Following on from the last note, staying in and with Japan, as the recent elections can be a ‘teachable moment’, as we like to say in the classroom. What it speaks to is deepening structural stresses that are exceeding existing modes of governance. In many ways, what can be found are Japan-specific manifestations of wider problems and tendencies: destabilising economic imbalances, rates of change that are too fast for societies, digital technologies that are socially disintegrative, the consequences of COVID-19 remaining very present but submerged and generally avoided, big corporations creating realities that most people have not asked for and do not want, all met by underwhelming politicians and aged political structures that are ill-fitting for the scope and scale of these complex and compounding challenges. To which can be added the other big structural shifts and stresses: a global re-ordering in relation to the competing and contrasting roles of the US and China, significant transitions in energy markets and mixes, all alongside a warming climate and pushing beyond other planetary boundaries.
Zooming in on Japan: the results were largely as expected: inflation and economic concerns were central, with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) - Komeito coalition doing poorly, social media savvy politicians having an advantage, and lo-res populists gaining ground. The dominant LDP is now in a much weakened position, it is difficult to feel especially sorry for them.
Describing a ‘system in crisis’, Tobias Harris identifies the real frustrations and failings with a way of doing politics that is not addressing the demands of the electorate and not working well. It is short both democratic and performance legitimacy.
Ultimately both the DPFP [the Democratic Party for the People] and Sanseitō have been able to tap into the anger of younger generations at a political system that has often seemed closed to them, a “silver democracy” and an economy that has seen real incomes stagnant as the cost of living rises. The parties’ successes may reflect their ability to communicate with younger voters through the information channels they use and address their concerns, rather than an indicator that young Japanese are overwhelmingly right wing, not least because their ideological perceptions may differ from common understandings.
Oddly enough, polls suggested that the public wanted exactly what happened. The ruling parties lost seats but have not lost power and the ruling and opposition parties are almost perfectly matched in the upper house. The problem is that it is difficult to see how this political situation – in which the prime minister and most of the established parties are diminished, while the new parties are growing but are still far from dominant – will yield policies that address the sources of public anger in the first place.
As this survey from Asahi suggests, Youtube and social media are having an impact. Anyone who has travelled on the metro in Tokyo and looked at what people are viewing on their phones should not be particularly surprised by this. There is nothing particularly exceptional: by now we have abundant evidence of how social media and algorithms are distorting and warping democratic politics, but little is done.
Beyond algo cooking, however, these results do reflect real problems, real frustrations. There has been a lot of emphasis on Sanseitō’s anti-immigrant appeals, and Noah Smith offers a balanced take on the challenges the country has with a growing foreign population and the awfulness of over-tourism. The most positive way you can read this development is that it is pushing Japanese politics to address these issues before they develop into more significant grievances and problems.
Perry Anderson’s recent LRB piece, ‘Regime Change in the West?’, captures an important aspect of contemporary populism:
What differentiates today’s rebellions is that they lack any comparably articulated ideologies or programmes – anything that matches the theoretical or practical consistency of neoliberalism itself. They are defined by what they are against, far more than what they are for. What do they protest against? The neoliberal system of today, as yesterday, embodies three principles: escalation of differentials in wealth and income; abrogation of democratic control and representation; and deregulation of as many economic transactions as is feasible. In short: inequality, oligarchy and factor mobility. These are the three central targets of populist insurgencies. Where such insurgencies divide is over the weight they attach to each element – that is, against which segment of the neoliberal palette they direct most hostility. Notoriously, movements of the right fasten on the last, factor mobility, playing on xenophobic and racist reactions to immigrants to gain widespread support among the most vulnerable sectors of the population. Movements of the left resist this move, targeting inequality as the principal evil. Hostility to the established political oligarchy is common to populisms of both right and left.
He continues:
The reason populism of the right has enjoyed an advantage over populism of the left is not hard to see. In the neoliberal order, inequality, oligarchy and factor mobility form an interconnected system. Populisms of the right and left can, in differing ways, attack the first two with more or less equally uninhibited vigour. But only the right can assail the third with still greater vehemence, xenophobia towards immigrants operating as its trump card…
Right populisms have a straightforward position on immigration: bar the door to foreigners and kick out those who shouldn’t be here. The left can have nothing to do with this. But what exactly is its policy on immigration: open borders, or skill tests, or regional quotas, or what? Nowhere has a politically coherent, empirically detailed, candid answer yet been spelled out. So long as that persists, populism of the right is all too likely to retain its edge on populism of the left.
The problem, indeed, is a more general one. No populism, right or left, has so far produced a powerful remedy for the ills it denounces.
Anderson speaks to a difficult and uncomfortable point for those on the left: the need for some kind of position on immigration that does not default into a neoliberal open borders in a way that suits global capital.
This connects back to Japan. Another way of viewing the discontent around immigration and over-tourism is that these issues are both a subset of a generalised frustration and sense that the political class are not listening and responsive to the concerns of the electorate. A related issue, one that is physically felt in Tokyo, is the reshaping and rebuilding of the city in ways that match the interests of big corporations and investors, not residents. This is most readily felt in the monstrosity that Shibuya has become, which now is literally encircled by towering buildings filled with shops and offices in the monotonous style of the global non-place. Another clear example is the determination to redevelop the Meiji Jingu Gaien area, despite prominent local protests and concerns. Corporate Japan is (re)building in a way that most people have not asked for or particularly want.
Sam Holden speaks to this dynamic in ‘Why the post-growth megacity still gets redeveloped’:
Worried leaders think, can we open up some new taps? Immigration and inbound tourism? What about chasing Chinese investors who want to dump money in offshore luxury condos? Or maybe we can just keep priming the pump with more and more money? At the very least, the new skyscrapers make us feel like we’re staving off our demise.
Such efforts might inject more urban energy into the system, but can never approach the impact of the postwar demographic boom, rural-urban migration, and Tokyo’s march towards affluence. The growth machine lashes around, scrounging for a drink, but if we zoom out from Tokyo to a national or planetary scale, just how sustainable is opening new taps in the demographic and ecological context of the 21st century?
He continues:
There is no need to prevent urban change. But the system should no longer actively incentivize mega-developments that gobble up the city’s urban energy simply as a way to keep the economy churning.
It is distressing, seeing the last-ditch nature of the Gaien protests, to know that electoral politics still offers no hint of the post-growth vision Tokyo needs to thrive in the next quarter century.
Simply put, the populace is tired with, and exhausted by, the Japanese iteration of TINA (There Is No Alternative).
Tobias Harris emphasised this lack of voice in his conversation with ChinaTalk:
There’s considerable frustration at how the political system has been dominated by familiar names — that the system hasn’t been open to new blood, to new voices, to people with different perspectives. That frustration is boiling over, and it explains at least part of the problem that the LDP is having. It has explained why there’s openness to voting for different parties. There’s a real sense of a democratic deficit — that the establishment, the LDP, and it hurts not just the LDP but pretty much any established party — these parties have dominated the system, they’re not allowing new people in, they’re not listening to younger voters, they’re not listening to the downtrodden urban working class. Something has to give, and we’re seeing that pressure start to boil over right now.
And speaking of boiling, in the background - an issue that seems to be constantly avoided - is the climate. The point is not to suggest it was a major electoral issue, it certainly was not. Rather, the change is very real, it is very much felt by people here. Summers are not the same, seasons are not the same. I do not want to try to make any causal claims, but to suggest something more diffuse: that it contributes to the sense of disorientation and frustration, that things are changing for the worse, alongside little agency over what is happening. Japan’s culture is deeply connected to seasons that are being warped and reshaped. Scrambled seasons and scrambled politics reflect and amplify one another.
From the Japan Meteorological Agency:
With the climate, we zoom out and recognise how Japan has its own version of much more generalised problems. Whether the core problem is democratic crisis and the need for experimentation, simply institutional and social decay, or the future now appearing authoritarian and militaristic, there is constantly mounting evidence that current modes of governance are not working, and most of what is presently on offer portends a more brutal and uncivilised world. Indeed, in such conditions, there is much to be said for the slightly quaint but valuable kind of ‘good international citizen’ role that Japan has played.
Japan retains many underlying strengths and under-appreciated potential. Jesper Koll is one of the clearest proponents of this. In a world that is becoming more and more fragile, the country has a certain resilience that - while weakening - remains. The challenge, as in many other democracies, is for forms of thought and agency that are more attuned to this uncertain world taking shape.