For first time in decades, Japan votes in a knife-edge election

Tokyo: Japanese voters are not accustomed to nail-biter elections.

But as the country holds parliamentary elections Sunday, the party that has governed Japan for all but four years since 1955 is facing the possibility that it could lose its majority in the body’s lower chamber, the House of Representatives.

Just one month after a leadership vote by the conservative Liberal Democratic Party anointed Shigeru Ishiba as the new prime minister, the party entered the election under considerable pressure from a public angered by a long-simmering political finance scandal, rising inflation and the burdens of raising families.

That does not necessarily mean that Japanese voters are ready to hand the government to a divided and enfeebled political opposition, which last won a general election 15 years ago. Analysts said it was likely that the incumbent party would either eke out just enough seats to retain parliamentary power or would be forced to bring on new coalition partners to remain in charge.

“What is most interesting about this election is its uncertainty,” said Masaru Kohno, a political scientist at Waseda University in Tokyo.

Unlike in other countries, where the electorate is divided over ideology and vastly different policy platforms, Japanese voters are frustrated by a sense that all options are uninspiring and that the governing party has grown complacent.

On the eve of the election, Ishiba stopped at a rally for a Liberal Democratic candidate near the Tokyo Dome, a baseball stadium in the northern part of the city. Acknowledging the instability in his party, he appealed to the undecided voters standing in the crowd of about 500 that had gathered on the edge of a playground.

“There are many people who haven’t decided whether they will go to vote or not until voting day, and many who haven’t decided who they will vote for until voting day,” said the prime minister, standing on top of a white campaign van in front of a local government office tower. “Who will all of them vote for?”

Both times the Liberal Democrats lost power in the past seven decades, the outcome was widely predicted beforehand. Ever since the party returned to power in 2012 under Shinzo Abe, it has entered elections confident of winning. Now it is possible that the party could lose a majority even in partnership with its traditional coalition ally, Komeito, a political affiliate of Soka Gakkai, a Buddhist sect.

“I didn’t think it would be such a close race,” said Masako Tanaka, 60, a clerical worker who stopped by a rally Friday afternoon in Tokyo for a Liberal Democratic lawmaker fighting a tight race against a candidate from the largest opposition party, the Constitutional Democrats. “It makes me excited as one citizen of the nation, too, more than for usual elections,” she said.

During campaign rallies, Ishiba, 67, has said he feels “the greatest sense of crisis.” His first approval rating after taking office on Oct. 1 was the lowest of any Japanese prime minister at a similar point since 2002, according to a poll conducted by the newspaper Nihon Keizai and TV Tokyo.

Going into the election, the Liberal Democrats still commanded the highest level of support, with just over 31 per cent of voters endorsing the party in a poll by NHK, the public broadcaster. The Constitutional Democrats received support from less than 10 per cent of voters surveyed. The largest proportion of voters — 35 per cent— said “there is no political party I particularly support.”

The conditions that the Liberal Democrats face — or arguably have created — recall the last two times they lost power. In 1993, voters cast out the party after revelations of corruption and a drastic bursting of a real estate bubble that plunged the economy into recession. Seven disparate opposition parties came together to form a government, but it collapsed within just 11 months.

In 2009, the Democratic Party of Japan won in a landslide victory as voters sought to punish the Liberal Democrats for failing to resuscitate the moribund economy. In both of those instances, the opposition did not present a robust vision for change as much as an opportunity for voters to express their frustration with the longtime governing party.

In August, Fumio Kishida said he would resign as prime minister in an attempt to reset his party’s reputation. Analysts said the party and Ishiba had missed the opportunity to do so.

“I expected Mr. Ishiba would carry out some reforms to get rid of the corrupted image of the LDP,” said Jiro Yamaguchi, a political scientist at Hosei University in Tokyo. But Ishiba, previously viewed as a politician unafraid to shed party shibboleths, backtracked on several of his more prominent campaign promises. “He looked to be co-opted by the old party system,” Yamaguchi said.

During debates before the party leadership election, he had floated plans to push for interest rate increases, capital gains taxes, an Asian version of NATO and the revision of an agreement that governs US military forces based in Japan. He indicated he might support a change in the law requiring that married couples use one surname. On all of these proposals, he has retreated, evidently bowing to party orthodoxy.

Ishiba has also shown an anemic response to the issue that seems to bother voters most: political finance scandals. For more than a year, the party has failed to restore voter trust after some Liberal Democratic lawmakers were accused of taking kickbacks from the sale of tickets to political fundraisers.

Although more than 45 politicians were implicated, the prime minister announced that the party would withdraw its endorsement from just a dozen candidates. Nine of them are still running, and last week the Japanese news media revealed that the LDP had transferred 20 million yen (about $131,000) to local branches of candidates who had lost the party’s endorsement.

Although voters have plenty else to be dissatisfied about — including rising food prices, looming demographic pressures from a rapidly aging population and increasing tensions with North Korea and China — the opposition parties have seized on the scandals as their most potent rallying cry. More than emphasising policy differences, the leaders of the Constitutional Democratic Party have talked consistently about the Liberal Democrats’ problem of “politics and money.”

While the approach is likely to dent some support for the Liberal Democrats, stalwart voters, particularly in rural parts of the country where communities depend on government largess, are unlikely to be swayed by the scandals.

“In the rural areas, I would be very surprised if the LDP doesn’t come away with its regular victories,” said Amy Catalinac, an associate professor of politics at New York University who studies pork barrel politics in Japan.

What’s more, she said, the opposition is so divided — at least 12 parties are fielding candidates — that it could prevent any other party from dominating. “It’s the silver lining for the LDP that the opposition candidates are numerous,” she said.

Ishiba, who represents a rural district in Tottori Prefecture, has focused on the far-flung and depopulating regions of Japan in his election rhetoric, calling his efforts “Regional Revitalization 2.0.”

While such measures play to his most loyal base, they could alienate urban voters, said Megumi Naoi, an associate professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego. “The LDP should be pumping money into the city and talking more about the cities and the hardships of child-rearing voters,” Naoi said.

If the Liberal Democrats fail to capture a majority, they may be forced to invite other coalition partners to help form a government. Such parties would “have a huge bargaining leverage,” said Kohno, allowing them to demand Cabinet positions or the adoption of favored policies.

The most critical question after Sunday’s voting will be whether Ishiba survives as prime minister. If he doesn’t, the country might return to the kind of revolving door leadership that has characterised Japanese politics in the past.

“We don’t want such trouble again,” said Tsuneo Watanabe, a senior fellow at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation in Tokyo. “But the situation looks likely to go to a very troubled time.”