ABSTRACT
Seiji kaikaku (political reform) has appeared in patches on Japan's political landscape for decades, largely as rhetoric. In the 1990s, political reform took on ever more life — in the machinations of political parties, in parliamentary debate and eventually as legislated change to the political system. Reform implies a problem (e.g. corruption) to be corrected or improved. Throughout postwar, those with political and moral authority to cast the national debate on political reform have set its margins narrowly around the electoral system. Their claim has been to clean up money politics that has seen the nation's political life run less on ideology or policy pursuing the national interest than on brokered deals driven by vast amounts of money, favour and obligation — a well-fed political pork barrel. Since the Japanese political system is fuelled by money, the economic recession of the 1990s added a new imperative to the political reform agenda. The need for financial prudence sparked calls for greater political efficiency and effectiveness, and strengthened the position of those pushing for substantive political reform rather than superficial fiddling on the margins.
