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Japan New Party Marked the Turning Point

Otto von Bismarck, the first Chancellor of the German Empire, famously said, “Fools say they learn from experience; I prefer to learn from the experience of others.” What has led to the current confusion in Japanese politics? Two guest commentators from Asahi Journal known for their discussions in Kokkai tsushinbo [National Diet report card] reflect on Japanese political parties over the 20 years since 1992 to look for the roots of this disarray.

MIKURIYA Takashi: Today we would like to reflect on political parties in the past 20 years, including those that are now defunct, and their relation to politics. My hope is that by looking at what each party did and the policies they achieved, and evaluating them and gauging their historical significance, we can identify the structural problems in today’s government.

Let’s start in 1992. This was the year we saw the downfall of Shin Kanemaru, chairman of the largest faction of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), and the Takeshita faction, owing to the Tokyo Sagawa Express incident in which he received 500 million yen in illegal donations. It was an era when factions within the LDP played key roles, and the Takeshita faction formed by Takeshita Noboru and Kanemaru Shin was particularly powerful. Kanemaru’s downfall prompted the faction to split into the Obuchi (led by Obuchi Keizo) and Hata/Ozawa (led by Hata Tstutomu) factions, which later led to the downfall of the LDP. Before we study the other parties, I think we must touch upon this Takeshita group.

MATSUBARA Ryuichiro: Former Secretary-General Ozawa Ichiro was the key figure in all this. Ozawa voted for the non-confidence resolution against the Miyazawa administration and later left the party to form the Japan Renewal Party. This triggered the LDP breakup that would occur later. The Takeshita faction ended up as it did because of a devil of sorts within it, named Ozawa.

Ozawa at this point had already advocated the very ideals that laid the groundwork for the political and administrative reforms of the Hosokawa administration and structural reforms of the Koizumi administration that would come later. I feel that everything that has led to today’s politics sprouted from sometime around 1992.

Mikuriya: A key party here was the Japan New Party (JNP) that former governor of Kumamoto Prefecture Hosokawa Morihiro formed in 1992. The JNP ran for that year’s House of Councilors (upper house) elections and won four seats. Hosokawa had declared the founding of his new party in the monthly magazine Bungei shunjuu. This ultimately turned out acting like a public advertisement to seek candidates, which was something that no party had ever dreamed of doing. Hosokawa was sort of a genius, coming up with one innovative idea after another.

The JNP only held four seats, so without the right to participate in the House Steering Committee or ask questions in the assembly, it initially was unable to make noticeable moves. But having gradually gained power through gubernatorial/mayoral and regional elections, the party succeeded in the 1993 House of Representatives elections by winning 35 seats, all with first-time representatives. Fifteen graduates of the Matsushita Institute of Government and Management won in this election, including current Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko, which was another event that led to today’s situation.

Matsubara: What was truly shocking about Hosokawa for the general public like us was that he was the first politician to pay such attention to appearance. I wonder how many politicians back then cared so much about a single necktie. He was also the one that established the trend of disclosing everything and making decisions openly, as opposed to the closed-door politics of the LDP. Although whether or not that was truly good is another question. This is because, as we saw in the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) presidential elections in August, the party needs to form its cabinet on the premise of restoring harmony after the electoral battle.

Mikuriya: Indeed, this was when politics made the decisive turn toward avoiding behind-the-scenes decision-making. But the LDP was still unable to break out of its old system, and those who hated that trend began leaving the party like teeth falling off a comb.

Matsubara: In the 1993 House of Representatives elections, the Japan Renewal Party (JRP) won 55 seats and JNP 35, while the LDP lost its majority standing at 223 seats and fell to the opposition for the first time in the party’s history. Another key player here was New Party Sakigake, which was led by Takemura Masayoshi and won 13 seats.

Past Prime Ministers

Mikuriya: New Party Sakigake and the JNP were unmistakably the parties that opened the doors to political reorganization in the early 1990s.

Matsubara: These two parties were the equivalent of Apple and its role in the IT industry. The JRP was like the Microsoft that came later and attracted many people, but New Party Sakigake and the JNP were the ones that had the truly innovative ideas.

Mikuriya: Ozawa’s Renewal Party turned out to be the pursuer, but he ended up swallowing the other two parties with his influence. Getting the Socialist Party and Komeito involved as well, he set up a non-LDP coalition government, placing Hosokawa as prime minister and Takemura as chief cabinet secretary. The two parties initially had no intention of joining the alliance, but Ozawa brought them together, which was simply amazing.

Matsubara: Looking back now, this forming of a coalition government was the first event that demonstrated Ozawa’s power to its fullest extent. Hosokawa and Takemura ultimately parted over issues such as public welfare tax. Ozawa forcefully put together two people with completely different qualities and then broke them apart, so he displayed faces of both builder and destroyer. He did a similar thing later in the DPJ, but the case mentioned was the only time that he really succeeded.