Today is the election day in Japan. This particular election is actually a pretty big deal, because for the first time in many years, the opposition party actually has a chance to take the Liberal Democratic Party out of the Japanese Government – the LDP has been in power for almost 55 years now, since the end of American occupation of Japan post World War II.

I am by no means a political analyst, I’m much less informed about Japanese politics and economy than I wish I would be, so I will only mention a few loose facts and observations that have been bugging me.

Hereditary Seats

One of the big problems I hear about japanese politics is that of “Hereditary Seats”. There are a bunch of reasons for the hereditary seats, from very strong support networks that get passed down from one generation of politics to the next, to restrictions to election publicity that makes it difficult for new/budding politicians to get their name out. The results is that some families have been in power for up to three generations now, forming literally a “ruling class” in japanese politics. Fortunately, this seems to be coming around, as some of those “feuds” are suffering defeats around the country.

Young indiference

Another big problem I see in Japanese politics is that a terribly large part of the young population was alienated to it. In a TV program a few years ago, I heard interviews with college-aged Japanese saying that “I’m abstaining from this election because I feel I’m still too young, politics is better left for adults” – as a result, the elderly in Japan (who already compose a pretty high part of Japan’s population) held an even greater weight in the elections, which meant that topics like unemployment and work reform would take second stage in politician discourse over pension reform. (OTOH, one of the reasons that the ruling party is taking such flak is that they screwed up pension reform hard a few years ago). Fortunately, this seems to be beginning to change – this year I have seen a number of advertisements in the trains calling young people to vote.

No Criticism

Somewhat related to the previous point, in Japan, comedians never, ever, make jokes about current political events, or political figures. They may have have done the most bizarre/astounding thing ever (like the defense minister saying that Japan was prepared for an alien invasion, the Finance minister drunken antics, or the Prime minister saying that poor people shouldn’t marry), you’ll never see a comedian on TV harping on these gold mines. I was talking about this with a japanese friend the other day, and she told me this is because comedians fear the negative repercussion to their careers if they make jokes about “powerful people”.

As silly as it may be, I think this is a pretty serious problem actually. It is the politicians that should be afraid of the people and the ability of the media to show the skeletons in their closet and make them public, and not the other way around. This “fear of offending/showing ridicule”, may contribute, in my opinion, on the fact that Japanese Youth is so distant from politics – like the comment I quoted above, they feel politics to be “too serious” for them. Another example, a few years ago I participated in a talk show in Japanese TV, which got together a bunch of Japanese and Foreign 20-somethings to talk about society problems. They told us that the show with the theme “participation of young people in politics” would be canceled because there would be elections 3 months later – do you want any BETTER time to talk about participation in politics on TV?

Treatment of foreigners

Finally, I’m really looking forward for a DPJ led government. The LDP has a very poor record on its relationship with foreigners, with the government refusing to see immigration as necessary or
even beneficial to Japanese society, and taking cheap shots at foreigners every now and then to get some points with the population. The DPJ has a much more interesting position in this – They usually add text about foreign plans and rights in their fliers – which would be weird for a campaign promise, since foreigners have no votes, so I can only imagine that they actually mean it.

Looking forward to the results tomorrow.