Problems for ’third force’ hopefuls

OSAKA – Tuesday’s start of campaigning for the Dec. 16 Lower House election found Nippon Ishin no Kai (Japan Restoration Party) and Nippon Mirai no To (Tomorrow Party of Japan) candidates battling for two very different visions of a future Japan, but the so-called third force parties also had organizational problems at the candidate filing deadline.

Nippon Ishin’s candidates are, for the most part, in their 30s and 40s, and 90 percent of them are male. They include former television announcers, former advertising and marketing directors, and a « dog spa » owner whose facility was designed to allow local children the pleasure of learning how to take care of man’s best friend.

The party also includes numerous former regional government officials, especially from western Japan, as well ex-members of the Tachiagare Nippon ultraconservative party, and former secretaries to Diet members from the Liberal Democratic Party. Nippon Ishin currently has nine Diet members in both the Lower and Upper houses.

While Nippon Ishin began in Osaka, only 36 candidates were standing for single-seat constituencies in the six prefectures of the Kansai region.

Nippon Ishin has spent the last few weeks desperately seeking qualified candidates. The party had originally hoped to field between 350 and 400. However, only 152 single-seat candidates were found and they are fielding 21 proportional representation candidates.

Shiga Gov. Yukiko Kada’s Nippon Mirai party is fielding 111 single-seat candidates and 10 proportional representation hopefuls. Due to controversy among her constituents in Shiga, the party is not running any candidates there. While a few candidates are company presidents, bankers and welfare workers, most are Diet members loyal to Ichiro Ozawa, who joined forces with Kada last week.

Nippon Mirai, though, has about two dozen women running and has agreed to cooperate with the Social Democratic Party during the election.

The majority of Nippon Mirai members are in their 40s and 50s, and the party is considered particularly strong in the Tohoku region. Kada kicked off Tuesday’s campaign in Fukushima, where she emphasized the party’s main promise of getting Japan out of nuclear power.

ERIC JOHNSTON, Japan Times staff writer, December 5, 2012
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20121205a4.html

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 Nationalism rears head ahead of poll

Park Jeong Hun always found Japan a reasonable place to live, a place where, as a second-generation Korean, she rubbed along well with her neighbors. But when her nonprofit group tried to put on a dance to showcase their heritage in the cosmopolitan city of Nagoya, things unexpectedly turned ugly.

Municipal officials received a visit from two respectable-looking Japanese men proffering business cards, saying they were in the city to protest the mounting of Park’s Korean dance event. Footage posted on the Internet shows the mask of civility soon slipping as the men let out a volley of racist abuse at a city official.

« I had to cancel the show for the children’s safety, » Park said afterward.

Observers say this kind of incident, though not typical, is becoming more common as a strain of robust nationalism grows in Japan.

Bruised by the territorial flare-up with China over the Senaku islets that Japan administers but both sides lay claim to, and a spat with South Korea over another bit of disputed real estate, the Seoul-controlled Takeshima Islands, the Japanese public is feeling less neighborly.

A recent government survey found that a record 81 percent of those polled expressed a negative view toward China, and only 18 percent voiced friendly feelings, down more than 8 percentage points year on year. Meanwhile, just 2 in 5 felt positively about South Korea, plunging 24 percent from 2011 and dipping below the 40 percent mark for the first time in 15 years.

And ahead of the Dec. 16 general election, mainstream political parties are rushing to accommodate this rising hawkishness and rightism.

Former Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara is trotting out his China-bashing rhetoric after joining forces with the stridently populist Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto, as they cross the country stumping for Nippon Ishin no Kai (Restoration Party of Japan), hoping to challenge the established political order.

Ishihara, Nippon Ishin’s recently appointed leader, told journalists he wants to rewrite Japan’s « ugly » Constitution – anathema to many who cherish its pacifist Article 9.

Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is also back at the helm of the Liberal Democratic Party, which is pushing an increasingly conservative agenda and pledging to examine the issue of posting officials on the Senkakus to bolster Japan’s control of disputed islets, which China calls Diaoyu.

Abe has vowed not to compromise « even 1 mm » over what he views as Japan’s sovereign territory, and says he would seek to boost the status of the well-funded Self-Defense Forces and let them engage in collective self-defense Å\ another postwar taboo.

His call to also re-brand the SDF as the National Defense Force (Kokubo-gun) is a bit of semantic slight of hand that translates poorly, but indicates the direction he’s headed in : a constitutional rewrite.

Despite polls showing Abe’s LDP winning the largest number of seats in the Lower House poll, the final outcome still appears set to be an unpredictable affair with most commentators predicting no single party will secure an outright majority.

But whatever postelection coalition emerges is unlikely to take a dovish tack, observers say.

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has cautioned against the headlong rush to the right in an interview with the Financial Times, saying, « This kind of (ultranationalist) atmosphere or mood is emerging . . . and it’s possible that tough talks could captivate the public, but that would be the most dangerous thing for the nation. »

Law enforcement officers say they are seeing a rise in membership of extremist groups, and – more significantly – a change in the kind of people joining up.

Takuji Norikane, who heads a division keeping tabs on political extremists for the National Police Agency, says old-style rightists in their quasi-military uniforms and black vans blaring martial music were easy to spot.

« Nowadays, we have these rightwing citizens’ groups that take to the streets wearing normal clothes, » Norikane said. « Such groups with rightwing ideologies are active across a wider geographical region of the country, and the number joining their ranks is swelling. »

Norikane said many of these groups clothe « extremely nationalistic and xenophobic ideas » in the language of civil rights. One group, which goes by the name Zaitokukai, uses the Internet to organize demonstrations at which people gather to shout slogans calling for immigrant « roaches » to « die. »

Journalist Koichi Yasuda said that with more than 12,000 users, the group’s site is a breeding ground for opinions that would not look out of place among rightist fringe movements in Europe.

« They have a similar nature to the neo-Nazis in Europe, » said Yasuda, author of the prize-winning book « Netto to Aikoku » (« Internet and Patriotism »), noting many members are seemingly ordinary people such as businessmen or housewives. « The forums they use see a lot of calls for ’immigrants’ to leave the country. »

Takeshi Nakajima, associate professor of politics at Hokkaido University, says a mood of neoliberalism is rising in Japan that is not dissimilar to the tea party movement in the United States.

« Neoliberalism advocates a political agenda of small government and self-responsibility, » Nakajima said, citing the rise of Abe and Hashimoto. « A natural result of this is that it widens the economic gap, and thus fuels nationalism. »

HARUMI OZAWA, AFP-Jiji Press, December 8, 2012
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20121208a6.html

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 LDP slowly widening gap with Nippon Ishin, DPJ : poll

The conservative Liberal Democratic Party is still in the lead to win the Dec. 16 general election, results said Monday, with its main competitors, Nippon Ishin no Kai (Japan Restoration Party) and the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, still in second and third place, respectively.

In a nationwide telephone poll conducted Saturday and Sunday by Kyodo news, 21.1 percent of the 1,240 respondents said they intend to vote for the LDP in the proportional representation section of the House of Representatives election, up 2.7 points from the previous poll on Dec. 1 and 2.

Support for Nippon Ishin, led by former Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara and founder Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto, stands at 10.6 percent, up 0.2 point from the previous poll.

Support for the ruling DPJ had meanwhile climbed to 10.3 percent, up 1 point.

No margin of error was given.

Asked who is more suitable to be prime minister Å\ current Prime Minister and DPJ leader Yoshihiko Noda or LDP chief Shinzo Abe Å\ 39.2 percent of the respondents said Abe and 30.7 percent Noda, compared with 34.3 percent and 32.2 percent in the previous survey, respectively.

Abe had narrowly led Noda in that regard in all three of the pre-election polls Kyodo has conducted since mid-November, but the gap widened to 8.5 points this time around.

Opposition force and LDP ally New Komeito fell to 4.1 percent support, down from 4.8 percent in the previous survey, followed by Your Party, which climbed to 3.9 percent from 2.9 percent.

Support for the Japanese Communist Party stood at 3.1 percent, unchanged from the previous poll, followed by the newly launched Nippon Mirai no To (Tomorrow Party of Japan) headed by Shiga Gov. Yukiko Kada at 2.3 percent, down from 3.5 percent, and the Social Democratic Party at 0.9 percent, up from 0.5 percent.

New Party Daichi and the New Renaissance Party won backing of 0.2 percent and 0.1 percent, respectively, compared 0.1 percent each in the previous survey.

The support rating for Noda’s Cabinet stood at 24.9 percent, down slightly from 26.8 percent in the previous poll.

In a separate survey by Jiji Press, 32.4 percent of voters think Japan should reduce its reliance on nuclear power to zero while 54.0 percent agreed it should be reduced, but not to zero.

The poll, conducted over three days starting Friday, also said 9.6 percent favor the continuation use of atomic power.

Among those favoring the zero option, 14.0 percent said they will vote for the DPJ, which is campaigning to slash nuclear power reliance to zero by 2040, for the proportional representation part of the election.

That’s slightly higher than 13.5 percent of zero-option voters who intend to vote for the LDP, which officially remains undecided on the issue but has traditionally backed the nation’s complicitous « nuclear village » and big business for decades.

Kyodo Press, December 11, 2012
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20121211a6.html

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 LDP likely to win nearly 300 seats in election : poll

The Liberal Democratic Party is continuing its strong run heading into Sunday’s election and is on course to win close to 300 of the 480 seats in the Lower House, according to the latest Kyodo News survey.

The LDP and its ally, New Komeito, could together secure more than 300 seats, according to the telephone survey conducted over two days through Wednesday.

The survey covered roughly 63,200 eligible voters in 150 selected single-seat districts.

Projections for the remaining 150 districts were based on additional information gathered by Kyodo.

The Democratic Party of Japan, which swept to power with a landslide in the 2009 Lower House race, is expected to emerge Sunday with only around 60 seats, compared with its current strength of 230 seats, the survey indicated.

Nippon Ishin no Kai (Japan Restoration Party), one of the so-called third forces challenging the DPJ and the LDP, is expected to come out of the election with fewer than 50 seats, according to the survey.

The party was founded by outspoken Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto and is now led by former Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara, known for his hawkish foreign policy ideas.

However, the poll found a high rate of undecided voters, with 43.3 percent of the respondents saying they had not yet decided who they will vote for in their district contests and 40.4 percent said they hadn’t made up their minds on which party to vote for in the proportional representation segment, which will determine 180 seats.

If the LDP wins as many seats as the poll suggests, party leader Shinzo Abe would return as prime minister.

Among other third-force parties, the newly formed Nippon Mirai no To (Tomorrow Party of Japan) led by Shiga Gov. Yukiko Kada, which is committed to phasing out nuclear power plants within 10 years, is projected to win around 15 seats, while Your Party, led by Yoshimi Watanabe who bolted from the LDP in 2009, is penciled in for a few more than 10 seats, according to the survey.

Between the single-seat districts and proportional representation, Abe’s party could win around 295 seats or more, while New Komeito is likely to win close to 30, according to the survey.

The Japanese Communist Party may fail to retain its pre-election strength of nine seats and the Social Democratic Party may only win one or two seats, the survey found.

Kyodo Press, December 14, 2012
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20121214b5.html

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