ABSTRACT
No significant Green parties have arisen in post-industrial Japan despite changes to the structures and values of Japanese society. That there are no significant Green parties can be explained in two ways. First, there are no Green parties that have made a substantial electoral impact. In the case of Japan, none won seats at the national level; unlike the European Greens, the Network Movement (NET) won seats only at the local level. Second, the dearth of a Green party may be viewed as the absence of a party having the characteristics of a New Politics party. A party cannot be regarded as a genuine New Politics party even if it has won elections on a Green label but failed to display fully Green characteristics. If NET were a perfect New Politics party, we would expect it to exhibit the following features:
an egalitarian organization whose members imbibe a participatory culture;
female-led organization; 1
amateurish activists motivated by purposive rather than material incentives;
great stress on Green issues rather than a personality-centric organization which revolves around the distribution of patronage;
clean politics instead of money politics; and
adoption of a strategy of representing NET’s constituency, policies, and values instead of vote maximization at the expense of its ideals.
