A new Japan rising?

The official election campaign for the Lower House of the Diet of Japan is now under way, with the snap poll to be held on December 16 likely to result in a change of government.

Prime Minister Yoshiko Noda of the centre-right Democratic Party of Japan had promised in August to dissolve the Diet and go to an election ‘soon', after he passed unpopular bills raising Japan's consumption tax, with support from the main opposition parties, the conservative Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner, the New Komeito Party.

Around 50 outraged MPs then split from the DPJ, most joining the new party of controversial faction leader Ichiro Ozawa, who formed the People's Life First Party. This left the DPJ and its junior coalition partner, the People's New Party, with a slender majority of nine in the 480-member House of Representatives, facing the risk of further defections and parliamentary deadlock in the 242-member Upper House of Councillors.

Noda therefore takes a demoralised party into the election, as the latest Asahi Shimbun poll shows the DPJ in its worst position yet: support for the Noda Cabinet is only at 20 per cent, with a disapproval rate of 59 per cent, the lowest since Noda became PM in September 2011, and the lowest for the DPJ since it was elected in 2009. The support rate for the DPJ is polling at 15 per cent, behind the LDP on 20 per cent, with the NKP on 4 per cent. Forty-one per cent do not prefer any political party.

Apart from the consumption tax increase, the DPJ has widely disappointed the public through failing to meet its main 2009 campaign promises. These included reducing the dominance of the sclerotic bureaucracy in policymaking, and solving ongoing tensions over the presence of US military bases in Okinawa; plus, there is adverse reaction to failings in the response to last year's March 11 disaster, where up to a quarter of reconstruction funds have been directed outside the affected disaster area.

To top off this dismal record, the economy has headed back into recession, continuing the deflationary stagnation since the collapse of Japan's real estate and equity ‘bubble' after 1989.

However, the polls suggest the LDP will not be able to form a majority government in its own right; no party controls a majority in the Upper House of the Diet either, which is not due for its own separate election until June 2013. There is little enthusiasm for the rather aloof and elitist LDP leader Shinzo Abe, who previously served as PM in 2006-07, until he stepped down from his unpopular tenure, ostensibly for ‘health reasons'. He was unexpectedly reappointed in a tightly contested LDP party leadership ballot last September. The main campaign policy platform of the LDP is to boost the economy towards a 2 to 3 per cent inflation target through ‘unlimited' quantitative easing.

This policy would effectively end the independence of the central Bank of Japan, by directing it to purchase government bonds to fund public works construction, and also to potentially purchase foreign bonds, to drive down the yen and improve exports. While some economists, including Paul Krugman, claim this is precisely the right policy needed for Japan, others worry this would be return to previous LDP policies that led to wasteful over-construction, and will only worsen Japan's already massive debt-to-GDP ratio, now over 233 per cent.

The DPJ's competing policy platform instead emphasises stimulus spending on health care, child care and other public services, and in renewable energy industries, to restore competitiveness and growth to the economy. Noda also pledges to gradually phase out nuclear power by 2030, which has plenty of appeal in a country still traumatised by the Fukushima nuclear disaster, with the Asahi poll showing 66 per cent supporting such a policy. Noda is also committed to Japan joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership regional free trade zone negotiations, while the LDP is uncertain on this issue; Abe has stated Japan will participate in the TPP, unless it goes against Japan's ‘national interests'. The LDP is also committed to retaining nuclear energy.

The election campaign has been further complicated by the emergence of new ‘third force' parties. Seeking to exploit the widespread voter dissatisfaction with the two major parties, the populist mayor of Osaka, 43-year old Toru Hashimoto relaunched his regional party organisation onto the national level in September, forming the Japan Restoration Party. To the surprise of many, he then formed an alliance last month with 80-year old nationalist Shintaro Ishihara, who had resigned as Governor of Tokyo to relaunch the ultraconservative Sunrise Party, which was absorbed into the JRP, with Ishihara as party leader, and Hashimoto as ‘acting Chief'. The JRP is currently polling 9 per cent support.

Hashimoto and Ishihara both promote a radical decentralisation of power away from the national government and its bureaucracies, in favour of prefectural and municipal governments. Along with Abe and the LDP, they also share a hawkish Japanese nationalism, advocating the revision of Article 9 of the Constitution, which restricts the use of the Japanese Self Defence Forces. This would potentially expand the JSDF into a ‘national defence force', deployed more assertively against China in the disputed Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands, and against North Korea. According to the Asahi poll, 51 per cent oppose any such alteration to Article 9 and the JSDF.

The other ‘third force' party, which has only just been formed by Yukiko Kada, the Governor of Shiga prefecture, is the Japan Future Party, merging with Ozawa's PLFP, the fledgling environmental Green Wind party, plus some DPJ defectors. The JFP wants to encourage more women to join the workforce, more pro-family subsidies and pensions, opposes the consumption tax increase, and opposes the TPP. Strongly anti-nuclear, the JFP aims to shut down nuclear power in 10 years, replaced with renewable energy. Polling at 6 per cent, the JFP is also likely to cooperate with the Social Democratic Party, polling around 1 per cent, and possibly the Japanese Communist Party, polling at 2 per cent.

Depending on the result, a ‘grand coalition' between the LDP and DPJ could emerge, to isolate the new parties and cooperate on legislation to boost the economy. However, if the LDP teams up with the JRP, a more nationalistic Japan would risk a dangerous escalation of tensions in the region, particularly with China. As Japan has become a major security partner with Australia, as well as remaining its second-largest trading partner, and shares the US as a mutual primary military ally, this election has major strategic, as well as economic implications which command attention.

Craig Mark is associated professor of International Studies at Kwansei Gakuin University.