Japan's election

Railing against the wrong enemy

As an historic campaign starts, both main candidates take aim at free-market capitalism as well as each other

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When a country has population that is double what the country can feed from its own food production, the country is overpopulated, and there will be instinctive inhibition against reproduction. Japan is a prime example of natural correction mechanism in action.


There must be something wrong with the Japanese society.
Statistics shows that the percentage of unmarried people, especially unmarried men is increasing rapidly. Please see the graph below.

The blue line shows the percentage of 50-year-old men who have never married. The red line shows the percentage of 50-year-old women who have never married. In 2005 more than 15 % of 50-year-old men have never married. That reflects the so-called dual labour market in Japan. Now non-regular workers like dipatched personnels account for 33% of the Japanese labour force, and they are so poor that they cannot have a family.


Mr. Anjin-San,

Please remember that America is so admiring of Japan that it is the first country since the 1960s (France and Great Britain) that has culturally taken America by storm.

The Japanese culture has captivated America... America may be taken over by Chinese money but it will be a Japanized America that IS there, whatever actually happens.

I myself am a computer lover, and Japan's culture seems to gravitate towards the computer and modernity (technology) and it seems to love the present and future...therefore, if you look at America, it is not opposed to

a Japan with High Self Esteem, high economic growth and lastly, high qualitative growth. :)


Excellent writing Mr. Old Collegian, that is one big reason why people are recommending your comment.


@aidan clarke
In the 20th Century, most people mistook "Growth" to mean "Quantitative Growth", which could be measured by one's bank account, or a country's foreign reserves. This is far from the truth:
A true wealth of any nation lies in the qualitative aspects that can not be easily measured. Yet, it is my distinct feeling that the quantitative "Growth" of Japan came hand in hand with a qualitative dilution and decline. Now may be the time to reverse this trend by bringing up fewer but better children.
If the number of children halves, we should be able to halve the number of pupils in a class, and NOT halve the number of classes or teachers. We should be able to take better care of fewer people. If not, that is a result of mismanagement, either by outdated legal structure or stupid people in power, or both.
This Sunday, I hope, will bring first steps to that change, and I fully intend to do my part (about 1 part in 70 million) to bring about that change.


Taro Aso is a playboy because he dose not want we to marry. He wants to love all gurls of Japan even old gurls... haha...

I wish nobody go to vote and they must broke this society better. Japanese society is only old peoples to keep all things of younger peoples and want to rob more, more, more...

Cardinal Jones

In fairness, I would call free market capitalism as recently practiced here in "the west" (bailouts, clunker schemes, plus the well-established web of lobbyist ties between industries and the agencies meant to regulate them) to be quite a "mushy-sounding concept," too.


Somehow, i find this evil anti market programs great :-). The Japanese system today is in effect a two class worker system, whereby the young are more likely to be in the second class. Thats in no way aceptable.

Old Collegian

It appears that the DPJ juggernaut is inexorably heading for victory in the Diet Election of 30 August 2009. Poll after poll has forecast imminent victory for the decade-old Opposition party - the latest ones predicting between 300 and 320 DPJ seats in the Lower House, a massive majority for a new, untried, heterogeneous party that has yet to specify in detail how it will fund its widely-popular manifesto of "change." If embattled LDP Prime Minister Mr Taro Aso is soundly defeated in seven days' time, DPJ leader Mr Yukio Hatoyama will have an indisputable mandate to take Japan in some new directions. For example, a DPJ Government might terminate Japan's MSDF refuelling mission in the Indian Ocean, reduce the American military presence in Japan, move closer diplomatically and economically to China and be less accommodating towards the United States in both foreign and defence policy. Mr Hatoyama, whilst not repudiating the long-standing Japan-US alliance, has said that Japan should not simply rely on the United States (as it has generally done in the past.) The alliance will continue under a DPJ Government, though its management will be more complicated than it has been previously. Japanese voters themselves are deeply worried about their declining standard of living, rising unemployment figures and growing poverty levels. Across Japan, almost 230,000 temporary workers have lost their jobs since the recession began in 2008, pushing the jobless rate to 5.4% - a six year high. Moreover, many Japanese now fear for the future and are relying on welfare payments or longer working hours simply to survive. Official figures for April 2009 show that a record 1.2 million households were on benefits. Needless to say, such economic hardship in what was once the richest society in Asia has produced deep public anger with the ruling LDP Government. As Economics Professor Noriko Hama at Doshisha Business School in Kyoto says, "Voters are totally fed up with the one-party LDP rule. Nobody believes in it any more and people are really desperately wanting to see a change." Such words could be truly prophetic as the largest democracy in Northeast Asia moves steadily towards its final destiny.

aidan clarke

Anjin-San, what specific policies would work better, and why? In response to a changing world, every country needs to be either innovative and flexible, or manage to carve out an inimitable, unassailable niche.

belle neige

Ironically, the anti-American (and sometimes anti-semitic) street-level interpretation reported by Anjin-San conforms to the biases that Bryan Caplan (The Myth of the Rational Voter) found among American voters.


In more practical terms, here is a street-level interpretation of Koizumi "Reforms" that led to this strong anti-market sentiment:

Postal Reform : Let AIG Goldman Sachs have access to the trillions of Postal Savings and Insurance.
Jury Reform : Let US Law Firms have field day in making millions out of tort and jury manipulation.

In short, we think that Koizumi was George W Bush's colonial governor of Japan, and not our prime minister....


Anglo-American "Free Market" is heavy on Liberte, but at the expense of both Egalite and, particularly, Fraternite (my PC can't do an accent, but the words are supposed to be French).

Average Japanese undestands the consept of "Free Market Fundamentalism" as being "Everything has a price", and many feel strong revulsion in putting price tags on their loved ones...

Londoner 383

Sounds like voting decision can as well be based on a coin toss as neither parties seem to know what they can do after winning to alleviate current economic issues while more hazy about political and militaristic strategies !!

Perhaps the elected govt should hire a management consultancy :)


I am endlessly amused by the single-issue nature of the New Komeito. The party has nothing to say beyond criticizing postal privatization, which was supported by the populace and seems to be doing quite well. More importantly, very few care enough about the issue to let it influence how they vote. What in the world are the New Komeito dinosaurs thinking?



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