Ｔhe somewhat ghostly figure of Yukio Hatoyama
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A wiser Japan casts its vote without illusions
By David Pilling
Published: September 2 2009 20:02 | Last updated: September 2 2009 20:02
On Sunday night, the somewhat ghostly figure of Yukio Hatoyama appeared on television screens around Japan. In subdued tones and against the backdrop of a drab party hoarding, he spoke grimly of his humility and appreciation of the electorate’s historic verdict. Anyone unfamiliar with Japanese would have thought he was conceding defeat.
His lack of triumphalism, matched by the total absence of street celebrations (not a car horn honked, not a fountain splashed in) was in keeping with the national mood. Japan’s public, in the words of Jeff Kingston, professor of Asian studies at Temple university, had voted for “change they don’t believe in and a leader they are not all that crazy about”. Their overriding aim, in an oft-repeated phrase that sounds distinctly odd in well-mannered Japan, was to kick the bums out.
Japanese society has indeed altered. The certainty of the fast-growth years and the exuberance of the bubbly 1980s have given way to greater introspection and recognition that the state may not always know best. That sense of self-dependency (or abandonment) has been exacerbated by the casualisation of a large part of the workforce. Nearly a third of workers are now part-time or on short-term contracts, a world away from the 1980s when most people felt secure in their jobs. Not only are these workers poorly paid. They are also vulnerable. There was an outpouring of anger earlier this year at the perceived callousness with which companies such as Canon and Toyota dispensed with their services.
Partly as a result of this two-tier labour system, society has grown more unequal. The percentage of Japanese who regard themselves as middle class has shrunk from 75 per cent before the bubble burst to about 40 per cent. A 2007 NHK poll found that 90 per cent of Japanese believed inequalities were widening. The term “working poor” – naturally spelt in the alphabet reserved for foreign imports – has entered the Japanese lexicon.
Japan has also aged. Of the 127m population, no fewer than 104m were eligible to vote on Sunday. (A record 70 per cent did so.) Many towns and villages outside the massive conurbations of Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya are peopled almost entirely with the elderly. Typical is the village of Inukai in the southern island of Kyushu, where 70-year-olds attend class to learn how to care for their 90-year-old mothers and fathers. In the absence of adequate government provision, almost everyone is a “volunteer”. Some villagers talk black-humouredly about the virtues of dying quickly, more cost-efficient than years of drawn-out illness.
This unhappy mood was exacerbated by Junichiro Koizumi, the once-wildly popular prime minister now more often blamed for widening the social divide. Mr Koizumi cut public works spending, removing one of the main mechanisms for trowelling money to the countryside where most farmers long ago traded in their pitch fork for a jack hammer. Tax transfers were reduced in the name of regional autonomy, and health provision and pensions pared in the cause of budgetary prudence. Mr Koizumi’s postal privatisation chiselled away at Japan’s most comprehensive social service network, the tens of thousands of postmen who saw checking up on the isolated and vulnerable as part of their job description.
Mr Kingston thinks the turning point came a couple of years ago when the LDP expressed scant remorse for the loss of 50m pension records, an administrative oversight that shook the public’s confidence in the ability of the state to spell, let alone look after it in old age. (Many of the records were misfiled because of sloppy data inputting.) When, earlier this year, homeless people took up temporary residence in a fashionable Tokyo park, an LDP member inflamed public opinion by suggesting they were lazy. That was reminiscent of the cabinet minister who a few years ago called women “baby-making machines”, a remark that helped turn them into voting machines – for the DPJ.
Mr Hatoyama’s Democrats have responded to the national mood change more adroitly. They have offered direct support for farmers, poverty alleviation for struggling families, a higher childcare allowance and better worker protection. Not all of these proposals are popular. The public is sceptical about spending pledges from such a heavily indebted state. There is also a lively debate about whether Japan can afford more labour market regulation if it is to compete internationally. The change the DPJ is promising may not always be change you can believe in. But the party has won brownie points – and a truckload of votes – just for listening.
