From: fester@island.COM (Mike Fester)
Subject: Re: Japanese Major Suggests Military Coup:Your Opinion? (mod. long)
Keywords: 'democracy' in Japan
Organization: /usr/local/rn/organization
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1992 19:55:50 GMT

In article <1992Nov4.012300.18974@tcsi.com> miket@hermes.tcs.com (Michael Turner nmscore Assoc.) writes:
>In article <1992Nov3.175303.4143@island.COM> fester@island.COM (Mike Fester) writes:

>>representative as it should be. Allow me to a couple questions here: Recently,
>>the Supreme court agreed that the districts should be redrawn to reflect the
>>current population distribution. What has happened (if anything) to implement
>>this? Second, why do the opposition parties (SDP, JCP, etc) also oppose
>>redistricting when it comes up? It seems to me that they have the most to
>>gain, but they oppose it as strongly as the LDP.

>I think the answer to the second question is that if the SDP and/or JCP
>threw in with urban voters by supporting redistricting, they would be
>alienating the rural voters while not gaining many more votes in the
>cities, and thereby just strengthen the hand of an anti-redistricting
>LDP.  The strength of the rural electorate is in their ability to turn
>power over to the SDP and/or JCP if the LDP doesn't serve them
>adequately.  In fact, that's probably the only reason why the SDP and
>JCP exist as serious parties, since the factional spectrum within the
>LDP is really rather wide.  It's a no-win situtation for JCP and SDP,
>but also a no-lose situation.

>The U.S. has historically had its rural regions over-represented on a
>per-capita basis, but I don't think the skew has not been as dramatic
>as in Japan, overall.

Again, I don't follow this. I think that in the last few elections, both
Tokyo and Osaka have voted more SDP than have the rural regions. If this is
the case, they would seem to have more to gain by promoting this sort of
reform than the LDP. As the rural electorate has NEVER turned over power to
the opposition, you'd think they (the SDP, etc) would have smartened up by
now.

And most nations will have an "over-representation" of rural regions, so 
long as a minimum number of representatives are required for each state, 
prefecture, or whatever the legal division happens to be. I think the current 
Japanese situation is extreme, however.

>I don't have a good guess about the first question, except that the
>legal system in Japan probably doesn't have quite the same force as
>it does in the U.S.  The U.S. legislative bodies are made of lawyers,
>for the most part, who get busy either challenging court decisions
>they don't agree with, or finding nominal implementations.  In Japan,
>there might be more of an attitude of "ignore it and it won't be a
>problem."  The quasi-legal status of the Japanese Defense Forces might
>be a case in point.

Part of it might also be the Japanese Supreme Court, which has a tendency to
tell parties to "settle out of court".

>Which leads to my question: if the typical U.S. politician comes to
>office via the practice of law, how does the typical Japanese politician
>get there, what with the relative scarcity of lawyers in Japan?
>I've heard something to the effect that it's semi-hereditary (which
>is also true to some extent in the U.S.)  Anybody have background?

While practicing lawyers might be rare, I believe many universities offer 
undergraduate majors in law. Perhaps this and economics might be the predominate
majors. Incidentally, I read somewhere that roughly 60% of the current 
Parliament was sons/daughters/nephews/nieces of previous Parliament members.
Anyone have any verification/refutation?

Mike
-- 
Disclaimer - I'm only doing what the little voices tell me to do. 
Newsgroups: soc.culture.japan