Japan A Mountain Moves

By Jill Smolowe

Whether it was just a minor rumble or a major tremor on the political Richter scale, last week's vote for the upper house of Japan's parliament was certainly a shock to the Liberal Democratic Party, which has ruled the country for 34 years. In the most devastating setback in its history, the L.D.P. claimed only 36 of the 126 seats up for grabs, while the underdog Japan Socialist Party took 46. Declared exultant J.S.P. leader Takako Doi: "I truly felt the mountains moving."

The vote gave the combined forces of Japan's opposition parties control of one of the houses in the Diet for the first time. Although the L.D.P. maintains control of the more powerful lower house, and therefore of the government, the defeat threw into question the party's continued dominance. Prime Minister Sousuke Uno promptly resigned his post after only two months, saying, "The entire responsibility for the defeat lies with me."

Uno's willingness to shoulder the party's disgrace did not disguise it. If Japanese analysts could not agree last week on the potential consequences of the voter backlash, they did concur on the causes of the L.D.P. rout. The vote amounted to a referendum on the party's arrogant and scandal-tainted performance in recent months. The downslide began with a bribery and influence-peddling scandal that forced the resignation of Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita last April. The L.D.P. further alienated voters, especially women, by imposing a controversial 3% consumption tax. In agreeing to liberalize agricultural imports, the party angered farmers, long the chief pillar of its support. The final straw came just weeks after Uno was named Prime Minister, when his supposedly spotless reputation was soiled by revelations of a paid affair with a geisha. "Along the way," says Katsuhiko Shirakawa, an L.D.P. legislator, "we lost sight of what the public was demanding."

During the campaign, the L.D.P. repeatedly demonstrated just how out of touch it had become. One L.D.P. legislator suggested that the consumption tax would be less painful if it were an even 4% instead of 3%. Another party member said farmers were only intelligent enough to do manual work. Credit for the greatest blunder, however, went to Agriculture Minister Hisao Horinouchi, who said, "It is wrong for women to come to the forefront of politics." Pausing just long enough to take one foot out of his mouth and insert the other, Horinouchi then attacked Doi, the popular Socialist leader. "British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is an exception, but she has a husband and children," Horinouchi asserted. "Doi does not. Can such a person serve as Prime Minister?"

Seizing on voter disillusionment, the J.S.P. mounted a stunningly effective campaign. Its trump card was Doi, a charismatic politician whose forthright statements and energy offered a refreshing change from the dour-faced, dark- suited politicians fielded by the L.D.P. Campaigning vigorously, Doi and her opposition colleagues promised to rescind the consumption tax and oppose further liberalization of farm imports. "The people are aware of how politics affects their daily life," Doi said during a campaign tour. "It's the politicians who are behind the times."

While such sloganeering proved effective on the hustings, the Socialists will have to offer voters something more than the rhetoric of protest if they hope to build on their success. "Casting the protest vote is no longer enough," concedes Masao Kunihiro, a newly elected J.S.P. legislator. Like the Solidarity movement in Poland, the J.S.P. and its allies may discover that it is far easier to belittle the old than construct something new. The Socialists are already having trouble rallying opposition parties behind a single agenda. The J.S.P., for instance, stands alone in calling for an unarmed, neutral Japan and opposing both the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty and Japan's Self Defense Force. Doi has worked hard to play down these positions, but further moderation will be required if she hopes to establish broad support.

In a 45-minute interview with TIME last week, Doi set out her agenda for the coming months. She called on the L.D.P. to dissolve the lower house and hold new elections. She planned to act on demands by voters to strengthen the lax laws on political ethics and campaign contributions that allowed the Liberal Democrats to peddle influence with near impunity. As for relations with its chief ally, she said Japan has given in to U.S. demands too often. Washington, she said, "can't just bring requests to Japan in order to resolve its own deficits. We should agree to disagree and debate vigorously."

The J.S.P.'s first major test will be to produce, as promised, an alternative plan to the unpopular consumption tax. Last week the Socialists had little problem persuading the other opposition parties to introduce a bill in the upper house to kill the tax. But the parties were unable to agree on an alternative source of revenue for the government, which needs the money for funding welfare programs, especially the soaring costs of providing care for Japan's aging population.

The outcome of the tax debate will be of keen interest to the newest force in Japanese politics: women. As traditional keepers of the household ledgers, women felt the pinch of the consumption tax most acutely. In the recent election, that issue galvanized them not only to throw their votes to the Socialists but also to enter the political arena in record numbers. Female candidates increased their numbers in the upper house from 23 to 33; they now account for 13% of the chamber's seats. Half of those elected were Socialists like Doi. The J.S.P. leader, however, downplayed her role. "It wasn't my popularity," Doi said. "I just happened to be a woman."

Perhaps most telling of the times, roughly half of the new female legislators have no political experience. They wooed voters by calling themselves "ordinary women" and "mothers and housewives," and campaigned on such issues as education, welfare and ridding the political system of corruption. "Let the voice from the kitchen be heard in government," said Nobuko Mori, 57, a winning candidate from western Okayama.

The voters seemed ready to embrace that message, but women still have far to go. They hold less than 2% of the seats in the lower house. In nearly a century of parliamentary government, only three women have held Cabinet posts; none do so at present. Yet women's eyes have been opened to new political opportunity. "I feel like our long-term movement has finally flowered," said Michiko Matsuura, president of the League of Women Voters of Japan.

If the Socialists must consolidate their power, the L.D.P. must work double time to recapture the loyalty of its straying core supporters. The most immediate concern is to find a replacement for Uno. As the search began last week, assertive Young Turks were working to put forward one of their own. But the Old Guard resisted, still bound by tradition, faction loyalty and a determination not to relinquish power. In a seeming capitulation to the young, however, the party agreed at week's end to leave the selection of a new leader to a party vote, rather than the back-room politicking that gave rise to leaders like Uno. "Our defeat was caused by the public's distrust of us," said party elder Takami Eto. "We must now rebuild that trust by operating more in the open."

But will a revamping of party practices be enough to lure back voters? Of key concern are the farmers who deserted the party in droves, complaining that the L.D.P. had capitulated to foreign trade pressures by opening Japan to food imports. Charged Masatoshi Wada, a leader of the 10,000-strong Shuso Agricultural Cooperative: "The L.D.P. promised to fight against liberalization at any cost, and then gave up the fight. We can no longer trust them at their face value."

The farmer backlash is bad news for the U.S. and Japan's other trade partners. The L.D.P. will now think long and hard before opening markets any further. In coming months Japan and the U.S. are to start talking about changing Japan's arcane retail-distribution system, which American businessmen perceive as a primary obstacle to getting their goods into Japanese stores. The L.D.P., hardly a speed demon in trade talks, will now be forced to move even more slowly, both to protect itself politically and to accommodate the strengthened voice of the protectionist J.S.P. Hiroshi Nukui of the Socialists' policymaking board gave Washington a hint of what lies ahead. "We value U.S.-Japan ties," said Nukui, "but we're not going to just follow in the U.S.'s footsteps the way the L.D.P. did."

Such rumblings indicate that the days of clubby back-room politics are threatened. A maturing electorate has already shown itself willing to risk its habitual reliance on single-party rule. The emergence of a strong Socialist opposition is certain to disturb the Japanese political debate, complicating management of the country's economy and its relations with foreign nations. It is also likely to plunge Japan into a long period of uncertainty as the country wrestles with political instability for the first time in decades. At the very least, the Liberal Democrats cannot hope to regain their majority in the upper house for at least six years. Some analysts believe the defeat may even prove salutary. Says an American official: "The voters were sending a specific message: Clean up your act, not We're through with you."

If the Socialists force elections in the parliament's lower house before next year, as they hope to do, there is also the remote possibility that for the first time in party history, the L.D.P. will be banished to the back benches. To avert that prospect, warns L.D.P. legislator Shirakawa, "we need to find the reasons for our losses and then show the people that we have corrected them." That is a tall order to fill, and the L.D.P. has no time to lose.

With reporting by Barry Hillenbrand and Kumiko Makihara/Tokyo