 Hello everyone. Good afternoon to you in Hawaii. Good morning to those of you in Japan. This is looking to the east. This is a twice weekly show where we look at various topics in and around Asia, mostly focusing on Japan. I'm your host Steve Zercher. I'm a professor of management and dean at Kansai Gai Dai University. There was an election just a couple days ago on Sunday, actually on Halloween in Japan and I decided to create a show to take a look at those election results which are now complete, have been fully reported. So that's the topic of this show. This is going to be an overview of the Japanese political system because I don't assume everyone has an understanding of how Japanese politics is structured and how it works. Then we'll get into the election itself and look at the repercussions of the election on the U.S.-Japan relationship. We're very fortunate to have Dr. Taro Tsuda with us today. He's a recent graduate of Harvard University with a doctorate degree in Japanese history and he also is a teacher as I am at Kansai Gai Dai University teaching history and other subjects. So Taro, welcome to the show. Thank you. This is your second visit to the show. The third time you actually get a prize so we'll work on having you come for the third time. So thank you so much for making time early our Tuesday morning here in Japan to meet with me and talk about Japanese politics. Thank you very much for having me. Sure. So I think as I mentioned it might be a good idea, excuse me, to maybe give an overview of the evolution of Japanese politics since World War II. We don't have much time but if you could briefly describe for our audience how the Japanese government was formed, what type of government it is and how it's been functioning since those days in 1940s and 1950s up until 2021. Okay. Thank you. So Japan had a parliamentary system similar to the British system in some aspects before World War II. However, the parliament, which is known as the national diet, had relatively little power compared to unelected parts of the government. Then that was the system that lasted till the end of World War II. And then after Japan lost in World War II, there was the American occupation. And under the American occupation, one of the big goals was to democratize Japan fully. And so many different policies were passed by the occupation authorities to do that. And one of them was to create a new constitution in Japan, which was enacted in 1947. And this set up the current structures that exist in the Japanese government today. Because this constitution has not yet been revised even once in Japan since it was enacted. And so all the structures in that constitution are there today, including the national diet, which is now the top body of government in Japan and other structures. And so under this system, political parties were able to fully have the power that they do in mature democracies elsewhere in the world. And very soon after, many different parties formed. And it was a quite messy period during the occupation because there were a lot of parties forming and changing. But by 1955, they settled on a new system where a big conservative party called the Liberal Democratic Party formed from the merger of two smaller parties. And there were parties on the left that merged into the Socialist Party, which no longer is influential in Japan. But the Liberal Democratic Party has stayed the most largest and most influential party in Japan since that time. And there are a number of reasons that scholars discuss for why it has stayed the strongest party. It only lost power twice since it was formed in 1955 for quite brief periods. So I don't know if I should go on. But I think it'd be interesting if you could give maybe the top two reasons why essentially Japan is a one-party state. You mentioned there's only been two periods of time since 1955 when the Liberal Democratic Party was not in direct control of the levers of power here in the country. Are there cultural reasons for this? Or is it the alignment of the Liberal Party with business interests or other interests? How would you explain this? Maybe the top two reasons as to why? You know, I've been in Japan a long time. The elections are kind of a foregone conclusion. It's just how strong, how many votes diet members the Liberal Democratic Party will have. It's not like there's much of a chance for them to lose power. Why is that? Well, I think from the beginning they had a lot of structural advantages. So some of the biggest, most well-organized constituencies or social groups in Japan were part of the coalition from the beginning. And that included farmers and rural voters in Japan. In the beginning, Japan was a much more rural country. So this was a bigger part of the population than now. But that was one big part. Then small business owners and also big business owners. And then they also forged very useful alliances with the bureaucracy as well as big business which provided a lot of funds and financial support for the party, which it could use to dole out sort of material benefits to its constituencies in different local areas. So I think this electoral machine and what they call the iron triangle between the LDP, the Liberal Democratic Party, the bureaucracy, and big business was a big part of why they could stay in power for so long. So that was forged in the early days back in the 1950s and has been consistent throughout the decades of their control. Well, there have been important social and socioeconomic changes in Japan which changed the situation somewhat because it urbanized and people moved from countryside to city. And so people were afraid that this would erode the support of the Liberal Democratic Party. But they were able to adapt, I think, relatively well. And there were also the structural weaknesses on the opposite side, the opposition. Never having a chance to be in power, they couldn't really prove themselves to much of the public. And so I think many Japanese people have tended to go with what they know and what they trust over time. So that's a big part of it as well, I think. Yeah, that desire for stability, which is rooted in the cultural aspects of Japan, I think maybe in part a cultural explanation beyond the political ones that you were given. You know, I teach culture classes, maybe you do that too also. And Japan's profile, when it comes to cultural analysis, like Hofstein's work, has a low tolerance for uncertainty. So it may be that even if the Liberal Democratic Party doesn't do all that good a job, there's still a sense, well, we need to keep them in power because we don't know who would be able to replace them. So that's interesting for Americans. And some of the same principles that you talked about, the patronage system and the vested interests are also there. But we seem to have greater variability in terms of who's in control of Congress or the White House. So I think it's important to note too for our viewers that in a parliamentary system, the Prime Minister is not elected directly. He's actually elected by the party, right? Yes. So in a parliamentary system, first the party chooses its leader, and then there's a parliamentary election, and the party that wins the most seats tends to become the governing party, either by itself or in coalition. So it's a more indirect selection of the head of government than in the US. And we have a new Prime Minister. He's what been in power for about a month or so now. He was appointed before this election occurred, and now his status has been confirmed by the election results just this last Sunday, Japan time Sunday. So let's talk about the next topic, and that is the election itself. I think, as I thought about the various elements that were leading up to the election and some of the predictions that were made by the Japanese media and also the English media that covers Japan. The topics that were covered was the Liberal Democratic Party's management of the COVID pandemic, which I don't think anyone would describe as successful, although the numbers now are very, very low. But over the last year and a half, Japan was somewhat slow to respond, and the inoculations, vaccines came in later than other countries. During the Olympics, the COVID infection rate was very high. So I think that was a concern that many analysts looked at and said this may be a factor that will negatively affect the Liberal Democratic Party's power. Then economically, Japan has been in a melees for decades now. And despite the efforts of the Liberal Democratic Party, especially under Prime Minister Abe, to try and revitalize and re-energize the Japanese business environment and wages and so forth, also to try and get out of a depressionary cycle that Japan has been in. Prices have been trending down over the last 20 years or so. So that was another factor that the analysts were looking at and saying this could have a negative impact on what results will occur for the party and power. So those are two things that I thought about and many people were predicting that the Liberal Democratic Party would of course be still the dominant party, but would probably lose a number of seats. But the election results are in, and it seems like they're just about as strong as they were previously. Do you agree with this kind of analysis that I've given that those were negative factors? They were kind of facing wins in the election and many people were predicting that they would suffer as a result of that. But in the end, the Japanese people decided that they wanted to keep the Liberal Democratic Party at relatively the same level of influence. Basically, they completely control all levers of government at this point after the election on Sunday. Yes, I think that's a very good assessment of the situation. I think there was sort of skepticism or a little bit negative view towards the Japanese government's approach towards the pandemic and some aspects of economic recovery. But right before the election, I think there were several things that kind of made the party's outlook a little bit more bright than it had been for several months before. And so one was that the Prime Minister at the earlier Prime Minister, Prime Minister Suga, who was getting a lot of the blame or pressure about the pandemic response, he decided not to run for reelection as the party leader. And so I think that kind of scrambled the situation a little bit because the opposition couldn't rely on using him as a foil or someone to blame. And then, so that was one factor and Kishi, the current Prime Minister, so was a kind of change of face for the party. And then another thing is that the pandemic's numbers went down quite dramatically in the past few weeks. And so the people started to be maybe a little bit more optimistic. So I think those things really helped the timing of the election. And Prime Minister Kishi, the new Prime Minister knew that. And so that's why he chose to hold this election as soon as possible because the Prime Minister has that power in Japan to call a snap election. And so he thought now is the time to do it before things get worse again if they do. So I think that helped the election results for the other people. It's important to note that the last national election was four years ago. So it has been quite a while, unlike the American system, which holds elections at periodic dates. So every two years or every four years depending or every six years, depending on the office holder, the national election in Japan is at the discretion of the party in power and the Prime Minister who is in that position at that time. So you can see clearly, yeah, there was a strategy to appointing a new Prime Minister having a fresh face, so to speak. Although my opinion, all these guys are pretty much the same. They're part of the same inner circle. But ostensibly, there is a new person who's become Prime Minister and to have the election very soon after that to create a sense of newness, perhaps. Yeah. And well, in terms of the timing of elections, there is about a four year period for the the diet members hold their seat. So that a little bit limits the length of time that they can go without an election. But within that period, the Prime Minister can choose when to hold a sooner election if he feels it's good for his mandate or for the party's performance. So we were coming up on that four year limit on Sunday. This time it came up very close to the. Okay. Yeah, I think the election in 2017 was in the late latter part of the year as well, maybe November, if I remember correctly, that's a while ago. And as you alluded to in your description of the political system, the opposition to the Liberal Democratic Party is relatively weak. And one thing that they did do for this election is they attempted to cooperate with each other. So there's the constitutional Democratic Party, correct me if I'm using the wrong terms here, and then the Japanese Communist Party, which is I guess a legacy from those post World War two days, and a number of other smaller parties agreed to collaborate and not run against each other. So therefore to cut the split the opposition vote. But from what I read, it turned out to be a failure. It didn't work. It didn't excite the Japanese voters at all, which led to this result of the Liberal Democratic Party still being very much strongly in control here. Do you have any opinions about that? It really looked like it was. I think that's one of the most interesting aspects of this election, how that strategy worked out. I think in some ways it was like a double-edged sword because in some some districts it did make it more competitive. The race and some of the LDPs actually top people did lose like Amari Akira, who was the LDP Secretary General, who's considered the most, the second most important party official. He actually lost his race to opposition person. He was able to come back because there's a proportional representation aspect to this election. So if you're high enough on the party list, you can still survive as a proportional representation candidate. But he lost the one-to-one race with his opponent. And there are other examples like that. So it did make it more competitive in some districts. But on the other hand, the opposition parties image sometimes suffered because people were skeptical of the alliance between these very different parties. So some people were hesitant to make an alliance with the communists and vice versa. And so for the opposition, some people weren't comfortable with voting for it because they didn't want some of the other parties to do well. And this turned out interestingly too, because another opposition party, the Nippon Ishinokai, or Japan Innovation Party, turned out to do very well, especially in the region of Kansai and Osaka. Because people saw that as a more palatable third choice than the main opposition and the liberal Democratic Party. So even in our campus's district, the opposition candidate who was the incumbent lost to a Nippon Ishinokai candidate. So he was a quite important figure in the opposition. He served in the Democratic Party of Japan government a few years ago during the brief time that LDP was out of power. But he lost after many terms. So I found that result very interesting. That is interesting. I think I've met the former diet member. He may have come to our university, maybe when the new campus was opening, or I think there was some special occasion when he visited and I happened to be there when that occurred. So now there's a new diet representation and Ishinokai. Well, the story of that party is very interesting, but that's something we'd have to look at in a different show. We have a question from a viewer here. Let me go ahead and read it. It actually is a nice segue to what I wanted to talk about next. The question is, do the election results affect the recent nomination of Rahm Emanuel as ambassador to Japan from the United States? So let's address that question. But first, let's talk about this election and I guess Koshida in particular. Taro, do you think that there's going to be any significant change one way or the other in terms of the Japan-U.S. relationship as a result of this election? Or is it pretty much going to be the same as it has been? My sense is that it would not change much because as we discussed, the LDP's majority shrunk only a very small amount and it's still a quite strong majority, especially when you combine it with its coalition partner, Kometo. There's a smaller junior coalition partner that the LDP works with. And so the current line of very strong U.S.-Japan relations I don't think would change much in this post-election environment. I think perhaps there will be a push towards stronger cooperation with the U.S. on checking China because that was a big issue in the leadership, party leadership race before this election. How to check the growing power of China. So maybe there will be more emphasis on that, but that has been something I think President Biden has already been focused on. So it would just be following the same direction they were going in before. Yeah, that's an item of very intense discussion within the Japanese government and within the American government as well. So yeah, you're right. That'll probably continue. In terms of Kishida himself, he of course is a part of the inner circle and was very strongly connected to Prime Minister Abe. He was, I think, Abe's number two for a while. The reason I say that is a friend of mine who's a professor at the University of Hawaii West O'ahu has a picture of Abe and Kishida visiting Hawaii on a some kind of trip a number of years ago and they're right next to each other. They're standing right next to each other. So clearly Kishida is a part of that central group, those of the most influential power brokers within the Liberal Democratic Party, but there has been some indication that Kishida is maybe more liberal. We're talking relatively here because the Liberal Democratic Party is a conservative party, but his policies maybe when it comes to social issues is a little bit more liberal or progressive in a sense than the prior Prime Minister Suga or Prime Minister Abe who was before that. So do you think that, well first of all, do you think that's true that he is somewhat different from the previous Prime Ministers? And if that is true, would his personality or his way of doing things maybe influence the relationship with the United States? To a degree I think there is some ideological difference with Prime Minister Abe and Prime Minister Suga. But I think one of the things that makes Prime Minister Kishida very adept as a politician is to kind of be able to adapt to different and work with many different types of people and that's probably why he emerged as a consensus candidate in this very recent leadership election because many different groups did not have a big problem with him and so that's how he got the most votes in that. But in terms of, I think one difference that has come up is that he's been talking about a new form, a new capitalism, which means like a more, I guess maybe what you might call compassionate conservatism that President Bush used for a few years back but that kind of approach to capitalism in Japan. So a little bit modifying the Abinomics plan but I'm not sure how much substance is really in that. Maybe that was more a rhetorical tool for him to win the election so we have to see if he'll actually really do significant policies to expand social benefits or give out pandemic aid for example. So that was the one clear sort of distinction I saw raised in the past few months. Yeah I think Bush used that as a basically a campaign tactic and in the end there really wasn't a significant difference in terms of the United States policy under the Bush administration. So it'll be interesting to see Akashita actually implement some reduction in the income inequality which is occurring in Japan as it is in the United States and it is pretty much worldwide. So I guess to address the last question we asked, it doesn't seem like there'll be a material effect on the Rama manual nomination which is wending its way through Congress right now. I would guess that maybe sometime late this year he will be approved by the Senate and will take his place in Tokyo as the ambassador, a representative of the United States to Japan. That's going to be very interesting. I've done shows on that by the way, Tara was about, is he the right person to be the ambassador or not? Because he has some very strong pluses obviously and he also may have some strong negatives as well. I'm not sure they know in Japan, I'm not sure people are really aware of how he's seen as controversial in the U.S. So I don't think from the Japanese side there would be much pushback. Yeah that doesn't seem to be being played up in the Japanese media so much and I guess it doesn't need to be but yes in the United States he is a controversial politician. He was a mayor of Chicago and he made various decisions when he was in that position that the more liberal aspects of the Democratic Party take great issue with and they're trying to stop his nomination process but it doesn't look likely that they're going to be able to do that because Biden has picked him. Okay we're out of time. Tara, as always this goes by so quickly. Thank you so much for your overview of Japanese politics, your analysis of the election, you're a professor of modern Japanese history. I should have made that clear so you're very carefully watching what's going on in Japan as of today. So we'll have to see. I guess the next election is somewhere in the distant future I would imagine. There's an upper house election next year so the other house of the parliament, the diet will be elected last year. Yeah it was a lower house, the election occurred on Sunday, the upper house or I guess you can think of it as a congress versus a senate. Is that a rough equivalency? Although in Japan's case the upper house is less powerful so the lower house that was just elected has a lot more power in Japanese politics. Do you anticipate the same type of results for the upper house election next year? We see the continuation of the pretty much the stranglehold that the Liberal Democratic Party has on the upper house as it does now on the lower house. They don't expect to lose power but I think many people are watching to see how Prime Minister Kishida does and depending on that the results may of that election may change a lot. So I think more than this previous one people are looking to that to see as a test of or indication of how he's doing. So I see. All right well thank you so much. Thank you very much. Yeah this was great I really appreciate you participating this morning. Thank you very much everyone for tuning in and watching. We'll have another show in a couple of weeks on another topic relating to Japan or maybe more broadly Asia. I'm Dr. Stephen Zercher. Thank you so much. This is Looking to the East.