Prime Minister Noda has his own contest later this month. He is opposed by three no-hopers and is expected to easily win another term as party president. There is, of course, some question whether it is a prize worth having since the Democratic Party of Japan is widely expected to suffer big losses. It holds on to a fleeting majority in parliament now because of constant defections.
Noda is planning to visit Moscow in December – one reason for thinking that the election may be postponed until January - amid speculation that he may make some headway in another vexing territorial issue: Russia’s ownership of four Kuril islands claimed by Japan. A success here might resurrect the DPJ’s election prospects.
Of course, the most significant political development in Japan is the emergence of a new party headed by the popular mayor of Osaka, Toru Hashimoto. Hashimoto recently went national, changing his party’s name from Osaka to the Japan Restoration Party. It has already attracted seven deputies in the Diet, giving it official status.
The new political group is expected to do well in the Kansai region (Osaka, Kobe and Kyoto), but it is far from clear how well it would do in the rest of the country. Yet it could hold the balance of power, assuming that the now opposition LDP and its ally increase their number of seats but fall short of a majority.
Hashimoto and Abe would seem to make a good fit, as both are conservatives as Japanese understand the term. The Osaka mayor proposes holding a national referendum on Article 9 of the constitution, with an eye to modifying or repealing the war-renouncing clause. He is also hawkish on defending Japanese territory, i.e. the islands in dispute with China and Korea.
Hashimoto has feuded with local Kansai Electric Power Co. and its efforts to bring some of its nuclear power plants back on line, giving him an anti-nuclear power reputation. However, he hasn’t spoken much about the issue on a national level, and his prospective partners in a future coalition government are not likely to push de-nuclearization of Japan as ardently as some other politicians. Rather, he is proposing some radical constitutional issues that may not find much support among the more traditional LDP. These include cutting the size of the House of Representatives (now 480 seats) in half, eliminating the upper house, making the prime minister elected nationally and merging the prefectures into larger provinces.
Hashimoto sees himself in grand terms as a latter-day version of the Men of Meiji who totally transformed Japan in the 19th century and turned it into a world power. That is evident in the name of his party, in Japanese Nihon ishin no Kai. The word “ishin” is the same as the word in Meiji Ishin, or the Meiji Restoration.
Some in Japan might feel Hashimoto is getting ahead of himself by presenting himself as a major reformer in the mode of historical figures. But the Meiji Restoration is looked on with nostalgia among Japanese who are increasingly frustrated about the utter lack of change in modern Japan under the two main parties, and he may tap into that feeling.
