Political clarity increasing

The Japan Times: Tuesday, May 3, 1994

By REI SHIRATORI
Special to The Japan Times

     Ozawa has crossed the Rubicon, for he has split the LDP and put an end to its long, stable one-party rule. If he is to hold hegemony over Japanese politics, he has no choice but to create and lead a force strong enough to counter the LDP. The non-LDP coalition was only a first step in this direction.

     Japanese politics during the Heisei Era, which began in 1989, has undergone a series of upheavals. Former Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita's involvement in the stocks-for-favors Recruit scandal led to the resignation of the Takeshita Cabinet. The arrest of former Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) Vice President Shin Kanemaru opened the way for the breakup of the Takeshita faction. The secession of an anti-Takeshita group from the LDP ended up creating a non-LDP coalition government. And now the Social Democratic Party of Japan (SDPJ) has bolted from the coalition.
     These changes have brought few benefits, if any, to the lives of the Japanese people, but in terms of political science, they have provided a highly interesting subject for analysis.
     It all started in 1987, when Takeshita won the coveted post of prime minister, retired as chairman of prime minister, retired as chairman of the Takeshita faction and passed the baton to Knemaru. But Takeshita's fall from power, triggered by his secretary's involvement in the Recruit affair, deprived him of a chance to regain full control of the powerful faction.
     The LDP's largest group, known as Keiseikai, remained under the thumb of Kanemaru. But he used a different method - the carrot and the stick - to run the faction. Takeshita, the founder of Keiseikai, had little difficulty commanding the loyalty of faction numbers. Not so Kanemaru, who became Keiseikai chairman riding on Takeshita's coattails. Kanemaru used the carrot - political campaign funds - to silence dissident members. He used the stick - strategist Ichiro Ozawa - to keep the faction united.
     To fill up the campaign war chest, Kanemaru received 500 million yen in illegal contributions from the Sagawa Kyubin trucking company. That cost him his political life. He resigned as both Keiseikai chairman and a member of the Lower House.
     In the meantime, Ozawa cultivated strong-arm political methods under Kanemaru's tutorship. But at the same time friction developed between Takeshita, who tried to control Keiseikai from outside, and Kanemaru , who styled himself as the faction's godfather.
     As a result, pro-Takeshita members including Keizo Obuchi, Ryutaro Hashimoto and Seiroku Kajiyama, were pitted against pro-Kanemaru members - among them Ozawa and Keiwa Okuda. The confrontation intensified after Kanemaru's downfall, leading to the split in Keiseikai and the collapse of the Cabinet of former Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa.
     The passage of a no-confidence vote against the Miyazawa Cabinet touched off a wider political contest that reached a watershed in the general election of a watershed in the general election of mid-1993. It was a contest in which the power struggle in the Takeshita faction over the future hegemony of conservative politics involved all political parties from the LDP to the SDPJ.
     One interesting thing about that power struggle is that it brought to the fore the different views that pro-Takeshita and pro-Kanemaru groups hold about the merit of Japan's postwar politics.
     Takeshita in his book gives high marks to the postwar farmland reform by the Allied Occupation forces. He describes that reform as "laying down the fundamental concept of agriculture in postwar Japan." Pro-Takeshita politicians, led by Hashimoto, put a positive spin on the ideology and achievements of Japan's postwar conservative politics, which is based on a policy of "making the nation richer while keeping the military weak," a policy pursued since the Cabinet of Shigeru Yoshida. They are not political proponents of protecting the pacifist Constitution, as are Miyazawa and Yohei Kono. Yet they belong to the "protect the Constitution" school because they appreciate Japan's postwar development as a major economic power.
     By contrast, Ozawa, the leader of pro-Kanemaru politicians argues that Japan should be a "normal nation". By this he means that Japan should assume responsibilities not only as an economic power but also as a political and military power. In other words, he embraces the traditional mode of a "wealthy and powerful" nation. Ozawa rejects the postwar argument that Japan should maintain a minimum level of military power and concentrate its labor and capital on economic development - that the nation should become a trading power, not a political and military power. Ozawa criticizes this argument as "out of the ordinary."
     Ozawa has crossed the Rubicon, for he has split the LDP and put an end to its long, stable one-party rule. If he is to hold hegemony over Japanese politics, he has no choice but to create and lead a force strong enough to counter the LDP. The non-LDP coalition may have been a necessary step in this direction, but it was only a first step.
     His aim is to establish a two-party system and form a stable one-party government to make Japan a "normal nation." That is why he put up Tsutomu Hata, an ardent advocate of political reform, and tried to introduce a single-seat constitution should be amended if it stands in the way of Japan's becoming a "normal nation."
     Perhaps Ozawa is the only politician in today's Japan who has a clear-cut vision of politics as it should be and is making all-out efforts to put that vision into action. This explains why all of politics is moving at this initiative.
     The SDPJ meanwhile has lost its political goal since collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe. The Democratic Social its Party (DSP), which draws its electoral support from labor unions in pollution-causing industries such as the auto industry, is in a state of structural decline. Komeito, its growth leveling off as a result of the end of high-rate economic growth, sees a cloudy future. And the LDP, which has in the past found its theoretical legitimacy in economic development, has lost its appeal now that the high-growth era is over.
     Thus the major political parties have lost the goals they sought to attain. They have either to share power under the Ozawa strategy or mount an anti-Ozawa campaign. This explains why the DSP has taken a rash step and why the SDPJ has been unable to undertake consistent action.
     Where is Japanese politics headed from here? My answer, providing the political world moves under Ozawa's aegis, is that in the long run confrontation will continue over two opposing schools of thought - that calling for a "normal nation" vs. the one that wants an "extraordinary nation," or the one for a "rich nation with a weak military" vs. a "rich nation with a strong military."
     If this turns out to be the case, the SDPJ might as well team up with the LDP under Kono, although exactly where the SDPJ's withdrawal from the coalition will now take the party is anybody's guess.　Yet its about-face indicates that the eight-month-long non -LDP coalition has weakened the "end of one-party LDP rule" slogan and that the political situation here is now shifting from a confused murkiness to a grater degree of clarity.

     Rei Shiratori is professor of political science at Tokai University and President of the Institute for Political Studies in Japan (IPSJ).