ABSTRACT
Leadership in Japanese politics has been and still is a contested issue in academic and public debates.1 Many studies on Japanese politics and political decision making explicitly or implicitly argue that Japanese politics is characterized by an absence of decisive leadership, and that not only the patterns of political decision making but also political recruiting and the importance of seniority practically prevent individual politicians from becoming charismatic, proactive leaders.2 Others stress that leaders nevertheless matter in Japanese politics, although their leadership style is different from other democracies.3 Media images of Japanese leadership have been shifting quite dramatically since the late 1990s. Although the media in the United States and Europe (and to a certain degree also in Japan) seemed to agree that Japanese politics lacked leaders, things changed dramatically in 2001 when Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi took over the reins of government. Koizumi’s charismatic personality and assertive leadership style triggered a veritable Koizumi boom in Japan and internationally. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) headquarters in Nagatacho became, for several months, one of the city’s main attractions. Tourist buses stopped there during their sightseeing programmes, and hundreds of shoppers crowded the LDP gift store to purchase Koizumi goods for themselves and their friends: T-shirts, mugs, stickers, calendars and posters. A cartoon character that depicted the new prime minister as ‘Lion Heart’ in an oversized lion costume with a big red pulsating heart became a ‘must have’ item, not only for young women. And for several weeks a huge Koizumi poster covered one of the sides of the LDP building. A Japanese publisher, Futabasha, even produced a Koizumi photo album (shashinshū), a genre usually featuring the private lives of pop stars and actors.4 Foreign observers of Japanese politics became similarly excited about this new and seemingly innovative leader that had risen to power in Japan. Major international newspapers carried feature articles about the new man in Nagatacho, and Japan experts worldwide gathered in panels and workshops to analyse and understand the ‘Koizumi phenomenon’. The Koizumi boom lasted for about eighteen months. Thereafter, commentators both in Japan and abroad lost their enthusiasm and a more gloomy tone returned to Japanese political commentary. Three years after his leaving office,
Koizumi is portrayed no longer as the bright star in the Japanese political firmament, but as a politician with shortcomings and deficiencies who succeeded in maintaining a support rate of 50 per cent or more throughout his time in office5 and who could secure a landslide victory for his party in the 2005 Lower House elections. In the end, however, Koizumi failed in his endeavour to produce sustainable economic and structural reforms, mostly due to resistance from within his own party. His successors, until they were voted out of power in August 2009 by the now ruling DJP party, had to confront a much more difficult situation in the Diet after losing the (coalition) majority in the Upper House in 2007. After this, media coverage of Japanese politics, both domestic and international, portrayed Japanese politics as characterized by a ‘leadership vacuum’6 that led to a situation where Japan had three prime ministers in three years, Shinzo Abe (September 2006-September 2007), Yasuo Fukuda (September 2007-September 2008), and Taro Aso (September 2008-2009), and where the prime minister faced ever dropping support rates. Do we have a shortage of leaders in Japan and especially in the long-term ruling party, the LDP? Was Prime Minister Koizumi – who was long considered too radical by fellow party members and political observers and thus unlikely to become prime minister – the first of a new group of leaders in Japanese politics? Or was Koizumi’s tenure as prime minister rather an aberration in Japanese politics? Does political leadership in Japan change? Can we see current developments in Japan in the context of similar developments in Europe, where political leadership turned away from media-oriented postures of leadership after the demise of the Blair and Schroeder governments? In this chapter I analyse aspects of training and career development of Japanese politicians, especially within the LDP. I explain how leaders have emerged in the LDP and what effect the process of becoming a party leader has had on the leadership style in national politics. I point out incentives and opportunities for leadership embedded in the Japanese political system and especially in the relationship between politicians and voters, on the one hand, and within the LDP decision-making process on the other. The argument I make in this chapter consists of four points. First, leadership in Japanese politics and especially within the LDP is the product of incentives and opportunities embedded in the mechanisms of political and party decision making. If we want to understand the core of political leadership in Japan, we have to turn to the distribution of power in the Japanese political system and to the relationship between politicians, their voters, supporters, and fellow party and Diet members. I argue that until the mid-1990s, politicians who wanted to make a career in the LDP and/or in government had to focus on two tasks: catering to the (often narrow) interests of their local support base (which was not necessarily the whole electoral district) and building a network among fellow LDP Diet members. This situation favoured political leaders that were highly skilled as mediators between often conflicting interests, but it penalized those who self-assertively took charge of policy issues or who singlemindedly proposed path-breaking new legislation.7
