Get This Party Started

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r a few rounds of the board game Go earlier this summer, Japanese political veterans Naoto Kan and Ichiro Ozawa brokered an alliance that could forever alter their country's political landscape. For years, these rivals had led Japan's two major opposition parties, each a sworn enemy of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) that has ruled the country almost continuously for 48 years. Alone, neither had been able to mount more than a token challenge. But Kan and Ozawa agreed that the LDP's once fearsome power base was eroding. Even its popular leader, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, was having trouble keeping its squabbling factions in line. Suddenly, they reasoned, the LDP seemed vulnerable to an opposition party with real clout. The answer: to join forces. So Ozawa agreed to let his Liberal Party be acquired by Kan's Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). "There has never been a major political power shift between the ruling party and the opposition party," Ozawa told TIME shortly before the merger. "Japan needs that power transfer to establish a true parliamentary government."

Since that epochal decision, a genuine two-party democracy has begun to emerge in Japan. For the first time in the country's history, a political party is putting unprecedented power in the hands of voters by mounting a serious challenge to the LDP directly at the polls, rather than cobbling together an opposition parliamentary majority through alliances of previously unaffiliated parties. Old-fashioned Japanese politics—including backroom deals and rule by faction—won't disappear overnight. But "aside from the random Communist running around, it's a two-party system now," says Steven Reed, professor of modern government at Chuo University in Tokyo. And that's what makes the run-up to the Nov. 9 general election such an intriguing—and heartening—spectacle.

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It's already one of the most hard-fought, liveliest Japanese elections in memory. Taking a cue from the charismatic Koizumi, who has hung onto his job largely by charming the masses, the DPJ has fielded younger, more telegenic candidates to battle the LDP gerontocracy. The DPJ recently hired U.S. public relations giant Fleishman-Hillard as image consultants, and its candidates received a booklet of tips on wooing voters—particularly women. Among other advice, candidates were told that bad breath, dirty fingernails and poorly knotted ties are all electoral turnoffs.

The DPJ's chances of capturing the 104 seats necessary for a majority in the powerful lower house (thus catapulting Kan into the Prime Minister's seat) remain slim. But at the very least, DPJ candidates are generating unusually robust political debate. Besides zealously portraying the opposition as corrupt and anachronistic, the DPJ took the unorthodox step of publishing a 60-page manifesto that's rich in specifics, from slashing government spending on large public works projects by 30% by 2006 to decreasing the size of grade school classes.

In the past, politicians tended to avoid taking detailed stands on issues, fearing they could later be held accountable for broken promises. But now the LDP has been compelled to release a manifesto of its own. Among its pledges: to privatize the postal service within four years and increase tourism from today's 5 million visitors per year to 10 million by 2010. "This is without a doubt the most policy-oriented election campaign in postwar Japanese history," says Ellis Krauss, professor of Japanese politics at the University of California, San Diego.

Kan himself admits only to modest expectations for the upcoming election. He says his goal is to take 63 seats, far short of a majority but enough to embarrass the LDP and wound Koizumi. Kan has already succeeded in convincing many Japanese citizens and businesses that a strong second party is essential to economic and political rejuvenation. For example, a coalition of executives led by Kyocera's Kazuo Inamori recently took out newspaper ads spelling out the benefits of a two-party system. "I want Japan to be like the U.S., England, Taiwan or South Korea, where we can have a change in government every five or ten years," Kan said during a recent election rally. Considering the Japanese government has barely changed in half a century, shaking things up even once would be progress.