A billboard for the Liberal Democratic Party presidential election at the party's headquarters in Tokyo. A record nine contenders are vying for the top job. - Bloomberg
TOKYO: Welcome to “THE MATCH”, the gloves-off clash between nine contenders vying for the post of Japan’s next prime minister.
The English words, capitalised and in bold red font, take the spotlight in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s (LDP) promotional collateral for its Sept 27 election, in which the party’s next leader will be chosen.
The main billboard, bearing the tagline “Who will be the leader for this era?” in Japanese, includes in the background grey mugshots of former Japanese prime ministers.
It could pass off as a poster for a wrestling event, or a cinematic noir tribute to the fallen. And surprisingly, for a party that is perceived as staid and stodgy, the design was generated by artificial intelligence.
The underlying message is clear: It portends change, and there are many surprises it can pull out of the bag.
One surprise is the sheer number of contenders with their hats in the ring – a record nine, each with his or her own ideas of how to run the country.
The public has already indicated, through media surveys, their top three choices in the contest: former defence minister Shigeru Ishiba, 67, former environment minister Shinjiro Koizumi, 43, and Economic Security Minister Sanae Takaichi, 63.
But the public has no direct say in the party election, although they could make their views known through the ballot box, with national elections at most 14 months away.
The LDP, again, finds itself at a turning point. Unlike in 2009 when the party was ousted from power, the opposition remains defanged and unlikely to form a government.
Trust and support are in the doldrums due to under-the-table accounting that had been going on for decades, only to finally erupt under the watch of outgoing Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
Not many Japanese know the ins and outs of this affair; but the slush fund scandal, which implicated nearly one in five LDP lawmakers, only served to reinforce an image of untrustworthy politicians with vested interests, even as wages are not nearly rising fast enough.
How, then, can the LDP claw back support? Will a new face at the top be enough? Or will these promises to change only be cosmetic, the leopard never changing its spots?
Sophia University’s Professor Koichi Nakano, now a visiting scholar at the Weatherhead programme on US-Japan relations at Harvard University, pointed to the sweet irony of the situation when “the very people who were involved in the slush fund scandal are now involved in picking the next leader”.
“Yet, the Japanese are being given an impression that this is a lively and competitive democratic process,” he told The Straits Times.
All the candidates said that, in the absence of new evidence, they wanted to close the chapter on a scandal that triggered the dissolution of most party factions and led to the indictments of several faction accountants.
Also, there are already hints that the LDP lawmakers will not vote according to the public’s favourites.
A Nippon TV poll of the LDP’s 364 lawmakers on Sept 12 found that while about 100 MPs were still undecided, the top two among those who have already made up their minds were former economic security minister Takayuki Kobayashi, 49, and Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi, 63.
The unprecedented nature of this poll has exposed a yawning divide in ideological visions of how Japan should be run, which has played out since campaigning began on Sept 12, including at a nationally televised policy debate on Sept 14.
While it had none of the fiery rhetoric or falsehoods seen in the United States presidential debates – it would be career suicide to mount similar attacks in collectivist Japan – the arguments and counter-arguments exposed a tug of war between tradition and modernity.
This is notwithstanding the fact that many “traditions” over gender, such as the imperial household law to allow only male monarchs and a civil law that requires married couples to bear the same surname, became law only after the Meiji Restoration of 1868.
Japan is now the only advanced economy in the world to enforce the shared surname law, under which most wives adopt their husbands’ names.
A handful of men take their wives’ surnames, often when they marry into an influential family.
The business lobby Keidanren had in June 2024 argued that the law was antiquated and counterproductive to women’s empowerment, as it threatens to derail careers built up by women using their maiden names.
Koizumi, the former environment minister whose father Junichiro led the LDP and was prime minister of Japan from 2001 to 2006, tugged at heartstrings when he advocated the expansion of choices to “allow each and every individual to live their fullest lives, even if a minority”, stressing that he was in no way eliminating the right of couples who wanted to adopt a single surname.
Revealing his personal story, he said he had never met his birth mother until earlier in 2024, as his parents divorced when he was just a newborn.
He also did not know that he had a younger stepbrother until he was in university.
“Our surnames are different, but we are family,” said the father of two, slightly choking up.
“I hope to tap my own life experience to build an LDP that remains conservative at its roots but is also tolerant and inclusive.”
Fellow candidate, Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa, 71, confessed she “felt like half my identity was taken away” when she took her husband’s surname after marriage.
But Takaichi and Kobayashi argued that politicians are irresponsible if they act only on adult whims without considering the impact on children and the potential destruction of the social fabric.
“Think about how confused children may be as to whose surname they would take,” said Kobayashi, who has a daughter.
Candidates also clashed over ride-sharing and autonomous driving, with progressive candidates in favour of more deregulation to keep pace with global trends.
Digital Minister Taro Kono, 61, said exasperatedly that self-driving cars are being trialled with maximum speeds of 10kmh in Japan when, in Estonia, such vehicles are already being used for food deliveries at speeds of up to 40kmh.
“Which is the country that has the world’s oldest population, and needs such technology the most?”
Takaichi argued against ride-sharing, noting that it was impossible to ensure that vehicles are well maintained, ascertain the quality of drivers, and even guarantee “whether passengers will be safe from stalking or sexual crimes”.
Koizumi, implying that her view holds inherent prejudice, said ride-hailing apps contain plenty of inbuilt protections that make it “even easier to tell whose vehicle a passenger has ridden in as compared with taxis”, and would help resolve transportation shortages in rural area.
There were also discussions over myriad issues such as the use of nuclear energy, labour market reforms and the promises to double wages and impose zero tax increases.
But senior fellow Tetsuo Kotani from the Japan Institute of International Affairs think-tank felt the debates were missing the forest for the trees.
“I haven’t heard much about how Japan intends to tackle demographic issues,” he said. “Unless we address this, there will be no future.”
What is clear is that the winner will have to tackle some steep challenges, including societal issues and the need to bridge ideological divisions within the party. - The Straits Times/ANN
