The truly handsome victory of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan in Sunday’s general election has been hailed by East Asian pundits as a political tsunami, a seismic power shift, and a historic change. In parallel, the defeat of the long-governing Liberal Democratic Party is seen in conventional political terms as a drubbing for Japan’s overstaying conservative ideologues. Viewed in the same milieu, the poll outcome reflects an ascendance of centre-left p olitics in a country often considered inhospitable to such a theory of the state.
As Japanese experts and external governments come to terms with the DPJ’s landslide victory, its architect Yukio Hatoyama has sounded a rather pragmatic note of celebration. He sees the results as reflecting the people’s yearning for a three-dimensional change. They are “a change of government,” “a smooth transition from the old to the new” as also their “fusion,” and “a change” in the substance of people’s “sovereignty.”
A nodding acquaintance with Japanese politics will suffice to recognise the historic proportions of “a change of government.” The LDP has headed governments in Japan for over a half-century except for a hiatus of less than a year in the early 1990s. So, the prospective transfer of power to the DPJ, which has two small parties as allies, signifies a tectonic shift in the template of Japanese politics. After all, the LDP had acquired an enduring profile as a coalition of big business and grand bureaucracy besides the farming and other rural lobbies. By contrast, the DPJ, itself a forum of politicians with either a vintage LDP background or socialist ethos, has not yet acquired a smart tagline of political identity. However, Mr. Hatoyama is no stranger to the Japanese electorate. He and Ichira Ozawa had left the LDP at a previous defining moment in Japanese politics. It was the time when the economic superpower’s “miracle growth” began fading before the “bubble economy” finally burst. If Mr. Hatoyama’s political choices in the early 1990s did not create the kind of groundswell of popular support that he now has, the reason is not far to seek. One of his grandfathers was an LDP founder; and dynastic politics has been strong in Japan.
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