Japan

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6

Cabinet Turnover

Although the LDP continued to hold the reins of government throughout the 1970s, the party’s Cabinets frequently changed, as factional infighting substituted for alternation of governing parties. In 1972 Kakuei Tanaka, who succeeded Premier Sato in July, agreed on measures to alleviate the American trade imbalance. He also visited China and agreed to resume diplomatic relations with that country immediately; official ties with Taiwan were then severed. In November 1974 Tanaka resigned in favour of Takeo Miki. Miki’s government had to endure the world economic recession that followed the Arab oil embargo of 1973; Japan’s economy, heavily dependent on oil and other raw materials, showed zero growth during the fiscal year 1974 to 1975.

In 1975, the LDP was torn by factional strife and failed to pass most of its major bills in the Diet. The party was further shaken in 1976 by revelations that the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, a US firm, had paid at least US$10 million in bribes and fees to Japanese politicians and industrialists since the 1950s. Miki called elections for December, in which the LDP lost its majority in the lower house for the first time. Miki resigned, and Takeo Fukuda was elected premier. He was replaced by Masayoshi Ohira, another Liberal Democrat, in December 1978. After Ohira died at the height of the 1980 election campaign, Zenko Suzuki was chosen by the LDP to succeed him. Beset by factionalism within his own party, Suzuki unexpectedly resigned in November 1982. He was replaced as premier and party leader by Yasuhiro Nakasone. The LDP, which suffered a setback in 1983 Diet elections, won its greatest landslide in 1986; to replace Nakasone, Noboru Takeshita was chosen in November 1987.

Japan in the early 1980s faced urban overcrowding, environmental pollution, and unproductive agriculture, but had the highest rate of economic growth and the lowest inflation rate among leading industrial nations. Economic growth began to slow in the mid-1980s, in part because the yen’s strength against the US dollar had a dampening effect on exports.

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The Heisei Era (1989- )

Hirohito died in January 1989, and his son Akihito succeeded him as Emperor, inaugurating what was officially called the reign of Heisei (“achieving peace”), which soon proved to be a period of convulsion and reform. In April, Takeshita resigned the premiership as the result of a bribery and influence-peddling scandal; his successor, Sosuke Uno, implicated in a scandal, resigned in July and was replaced by Toshiki Kaifu. The LDP won decisively in the parliamentary elections of February 1990, even though the Tokyo stock market had begun a decline that would last until mid-1992 and see the Nikkei average lose almost two-thirds of its value in what was referred to as the bursting of the “bubble economy”. Unable to cope with economic malaise and lacking the confidence of conservative party members, Kaifu was replaced in late 1991 by another veteran politician, Kiichi Miyazawa, while the Socialist Party changed its name to the Social Democratic Party of Japan (SDPJ). Legislation allowing the participation of Japanese troops in UN peacekeeping operations, long resisted as unconstitutional, was finally passed in 1992. National attention was diverted in June 1993 by the marriage of Crown Prince Naruhito to a commoner, Masako Owada.

Against a background of continuing tension with the United States over Japan’s trade surplus, confidence in the government continued to decline as the Japanese public became increasingly frustrated with the stagnant Japanese economy and corruption in the government. In June 1993 several Liberal Democrats, led by Tsutomu Hata and Ichiro Ozawa, defected to form the Japan Renewal Party (JRP), enabling minority parties in the Diet to band together and force new parliamentary elections. In the July elections the LDP lost their majority, ending their 38-year dominance of the Japanese government. A fragile seven-party coalition was formed; the LDP became the main opposition party. Morihiro Hosokawa, a former Liberal Democrat and leader of the Japan New Party, was elected to head the government. His electoral reform plans, aimed at dismantling Japan’s system of money politics and redrawing electoral boundaries, were enacted in January 1994, albeit diluted as a result of Social Democratic Party defections.

Dogged by allegations that he accepted an illegal loan in 1982 and beset by the strains of keeping the backward-looking Social Democrats in the coalition, Hosokawa stepped down in early April 1994. Later that month, the seven-party coalition chose Hata to be premier. Soon afterwards, the Social Democrats withdrew from the coalition, fearing efforts by coalition partners to marginalize them, leaving Hata without a majority in the lower house of the Diet. He subsequently resigned in late June. Social Democratic Party leader Tomiichi Murayama was elected premier a few days later in a coalition agreement with the old Socialist Party’s former enemies the LDP, becoming the first left-wing figure to lead Japan since 1948. Reformist opposition parties regrouped as the New Frontier Party (NFP), under Toshiki Kaifu’s leadership and Ichiro Ozawa’s stewardship.

On January 17, 1995, the city of Kōbe was devastated by an earthquake which killed some 4,500 people and left hundreds of thousands homeless. On March 20 Tokyo’s subway system was hit by chemical weapons including the nerve gas sarin in a terrorist attack that killed 12 and affected thousands. The fringe religious cult Aum Shinri Kyo was soon identified as the culprit, and was broken up by concerted police operations. The Murayama coalition government suffered an embarrassing setback in local elections in April, when a general swing against mainstream candidates included the elevation of a television personality and a former comedian to the key governorships of Tokyo and Osaka; while the NFP gained important provincial governorships. Rampant currency speculation drove up the value of the yen to record levels, threatening economic recovery and unleashing severe price deflation.

In August 1995, on the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, Murayama made a statement expressing a “heartfelt apology” for Japanese wartime aggression. In September the second fiscal stimulus package of the year was introduced to boost the economy. The rape of a Japanese schoolgirl in Okinawa by three American servicemen in October 1995 caused a wave of anti-American demonstrations there and ignited a campaign against the renewal of leases for US military bases. In December 1995 Ichiro Ozawa became leader of the opposition NFP. Murayama announced his resignation in January 1996, and was replaced as prime minister in the coalition government by Ryutaro Hashimoto, leader of the LDP, marking the return of LDP dominance. In March 1996 a government plan to rescue insolvent housing loan companies using public money was finally passed after a long opposition blockade. In April Shoko Asahara, leader of the Aum Shinri Kyo cult, went on trial. He was found guilty of murder and attempted murder and was sentenced to death in February 2004.

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1

LDP Revival, Economic Paralysis

In September 1996 Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto called an early general election. The poll, held on October 20, returned the LDP as the largest single party, but left it short of an overall majority; the NFP was left as the largest opposition party, while the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), a new body formed of disaffected SDPJ members and others, came third. The SDPJ’s support slipped further, halving its seats to 15, while Sakigake was left with only 2. In November Hashimoto formed a minority LDP government, banking on informal support from the SDPJ and Sakigake, his former coalition partners.

In a key policy speech in January 1997, Hashimoto promised a wholesale revision of Japan’s social and economic system, including deregulation to promote growth and curbs on the power of government bureaucracy. In January the first payment was made from a semi-official fund set up to compensate Korean “comfort women”, forced to serve as prostitutes for Japanese soldiers during World War II. All major parties cooperated in passing a bill in April 1997 to enable continuing US occupation of military base sites on Okinawa after the expiry of their leases. In April, Hashimoto expressed approval of the freeing by Peruvian troops of hostages held by terrorists at the Japanese embassy in Peru since December 1996, though Japan had appealed against the use of force throughout the crisis.

In September 1997 the LDP recovered its majority in the lower house of the Diet for the first time in 1993, but still proved unable to remedy the country’s continuing economic downturn. The latest in a package of LDP emergency measures, unveiled in October 1997, met with overwhelmingly negative comment. In November, Sanyo Securites became the first Japanese brokerage house to collapse since 1945; it was promptly followed by Hokkaido Takushoku, the nations 10th largest commercial bank, and Yamaichi Securities Co., one of the “Big Four” Japanese securities houses. Another emergency package in December did little to improve matters. Also in December, Ichiro Ozawa dissolved the NFP, forming the Liberal Party in January 1998. Also in January, the Finance Minister resigned over revelations of supervising ministry officials accepting hospitality and other benefits from organizations they were overseeing; the Bank of Japan’s governor resigned in March for the same reason.

The 1998 Winter Olympic Games, held at Nagano in February, were one of the few conspicuous successes to lighten the murky political and economic climate. In March 1998, several smaller opposition parties agreed to integrate into the DPJ, while LDP policy paralysis remained the subject of criticism from US officials and international bodies. Hashimoto’s much-vaunted “Big Bang” deregulation of Japan’s financial system commenced in April 1998, but yielded little immediate benefit for the ailing economy, as did tax cuts rushed through by the LDP the same month.

With economic stagnation continuing, Prime Minister Hashimoto resigned in July 1998 to take responsibility for poor LDP performance in elections to the upper house of the Diet that month. He was replaced by Keizo Obuchi, formerly his Foreign Minister. In October 1998 the government passed legislation to support Japan's ailing banking system with over US$500 billion. In early 1999 the government introduced spending vouchers for certain classes of consumer in a bid to revitalize demand.

In January 1999, the ruling LDP formed a coalition with the Liberal Party in order to stabilize Keizo Obuchi's six-month-old administration. However this was insufficient to secure a majority in the House of Councillors, the upper house of the Diet, and in July, Obuchi enlarged the two-party ruling coalition by bringing in the New Komeito party. In September, Keizo Obuchi was overwhelmingly re-elected as president of the LDP, taking 68 per cent of the total votes cast and remaining prime minister of the country. That month, Japan suffered its biggest nuclear power accident at an uranium-processing plant in Tokaimura, making it the world's worst since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Economic stagnation continued throughout 1999.

Mount Usu, on the island of Hokkaido, erupted for the first time in more than 20 years in April 2000, causing thousands of people to be evacuated from their homes. Around the same time, the prime minister announced that the ruling three-party coalition would break up after he rejected demands for a series of reforms. In the wake of these pressures, Obuchi suffered a major stroke and slipped into a coma. Japan's leaders moved quickly to appoint a new government, when it seemed unlikely that Obuchi would be able to resume his duties. He was succeeded by Yoshiro Mori, formerly the secretary-general of the LDP.

The decline of the Japanese economy continued under Mori, whose personal popularity plummeted through a series of scandals involving his colourful career. In the June 2000 national elections, support for the governing coalition dropped significantly from 65 to 56 per cent. Yoshiro Mori remained prime minister however, and outlined his government’s aims to return Japan to economic prosperity and introduce much-needed government reform. Surviving a no-confidence vote in November, he was able to announce the complete restructuring of the Japanese government in January 2001. In a bid to revive the economy, in March the Bank of Japan announced the reduction of interest rates to zero per cent.

In April 2001, Junichiro Koizumi became Japan’s new prime minister after the previous administration was toppled. He stated his intention to boost the economy with a series of radical reforms. However, Japan got immediately involved in a series of tit–for-tat tariff rows with China over the import and export of a series of goods and services. In elections to the House of Councillors the LDP won 65 seats to take its total to 111. Koizumi was elected as president of the party in August.

Koizumi paid a controversial public visit to the Yasukani shrine in August, and continued to do so regularly thereafter. The shrine commemorates Japanese war dead, including convicted war criminals. In visits to Korea and China in the same month, Koizumi lessened tensions by expressing “heartfelt apologies” for wartime aggression, including atrocities carried out in China and to Korea for colonial rule there.

Koizumi also visited North Korea and met North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, in September 2002. The Korean leader apologized for the kidnappings of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s; those who had survived were released in October 2002. They returned to Japan and remained there. This issue, as well as the alleged nuclear weapons programme being developed by North Korea, was cited by Japan as an obstacle in the way of normalization of relations between the two countries.

In September 2003, in the run-up to the general election, Koizumi reshuffled his Cabinet to speed up economic reforms. The following month he dissolved the House of Representatives (the lower house of the parliament). November’s elections were marred by a low turnout of only about 60 per cent of voters. The ruling LDP retained its majority in the House, gaining 237 seats (this figure rose to 240 after three independents joined the party); it formed a coalition with the New Komeito (New Clean Government) Party and the New Conservative Party, garnering a 278-seat majority, and subsequently merged with the New Conservative Party. The opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), which in July had amalgamated with the Liberal Party, won 177 seats; opposition parties took 202 seats altogether. Koizumi was reappointed prime minister immediately after the election.

Japan announced in December 2003 its intention to construct a missile defence shield, said to be purely self-protective, to be put into service between 2007 and 2011. In January 2004 the lower house of the Diet passed a bill allowing Japan to implement economic sanctions against foreign countries—a move widely seen as intended to be employed against North Korea.

An initial group of an intended 600-strong non-combat contingent was sent to Iraq in February 2004 to assist in the reconstruction of the country. It represented the first Japanese ground forces to be deployed in a combat zone since World War II. The measure was widely seen as potentially unconstitutional and controversial, especially as it came after the deaths of two Japanese diplomats in a bombing in the city of Tikrit in the north of the country in December 2003.

As part of its efforts to develop economic ties with Russia, Japan announced in February 2004 its intention to support the construction of a major oil pipeline from Tayshet in south-eastern Siberia to Nakhodka, a port on the Sea of Japan; the partners would jointly develop oil fields in eastern Siberia.

In August 2005 Koizumi called an early general election after elements of his economic reform agenda, notably the privatization of the post office, were rejected by the upper house. Koizumi’s Liberal Democratic Party won a landslide with 296 of the 480 seats in September’s poll, the Democratic Party of Japan secured 113 seats, and the New Komeito Party 31. After the defeat the leader of the opposition DPJ resigned.

With the expiry of his term as president of the LDP in September 2006, Koizumi left office as prime minister. The election of an ally, the party secretary-general Shinzo Abe, as his successor offered the prospect that Koizumi’s programme of reform would remain central to Japanese politics. However, Abe resigned a year later citing health concerns. His government had suffered losses in the elections to the upper house, the House of Councillors, in July; these troubles were compounded by several ministerial scandals, resignations, and the suicide of the agricultural minister. Abe was replaced as leader of the LDP by Yasuo Fukuda who defeated the former foreign minister, Taro Aso, in the election for the premiership in September 2007. Fukuda, son of the former prime minister Takeo Fukuda, pledged to follow Abe’s pursuit of a greater role for Japan in world affairs and also voiced a more conciliatory approach to Japan’s neighbours.