Koizumi and Japanese Politics

Reform Strategies and Leadership Style

Yu Uchiyama

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9781135149703
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book offers an empirical and theoretical study of the Koizumi administration, covering such issues as the characteristics of its political style, its domestic and foreign policies, and its larger historical significance. The key questions that guide its approach are: what enabled Koizumi to exercise unusually strong leadership, and what structural transformations of Japanese politics did he achieve?

Uchiyama looks at policy-making processes, newly created institutional arenas such as the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy, Koizumi's populist strategy, foreign policy, and neo-liberal convictions to assess the historical significance of his administration and seek out the basis for its wide public support.

Finally, the book undertakes a normative evaluation of the merits and demerits of the Koizumi administration's political style, and compares it with the Abe and Fukuda administrations that came after. This book will be of interest to scholars and students with an interest in comparative politics, administrative reform, and contemporary Japan.

1
Koizumi’s management of politics

Koizumi Junichir

held office for five years and five months, from the day his administration took office on 26 April 2001 to the day he stepped down on 26 September 2006. He maintained consistently high popular support ratings throughout as he fundamentally changed the face of Japanese politics in multiple respects, ranging from the structure of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to the policy-making process and the image of the prime minister.

This chapter seeks to cast the way the Koizumi administration carried out its political operations into sharp relief by considering the two dimensions to his character as prime minister: the sentiment-driven ‘prime minister of pathos’ and the executive authority-wielding ‘strong prime minister’. Previous researchers have considered his administration from a variety of angles. Here, I seek to offer a comprehensive analysis of its defining features by approaching it from these two sides.

The present chapter will also address the question of what the sources of Koizumi’s ‘strength’ as a prime minister were. Did he draw on his personal power for that strength, or did he benefit from changes in the institutional system since the latter half of the 1990s that made Kantei-led policy-making possible? Considering these questions should help to deepen our understanding not only of the Koizumi administration but also of how Japan’s prime minister functions.

Populist style, or the ‘prime minister of pathos’

Koizumi’s media strategy

Prime Minister Koizumi gave a great deal of consideration to acutely impressing the average person with his image. He attached greater importance to making his appeals directly to the general public and winning their support than to building up his power base within the LDP. A political style aimed at gaining favour with the public in this fashion is commonly termed ‘populism’ in politics. While Koizumi was hardly the first Japanese prime minister to use this approach—one notable example being Hosokawa Morihiro, who held office from August 1993 to April 1994—none had been as successful at it as he was.

The victory Koizumi achieved against almost everyone’s predictions in the spring 2001 LDP presidential contest was based on a landslide win in the party primary against the backdrop of his national popularity. His support in opinion polls immediately after taking office reached then-unheard-of highs of above 80 per cent.

As prime minister, Koizumi spoke to the public in a clear-cut language dubbed ‘one-phrase’ (wanfur

zu

) by the Japanese media for the curtness of his remarks. At times he would dramatize confrontations with his political enemies in a calculated effort to arouse public interest. His skilful use of such methods to keep his administration afloat successfully maintained its public support at high levels. The 50 per cent support rate his cabinets averaged was the second highest in the postwar period, bested only by the 68 per cent achieved by the Hosokawa Cabinet, which lasted for only nine months.¹ This support sustained his administration’s long term in office, the third longest for a postwar prime minister.

Koizumi’s populist approach was characterized by his media strategy, his penchant for casting issues as matters of good and evil, and his patterns of speech. First of all, it was only because Koizumi had a media strategy that his methods could achieve maximum efficiency. The essence of this strategy lay in making aggressive use of media that had so far stood on the fringes of the established political press corps.

Under the 1955 system, newspapers formed the core of the press corps covering politics. Newspapers relied for their coverage on beat reporters, called bankisha

, who collected information by forming close relationships with politicians. Television reporters remained on the outside of these insider groups comprised of politicians and reporters on the political beat.² It was coverage of the political reforms and realignments that occurred during the early 1990s that built momentum for the role of television media to gain increased attention.

An excellent example of this new awareness of television’s role is how the Hosokawa administration came to be labelled the ‘Kume-Tahara Coalition Government’ (after Kume Hiroshi, then anchorman of the popular weekday evening News Station television programme and Tahara S

ichir

, moderator of the long-running Sunday Project current affairs talk show) based on the widely held perception that television reports critical of the preceding LDP government had been a factor in its demise. This example illustrates the dramatically expanded role played by television in contemporary politics that has led some to speak of ‘telepolitics’. Koizumi saw this situation clearly and used television aggressively and to great effect.

First of all, Koizumi completely changed how burasagari

(‘hanging in tow’) press briefings were carried out. Until this point, burasagari usually referred to the prime minister answering reporters’ questions while on the move around the Kantei (prime minister’s official residence) or the Diet. Koizumi’s method, however, was to stop where the television cameras stood and talk.

Under Koizumi, such press briefings were held twice a day, once at midday and once in the evening. The midday briefing was conducted without television cameras, primarily with the newspapers in mind. The evening briefing, on the

Photo 1.1 Koizumi holds rally. Crowds throng to a speech by Koizumi after the LDP presidential election of April 2001. His striking and clear-cut way of speaking carried by the mass media captivated many and won the public to his side. Photo credit: The Yomiuri Shimbun.

other hand, held as Koizumi was about to leave the Kantei for the day, was conducted with the cameras rolling.³ Koizumi often came out with some deeply striking comment at this evening event, a scene that would then be broadcast on the evening news programmes. Koizumi’s pronouncements and public assertions were effectively diffused among the populace through this routine.

Among the print media, Koizumi favoured the weekly tabloid magazines and sports newspapers, which heretofore had stood on the fringes of the political press corps, over the major newspapers (the so-called ‘quality papers’). He put a premium on appearing in such publications, would hold informal talks with the magazines’ editors and reporters, and forced the cabinet press club to admit sports newspapers. The sensational, dramatized reporting such publications favoured suited Koizumi’s populist style.⁴

Pitting good vs evil

The term ‘populism’ generally refers to the position that popular opinion ought to be indulged or accommodated, but we can define it here with greater precision. According to political scientist Otake Hideo, populism is characterized by a ‘theatrical’ political style that presupposes binary oppositions between ‘the average person’ and ‘the elite’, ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’, or ‘friends’ and ‘enemies’. The leader is cast in the role of the ‘hero’ who, standing firmly on the average person’s side, leads them in confronting and doing battle with ‘the enemy’.⁵

In fact, Koizumi called the zoku lawmakers and bureaucrats who opposed such reforms as his efforts to eliminate public corporations and to privatize the highway public corporations ‘forces of resistance’ (teik

seiryoku

). He constructed an oppositional framework in which they were ‘bad’ and he was ‘good’. The way he dramatized the confrontation between himself and the ‘forces of resistance’ was grist to the mill of television variety programmes, which normally did not cover such topics, and attracted the attention also of those who normally had little interest in politics. Koizumi’s structural reforms picked up a strong tailwind of popular support owing to the spread of this black-and-white view of the world among the public at large. In contrast, the anti-reform faction found itself presented in a morally negative light.⁶

Having made postal privatization the only contested issue in the 2005 general election, Koizumi vowed to not endorse any politicians who opposed the draft of his privatization bill, and dispatched carpetbagger candidates to run in their districts as what the media dubbed ‘assassins’ (shikaku

). Koizumi again painted a black-and-white picture that pitted good against evil, with rebel lawmakers in the role of the ‘bad guys’ blocking reforms and injuring the public interest, while Koizumi and his ‘assassins’ were playing the part of the ‘good guys’ pursuing reform. The strategy paid off and the LDP scored an unprecedentedly massive victory, thanks in particular to this strategy’s enormous appeal to independent voters.

As Koizumi’s achievement of postal privatization by these means demonstrates, depicting issues in black-and-white terms in an effort to mobilize public support allowed him to increase his influence over the policy-making process to a marked degree. Koizumi achieved greater policy transformations than any prime minister before him thanks to his effective use of populist techniques and a string of reforms to the political system and government structure that preceded his term in office. I will return to these points.

Koizumi’s patterns of speech

Another characteristic of Koizumi’s methods lay in his manner of speaking. When addressing the public he relied on easily understood terms and simple assertions, a style referred to in Jap...

Table of contents

• Routledge/University of Tokyo Series
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Editorial note
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Koizumi’s management of politics
• 2 Domestic affairs
• 3 Foreign relations
• 4 The Koizumi administration in historical and theoretical perspective
• 5 Legacies of the Koizumi administration
• Postscript
• Afterword and acknowledgements
• Appendix 1 Diet election results under the Koizumi administration
• Appendix 2 Koizumi cabinet approval rating trends in public opinion surveys
• Appendix 3 The Koizumi administration: a timeline
• Appendix 4 Glossary
• Appendix 5 Personal names
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index