The Economist - USA (2019-07-20)

TheEconomistJuly 20th 2019 31

1

I

t is theopposite of election fever. On

July 21st Japan will go to the polls to vote

for 124 of 245 seats in the upper house,

where members sit for six years. Were it not

for the posters, the odd noisy campaign

van and occasional rallies outside train sta-

tions, few people would notice. The vote is

not the main topic of conversation in the

media nor in crowded cafés. Indeed, given

the lack of interest, some analysts fret that

turnout will dip below 50%.

There is little upheaval in Japan’s poli-

tics, but that does not make them healthy.

Turnout has long been falling for all age

groups (see chart on next page)—and the

decline may accelerate if the young remain

disengaged as they age. The lowering of the

voting age in 2016 from 20 to 18 seems to

have made little difference. Faith in the

system is faltering, too. In 2018 only 40% of

Japanese said they were happy with their

democracy, down by ten percentage points

from a year earlier, according to the Pew Re-

search Centre, an American think-tank.

The dearth of interest is not for lack of

pressing issues. Three topics are dominat-

ing the election. The first is a planned hike

in the consumption tax from 8% to 10%,

which is intended to slow the growth of Ja-

pan’s monstrous public debt (currently

around 250% of gdp), but which many

economists fear could cause the long-fal-

tering economy to stumble yet again. The

second is pensions. The government has

tried to disown, play down and deny the re-

cent finding of the Financial Services Agen-

cy, a regulator, that the average elderly cou-

ple will need to top up their public pension

by an eye-watering 20m yen ($185,000) to

maintain a reasonable standard of living.

The third is a proposed amendment to the

pacifist clause of the constitution to make

it clear that the Self-Defence Forces, Japan’s

army in all but name, is legal (the govern-

ment has abandoned the idea of scrapping

the clause altogether).

The amendment is the first item in the

manifesto of the ruling Liberal Democratic

Party (ldp), but polls suggest a majority of

voters oppose it. Nonetheless, the ldpis

likely to win handsomely. It has ruled for

all but a handful of the past 65 years. At the

moment, says Aurelia George Mulgan of

the University of New South Wales, there is

only “a weak desire to throw the bastards

out”. “It is practically a one-party state,”

says Hajime Yoshikawa of the Social Demo-

cratic Party.

A few, like Mieko Nakabayashi, a former

mp with the Democratic Party of Japan

(dpj), blame voters for not giving opposi-

tion parties a chance despite supporting

many of their policies. The dpj’s three-year

stint in power from 2009 to 2012 was “not

enough time to raise a baby”, she laments.

The dpj’s chaotic tenure made voters wary

of turning to the opposition—a reluctance

reinforced by nettlesome foreign-policy

problems that seem to demand experi-

enced hands, such as North Korea’s nuclear

programme, China’s military build-up and

American protectionism.

The law that restricts most forms of

campaigning to between 12 and 17 days, de-

Democracy in Japan

Yawning in the face of danger

TOKYO

A largely predictable election is a sign of a worrying political malaise

Asia

32 Pakistan’stribalareas

33 Banyan:JapanandSouthKorea

34 Australia’sveryhighminimum wage

34 CivillibertiesinMalaysia

35 Opulent Afghan weddings

Also in this section