Is the DPJ Anticapitalist?

Even as Japan celebrated the opposition Democratic Party of Japan’s (DPJ) victory over the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in last week's general election, in which the DPJ won the largest parliamentary majority of the postwar era, the response abroad was muted. Editorial writers and analysts acknowledged the significance of the DPJ’s landslide victory, but many saw the DPJ’s ascendance as a sign of an "anticapitalist" turn in Japanese politics.

Writing in The Wall Street Journal, for example, Mary Kissel, editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal Asia, warned of the “Keynesian worship” of the DPJ and its leader, Yukio Hatoyama, which she suggested could “spell another lost decade of growth for the world’s second-largest economy.” A Washington Post editorial lamented that the DPJ “bought the votes of Japan’s farmers with promises of money and protection.”