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Letter from Japan: Shock Scoop!
Election shows Japanese people don't care
By
PETER McKILLOP
June
30, 2000
Web posted at 12:30 p.m. Hong Kong time, 12:30 a.m. EDT
There is nothing more boring than reading the foreign media whine
about the lack of dramatic results from this week's parliamentary
elections in Japan. Even worse is when a reporter for a prominent
American newspaper, obviously eager to turn page-30 pabulum into page
one hype, goes completely bonkers by making grandiose claims about
an 'electoral transformation.'
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Put yourself in this scribes' deadline-soddened head: "Jeez, how am
I going to get my myopic editors to actually care about Japan? Umm,
let me see. I know, I'll write about young urban voters -- yeah, that's
new and fresh -- and how they are going to reshape the electoral landscape
and bring dramatic change to Japan. Oh, this is so cool. And let's
see, oh yeah, the big losers will be the old rural, feudal political
dinosaurs. Hey, this is beginning to sound good." If only it were
true.
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This week's election in Japan was hardly an electoral tipping point.
I know, this is very frustrating for all you clever journalists,
scholars and democracy missionaries who think in post-Berlin Wall
Internet real time. Yes, I know, Japanese voters should toss out
those LDP rascals. Yes, it should be their civic duty to rise up
in anger and ask what is so "divine" about spending the nation's
earned savings on Hokaido highways, used by busy muskrats for whom
roadkill is an alien concept. And yes, it's been blatantly obvious
that for years, the LDP and their cabal of bankers, businessmen
and bureaucrats have been screwing the Japanese public blind.
But it is equally obvious -- much to the chagrin of page-one American
newspaper editors -- that the vast majority of Japanese don't care.
To the contrary, there is almost something comforting knowing that
nothing ever really changes. Sure, there is some periodic anxiety.
During the oil crisis, it was over where to get toilet paper. In
the go-go '80s, it was how to flag a taxi after spending $5,000
drinking in Ginza. These days it's about wondering whether the assignment
to eradicate rodents in the company's Kyushu warehouse is somehow
a signal from your boss to start looking for a new job. On second
thought, what is wrong about chasing rats? At least I'd be paid,
be out of my wife's hair, and after work I'd get to eat grilled
internal cow organs washed down by Asahi Super Dry beer watching
the Daie Hawks play baseball. Life could be worse.
Japan is a nation with plenty of time -- and money -- on its hands.
After all, this is a nation that has squirreled away more money
per capita than any nation in the history of our planet. There is
no fear here about spending $150 on a melon, or to spend time at
a Tokyo 'wifey' club where some poor sod will get the five hours
of marital bliss missing at home -- and a good bonk -- for $1,000.
Money and time breeds complacency. And complacency remains the single
most powerful force shaping electoral results in Japan today. Foreign
journalists are loath to admit this, but the LDP knows otherwise.
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