【Text/Observer Network Columnist Sha Qingqing Huang Lijun】
The "Fifth Five-Year Plan System": The Great Integration of the Rightists
In Japanese political terminology, the term "May Five-Year Plan" or "1955 System" refers to a complete set of political operations in Japan after the formal establishment of the Liberal Democratic Party in 1955.
Since its inception, the DEMOCRATIC Party has been in power in Japan for a long time, and occasionally has "lost its front hoof" two or three times, but the time to lose power is very short, and it can basically return to the center of power very quickly. This mode of operation of the LDP almost directly determines the rules of the political game in post-war Japan, and the "May Five-Year Plan System" is a special phenomenon of the LDP's long-term rule as Japan's largest party.
So, what is the background of the emergence of the "Fifth Five-Year Plan System"? Why was the LDP born at this time? As can be seen from the name of the party, the Liberal Democratic Party was the merger of the Liberal Party and the Democratic Party in 1955. At that time, in the early stage of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, the left-wing forces in Japan were surging up, and many leftist political and social forces were integrating to try to challenge Japan's existing political model. However, due to the background of the Cold War, neither the conservative forces in Japan nor the United States behind it want to see a left-wing party seize power in Japan, or even dominate Japan's policy direction in the future. In the eyes of the Americans, this undoubtedly shook their own cold war foundations in the Far East.
Therefore, when the left socialist party was integrated, the United States was very nervous, and the momentum of the Japanese Communist Party at that time was also very strong. To avoid the left coming to power, the United States has pushed for integration almost on the head of both the Liberal and Democratic Parties. Although the heads of the Liberal Party and the Democratic Party have different political views on some issues, and even have different sides, at least they have the background of right-wing conservatism, at least with the aim of preventing the left from coming to power, and the integration of the two sides has been narrowly achieved.
After the merger of the two parties in 1955, a relatively powerful political force was indeed formed, which was enough to effectively compete with the left forces, and was in an overwhelmingly dominant position, and was in a stable and stable government for a long time.
However, it is precisely because the LDP was born in this context that from the beginning of the founding of the party, it is impossible to quell various factional disputes or "factional" struggles within the party. It is originally a political group integrated under external pressure, and it is bound to form a "group" phenomenon around some important political figures within the original two parties.
In 1955, the Liberal Democratic Party was founded. Pictured from the website of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party
Two important political figures are mentioned here, Shigeru Yoshida and Ichiro Hatoyama. In fact, in connection with the Japanese politicians who are still on the table today, everyone should be familiar with these two people, the grandfather of the current Japanese Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Aso Taro is Shigeru Yoshida, and the grandfather of former Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama is Ichiro Hatoyama. During his tenure, the latter experienced one of two political rotations in postwar Japanese history – the first was the fall of the LDP in 1993 under ichiro Ozawa's maneuvering, but because there was no strong opposition party, there was an "eight-party alliance"; the second was in 2009, when Yukio Hatoyama became prime minister, when the Democratic Party of China was very strong and replaced the LDP.
The political stance of the Liberal Democratic Party represented by the two of them has continued to this day, and there are still "doves" and "hawks" in the party. At that time, Hatoyama's position was more Japanese traditional values, while Shigeru Yoshida was more international.
Shigeru Yoshida, a bureaucrat from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, played a role as a pawn to some extent in the process of Japan's foreign aggression and expansion in the 1930s, which is strictly speaking a historical original sin, but he was opposed to Japan's expansionist policies after 1937. For example, after the 9/18 Incident, he exerted a bad influence during the establishment of the puppet state of Manchukuo, but in Japan he belonged to the so-called "non-expansion faction", which thought that it was enough to defend northeast China, and there was no need to start a new war, so after 1937, Yoshida Shigeru was marginalized in Japanese politics.
On the other hand, because of Shigeru Yoshida's status as a diplomat, there were some personal channels between him and Britain and the United States. In late 1941 and early 1942, when Japan and the United States went to war, Gru, as ambassador, was placed under house arrest, and some Japanese friends who had befriended him would quietly bring him food, including such figures as Shigeru Yoshida.
However, it was precisely because Shigeru Yoshida was a marginalized politician during the Pacific War that he was able to return to Japanese politics after 1945. Also because of this relationship, GHQ is also relatively more reassuring to these people, and will not pursue his political responsibility and war crimes committed before the Pacific War, and even let him take charge of post-war Japanese politics. Between 1945 and 1955, Shigeru Yoshida became the most important figure in Japanese politics.
From May 1946, when Shigeru Yoshida first formed the cabinet at the age of 68, to December 1954, in addition to the cabinets of Tetsu Katayama and Ashida Jun, Yoshida Shigeru formed five cabinets, and his regime existed for a long time in Japanese constitutional history after Abe Shinzo, Katsura Taro, Sato Eisaku, and Ito Hirobumi (2616 days). Pictured from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
In contrast, Hatoyama has a more conservative background, and is more "dovish" or more moderate in the LDP; in his dealings with Americans, he is obviously unable to dance and be flexible like Shigeru Yoshida, but more "adhere to traditional Japanese values". His so-called Japanese values are somewhat similar to the constitutional revisionists in Japan today, because this group of people always believe that the current Japanese Constitution was revised under the will of the United States, so they have always advocated constitutional revision.
The Hatoyama family is a political family, and in 2009 Hatoyama's grandson, Yukio Hatoyama, became the prime minister of Japan, and he was promoted to the position of prime minister by the Democratic Party of Japan, in large part because he was the big financial backer behind the Democratic Party. Yukio Hatoyama is a political figure with a distinct personality, known in Japan as an "alien", who is often unpredictable in the imagination of the outside world; after becoming prime minister in 2009, he adopted a series of aggressive policies against Japan-US relations, directly challenging the Japan-US alliance, shouting out the "East Asian Community", relocating the US military's Futenma base in Okinawa, and so on. In the eyes of the United States, these have almost shaken the political foundations of the Japan-US security alliance.
Therefore, there are still many people who believe that Yukio Hatoyama's downfall is the result of the influence exerted by the United States behind the scenes. At that time, the relocation plan of the Putama base and important documents during the negotiations were supposed to be state secrets, but they were poked out by the Japanese media in advance. According to the recollections of Hatoyama and those around him, what he said the night before was immediately published by the media the next day, and it is clear that some of the people in charge of specific affairs or some bureaucrats around him deliberately leaked information to the media and attacked him politically.
When Yukio Hatoyama first came to power, Japanese society was full of praise. First of all, the LDP has been in power for too long, and the Japanese people really have a bad impression of the LDP as a whole at that time; second, he himself has a lot of aura, his grandfather Hatoyama Ichiro is the founder of the LDP, but he defeated the LDP, his mother is a Bridgestone company, the family has power and money. Their home has a bungalow in the best part of Tokyo, "dove" means pigeon in Japanese, and the whole building is carved with the image of a pigeon, known as the "palace of the pigeon". At that time, the Democratic Party had few sources of political funding, and Yukio Hatoyama was one of the big financiers. However, with the tension between Japan and the United States, the turn of public opinion, and the inability to postpone the relocation of the Base in Putianjian, it fell.
To some extent, this defeat led to the long-term collapse of Japan's opposition parties. For example, in the past year or so, the epidemic has been repeated, and the support rate of the Japanese people for the Liberal Democratic Party is very low, but the support rate of the opposition party is even lower. For many people, the LDP does have all kinds of problems, corruption, conservatism, arrogance, but the LDP can at least do things, and if it is replaced by opposition parties, I am afraid it will be difficult to maintain the normal functioning of the government.
Of course, from a longer period of time, it is difficult for opposition parties to come to power, which is related to the shaping and historical evolution of Japan's domestic political structure after 1955. After the establishment of the "Fifth Five-Year Plan System," the Japanese conservative camp has completed a great integration, and although there are factions within the party, and they have attacked and defended each other and dismantled the taiwan, they can at least unanimously go out at the time of the election, and thus maintain the majority of the Diet for a long time.
On the contrary, there have been frequent divisions within the left camp since the 1960s, and it has been difficult to form a joint force at the level of parliament to confront the LDP. This problem continues to this day. Even before the upcoming parliamentary elections, the Cadets shouted the slogan of "fighting among the opposition parties", but the actual effect is still doubtful. For example, whether to accept the participation of the Japanese Communist Party has always been a "difficult problem".
For the opposition, the Japanese Communist Party is a very embarrassing "potential partner." Although the Japanese Communist Party is not large, it has strong combat effectiveness and a stable support group. In the past few decades, the image of the Japanese Communist Party has been very strangely shaped by the Japanese media, resulting in the delicate position of the Cadets, who want the combat effectiveness of the Japanese Communist Party and do not want to be too tied to the Japanese Communist Party, so as not to lose votes. However, in recent years, Japanese young people have also had a tendency to "left-wing", and one of the best-selling books in Japan during this time is called "Ren Xin Shi の "Capital", written by a young scholar named Yukihei Saito, and the book has sold more than 500,000 copies. It can be seen that the ideological trend of young people in Japan is also changing.
"Kakufu War": The smell of money is in the air
After the formation of the "May Five-Year Plan System," factional evolution and struggle within the LDP have always been there. The LDP's factionalist politics is institutionalized, which is an open political group that meets frequently; at first it may eventually form a political entity in the name of study meetings or seminars, and sometimes even its own office, but this entity belongs to the LDP.
In the 1960s and 1970s, factional struggles were the most bloody and brutal, the most dramatic of which was the "Horned Fortune War", or another saying "Triangle Blessing". The former refers to Kakuei Tanaka and Takeo Fukuda, while the latter refers to the four most important political figures in the LDP at the time, each of whom took a word in their names, "Three" is Takeo Miki, "Horn" is Kakuei Tanaka, "Dai" is Masayoshi Ohira, and "Fu" is Takeo Fukuda. All four had served as Prime Minister of Japan, and all had played an important role in the normalization of diplomatic relations between China and Japan, and had good relations with the older generation of Chinese leaders at that time.
As the leader of the four major factions, he basically dominated the political struggle within Japan's Liberal Democratic Party in the 1970s, and every election was a variety of behind-the-scenes operations, and the core dispute was the "Kakufuku War". In the 1980s, There was also Yasuhiro Nakasone who came out to show his skills.
In the 1972 LDP presidential election, Kakuei Tanaka shook hands with Takeo Fukuda. Pictured from Current Affairs News Agency
At that time, the politics of the secret room or the politics of gold power was indeed very dirty. In the LDP presidential election, all members of parliament, local party departments, and some party members are eligible to vote, mainly to seize the members of parliament, so each faction will calculate the number of members of parliament on their own.
Just like the scenes that you see in documentaries or film and television works, party leaders gather in high-class kiosks in places like Akasaka and Nagatacho, which is "rubbing tangyuan" in The parlance of Taiwan. The big guy talks about things in the booth, and his men open a suite in the high-end hotel next door, called the "war room". Therefore, while talking about things, the big guys issued instructions to the hands of the "war room", and the parliamentarians who were willing to vote for themselves went to a certain private room in a certain hotel and were not allowed to come out after entering. At that time, they were all connected by landline, and the subordinates of all parties ran around the room to answer the phone and inform themselves of how many votes they had pulled. Some politicians once recalled that when the parliamentarian walked into Tanaka Kakuei's war room, he directly put a black suitcase in front of him, and opened it with money, which was equivalent to buying tickets on the spot. Tanaka Kakuei's closest mp, Tatsunan Ozawa, also admitted that every Mid-Autumn Festival or New Year's Day, Tanaka would send gifts to other parliamentarians, not only those who were in the same faction as him, but also other members of the party, with about 200 people.
The reason why the factions in the LDP party can form and control the party members for a long time is nothing more than the granting of political resources or funds, and to participate in local elections, money and contacts are needed. For example, I am a small person from the countryside of Akita Prefecture, Japan, who was elected to the Diet for the first time as a young member of the Liberal Democratic Party, and then I had to start occupying the seat and visiting the docks. After that, the various factions may come to you and give you some political resources and campaign funds to try for re-election, or do constituency coordination in the next election, for example, although this time you are electing a member of parliament in the Akita constituency, but the assessment is that the next constituency is not safe, and the faction valve is more powerful in another constituency, then let you move to that constituency. This is done to ensure that the political career of parliamentarians in Congress can be long-term and can give emerging legislators greater appeal, so they choose to join a certain faction.
After the parliamentarians join, they also have their own obligations, such as this presidential election, you must vote according to the instructions of the faction, not necessarily to support their own faction leaders, it is possible that the faction leaders have reached some kind of compromise, this time support A next time support B, parliamentarians must vote according to the instructions. Once you find out that someone is running away, wait and see for the next election.
This system of factional politics was very effective in the elections of the time, especially in the pre-90s central electoral district system. The central electoral district means that several candidates can be produced in the same constituency, as a member of the Liberal Democratic Party, it becomes very important to be able to squeeze into the LDP candidate list; because relatively speaking, in the central electoral district, the votes of voters of different political factions generally do not flow, I elect the Socialist Party, I elect the Socialist Party, the Democratic Party elects the Democratic Party, and there is rarely a "rebellion", so the LDP candidates can hardly pull votes from other support groups, such as only from the right-wing conservative groups. But it is impossible to get a ticket from the Communist Side. In this way, if a party member cannot become a public candidate of the party, it basically means that it is impossible to be elected.
Under the central electoral district system, for example, if 4 members of parliament can be elected in a constituency, the usual election structure is that the strongest candidate of the LDP is elected first in the constituency, and the second place is a candidate of the Socialist Party, because all the left-wing votes are poured on him, and then the third and fourth may still be the LDP. This is equivalent to three large factions can choose their own candidate.
However, after the introduction of the small electoral district system in the mid-to-late 1990s, only one person could be elected, which meant that as long as you were a person pushed out by the LDP, you could be elected almost without suspense. But at the same time, it also means that the resources that can be allocated in the hands of the faction valve are much less, and there were originally many seats that could be stuffed with their own people, but now they have suddenly changed the pattern of the original small party and the large faction, the Liberal Democratic Party is the largest, and the faction valve is no longer so important. Therefore, after the reform of the constituency system, the number of non-factional members in the Liberal Democratic Party has increased, for example, the current prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, has always advertised that he has no faction, and as of now, about 68 members of parliament are non-factional. If the non-faction is to be regarded as a faction, it is the second largest faction in the Liberal Democratic Party, after the Hosoda faction.
It should be noted that no faction valve does not mean that there is absolute no stick, or it will be relatively close to some politicians or faction valves, and sometimes they will act together.
Returning to the Kakufuku War, Kakuei Tanaka ran a construction company before entering politics and was successfully elected to the House of Representatives in Japan's second post-war general election in 1947 and the first election held under Japan's Peace Constitution. Since then, he has served in the party as the chairman of the political investigation committee, the secretary general, and other positions, and has also served as the minister of posts, the minister of finance, and the minister of international trade and industry in several cabinets, so it can be said that he has power and money.
As a former builder, Kakuei Tanaka was very enthusiastic about legislative work in land development, residential construction and transportation network construction, so he had a nickname called "Tanaka Earthworks Councillor", which means civil engineering. During his tenure, Kakuei Tanaka flaunted two major achievements, one was the normalization of Sino-Japanese diplomatic relations, and the other was the transformation of the Japanese archipelago and the vigorous construction of infrastructure, and there was a lot of gray space in it. For example, the excessive construction of highways, even in sparsely populated places, is behind the construction company after winning the bid, to the politician rebate, the politician relies on these gray income to engage in political operations.
Kakuei Tanaka's main experience is from nippon.com
In addition, the biggest difference between Kakuei Tanaka and Japanese politicians such as Shigeru Yoshida and Nobusuke Kishi is that Tanaka is completely grassroots, graduated from elementary school, and many techniques are "Noroko", full of Ichii's "wisdom". Of course, you can say that he is very angry, but he does not care, and even prides himself on it, unlike the traditional political elite.
If you know Japanese, you can search the Internet for Kakuei Tanaka's street speeches. He speaks with an accent and his voice is thick and rough, but it is easy to be impressed by him, because it is a grassroots language, there is no policy discourse. He is close to ordinary people on the street, criticizing politicians sitting in high positions for not understanding people's feelings, creating the feeling that we are a family, and the people love him very much. For Tanaka himself, it is also like a fish in the water. Of course, success or failure is here, and Tanaka Kakuei's game later led to many political corruption cases, such as the Lockheed case, and Tanaka also paid a huge price for it. As a former Prime Minister of Japan, he was arrested and retired from the Democratic Party, a corruption case that lasted 20 years and was finally convicted of Kakuei Tanaka in 1995, nearly two years after his death.
In contrast, Takeo Fukuda, who graduated from the University of Tokyo, started as a civil servant of the Japanese provincial government and then served as a politician's secretary, which is completely elite; in contrast, Tanaka Kakuei is a countryman. Therefore, we can imagine how fierce the struggle between the two men was, which was basically the main theme within the LDP in the 1960s and 1970s, and it can also be regarded as a two-line struggle within the LDP.
This may explain why the Japanese prime minister changed more quickly. On the one hand, it is because of Japan's political election mechanism, and on the other hand, the liberal democratic party's factional ecology determines that it is difficult for the prime minister to govern for a long time, because factions contain each other, compromise with each other, and take turns to sit on the throne. Therefore, long-term ruling situations such as Yasuhiro Nakasone, Junichiro Koizumi, and Shin Abe are very rare, and they are an outlier in Japanese politics. Under normal circumstances, it is relatively normal for the prime minister to serve for about two years, and if he can complete the four-year term, it is already a good result.
If the term of prime minister of one faction is too long, it is easy to become the attack center of other factions. For example, Abe's faction is the "Hosoda faction", which belongs to the conservative honmo, because he has been in power for a long time, so in the last election, it was not the Hosoda faction that came out, otherwise other factions would not be tolerated. After Abe resigned last year, Suga Yoshihide came to power, and the author wrote an analysis that Suga was able to come to power largely because of his status as a non-factional valve, which gave other factions the opportunity and time to continue to divide the cake, because they judged that Suga Yoshihide would be difficult to become a long-term regime.
Diagram of the liberal democratic party organization organization
"Koizumi Theater Show": Political Polarization
Although Kakuei Tanaka was not prime minister for a long time, it profoundly influenced Japanese politics throughout the 1970s; he has long played the role of "Kingmaker" behind the scenes, and this practice has affected another person, Ichiro Ozawa.
Ichiro Ozawa, a disciple of Kakuei Tanaka, entered the leadership of the Liberal Democratic Party in his forties and had the opportunity to compete for the LDP president and prime minister, but he seems to have been obsessed with being a "kingmaker". Ichiro Ozawa's greatest political enemy was Noboru Takeshita, who served as prime minister, and the "Takeshita faction" that originated from him still exists today. After Takeshita became prime minister, Ichiro Ozawa was somewhat excited, and to some extent gave birth to the 1993 LDP defeat.
In June 1993, Ozawa and Haneda led 44 LDP members of the Senate and the House of Representatives to quit the LDP; then gathered eight opposition parties to form a coalition regime and shouted the slogan "non-liberal and non-communist", with the sole goal of overthrowing the LDP's rule. The ultimate goal was indeed achieved, but the eight-party coalition was also a flash in the pan, and it ended after several prime ministers such as Haneda Andoichi Murayama.
Before the reform of the small electoral district system, Japanese politics experienced a period of great chaos and turmoil; from the Heisei era in 1989 until 1995, the change of prime minister was almost always in progress. The U.S. ambassador to Japan at the time had this to say when he reported to Japan: I have been ambassador to Japan for less than two years, and I have already met four prime ministers. It was not until 1995, when the LDP returned, that Ryutaro Hashimoto became prime minister, ending the eight-party rule.
Ichiro Ozawa's data chart is from Xinhua Net
The basic ecology of Japanese politics was that from 1989 to 1995, it was all sides that "raced against the central plains", and when Ryutaro Hashimoto came to power, the LDP began a long-term cooperation with the Komeito Party. Ryutaro Hashimoto was followed by Keizo Obuchi, but Obuchi died of a cerebral hemorrhage during his term as prime minister, and the LDP First Aid Medal promoted Yoshiro Mori as president to succeed him as prime minister. I believe that everyone knows something about Yoshiro Mori when watching the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, who served as the president of the Japanese Olympic Organizing Committee, and later resigned because of various inappropriate and discriminatory remarks.
Yoshiro Mori's rise to power has greatly highlighted a major drawback of the politics of the faction. Yoshiro Mori is a senior parliamentarian and party boss, but he did not pass the party election, let alone pass the national election, and he won the position of prime minister, which is completely the result of the bargaining of the major factions.
Yoshiro Mori's faction was the Hosoda faction, which was called the "Mori faction" at the time. He is indeed a master of "rubbing tangyuan" in party politics, and can effectively balance the forces of various factions, but when facing the public or formal occasions, he is somewhat off the table, lacks personal charm, and often speaks wildly in public speeches, such as "Japan is the land of god" and other inexplicable remarks. The japanese system dictates that such a person can become prime minister, and as long as the LDP thinks it's you next, it doesn't matter. During Mori's tenure, the LDP's support rate can be said to have fallen to the bottom, and he had no choice but to hold the president election in advance, at which time "political freak" Junichiro Koizumi appeared.
On September 4, 2005, then-Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi cheered for Yuriko Koike's election in the House of Representatives at a campaign rally near Tokyo's Ikebukuro Station. (Xinhua News Agency/AFP)
Of course, Junichiro Koizumi became a political star in the LDP because his slogan was to reform the LDP and overthrow the traditional factional politics in the LDP, thus capturing the support of many voters. After this round of tossing, there are indeed some "results". For example, he does not agree with the policies of some LDP bigwigs, and will "send assassins" to constituencies to "assassinate", which means to pick a young and middle-aged party member during the election and go to the constituencies of these bigwigs to dismantle the stage. Because this time has been changed to a small electoral district system, the constituency can only produce one person, the original constituency of the mposlove can continue to run, but Koizumi as the president of the Liberal Democratic Party can send other party members to fight against each other. Koizumi recruited a group of LDP youth or female party members, including Yuriko Koike, who was called "Koizumi children" by the media.
This set of practices has indeed stirred up muddy waters and changed the political ecology within the party, but in hindsight it has not really shaken the foundation of factional politics, but more just let the younger generation of politicians appear early.
Objectively, Junichiro Koizumi ushered in the era of the so-called "theater political show". After the introduction of small electoral districts in the 1990s, a new situation gradually formed, with the LDP getting bigger and bigger, and the left-right opposition becoming more and more distinct. In the past, under the big electoral district, it was the competition between candidates, and now the level of candidates has become indifferent, just like the "Koizumi children" of young people, your personal political views are not important, I am the president, give you the greatest political ability, every day to the constituency where you need to "assassinate" to help the election. Thus indirectly a paradigm was formed, that is, Junichiro Koizumi's "theater politics", in which the personalized and flattering media strategy of a party leader became very important, but the specific policies, ideologies, etc. of the political party were no longer so important.
It can be mentioned here that when Junichiro Koizumi first ran for president, his opponent was Ryutaro Hashimoto, who was a big man in the party and had deep political power within the party. So Koizumi did a few things, first recruiting Tanaka Makiko, the daughter of Kakuei Tanaka. Tanaka Kakuei's daughter is a bit like Park Geun-hye, and is deeply rooted in the true legend of Tanaka Kakuei. Therefore, public opinion is very fond of the image of Makiko Tanaka and Junichiro Koizumi singing a harmony, and the golden sentences are frequently published, setting off a whirlwind of media. Traditional politicians like Ryutaro Hashimoto have fallen out of favor in the media.
Makiko Tanaka (left) is known as the heroine of the "Koizumi Theater" pictured from fnn.jp
Although the LDP presidential election is an intra-party election, if there is a parliamentary election immediately after that, the importance and complexity of the presidential election will be magnified. Because for LDP MPs, if the image of the president's public opinion is better, it will be conducive to his next personal election, which makes more and more MPs vote for Koizumi. Coupled with Koizumi's public opinion tactics, it overwhelmed the world and eventually crushed Ryutaro Hashimoto and was successfully elected president of the Liberal Democratic Party. Later, he used the same pattern to crush the opposition parties and secure the prime minister's throne.
At that time, Koizumi's main words were, "Those who oppose me are against reform and oppose Japan's new future." Japanese political commentator Masayasu Hosaka once criticized this approach in his book History of Heisei for creating a political polar opposite, with no middle ground, which led to the emotions of everyone being very excited.
In 2005, Koizumi forcibly pushed for postal reform, and was rebelled by the LDP, who had to dissolve the parliament and hold an early election, but at the same time, in order to clean up these rebels, he sent a group of "assassins" such as Yuriko Koike, and the results were amazing. But it was at this time that Koizumi retreated and handed the baton to Abe.
In fact, this is also a problem of Koizumi's "theater politics", and he did not, like the later Abe, for example, by modifying the method of electing the president to allow himself to obtain a longer term. He is the one who left when his term of office is over, and indeed he has a personality; but at the same time, it is also difficult for the successors of Shinzo Abe or Yasuo Fukuda or other politicians to take over the mantle of the "Koizumi Theater", because his public opinion prestige is too high for those behind him to catch it. Abe faced this dilemma when he began his first term in 2006, exposing many problems more than a year later and eventually having to resign. In this regard, Koizumi may be the most important and powerful president of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party since 2000.
In contrast, although Abe has been in power for a long time, he is more likely to use the gaps between various factions to stabilize his long-term political power. Another important point is that Abe has greatly transformed the Japanese bureaucracy, taking the root cause of bureaucratic promotion in his own hands, thus taming the bureaucracy.
As an aside, in addition to taming the bureaucracy, Abe does have a "unique secret" in political operation: he has a strong political judgment and a steady and accurate grasp of the timing of the election, which is worthy of the influence of the political family. In contrast, Suga's ability to grasp this aspect is very weak, and he has repeatedly missed the best time to dissolve the parliament.
Distribution of LDP MPs (Wikipedia, August 2021)
"Koizumi reappears"? Generational rivalry within the Liberal Democratic Party
After Suga announced his resignation, the LDP presidential election drama began. The official announcement of the candidacy includes four candidates, Nameng Kishida, Sanae Takashi, Taro Kono and Seiko Noda. The specific election schedule is the announcement on September 17 and the vote on September 29, and the results should be available on the same day, including LDP MPs, local party members and party members. If there is no winner or loser in this round, that is, no one can get more than 50% of the votes, a second round of voting is required, and the top two with the highest votes are dueling.
If you enter the second round of voting. Then the situation will be more delicate, where the votes of the eliminators in the first round will become the key to the victory; at the same time, local party members and party members cannot participate in the second round of voting. For example, Shinzo Abe has competed with Shigeru Ishiba many times, and often Shigeru Ishiba is more popular in the local area and will get more local votes, but he can't win among the members of Congress.
Therefore, the number of candidates will directly affect the direction of the first round of voting, and even some people who are good at engaging in "conspiracies" can deliberately incite and encourage more people to participate in the first round in order to disperse the vote in order not to let someone break through 50% in the first round, so that the people who originally ranked second can get more opportunities in the second round of voting, because the second round of voting is only parliamentarians, which is more convenient for secret room politics. Therefore, some people think that Sanae Takaichi or Noda Seiko may be taking on the role of this "task".
In Tokyo, Japan, September 17, Candidates for the LDP presidential election, Taro Kono, Fumio Kishida, Sanae Takashi, and Seiko Noda (from left to right), candidates for the LDP presidential election, pose for a group photo at a news conference after their campaign speech. Pictured from Xinhua News Agency
First of all, Kishida Fumio, who first announced his candidacy, is more like the aforementioned Hashimoto Ryutaro, who currently has 46 members of parliament and ranks third and fourth in the Liberal Democratic Party, which is also a big faction.
In recent years, Kishida Fumio's relationship with Aso Taro, Toshihiro Niji, and Shinzo Abe has been OKAY, and he is basically in a state of equidistance with the big guys of all sides. If Abe had not temporarily resigned last year, but instead "retired from power," many believe that the presidency would have most likely been passed to him; that is, Kishida is the most suitable and secure candidate for president based on his party seniority or the LDP's traditional political inertia.
But because of the intermediate episode of Suga Yoshihide, his succession path was disrupted. At that time, there were news reports that when Abe suddenly announced that he was going to resign, Kishida was participating in a political event in the field, and he was very excited, thinking that it was finally his turn. But I didn't expect that the second-order secretary general "rubbed the tangyuan" behind the scenes and arched out Suga Yoshihide.
The second person to announce her candidacy is Takaichi Sanae, whose position is clear, that is, Abe's spokesperson, or even a microphone. If Suga is more like a moon, mainly reflecting the shadows of those who cooperate with him, then Takaichi Sanae is 100% Abe's puppet. Earlier, a reporter asked her very directly at the press conference, is choosing you equivalent to choosing Abe? She was very embarrassed to refuse to answer the question. Takashi Sanae even launched "Sanae Economics" at the policy level, which is almost exactly the same as "Abenomics"; in addition, it insisted on visiting the Yasukuni Shrine and proposed to amend the constitution. And as a female politician, she does not recognize the female emperor and opposes the surname of husband and wife, leading some commentators to say that her ideology is basically a most conservative "big boss".
Originally, some people analyzed whether the first female prime minister candidate would attract more women to vote, but if it was a high city, it was not necessarily, and it may even have the opposite effect. Overall, her election is unlikely, but it may have a spoiling effect. In this regard, the situation of Noda Seiko is somewhat similar to that of Takashi Sanae, that is, it is unlikely to be elected, but it is possible to "divide the votes". In contrast, Noda's policies are mostly the opposite of Takashi's.
Finally, there is Kono Taro, who in a way is very much like Junichiro Koizumi. First, he lacked political roots within the party. Although he is a member of the "Aso school", and the "Aso school" was passed down to Aso Taro by his father Yohei Kono, perhaps in the future it will be "returned" to Kono Taro, but now is certainly not the time. Moreover, Aso's attitude toward Kono is now very ambiguous. Previously, when Suga was "dying and struggling", he hoped to increase his popularity through the adjustment of party personnel and the reorganization of the cabinet, such as the second-order Toshihiro relinquishing the position of secretary general and considering letting Kono Taro take over, but when discussing this matter with Aso Taro, Aso threw a sentence to Suga Yoshihide: You are already a ship to sink, don't pull Kono to board with you. In this way, Aso is caring for Kono.
On the other hand, recently there have been media reports that Kono has visited Aso Taro for his candidacy and hopes to get the unanimous support of the Aso faction. As of now, Aso Taro and the "Aso school" have not yet had a unified statement, so it is very likely that in this presidential election, the "Aso school" is an autonomous vote, that is, it will not give a unified instruction. As a result, Aso's attitude does not seem to be so supportive, and he even explicitly warned Kono that even if you become prime minister, it is likely to be a short-lived regime.
In addition, some elderly tycoons in the LDP have a contradictory attitude toward Kono. On the one hand, after all, his father left a legacy of political factions, and everyone will take care of Kono, but on the other hand, he is afraid that Kono will not be able to control it after he grows bigger. Therefore, if you are separated from Kono, you are both defensive and used.
Taro Aso warned Kono that even if he became prime minister, it would be a short-lived regime.
Kono Taro himself is a very maverick person. He was elected president of the Liberal Democratic Party as early as 2009. At that time, he had never been a minister of state, and he was only a young party member who dared to elect a president, and as a result, he also got more than 100 votes, which shows that this person's personality is dare to think and dare to do. Moreover, he has long said publicly that his goal is to become the prime minister of Japan. This is very different from the traditional style of Japanese society, and it has never hidden its political ambitions. His logic is that since he chose the path of politicians, of course, he must look at the prime minister's position, so there is no need to hide his political ambitions.
In addition, Kono Taro is one of the few Japanese politicians with an international outlook. It has to do with his experience in the United States, where he speaks fluent English with almost no accent. In this regard, he is also an acceptable candidate for the United States. In addition, the personal image is relatively young, the dress is more fashionable, and it is easy to win the favor of female voters.
Taro Kono answered questions on Twitter
Most importantly, he loves and excels at the web and social media, with 2.3 million followers on Twitter in Japan, the highest of any Japanese lawmaker. When he was chatting with a Japanese political reporter, he openly said that he was the best person in the LDP who used a smartphone, and the first thing he met when he met a reporter was to add a Twitter friend. Kono is very keen to answer questions from netizens on Twitter, and will also engage in online live broadcasting. When he visited China during his visit to China as foreign minister, he took a selfie with Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying and posted it on Twitter, which was collectively praised by Japanese netizens.
His approach is popular with young people, and according to current polls, his approval ratings in the 20- to 45-year-old age range are far ahead. A recent poll of candidates' overall approval ratings showed Kono ranked first, about 30 percent. So, from this point of view, Kono Taro is very similar to Junichiro Koizumi in 2000. Interestingly, Koizumi Junichiro's son, Shinjiro Koizumi, also publicly announced his support for Kono's candidacy for president.
Koizumi Jiro Omoteso Support Taro Kono
Our observation then is whether Kono can jump out in the party vote at the end of September and turn his high popularity into party support. This involves young members of the Liberal Democratic Party and a group of MPs with relatively weak support, who may be more inclined to Kono Taro because of the imminent parliamentary elections. Judging from the current situation, if Kono becomes president, the LDP will certainly have an advantage in the following House election. In contrast, Kishida Fumio may be a state that neither adds nor subtracts points. To be honest, the LDP has been in power for a long time, and the people always have some tiredness and rebellious mentality, and compared with old-school politicians like Kishida, Kono's expectations are very high.
But on the other hand, a group of "old-school valves" in the LDP still have deep prejudices against Kono Taro, for example, Gan Liming, who was the former chairman of the LDP, has publicly issued some very vicious complaints, such as "I can't understand why Kono's support rate is so high, isn't he in charge of vaccines, before the vaccine was so bad." But in this regard, Kono's own statement is that it is also his merit that the vaccine application rate can reach this level now. In a TBS evening news interview the other day, he said that the current second dose coverage of the vaccine is almost the same as that of the United States.
Another variable associated with Kono Taro is Shigeru Ishiba, who recently publicly expressed his support for Kono. Shigeru Ishiba is very interesting, and has been in the non-mainstream of the party for a long time, but his eloquence and knowledge are quite good. His views on related policy issues may even be more savvy than Abe and Aso. But Abe and Aso have a deep dislike for Shigeru Ishiba, so shigeru Ishiba's high-profile support for Kono now will definitely cause a lot of headaches for the party bosses. Next, it depends on how much endorsement Kono can get from the main faction of the Liberal Democratic Party, and whether the young MPs will continue to create the older generation for their own electoral interests.
Based on this background, we can understand this LDP presidential election as a generational war within the LDP. From Shinzo Abe to Yoshihide Suga, a series of negative policies and news have given the people too many bad feelings, so the LDP urgently needs a politician who has a sense of distance from them to stand up and have an innovative posture.
However, regardless of the outcome of the presidential election, the LDP's factionalist politics has continued since its founding in 1955, and this state of affairs will continue as long as the LDP continues to dominate as a single party. Because in the final analysis, it is still a question of resource allocation, as long as the positions of parliamentarians, cabinet members, and presidents are placed there, then the dispute over distribution will not stop.
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