Japanese politics

[Roderick_Femm]

I just spent a couple of weeks in Japan, and the Osaka mayor Hashimoto was all over the news just about every day since Friday May 17th, because of his remarks which said (paraphrasing, so I won’t put it in quotes):

The existence of “comfort women” in world war two was a necessity to maintain discipline for the Japanese army.

Disclaimer: I don’t understand spoken Japanese well enough to have translated this on my own, I am relying on various news reports.

Over the next several days he was in front of the press every day, defending this statement, impugning the media (at one point he said “if all the media calls me a bad person, I don’t care”), comparing the institution of comfort women to American troops who rape Japanese women in Okinawa, and in general playing vigorous semantic games to defend his position.

Since then he has backed down from that statement somewhat, although he still believes that it is unfair to single out Japan for this behavior (see upcoming IMHO or GD thread for a discussion of that issue).

My main interest in this thread is to assess the political viability of this mayor Hashimoto for higher political office in Japan. I spoke to one American who has lived there for 20+ years who believes he is being groomed for PM, and said he wouldn’t be surprised if he succeeded at that goal in the next 5 years or so.

Hashimoto is one of the founders of a new right wing party, distressingly called “Japan Restoration Party”, and one of their big planks is to re-write the constitution so that the Japanese self-defense forces could become regular military and do more, I guess, than just defend Japan. Maybe they want to attack Russia for those islands up north, who knows.

Can he be elected PM*? Since Japan is parliamentary, that means that his party would need a majority in the Diet or else be the majority member of a ruling coalition.

Corollary: does this new party have legs? What do they want to “restore” to Japan, other than the ability to have regular non-defensive armed forces? Do you foresee a turn to the right in Japan?

If he were elected, is there any chance in hell that the constitution will actually be re-written?

*Note: he is by far the best-looking, most charismatic and well-spoken Japanese politician in my memory, which goes back to Nakasone. He can apparently speak very effectively off-the-cuff, at least when he is being adversarial with the press. Based on past experience, I can’t tell how much these factors would influence Japanese voters in a positive way. It’s possible he is too young (and young-looking) to be taken seriously.
Roddy

[smiling_bandit]

@Roderick_Femm

Hashimoto is one of the founders of a new right wing party, distressingly called “Japan Restoration Party”, and one of their big planks is to re-write the constitution so that the Japanese self-defense forces could become regular military and do more, I guess, than just defend Japan. Maybe they want to attack Russia for those islands up north, who knows.

Corollary: does this new party have legs? What do they want to “restore” to Japan, other than the ability to have regular non-defensive armed forces? Do you foresee a turn to the right in Japan?

If he were elected, is there any chance in hell that the constitution will actually be re-written?

Portions snipped by me.

His party is, I supposed, right-wing for Japan; that does not have much to do with politics outside Japan. The concepts of conservative and liberal mean very different things there.

The “normalization” of the military is a major plank of the party, correct. It’s certainly plausible that it might be changed. Japan hasn’t tried to conquer Asia in two generations, and just as Germany has been more active with its military, younger Japanese are possibly feeling as though they don’t need a purely defensive military. I doubt they’d actually do anything with it; it’s just a matter of pride and self-determination.

As far as his remarks go, it’s mostly a legacy of Japan’s Yes-No legacy fo World War 2, something the germans also struggled with, where many politicians ended up dancing awkwardly around the finer points of realistic-but-unpopular-acknowledgement versus potentially deceptive-but-cleaner-looking-denial.

[Roderick_Femm]

@smiling_bandit

Portions snipped by me.

His party is, I supposed, right-wing for Japan; that does not have much to do with politics outside Japan. The concepts of conservative and liberal mean very different things there.

The “normalization” of the military is a major plank of the party, correct. It’s certainly plausible that it might be changed. Japan hasn’t tried to conquer Asia in two generations, and just as Germany has been more active with its military, younger Japanese are possibly feeling as though they don’t need a purely defensive military. I doubt they’d actually do anything with it; it’s just a matter of pride and self-determination.

As far as his remarks go, it’s mostly a legacy of Japan’s Yes-No legacy fo World War 2, something the germans also struggled with, where many politicians ended up dancing awkwardly around the finer points of realistic-but-unpopular-acknowledgement versus potentially deceptive-but-cleaner-looking-denial.

I think of right-wing in Japan as being mostly about nearly jingoistic patriotism (depending on how far you take it) and disdain for many or most other cultures. This includes defenses of Japanese behavior in WWII that fly in the face of generally-accepted history.
Roddy

[Qin_Shi_Huangdi]

I doubt it. Abe is already hawkish and a bit of a war crimes apologizing asshole himself (though admittedly I’d probably vote for him) and his economic polices are seemingly quite successful, so I think the LDP has it covered. BTW, isn’t Abe himself calling for amending the Constitution-which I don’t mind personally considering the Germans have their Bundeswehr.

[smiling_bandit]

@Roderick_Femm

I think of right-wing in Japan as being mostly about nearly jingoistic patriotism (depending on how far you take it) and disdain for many or most other cultures. This includes defenses of Japanese behavior in WWII that fly in the face of generally-accepted history.

More or less. They don’t really have any particular plans to do anything about it, and I’m not sure how far their rewriting of history actually goes beyond brash nonsense.

[cckerberos]

@Roderick_Femm

My main interest in this thread is to assess the political viability of this mayor Hashimoto for higher political office in Japan. I spoke to one American who has lived there for 20+ years who believes he is being groomed for PM, and said he wouldn’t be surprised if he succeeded at that goal in the next 5 years or so.

No offense to the American you spoke to, but there’s absolutely no way in hell that’ll happen barring some kind of massive, unforeseeable shift. Hashimoto’s statements have essentially torpedoed the JRP’s chances in this summer’s upper-house elections as they have been very unpopular. Abe and the LDP, who already won a massive victory in December’s lower-house election, are going to be in the position of doing basically whatever they want for the next 4 years.

Hashimoto is one of the founders of a new right wing party, distressingly called “Japan Restoration Party”, and one of their big planks is to re-write the constitution so that the Japanese self-defense forces could become regular military and do more, I guess, than just defend Japan. Maybe they want to attack Russia for those islands up north, who knows.

Can he be elected PM*? Since Japan is parliamentary, that means that his party would need a majority in the Diet or else be the majority member of a ruling coalition.

Corollary: does this new party have legs? What do they want to “restore” to Japan, other than the ability to have regular non-defensive armed forces? Do you foresee a turn to the right in Japan?

FWIW, the name “Japan Restoration Party” is derived from Hashimoto’s earlier Osaka Restoration Party. It’s also a reference to the Meiji Restoration. The word translated as “restoration” doesn’t sound as bad in Japanese since it has a connotation of reform to it and not so much a “let’s go back to the old system” implication.

The party also isn’t, IMHO, quite as far to the right as it’s been portrayed in foreign media, at least as far as its platform goes. It’s pushing constitutional revision, sure, but that’s been a mainstream position in Japanese conservative politics for a while now. There’s a serious chance that the constitution will be amended in the near future, but it’ll be done by the LDP, not the JRP. (As an aside, even if constitutional revision happens, it’ll be incremental. I don’t believe the LDP have announced any proposed new language - it’d be really stupid to do it before the coming elections - but the last time they tried this about 5 years ago, they wanted to keep most of the pacifist language but add clauses specifically acknowledging the SDF’s right to participate in collective self-defense and international security actions like peace-keeping, IIRC. Oh, and to rename the SDF to the “Self-Defense Army”.)

A poll taken this week showed that the percentage of people planning to vote for the JRP in July’s elections had dropped from 9% to 3%. There were some high electoral hopes for the party after it was first formed last year: the DPJ was imploding and the LDP wasn’t particularly popular, thus making it look like a new third-party had a real chance. That didn’t pan out. They did decently on the PR ballot, but virtually all of their district seats came from Osaka. That wasn’t a good result for a party hoping to transform itself from a regional party to a truly national one.

I’ve read analysis suggesting that Hashimoto’s recent statements were actually an attempt to draw attention to the party and revitalize it. They were intentionally controversial so that they’d get media attention. He obviously seriously miscalculated about how controversial and how they’d be received, though.

*Note: he is by far the best-looking, most charismatic and well-spoken Japanese politician in my memory, which goes back to Nakasone. He can apparently speak very effectively off-the-cuff, at least when he is being adversarial with the press. Based on past experience, I can’t tell how much these factors would influence Japanese voters in a positive way. It’s possible he is too young (and young-looking) to be taken seriously.

His experience working on Japanese TV seriously helps him. But I think he loses out to Koizumi in terms of charisma and political acumen.

[Roderick_Femm]

Thank you very much, cckerberos, for your observations - this is precisely the sort of background knowledge that I lacked coming into this thread.

I was suspecting that his controversial comments were some kind of publicity ploy, and it’s nice to know that they have apparently backfired. At the time I wrote, I did not know that he had a TV commentator background, and that explains a lot.

As for your final observation, I’m sure Koizumi did have tons more political acumen. However, he always struck me as more eccentric than charismatic. But then I’m not a Japanese voter.
Roddy