Why Japan's General Election Is Historic

TOKYO -Japan's August 30 general election has been described a hundred times as being "historic". But while this has become a cliché, there is no other way to describe what is taking place. It is historic because in the more than 50 years since the founding of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) no opposition party has ever come to power by winning a popular election.

Put another way, Japan has never passed the most fundamental test of a working democracy: throw the bums out. It has never done what the Indians have done, what the Taiwanese have done, what the South Koreans have done , the latter two after years of military dictatorship, namely change the administration through the ballot box.

The venerable governing party, which has guided Japan's rise as an economic super power and been a reliable partner of the U.S., is not exactly made up of "bums", but the party has worn out its welcome with the Japanese public and their perfectly natural weariness of long-entrenched politicians and desire to bring in a new lot.

One week before the balloting, every indicator points not just to a win by the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) but to a blowout. Extrapolating from some polls gives the DJP some 300 seats in the 480-seat House of Representatives. The party currently has 115 seats; the LDP 303).

American political scientist Tobias Harris has studied the electoral map district-by-district and forecasts that the DJP will win 279 seats, including those elected through proportional voting (The lower house of Japan's bicameral parliament is split between 300 single-member districts and 180 seats allocated through proportional voting. Each citizen gets two votes)

Prime Minister Taro Aso, leader of the Liberal Democrats, is putting up an energetic fight, but a victory in this election, defined has winning enough seats to maintain a majority, would be somewhat akin to former U.S. President Harry Truman's surprise victory in the 1948 presidential election.

It has taken Japan a long time to come to this point where it is on the brink of a genuine two party system, one in which two parties of roughly equal strength, one a little left of center the other a little to the right, are fighting it out openly, are having televised policy debates, publishing manifestos and touring the country to try and sell the voters on their point of view.

A half a dozen minor parties are also running in the election, some in partnership with the two main parties, but increasingly the election is a contest between two bigger parties. In more than a third of the 300 electoral districts only the candidate of the LDP is facing the candidate of the DPJ, five times as many as in the 2005 election.

The decision of the Japanese Communist Party to field candidates in only half of the districts is another boon to the Democrats. Party leader Kauo Shii has practically ordered his followers to vote for the DJP in their single member contests and the communists on the proportional ballot. The party did poorly in the recent Tokyo municipal election.

For the opposition Democrats, there remains the just one final hurdle in persuading the conservative Japanese public that they can be trusted with power. Should Japan stick with the known or take a leap into the unknown and turn the keys to government over to another political party?

Election campaigning for Japan's general election officially opened on August 18, only twelve days before the voting, but you would hardly know it. The two main and several smaller parties vying for votes have been campaigning furiously since mid-July when Prime Minister Taro Aso dissolved the Diet (parliament) and set August 30 as the day of reckoning.

The leaders of the two main parties, Aso of the LDP and Yukio Hatoyama, leader and prime minister candidate for the Democratic Party of Japan, have already had televised debates with each other and forums with leaders of several smaller parties and have shouted themselves horse at political rallies..

The electioneering will reach a frenzy this week as more sound trucks patrol the neighborhoods blasting out the name of the candidates, more politicians, wearing sashes with their name on it, bow and greet commuters going to and from work at the railroad stations, more election flyers are stuffed in mailboxes.

Japanese are at least spared the endless "attack" advertisements on television as is the case in the U.S., since paid advertisements on radio and television are banned. The candidates make their case on unpaid televised public forums and by haranguing voters at railroad stations, the main public space in urban Japan.

The politicians however, have found a loop-hole in the election law that permits them to air what look suspiciously like attack advertisements over the Internet. In a recent YouTube video produced by the LDP, a young man woos his girlfriend with promises about a life free or worries about child care and retirement.

The woman wonders how her suitor is going to pay for all these goodies, but he tells her not to worry. He will sort out the details after they are married. It is a clever play on the DPJ party manifesto, which calls for generous government benefits childrearing and is generally vague on how to pay for them.

Each party has issued its election platform, or manifesto as it is called here. It is not certain whether Japanese voters are swayed by these platforms any more than most Americans are persuaded by their party platforms, but it does give the candidates something to talk about. The LDP has zeroed in on the several generous promises made in the DPJ manifesto along with its fairly vague proposals to finance them.

Democrats propose that the government provide a monthly stipend of about $250 per month per child until graduation from junior high school, providing free high school education and the abolition of all highway tolls. The proposals would "bankrupt" Japan, says Hiroyuki Hosoda, secretary general of the LDP.

Some others would argue that this criticism is pretty rich coming from the party, which has spent its way into the greatest per capital budget deficit of any developed nation on the planet, a public debt that is estimated at about 180 percent of gross domestic product.

Meanwhile, the Democrats are paying less attention to the LDP's party manifesto and spend more time talking up "change". That is sensible considering that change is in the air, and the Democrats are eager to simply push it along.

Aso and his party did catch a break with the first definitive news of impending economic recovery. The country's gross domestic product grew at nearly one percentage point in April-June, compared with the sickening eleven percentage point drop the previous quarter. Aso was quick to argue that the news vindicated the stimulus measures his government has taken.

That may take a little wind out of the opposition sails, but the only real determining factor in this election will be the average Japanese's gut feeling that it is time to send the LDP into honorable retirement and turn the reins of government over to the opposition Democrats. And if the opposition can't pull it off this year, when can they?