The White Peril 白禍

Polls opened for the House of Councillors (upper house) election this morning. The run-up has been contentious in a rather boring way, with cabinet members suffering from the usual misappropriation scandals and foot-in-mouth syndrome but none of the sense of momentousness of the Koizumi-era show-downs. I miss that guy. Even the Nikkei reports come off somewhat listless:

Issues such as pensions and "politics and money" are the points of contention in the twenty-first upper house election, for which voting began on the morning of 29 July. Ballot counting will begin today.

The focus is on whether the ruling or opposition coalition will capture the majority in the upper house. The results of the election will have a major influence on the overall political future of the Abe cabinet. The direction of the results is expected to be clear by late tonight.

According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, 16.93% of the electorate had voted by 11 a.m., exceeding by 0.21 percentage points the comparable figure for the last election in 2004.

Nevertheless, this could be a turning point. The DPJ-led opposition is not pushing a policy platform that differs all that much from that of the LDP this time around. It's focusing instead on accusing the LDP of fat cat syndrome--corruption and lack of transparency.

The office of agriculture/forestry/fisheries minister Norihiko Akagi obligingly ensured there would be a fresh LDP scandal blanketing the media this election weekend:

Farm minister Norihiko Akagi flew back from Beijing on Friday and landed in yet another political fund scandal--this one involving photocopied receipts to doubly book spending by his two political organizations.

The new irregularities were uncovered by The Asahi Shimbun, which obtained copies of Akagi's political fund reports from Ibaraki Prefecture under the information disclosure system.

...

Akagi has been under fire for huge and dubious office expenses reported by the support group based in his parents' home.

His mother at one time said the group rarely met at the home, and that she covered the utility bills.

Added later: What they're showing so far is 29 wins for the LDP and Shin-Komeito combined and 54 for the DPJ, Communist Party of Japan, and Social Democratic Party of Japan combined. Abe has said that he plans to think carefully about reshuffling his cabinet as a move to "take responsibility." JNN, one of the networks I've been flipping through, has been flashing viewer e-mails across the top of the screen. The running themes, not surprisingly, are "this is what the LDP gets!" and "we'll be watching you, DPJ!"

The Asahi ran a story yesterday that concludes that Japan's "lost generation" (those who came of age in the years following the bursting of the Bubble) is showing itself ready to assume the role in politics it's been avoiding. Based on the people profiled, I'm not so sure that's a good thing:

After she graduated from university in 1998, Yamamoto decided she wanted no part in "mass consumer society." Instead, she rented a 20-hectare farm in Niigata Prefecture and set about making a living through organic farming.

She barely managed and had to supplement her income by working part-time as a waitress at a nearby onsen. After two years, she gave up the farm and her job to volunteer her time and energy to local nonprofit activities.

She started by joining protests against the planned construction of a nuclear plant in the village of Maki. In 2003, she joined the village assembly. During this period, Yamamoto occasionally found odd jobs which paid little more than 200,000 yen a year.

While campaigning in a shopping district in downtown Niigata on July 15, Yamamoto emphasized that she understands what it's like to be young and poor.

...

As part of her campaign platform she pledges to correct the income and benefit disparity between full-time and part-time workers.

There's a certain droll logic to the idea that becoming a politician is the obvious next step for someone who's spent her adult life avoiding work that has market value and generates wealth. However, being newly engaged with the political system is not the same as having learned anything useful about policy. There's young and poor because you can't find any steady work, and then there's young and poor because you turn up your nose at the possibility of working in "mass consumer society."

Promising to "correct" disparities implies that it's a good idea for the government to continue the Japan Inc.-era practice of knob-twiddling with prices and wages--exactly the sort of behavior that helped the Bubble to inflate and burst in the first place. Perhaps, despite her overall failure as a farmer, Yamamoto managed to grow a money tree that she can use to make up the difference between freeters' value to the economy and what she thinks they should be paid. If not, the major problems remain bureaucratic drag and the contraction of the population, neither of which is addressed by the Diet hopefuls quoted by the Asahi.