POLITICS-JAPAN: Looming Elections Leave Young Voters Cold

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Nov 5 2003 (IPS) - Come Nov. 9, the Sunday that Japan goes to the polls, Seiko Tayama won’t be casting her vote. Instead, she’s going to spend her time choosing a study programme to pursue in the United States.

The 31-year-old Tayama, a part-time English interpreter, explained that she is ”a bit ashamed of my disinterest in Japanese politics” but that she sees her Sunday spent making plans, rather than voting, a better investment in her future.

”Politicians are boring and untrustworthy, so what’s the point in voting?” she asked caustically.

Jun Ando won’t be at a polling booth either. Next year, the 29-year-old university graduate plans to open a shop selling Asian arts goods, and he will be travelling to look for and buy material for his venture.

At 29, the university graduate lives with his parents. ”Voting is a waste of time,” said Ando, ”I am sick of politicians who never change anything in Japan for the better.” That’s why, instead of choosing candidates, Ando would rather be travelling cheaply in Asia.

Tayama and Ando represent the younger Japanese voter whose numbers skew the voting statistics. Surveys show that while voting turnout rates range between 60 and 70 percent for those over 70, it is barely over 50 percent for those in their thirties and below. The sharp contrast has led analysts to speak of a ”serious” political vacuum in Japan.

In the face of this vacuum, Sunday’s voting will decide the fates of 1,159 candidates competing for 480 seats in Japan’s lower house, the House of Representatives.

Last week the incumbent prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, appealed on television, ”I urge more people to vote this time. This election is a critical turning point for the nation.” Japan’s Tayamas and Andos certainly don’t think so.

This time too, as also during past elections, the campaign pledges have been grand and sweeping, but surveys indicate that public enthusiasm in the voting process has hardly been boosted.

Illustrating the apathy, Japan’s largest daily newspaper, the Yomiuri Shimbun, last week conducted an opinion poll whose results showed that 40 percent of the respondents had not yet decided which party to support.

Professor Rei Shiratori, a political expert at the Tokai University, explained: ”Koizumi was a big draw in the 2000 election with people charmed by his outspokenness and promise to usher in important changes. But since he has not achieved much during his tenure, there is less interest now, especially among the young.”

Shiratori said a greater number of youth are turning their backs on politicians in the belief they can do without them. ”This is in stark contrast to Japan’s war-experienced older generation who continue to depend on the government to draw up their future,” he said. ”Young people are more individualistic.”

Yet the prognosis for the ruling coalition, led by the Liberal Democratic Party, remains bright. It will almost certainly be returned to power in Sunday’s general elections, according to opinion polls, but the major opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan, is also likely to increase its number of parliamentary seats.

The Democratic Party of Japan is wooing voters with such pledges as more funds for welfare, reforms that make the protection of jobs a priority, and a policy of providing only humanitarian assistance in Iraq. Indeed, party president Naoto Kan’s campaign slogan is to make Japan a ”safer and happier place” for the people.

In contrast, Koizumi is promoting an LDP platform that promises a turnaround of the lengthy economic recession through drastic structural reforms, a bigger role for privatisation, and changes in the country’s pacifist constitution to allow the deployment of Japanese troops internationally.

Despite the different platforms, undecided and apathetic Japanese voters – many of them young like Tayama and Ando – remain a significant section of the electorate. Hence Kan’s exhortations, like ”This election is your last chance for change”.

Parties challenging the ruling LDP coalition are campaigning on their own manifestos that bitterly criticise LDP politics which, they claim, promote businesses over the needs of people. Yet a series of polls in Japanese newspapers are indicating a scenario in which both big parties do well at the expense of the smaller challengers.

Koichi Ishiyama, an international relations expert and media commentator, blames the absence of ”a sense of crisis among Japanese youth” for the low confidence they have in politics. ”This has brought about an LDP-led government for too long,” he said.

He believes that Japan’s affluent young, financially supported by their parents and more interested in brand-name goods than fighting for political change, has led to this apathy. Also contributing is Japan’s constitution, which he says ”has produced a generation of peaceniks who have never been faced with making difficult decisions”.

Equally, Ishiyama accords blame to the country’s post-war education system, one which he says deliberately resisted promoting a deeper national debate on Japan’s aggressive invasions in Asia before and during World War Two.

The focus has instead been ”overwhelmingly on economic success”, he pointed out. ”The result will be an election with no surprises, as before. We are stuck.”