A Perspective from Japan

Aso and His Cabinet: Caretakers for an Election

 

Cultural News 2008 October

 

By Motoaki Kamiura, Military Analyst

Translated by Alan Gleason

 

   When Yasuo Fukuda, Japan’s prime minister for barely a year, abruptly announced his resignation on September 2, five candidates joined the race to succeed him as head of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). From the outset, however, former foreign minister Taro Aso was widely viewed as the likely winner, as indeed he was. Because the LDP controls the House of Representatives or Lower House (the more powerful of Japan’s two houses of Parliament), winning the LDP presidency assured Aso the premiership.

 

    Aso’s primary task is to dissolve the Lower House within the year and hold an election -- its first since 2005, when the LDP coasted to a landslide victory under popular Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. Since then the LDP has governed under two more prime ministers -- Shinzo Abe and Fukuda -- without having to face another Lower House election. Both the Abe and Fukuda cabinets steadily lost support as the public mood soured over a stagnating economy, and neither lasted more than a year.

 

     Although the next Lower House election could be held as late as 2009 under the Constitution, the LDP feels the time is right to regain its momentum by holding a snap election now, while the Aso cabinet is still fresh.

 

     Democratic Party Japan (DPJ) leader Ichiro Ozawa has declared that he will stake his political life on the opposition’s success in wresting the Lower House majority away from the LDP in the next election, thereby becoming the new ruling party. (The DPJ seized control of the Upper House in an election held last year.) In contrast to the Koizumi landslide of 2005, this time the LDP will be hard put to stem a wholesale loss of seats in the Lower House, most pundits predict.

 

   To minimize the damage, the LDP has placed its bets on Aso, known for his cheerful demeanor and popularity among young voters. Having just opened the extraordinary autumn session of Parliament with a hard-hitting policy speech, Aso is expected to dissolve the Lower House in short order, paving the way for an election in early November.

 

    Many Japanese are aware that the ascension of Aso to the premiership, and the selection of his cabinet members, follows a carefully thought-out scenario extending from Fukuda’s resignation through the upcoming election. The game plan is once again the work of former prime minister and LDP kingmaker Yoshiro Mori, who can be credited with arranging the premierships of Koizumi, Abe, Fukuda, and now Aso.

 

 

Motoaki Kamiura is a Tokyo-based military analyst. When the world is in crisis, he appears frequently on national television programs.

    Alan Gleason is an editor, writer, and Japanese-English translator. He lives in Tokyo.