia University.
But Mr. Yokokume admits that it is hard to battle an opponent who seems invincible, and whom Mr. Yokokume said he had never even seen. What keeps him going, he said, is a hope of parlaying even a defeat into an eventual career in politics, and a touch of indignation at hereditary politics.
“Why can’t a regular person be a politician?” he asked. “Politics shouldn’t be a family business.”
Ganbatte, Yokokume-San!!!
I wish him success.
Thanks for the post/thread, Ordie!
I think Katsuhito Yokokume feels like a breath of fresh air which might be more of what Japan needs.
I think the Japanese are not mature enough voters yet to realise what they need. With the opposition in perennial disarray and turnout shrinking every election, the population aging and the deeply entrenched patriarchal confucian values, Japan won't see change for at least another generation.
Once people end their complacency and realise they don't have to vote for the same old LDP just because that's what they've always done - and what everyone else seems to be doing - then this country can move socially, politically and economically into the future.
It's not all bad though: till then Japan will manage to plod along as it has for the past two decades since the bubble burst.
This sounds like the Singaporean political scene.Originally Posted by budgie
As far as I can tell Singapore doesn't allow democratic elections.This sounds like the Singaporean political scene.
Japan does, however the voters are so unimaginative, so single-minded as to have created their own one-party-state. If they would just change the mould (as they did briefly with Murayama in 1993) then the country might improve but it is the people's own apathy and complacency that hold them back.
From my contacts with Japanese ppl i find they are realy hard to change customs, choices they make or way of thinking. For example Nihongo Noryoku Shiken (JLPT) is done allways in first sunday of december in whole world, then papaers are sent by airmail to Tokio where they are checked by computer and response is sent back also by mail, any other language test i have taken was checked on site while this has to have japanese post stamps so we wait for results 3 months
Singapore does have elections. However the outcome is always in same with 82 seats in favor of the People's Action Party (PAP) and 2 in the oppositions. The opposition parties are always being sued for libel or scrutinized to death.
As you can see by the map, there's alot of Gerrymadering in favor of the ruling party.
Ironically, Singapore is considered as a future model of governance by the CCP in China.
The LDP hardly has a monopoly on power, if Japan had a proportional representation system of government, then the absolute majority that the LDP held in the Diet since the 1950's would be so narrow that the LDP would have been forced to call new elections if even just a dozen of its MPs defect, even with its best showing in an election the LDP never had more than 60% of the vote, more commonly it was just above 50%, and saying that LDP should be thrown out of power is just like saying that a car needs to be sent to the junkyard just because the stereo conks out every now and then, much of the prosperity that Japan has enjoyed has been built on the back of the LDP's export oriented economic policies, the LDP needs some reforms, but they hardly need to be thrown out of power right now, especially since they are the only viable center right party in Japan right now, if the LDP is dismembered instead of the DJP gaining votes, you might just see far right ultranationalist parties increase their vote share.
Hell yeah that Bukit Panjang is blatant!Singapore does have elections. However the outcome is always in same with 82 seats in favor of the People's Action Party (PAP) and 2 in the oppositions. The opposition parties are always being sued for libel or scrutinized to death.
As you can see by the map, there's alot of Gerrymadering in favor of the ruling party.
Ironically, Singapore is considered as a future model of governance by the CCP in China.
I don't think they need to be "thrown out of power", only that voters need to be more imaginative and open to other options. Furthermore what was good for building Japan's postwar economy may not necessarily be best for maintaining it into the 21st Century with an aging population and declining birthrate, and countries like China streaming ahead economically.
All I'm saying is the voters need more imagination and should have tired of the 'old boy network' by now.
The far right will never gain much credence without an economic crisis to guide them. Amrer recession won't do it, the peace-minded voters of Japan need to be whipped the way Germans felt whipped in 1933. Ain't gonna happen.
Foreign investors usually want stability and predictable regulatory policies, whether that is provided by an autocracy or a democracy is usually not very relevant, I mean look at Singapore and Hong Kong's scores for economic and political freedoms. And as for people complaining about their government, even if you have a government run by the Valar it is still likely that there would still be some people who are disatisfied with the way the place is run.Singapore does have elections. However the outcome is always in same with 82 seats in favor of the People's Action Party (PAP) and 2 in the oppositions. The opposition parties are always being sued for libel or scrutinized to death.
As you can see by the map, there's alot of Gerrymadering in favor of the ruling party.
Ironically, Singapore is considered as a future model of governance by the CCP in China.
This is my problem with the Japanese voters. In poll after poll they lack faith in their leaders and complain of corruption but come election time they lack the imagination to elect anyone new. Back to the OP: it's the same old political dynasties. Same old faces, smoky backroom deals and 'black money' seeping out through pork-barrel politics. Other democracies suffer from similar problems but show more ****ounced left-right swings at election time.
While it may have its drawbacks, the fact that the LDP was the ruling party for most of Japan's post World War 2 history may have provided Japan the sort of political stability that is needed for sustained rapid economic growth (which may not be possible with constantly changing ruling parties and economic policies, and constant and erratic shifts between right wing and left wing governments, what the typical investor who is thinking about risking his capital in a business venture wants most is predictability), another thing is that it is really the beauracracy that runs the Japanese civil service (google MITI), with the prime ministers having little real power, most Japanese prime ministers rarely sit in office for more than 3 years. Another thing is that Japan is really overcrowded (ideally Japan's population should be no more than that of Italy), its only significant stretch of flat land is the Kanto plain, the rest of the terrain is very rugged.
Composition, topography, and drainage
Topographic map
Map of Japan
About 73% of Japan is mountainous, with a mountain range running through each of the main islands. Japan's highest mountain is Mt. Fuji, with an elevation of 3,776 m (12,388 ft). Since so very little flat area exists, many hills and mountainsides are cultivated all the way to the top.
Last edited by ren0312; 03-16-2009 at 10:48 PM.
Overcrowded and rugged. Thank you for the insights and I'll be sure to check it out if I ever visit japan
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