AJISS-Commentary
The Association of Japanese Institutes of Strategic Studies
IIPSRIPSInstitute for International

The Japan Institute ofResearch Institute for

Policy Studies

International Affairs

Peace and Security

Editor:Akio Watanabe

Editorial Board:
Masashi Nishihara
Naoko Saiki
Taizo Yakushiji

No.103.

2 November 2010

DON’T THINK TWICE ABOUT JAPANESEPOLITICS. IT’S All RIGHT.

Online Publisher:
Yoshiji Nogami
President, JIIA

Masaru Kohno
Japanese politics in recent years has often been
described with such adjectives as volatile, confused,and unpredictable. Surely, prime ministers resign
frequently. True, public opinion seems to shiftradically from one election to another and, yes, thetendency persists toward “a divided Diet” in which
the composition of the majority differs between thetwo houses of the bicameral parliament. Despite
appearances, though, it would be wrong to regard
today’s Japan as an unstable democracy or acountry that faces some crisis in governance.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and should
not be attributed to The Association of Japanese Institutes ofStrategic Studies.

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The Association of Japanese Institutes of Strategic Studies

None of the above represents a phenomenon that deviates from standard
democratic practices or that challenges the legitimacy and integrity of thegoverning institutions. If anything, those symptoms point to the maturity, not theprecariousness, of Japan’s democratic polity.
The recent political trends in Japan must be viewed and appreciatedfrom an appropriate long-term perspective. Consider, in particular, what
Japanese politics has gone through over the last two decades. In 1993, in theaftermath of a series of large-scale scandals that involved high profile
incumbents, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was forced out of power after 38years of continuous rule. The non-LDP coalition government then carried out acomprehensive reform of the electoral system used for the House ofRepresentatives, which changed the fundamental “rules of the game” forJapanese politics. The non-LDP camp, however, was unable to turn itself into acoherent parliamentary force, a situation of which the LDP took advantage toexplore various coalition opportunities with different partners. Because both thepartisan landscape and government composition were in constant flux, many
Japanese voters abstained from voting in the 1990s, as they waited for a clearalignment to emerge. The dust settled eventually. The mechanics of the newelectoral system clearly benefit larger parties by assigning more weight tosingle-member

districtcontests

thantoregionally-divided

proportional

representation competition. As a consequence, for the first time in Japan’s
postwar history, a viable two-party system has finally begun to take shape in the2000s. In this context, the ascendance of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ)should be understood as an episode marking the conclusion of a long turbulent
era of Japanese politics.
For myopic observers, the dramatic transition of power in 2009 from theLDP to the DPJ may appear to be a watershed event that materialized thetwo-party system in Japan. The reverse is the truth, however, as is evident fromthe electoral records. Not only in the general election in 2009 but also in the two
preceding elections in 2003 and 2005, the LDP and DPJ together consistently
won more than 85% of total Lower House seats (86.3% in 2003, 85.2% in 2005,
and 89.0% in 2009), leaving little room for any other parties deemed rivals. In

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The Association of Japanese Institutes of Strategic Studies

other words, it was not the DPJ’s smashing victory in 2009 that caused theemergence of the two-party system in Japan. The DPJ’s success was rather
an effect of the system that had already existed for some time.
From this perspective, it becomes clear that none of those allegations
made about volatile, confused and unpredictable politics in Japan is worthy of
being taken seriously. For example, the fact that the LDP leaders (and thusprime ministers) changed so frequently in the last few years of the LDP’s rule ishardly surprising, given that this party had to adjust to the new political reality ofthe two-party system. No doubt the situation surrounding the LDP in those years
was extremely tense as it faced an ever-vibrant rival party ready to pounce andtake office at any chance given. If it had not been for the pressure originatingfrom the competitive two-party system, the tenures of these LDP leaders might
not have been cut so short. A similar pressure, of course, has affected the DPJ
as well. After the historic election of 2009, Japanese voters did not seemparticularly willing to prolong their “honeymoon” with Yukio Hatoyama, the first
DPJ prime minister. As his approval rating plummeted, Hatoyama was in fact
forced to resign after less than a year in office largely because of his mishandlingof the controversial issue of US base transfers in Okinawa. Again, if it had notbeen a two-party system under which voters could always ditch the incumbent
and vote for the alternative, the margin of error allowed Hatoyama might havebeen much larger. In any case, the seeming tenuousness of recent Japaneseprime ministers is not an indication of structural problems with Japan’s
governance, as suggested by some pundits. It simply indicates that the two
major parties in Japan, the LDP and DPJ, are now engaged in a fierce
competition, and that Japanese voters are exercising their political clout
shrewdly and effectively, just as political parties and voters in any mature
democracy would.
In the same vein, the pejorative comments often made with regard to thehuge electoral swing and the “divided Diet” in Japan of late are also off the mark.
It is true that the LDP won a landslide victory in the 2005 general election, thatthe DPJ was enormously successful in the 2009 general election, and that theLDP made a handsome comeback in the most recent Upper House election in

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The Association of Japanese Institutes of Strategic Studies

2010. These aggregate results alone, however, do not constitute any evidence
that the behavior of Japanese voters is particularly erratic or confused. It is
widely known that individual voters in many well-established democracies,including the United States and Canada, often engage in acts of “balancing”
voting and, as a result, different branches of government and/or different housesof the bicameral parliament feature different majorities. The intention behindsuch voting is straightforward in that those voters do not want one party toeffectively be a dictator provided with a carte blanche mandate. There is nothingthat makes us doubt that Japanese voters are as mature as those elsewhere in
engaging in such balancing behavior. Especially given that they have neverexperienced a viable two-party system before and that they thus have every
reason to be cautious, the current “divided Diet” may be exactly what Japanese
voters truly desire.
“It ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, babe” as Bob Dylan once sang.
Japan’s democracy works. It is as simple as that.

Masaru Kohno is Professor of Political Science at Waseda University inTokyo.

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