THE ＧＬＯＢＡＬＩＺＡＴＩＯＮ ＆ ＧＯVＥＲＮＡＮＣＥ ＰＲＯＪＥCＴ， ＨＯＫＫＡＩＤＯ ＵＮＩＶＥＲＳＩＴＹＷＯＲＫＩＮＧ ＰＡＰＥＲ ＳＥＲＩＥＳ

Ｆ－０３

Opinion Poll
What Kind of Socioeconomic System Do the Japanese Want?
Sekai 2008
Ｊｉｒｏ Ｙａｍａｇｕｃｈｉ and Taro Miyamoto
Hokkaido University＊

Paper for the March issue of the journal Sekai, 2008.

Opinion Poll
What Kind of Socioeconomic System Do the Japanese Want?
Sekai 2008
Jiro Yamaguchi and Taro Miyamoto
Jiro Yamaguchi
Born 1958. Professor of Public Administration at the Graduate School ofLaw, Hokkaido University. Publications include Okura-kanryo Shihai no
Shuen [The end of control by Ministry of Finance Bureaucrats], Ittoshihaitaisei no Hokai [The breakdown of single-party control], Blair Jidai no
Igirisu [The United Kingdom under Blair],Naikaku Seido.[Cabinet
System], Posut Sengo Seiji he no Taikojiku[Alternative to Post-Democracy
in Japan]. Edited works include Nihon-seiji: Saisei no Joken [Japanesepolitics: The conditions for revival] and ‘Kyosha no Seiji’ ni Taiko Suru!
[Resist “politics of the strong”!]
Taro Miyamoto
Born 1958. Graduate School Professor, Hokkaido University. Publications
include Shiminshakai-minshushugi no Chosen [Challenges of civil society
democracy’; co-authored, Nihon Keizai Hyoronsha) and ‘Posuto Fukushikokka no Gabanansu’ [Post welfare state governance). Shiso 983.
Introduction
Immediately after the Upper House elections in summer 2007, debate
between the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the Democratic Party ofJapan (DPJ) was expected to intensify as both parties made their bids for
power in the general election playoff. However, while the extraordinary
Diet session which began last fall was certainly protracted, the sole focus
was both parties’ maneuvering over the new Anti-Terrorism Special
Measures Law, with no rigorous debate in evidence.
This betrayal of public expectations as to how politics should have playedout is the result of the DPJ’s lack of both political strategy and politicalvision. The still-lingering talk of a ‘grand coalition’ is one manifestation of
this. The focus here is not on political strategies designed to drive theincumbent ruling parties into dissolving the Diet. Rather, we want toexamine the political vision that the parties bring to their bids for power—
what kind of Japan they seek to create—which is a far more critical issue
at this juncture than the power struggle aspect.
Japan has found itself with a divided Diet due to the coexistence in theDiet of two completely different tides of popular will, namely the popularwill of 2005 and that of 2007. In 2005, the public supported small
government, and this sentiment is still reflected in the form of the LDP’s

1absolute majority in the Lower House. In 2007, public feeling shifted
toward criticism of widening social disparities and an emphasis on abetter work-life balance, creating an opposition party advantage in theUpper House. The intermingling of these two strands not only in bothHouses, but within the various political parties, in the media and in public
opinion is currently blurring the axis of debate.
The major premise in considering the policy issues facing the next
administration must be the will of the people as it manifested in lastsummer’s Upper House elections. The DPJ’s duty as a political party that
could soon be making government decisions is to present a policy
framework for realizing their slogan “People’s lives come first.” The will of
the people as evinced in the Upper House elections suggests that uneaseover growing social disparities and fears as to the sustainability of social
security are shared to some extent across society as a whole. Moreover, asconcern grows over the increasing severity of environmental destruction,
one strand of public opinion is also calling for the current laissez-faire
approach to economic activities to be replaced with public rules of someform.
However, neither Japan’s political parties nor the media have come up
with any clear vision as to the policy menus that could be applied toresolve these issues. For example, while the DPJ has produced a morecomprehensive anti-global-warming approach than the LDP, it is stillcalling for abolition of the temporary gas tax rate. Price falls inevitably
boost gasoline demand, but the DPJ’s views in this regard are unclear.
The party’s failure to provide any indication as to how it will fund its
priority on lifestyle other than ‘curtailing wasteful expenditure’ alsopresents the DPJ as short on policy capacity.
Some of those politicians who still call themselves reformists criticize the
LDP for abandoning its reform campaign on the pretext of reducing
disparities. For example, speaking with Seiji Maehara, Yuriko Koike
observed that the LDP under Fukuda’s leadership has abandoned the newurban backers that it acquired during the Koizumi era, and is instead
trying to use pork barrel to regain its former rural support. Maehara issimilarly dissatisfied with the DPJ’s emphasis on lifestyle (Asahi Shimbun
January 7, 2008).
There is also a serious degree of media confusion. The media have rungalarm bells over the ‘working poor’ and the collapse of medical care, andare calling for strong measures to be taken. However, when thegovernment attempts to put money into these very causes, it faces a storm
of media criticism. For example, at the end of last year when the Ministryof Finance produced a preliminary budget proposal, newspaper editorials
and columns slammed this as a return to pork-barrel politics induced bypressure from ruling party politicians, or as a reform rollback.

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The purpose of policy is to alter distribution. Deregulating the labormarket to open the way for low-wage labor redistributes wealth fromworkers to companies. Those who have benefited from Japan’s buoyant
economy have also benefited from these policies. In other words,
redistribution to the strong has been lauded as reform. By contrast, those
recipients of rural subsidies and other measures aimed at reducing social
disparities are the weak: farmers, shop-owners and the like.
Redistribution to these weak members of society is being criticized as
pork-barrelling. The media evinces a decided contradiction in bemoaning
the distortions created by neoliberalism while still retaining a neoliberal
belief in small government that channels into support for the spending
curbs put forward by the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy.
In the political world, growing concern over social suffering seems to beparalleled by criticism of and hesitation over the use of public money inpolicy implementation. This criticism arises from memories of how various
types of policy expenditure were linked to vested rights and corruption.
However, one thing should be clearly understood. Those commentators
currently calling for something to be done about social disparities andsocial security are not seeking the answer in old-fashioned economic
measures. They see the government as neglecting its essential obligationsin the name of reform, and want those obligations to be taken back onboard. It is the government’s duty to provide public services such as
medical care and education nationwide. However, these services have been
eroding due to medical care and local allocation tax reforms. The problem
is that the steep rise in informal employment has created an excess of lowwage labor, making it difficult to preserve human dignity, but the
government has done nothing to redress these new circumstances.
Shouldering government obligations in this regard is a far cry frompandering to old clients.
Perhaps another reason that there is still no consensus over public
spending is the difficulty in seeing how the policies currently proposed willserve to erase current social contradictions. To make that connection clear,rather than just creating micro policies addressing individual issues, thegovernment needs to draw up a comprehensive social vision for the years
ahead, placing individual policies within that framework.
To provide the groundwork for creating this kind of overarching image, we
conducted an opinion poll as to the kind of socio-economic system people inJapan really want. There is a common misperception that policy-making
ability is the ability to make the kind of small-scale policy decisions soughtfrom bureaucrats. Political parties are also hesitating to enter discussion
on the grounds any vision that departs significantly from the status quo
would be merely a pipe dream. However, to move beyond Japan’s current
crisis, some major vision will be vital. Knowing what the people wantshould enable political parties and politicians, as well as academics andthe media, to present such a bold vision.

31. Public perceptions of the current situation
Our survey, which used the RDD method over a sample of approximately
1,500 people around Japan, looked at the public’s policy preferences
following the structural reform era. The basic drive of Koizumi’s structuralreforms was to abandon the traditional Japanese-style economic system infavor of the neoliberal American model. We sought to ascertain firstly how
the Japanese people rate the results of the structural reforms, and, basedon those perceptions, where public opinion stands on rejecting theJapanese model, adopting the American model, or seeking some othermodel entirely. A detailed analysis will be presented in the following
sections, but to cut to our conclusions, we believe that the poll revealed thefollowing trends in public perceptions (see Table 1 on the support ratingsof the various parties).
(a) Negative evaluation of the structural reforms
When asked about the current state of Japanese society, as seen in Table 2,
the vast majority of respondents gave negative responses, citing growing‘disparities between rich and poor` and ‘slipping quality of public services`,
followed by ‘the belief that any means of making money are justified’.
Despite Japan experiencing its longest-ever economic expansion in thelatter half of the 2000s, very few people remarked on the recovery of
economic vitality, and the results of political and administrative reforms
similarly received few positive evaluations. There was virtually nodisparity in these trends according to gender, region or occupation. One
clear trend in terms of political party support was that the number of LDP
supporters who lauded the achievement of economic recovery was ten
percentage points higher than overall.
(b) Serious unease over future livelihood
As seen in Table 3, over 70 percent of respondents took a dim view of the
future with regard to their individual livelihood, reporting that they felt
anxious or somewhat anxious. Only 28 percent reported feeling secure or
fairly secure. These results were virtually the same across all genders,
occupations, regions and generations. From the political party angle, one
conspicuous finding was that around 40 percent of LDP supporters
reported feeling a sense of optimism about the future. With only 20
percent of DPJ supporters feeling optimistic while nearly 80 percent feelpessimistic, the contrast with LDP supporters was marked. We can seethat people who feel that their livelihood is secure are supporting the LDP.
(c) Strong demand for public services
Asked what they perceived to be the main threats to a stable lifestyle in
the future, as seen in Table 4, ‘the collapse of the pension system’ and ‘thecollapse of medical care’ took first and second place. Although since lastsummer the media have focused primarily on economic deceleration andlow stock prices, few respondents felt that the weakening economy posed athreat to their lifestyle, highlighting instead the collapse of social security.

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Put another way, this suggests major demand for social security and otherpublic services. In addition, as seen in Table 5, when asked what elementsof the traditional Japanese system should be changed, the majority of
respondents—36 percent—chose ‘strengthening public social security’.
This indicates growing awareness of how the Japanese social security
system has traditionally depended on company-based employee welfare
measures and family-centred ‘services in kind’. Moreover, amid thecollapse of the family and changing employment practices, the public
seems increasingly keen to have social security established as a public
institution. Table 6 shows respondents’ views on measures to address
poverty. With almost half selecting ‘employment training and othergovernment support for people trying to achieve economic self-sufficiency,
it would seem that in this area too, people are looking for the provision of
public services rather then direct cash handouts.
(d) Hopes for the Scandinavian welfare model
When asked to choose what kind of social models they considereddesirable, as seen in Table 7, just below 60 percent of respondents chose ‘asociety like Scandinavian countries that stress welfare’, followed by morethan 30 percent who sought a return to ‘a society like traditional Japanthat stresses lifelong employment’. Less than seven percent of respondents
selected ‘a society like the US that stresses competition and efficiency’. In
other words, in spite of the neoliberal reforms which have been introduced
since Koizumi came to power, very few people support the US model. In
terms of political party support, support for the US system was extremely
weak in all cases. Support for a return to the traditional Japanese system
was ten percentage points higher among LDP supporters than overall,while supporters of the DPJ, Komeito and Communist parties leaned
primarily toward the welfare society model. These trends are consistent
with the low evaluations of the structural reform program noted in (a).
(e) Opposition to a consumption tax hike
Table 8 reveals very strong opposition to the recently debatedconsumption tax hike as a means of funding a welfare society. Viewed interms of political party affiliation, approval for a hike was more than ten
percent higher among LDP supporters than among other parties’
supporters. According to the results of a September 2005 poll conducted by
the Cabinet Office on social security and the tax burden, two-thirds of
respondents felt that an increased tax burden would be inevitable in orderto maintain or improve upon the current level of social security. Combinedwith the results of our survey, the only possible interpretation is that the
public will accept a greater tax burden where it is levied in the form ofcorporate tax and income tax paid by the affluent, but not in the form of aconsumption tax paid by ordinary people.
(f) A fair assessment of the traditional Japanese system
In association with their overall evaluation of the traditional Japanesesystem, ‘maintaining employment’, ‘personal relations at the community5

level’, and ‘protection of small and medium enterprises and the selfemployed’ came out ahead as elements of that system that should bemaintained. In terms of elements that need to be improved, the top choice
was the above-mentioned ‘strengthening public social security’, with
‘reducing bureaucratic power’ also attracting strong support. Taken
together with the views on social models noted in (d), it would seem thatwhile the public want to maintain the traditional Japanese virtues ofharmony and equality, this feeling exists in parallel with the realistic
assessment that returning to the old system is not a feasible option.
Based on this reading of the will of the people, we turn next to what
political parties need to do in order to produce the kind of policy visionthat the public are looking for in the next election.
2. An axis of opposition begins to emerge(a) New welfare preferences
Survey results suggest that, following a long period of complexity anddistortion, a new axis of policy opposition between the two main parties
has finally begun to emerge.
Survey respondents were asked to choose the best model for Japan’s
future from among the US model, which emphasizes competition andefficiency, the welfare-oriented Scandinavian model, and the traditional
Japanese model of lifelong employment. More than 60 percent opted for awelfare emphasis, while 30 percent prioritized lifelong employment.
Welfare accordingly seems to have taken on a slightly excessive potency,
but what is interesting is that the number of LDP supporters looking for a
Scandinavian-style welfare emphasis undercut DPJ supporters by a hefty
10 percentage points. When it came to those elements of the traditional
Japanese system that needed to be reformed, the number of LDP
supporters who felt that ‘the principle of competition needs to be
introduced and excessive equality redressed’ was also more than 10
percent greater than in the case of DPJ supporters.
Among DPJ supporters, on the other hand, in addition to a significant
amount of support for a Scandinavian-style welfare emphasis, the numberof respondents focusing on ‘strengthening public social security’ as theelement in the traditional Japanese system that needed to be reformed
was close to 10 percentage points higher than among LDP supporters.
DPJ supporters also outnumbered LDP supporters by 18 percentage
points in their selection of ‘guaranteeing a minimum income’ as a means ofdealing with poverty.
Looking at the axis of opposition in regard to socioeconomic policy,
unexpectedly clear differences in preferences appear to be emerging
among LDP and DPJ supporters. Is the new axis the familiar small
government/big government opposition? In other words, are DPJ
supporters simply looking for big government to institute redistribution

6

from above? In fact, no, they aren’t. When attitudes to issues on thevalues/culture axis such as social accountability, government dependence,and traditional family are added to the socioeconomic policy axis, a more
three-dimensional picture emerges.
In terms of points to reform in the traditional Japanese system, alongside‘strengthening public social security’, many DPJ supporters chose‘reducing bureaucratic power’, in fact outnumbering LDP supporters by as
many as eight percentage points in this regard. DPJ supporters were also
more than 10 percentage points ahead of LDP supporters in calling forsocial security to be funded not by increasing the public tax burden but bysome other means such as administrative reform.
Along the same value/culture axis, LDP supporters outnumbered DPJ
supporters by more than five percentage points in selecting ‘traditionalfamilies in which men and women have different roles’ as an element of
the traditional Japanese system that should be maintained. Compared to
DPJ supporters, LDP supporters also sought on the one hand deregulationand strengthening of the competition principle, and, on the other,preservation of the traditional value system. DPJ supporters were
persuaded by neither of these, and were also critical of bureaucrat-led
politics. This could be interpreted as a preference for individual autonomy
over traditional authority.
The kind of pattern evinced by LDP supporters, whereby the market
orientation along the economic axis links to conservative and traditional
preferences along the values/culture axis, has also been called neoconservatism. Accordingly, few people regard the current pattern asanomalous. If the market destabilizes traditional local communities andfamilies, the call for a return to traditional values to shore them up seemsa somewhat circular approach, but at the same time it does have a certain
logic.
Thinking in terms of the traditional welfare state, it might seem
contradictory that DPJ supporters, on the other hand, should emphasize
welfare while shunning big government. This could be interpreted asconfusion following the shift from an emphasis on market-oriented
reforms to criticism of growing social disparities. There are also probably
some analysts who view it more cynically as the vestiges of a pork-barrel
election campaign whereby disparities are supposed to be redressed
without increasing the public tax burden.
However, we believe that a new policy axis is peeking through here.
People were protected under the traditional Japanese system throughenclosure of the individual within firms and industries that werethemselves under the protection of government. Before the Koizumi
reforms, the DPJ’s identity revolved around revealing the corruption and7inefficiencies of this now-outdated system and rejecting it accordingly.
However, as a result of the rampant market orientation of the Koizumi
reforms progressively disassembling that system, the very foundations ofpeople’s lives have been shaken, spurring unease at increasing social
disparities. Protesting against such a divided society enabled the DPJ tocarry the 2007 Upper House elections.
There is in fact no contradiction between these two DPJ positions. Seeking
a more egalitarian society while also calling for lifestyles premised on
individual autonomy rather than dependence on government discretionand patronage are quite compatible positions. It could even be said thatthey form a necessary pair.
The key issue is that the foundations and conditions underpinning the
public’s desire for social security and safety nets are changing. It might
appear that the LDP which won the high-theater 2005 electionstransformed itself into an urban-based party, while in the 2007 Upper
House elections, the DPJ, which benefited from the single-seatconstituency backlash, became a rural-backed party. However, a look at
the types of occupations of both parties’ supporters reveals that this has infact not been the case. There has been a shift in LDP supporters toward
management and on-site occupations, many of which are found in
agriculture, forestry and fisheries. The DPJ support base, by contrast, has
shifted to freelancers, office workers, and technical workers, evidence of anurban support base. Despite this, DPJ supporters evince an increasingly
strong welfare orientation.
In other words, there is increasingly little truth to the received wisdomthat livelihood safeguards are sought by the uncompetitive rural sector
while urban white-collar workers stress competition and efficiency andprefer small government. As we have long pointed out, the spread of newsocial risks in relation to employment and nursing care, etc., has created a
growing need for public safety nets in the urban sector. At the same time,
as observed above, the group with these needs is the same group that
rejects livelihood safeguards where they are provided on the basis ofadministrative patronage and discretion. The real reforms in the years
ahead will not be directed at realizing the small government sought byurban residents, but rather at developing the safety nets to deal with therisks faced by those residents.
(b) Making the opposition axis function
A growing number of voters embrace the apparently contradictory
positions of wanting a welfare society while remaining deeply suspicious ofgovernment. Political parties need to develop visions that speak to thesevoters. If parties respond to the rural backlash against reform excesses by
returning to the traditional courting of interests, they are likely conversely
to alienate such voters. At the same time, given the enormous degree of
suspicion with which the government is currently regarded, seeking to8realize a big welfare state supported by a substantial tax burden is hardly
an immediately feasible scenario, and could also all too easily endanger
individual autonomy.
As of around the mid-1990s, various possibilities have been suggested interms of creating a welfare society that doesn’t spawn a bloatedadministration and does support individual autonomy. One such vision
was the ‘Third Way’ once proposed by European social democrats. This
‘Third Way’, which comprised neither a centralized welfare state nor neoconservatism, sought to constrain the growth of social disparities not
through income guarantees but rather by using non-profit organizations
and other such bodies to set in place the conditions for social participation.
While this vision attracted a reasonable amount of attention in Japan, it
could not be said to have penetrated sufficiently into actual politics.
Why is that?
When aftershocks from the Recruit scandal shook the political world andas the collapse of the economic bubble spread disillusionment over the
traditional Japanese system, Japanese politics responded with a reformboom that focused on not political but rather structural reform. Those
economic commentators who had once praised the traditional Japanesesystem converted overnight to market advocacy, while politicians werevociferous in their intentions to tear that system down. Amidst the uproar,visions seeking a point of equilibrium between redistribution and growth
were sidelined as vague and tepid.
Now, however, as a result of the reforms instituted by the Koizumi and
Abe administrations, a massive 64 percent of the population believe thatthe gap between the rich and the poor and urban and rural areas has
widened. A return to the traditional Japanese system is of course
impossible. This stalemate in Japanese politics is reminiscent of the US
and the United Kingdom in the early 1990s when the neoliberal drive forsmall government stalled, prompting the emergence of the ‘Third Way’discourse.
Could this be the late emergence of our own ‘Third Way’? Here we mustrecall the differing realities of Japan and of Europe as the originator of the‘Third Way’ concept. Because Europe was struggling with rising social
security spending spurred by high unemployment rates, the slogan in the‘Third Way’ discourse was ‘jobs not welfare’. In other words, the idea wasto draw people into labor markets through means such as vocational
training, counselling and childcare services, thus constraining the blowout in administrative spending and increasing individual autonomy.
In Japan, on the other hand, social security spending is actually relatively
limited, with the focus rather on using public projects, protection andregulations to provide jobs in uncompetitive sectors in order to restrain9social disparities. In other words, Japan has always sought ‘jobs not
welfare’. Moreover, given a system not of income redistribution based on
consistent principles, but rather of opaque and arbitrary job redistribution
underpinned by administrative discretion and interest-based politics, it ishardly surprising that the public’s distrust of government has risen to an
extreme. Now, with this particular job redistribution system declining andsociety graying, people have no choice but to seek new safety nets.
3. Prospects for party politics
The emergence of some extent of separation in the respective policy
preferences of LDP and DPJ supporters means that the preconditions forpolicy-based party politics are now in place. Having successfully
negotiated the Koizumi structural reform era, a particular segment of the
population that benefits from neoliberal policies has also taken shape tosome extent. As is clear from the survey results, this group have been
newly incorporated into the LDP support team. In that sense, Koizumi’s
strategy of courting urban voters arguably achieved some success. Victimsof structural reform, on the other hand, are now pinning their hopes on
the DPJ in the face of serious unease over the future. If the LDP and the
DPJ intend creating a policy-based two-party system, their mission must
be to develop policies which are faithful to their supporters’ wishes.
Clarification by the political parties of their respective policy axes would
enable the public to make meaningful choices at the next elections. While
we oppose the neoliberal policies of the Koizumi era, we do believe that thestructural reforms of that era created a space for policy debate—namely, a
two-party split—that represents a step forward for Japanese party politics.
With this emergence of a basic direction, what will be the key points weshould take note of in pursuing political debate? The first will be a
departure from divisive politics. Back in the Koizumi era, there was
extensive use of extremely simplistic slogans striking out at rivals andencouraging confrontation—calls, for example, for the transferral of power
and initiative from the public to the private sector and for destroying theold conservative forces of resistance. These simple catchphrases wereeffective in realizing specific projects such as the privatization of Japan’s
postal services, but they also ran counter to the deepening of policy debate.
Policy is neither a means of achieving Utopia nor a weapon for slaying an
opponent. It is a tool for gradually resolving contemporary issues, andevery policy has both effects and costs. All parties need to encouragerealistic debate on their policies.
Second, a serious attempt must be made to address government distrust.
During the Koizumi years, the LDP actually inflamed government distrust
as means of gathering support. This is also a self-destructive method as
far as politics is concerned. Looking at the sloppy management of pension
records, people’s distrust of the bureaucratic system is only natural.
Breaking down mechanisms that make much of officialdom and little ofthe people, as evinced in a pension system under which beneficiaries must10

apply in order to receive their pensions, is a key task for all politicalparties. However, demolishing the bureaucratic system inclusive of its
function in drafting and implementing policy would hamper policy
implementation regardless of which party takes power. Rather thansimply attacking bureaucrats, the challenge for political parties will be toenhance bureaucratic ethics and motivation. The duty of politics is to set
out specific goals for bureaucrats on the basis of a clear philosophy andvalues. To reiterate an earlier point, a policy line that does no more thancall for more welfare services while scraping together the necessary funds
by curtailing wasteful spending is not going to boost bureaucratic
motivation.
Third, we need concrete discussion of policy results and costs. As noted
earlier, the Koizumi era saw redistribution to the strong glorified asreform. A term as unclear as ‘reform’ should no longer be used. We should
not say social security reforms, but instead refer clearly to reductions inmedical care and nursing care spending. Rather than talking aboutreforming local allocation tax, we should talk about reducing the amountof tax that the central government allocates to local governments. And,
having clarified the expected consequences of these policies, we should let
the public decide on their relative pros and cons. For example, there has
recently been criticism about emergency patients being denied admission
by hospitals, but this is by no means an issue of doctor neglect. It goesback to policy, and restricted medical care spending and the shortage ofdoctors. The time has come to free the public from the spell of reform andlaunch concrete discussion of exactly what kind of society we want tocreate.
Moreover, if child allowances and income subsidies for farming households
are going to be an issue, how much of the budget will be earmarked forthese? If cutting back on wasteful spending is a key issue in terms of fiscal
sources, from where will that waste be curtailed? These points need to bemade clear. In fact, identifying waste will not be such a simple call. Major
cuts have already been made in big spending areas such as public works
and local allocation tax, to the extent that any further reductions would
make it impossible for local governments to meet the national minimum
and sustain employment. The DPJ’s call for a welfare state is a welcome
trend, but it will make high-level policy debate even more necessary if the
public and the bureaucracy are to be brought on board.
The process of trial and error in political reform and in the reorganizationof Japan’s political parties that began in the 1990s has now entered its
final phase. We are finally seeing the emergence of two-party system ofglobal standard that sets a conservative party with neoliberal preferenceson the right and a liberal social democratic party calling for a welfare
state on the left. Whether this kind of competitive political party systemtakes hold will be questioned in the next general election. At the sametime, there are certainly many politicians in both the LDP and the DPJ

11

who will feel uncomfortable with these particular party lines. It would
probably be a good thing if the clarification of party lines were to see
dissenting politicians shift to their ‘natural’ parties. Policy debate
sufficiently rigorous to spur that degree of change is just what Japan
currently needs.

12Table 1: Party support ratings

Table 2: What have been the consequences of the Koizumi and Abe administration reforms for Japanese society?

Table 3: Image of future lifestyleTable 4: Threats to future lifestyle

Table 5: Elements of the traditional Japanese system that should be improved

Table 6: Ways of dealing with poverty

Table 7: The ideal Japan of the future

Table 8: Fiscal sources for social security