Japan Press Weekly

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2010 April 14 - 20 TOP3 [POLITICS]

New parties, old content

The Your Party

“We must push ahead with the structural reform policy by leaving what the private sector can do to the private sector and what local governments can do to the local governments, otherwise Japan cannot break out of the knife-edge situation,” said Watanabe Yoshimi in his latest book “Minshuto Seiji no Shotai (identity of DPJ politics).” He founded the Your Party in January 2009 after resigning from the Liberal Democratic Party.

The party aims to further promote the structural reform policy on the grounds that the Koizumi reform was incomplete. The Koizumi reform led to increasing poverty and widening social gaps.

The party calls for reform in the civil servant system as the centerpiece of its policies. It wants to remove a large number of national public service servants and replace them with help from private companies. Its goal is to make Japan an authoritarian state by diminishing the role of government employees as servants of the entire community and eroding services for the general public. Party Leader Watanabe stresses the need to significantly reduce the number of parliamentarians and the need to empower the state to intervene or engage in the internal affairs of political parties.

It also intends to increase the consumption tax rate and has adopted the same policy as the LDP in regard to the Futenma base issue by arguing, “To relocate the Futenma base to the sea off the Henoko district of Nago City is a fixed agreement between Japan and the United States.”

The Sunrise Party of Japan

Hiranuma Takeo, Yosano Kaoru, and Sonoda Hiroyuki on April 10 showed up at a news conference as founders of a new party called the Sunrise Party of Japan. They were all important members of the LDP. Hiranuma served as the Economic, Trade and Industry Minister under the Mori and Koizumi Cabinets. The party’s co-founder Yosano was the LDP Policy Research Council chairman at the time of the Koizumi Cabinet, the State Minister in Charge of Economic, Fiscal and Financial Policy, and the Chief Cabinet Secretary in the Aso government. Sonoda was the former acting LDP secretary general.

Both the party platform and the inaugural declaration state that the party will work to establish a new constitution.

Yosano said, “The current financial situation tells us that Japan could possibly become bankrupt,” shutting his eyes to his own responsibility for making such situation.

In the latest issue of the monthly magazine Bungeishunju, Yosano criticizes the Democratic Party of Japan, saying, “It is extremely irresponsible to spread the illusion that financial recovery is possible without raising the consumption tax rate.” The new party’s founding declaration calls for job opportunities to be increased through deregulation and consumption tax revenues.

Hiranuma chairs the Japan Conference Dietmembers’ Council, the pro-Yasukuni force trying to glorify and justify Japan’s past war of aggression. In his book, he offers a draft revision of the Constitution, including the maintenance of military forces and the inclusion of the right to collective self-defense.

Nippon Soshinto copies its policy off business circles

Another new party, Nippon Soshinto, was formed on April 18 by incumbent and former local government heads. Its leading members include Tokyo’s Suginami Ward Head Yamada Hiroshi, former Yokohama Mayor Nakata Hiroshi, and former Yamagata Governor Saito Hiroshi. In their joint contribution to the May issue of the monthly magazine Bungeishunju, they stir up a sense of crisis by predicting Japan’s economic collapse in three years, and argue for a business-circle-oriented structural reform policy.

They call for putting in the hands of the private sector whatever can be done by the private sector; reduction in the corporate income tax rate to at least 30%; and introduction of the “do/shu” system which replaces the present 47 prefectures with 10 “do/shu” as regional administrative units. These are exactly the same policies the Liberal Democratic Party has long argued for. They are boasting that the privatization of public child-care centers is one of their achievements.

They are also adopting the same restructuring plan to cut national and local public workers by one-third as the other new parties. Both Yamada and Nakata had junior high schools adopt the controversial history textbook glorifying Japan’s war of aggression edited by the conservative Society for History Textbook Reform.

Komei Party is a coexecutor of maladministration

Komei Party Chief Representative Yamaguchi Natsuo said, “People want to break out of the present impasse. Their demands are expressed in the expectations of a third force.” In his street-speeches, he states that he believes the Komei Party can be the third force.

This party, however, allied with the Liberal Democratic Party to reduce the social welfare budget by 220 billion yen every year, promoted the deregulation of labor laws in the name of advancing a growth strategy, and supported the refueling of foreign warships by the Self-Defense Forces in the Indian Ocean and the dispatch of the SDF to Iraq. The party has not reflected on its responsibility for the present impasse of ruining people’s living standards and peace.

Although there are voices within the party saying, “We can no longer cooperate with the traditional Liberal Democratic Party, the image of which is interest-hunting, old-guard thinking and dwindling,” the Komei Party leadership, behind closed doors, is now fostering relations of cooperation with Your Party members who are ex-LDP members, in view of advancing in the coming House of Councilors election.
- Akahata, April 19, 2010