Update April 15, 2010

 

The Opposition Fragments
Japan’s ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has seen its support plummet since taking Government last August, but the former ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), facing its own crisis of confidence, is failing to capitalize on it. The efforts by some members to take matters into their own hands may prove counter-productive by fragmenting the opposition.

 

Conservative politicians are looking to build a “third force” to take on the DPJ at July’s Upper House election. However, none of the big names in conservative politics capable of mobilizing wide popular support have committed to running in the election so far.

 

LDP heavyweight Kaoru Yosano has formed a new party with Takeo Hiranuma, who left the party four years earlier in protest over postal reform. Together they have formed the Tachiagare Nippon party. Officially known as the Sunrise Party in English, a more literal translation is Stand-up Japan Party – reflecting a view among the older generation of conservative politicians that Japan is going to ruin under the DPJ.

 

The new party will pursue economic growth, fiscal rehabilitation, and a sustainable social security system. More concretely, it advocates tax reform, an increase in consumption tax and a new constitution.

 

However, the two founders differ fundamentally on the role of economic reform in putting Japan back on its feet – Hiranuma opposing postal privatisation, which has come to symbolize economic reform in Japan, and Yosano one of the architects of this policy. The two have evidently decided they will cross that bridge in the unlikely event they come to it.

 

The new party has reached out to controversial but popular Governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara. He has thrown his support behind the party, but stopped short of resigning as Governor to stand for the party in the Upper House elections.

 

Also not throwing in his lot with the new party is former Minister for Health, Labour and Welfare, Yoichi Masuzoe, who is regularly rated as Japan’s most popular politician. Despite his quip that LDP stood for “Lousy Dumb Party”, so far he is staying with the party.

 

He has not ruled out any options, though, and has made clear his political views share much in common with those of the enormously popular young Governor of Osaka prefecture, Toru Hashimoto, and comedian-turned-politician Hideo Higashikokubaru, Governor of Miyazaki. So far neither Governor has indicated he will run for office at the national level.

 

The emergence of new groupings may end up helping the DPJ by splitting the conservative vote. The DPJ’s Kozo Watanabe said that thanks to the new groupings, the position of DPJ Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa is now stable. Pressure for Ozawa to resign (due to some simmering funding issues) was likely to grow if the DPJ’s prospects at the Upper House deteriorated further.

 

LDP leader Sadakazu Tanigaki, is trying to hold the party together, denying the new groupings represent a credible alternative for LDP members. In retrospect, however, his qualities seem better suited to government than holding together an opposition party in crisis.

 

Smaller parties that can count on a core of loyal supporters, such as Komeito, will benefit to the extent that floating voters distribute their voters more diffusely. Yoshimi Watanabe, who left the LDP last year to form the Minna-no To (Your Party), is upbeat. Far from viewing new groupings as rivals, he sees them as increasing the overall interest in the “third way.” He compared his position to that of a noodle shop owner where competitors set up in the same area – the overall demand for noodles increases.