The woman poised to become Japan’s first female prime minister saw her chances of power diminish on Friday when her party’s long-standing coalition partner walked out in protest over her appointment of a scandal-stricken politician.
Sanae Takaichi was elected last weekend to the leadership of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which lacks a majority in Japan’s Diet and has to make deals with opposition MPs to pass budgets and bills — and to have Takaichi elected as prime minister. She has long viewed Margaret Thatcher as her role model and in a recent campaign told a group of schoolchildren that her “goal is to become the Iron Lady”.
That prospect is now in doubt after the desertion of the LDP’s most loyal supporter, the small political party Komeito, which has been in the ruling coalition since 1999.
Takaichi, right, with Tetsuo Saito, the leader of the coalition’s junior partner, Komeito
THE ASAHI SHIMBUN/GETTY IMAGES
The Komeito leader, Tetsuo Saito, is abandoning the 26-year-old coalition after failing to persuade Takaichi to compromise on changes to rules on political funding. The desertion opens the way for a unified opposition candidate who could potentially muster enough votes to be elected prime minister.
Takaichi’s position was further undermined on Friday by the man she hopes to replace, the outgoing LDP prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba. In a long-awaited statement issued to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, he sent a veiled warning against the politics of nationalism and xenophobia that are increasingly being articulated by Japan’s far right.
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“Democracy is not perfect — it could be quite vulnerable,” Ishiba told a press conference. “Civilian politicians who sometimes make poor decisions and go to war … We cannot tolerate speech that threatens or encourages discrimination. We have to look at what happened in the past, and we have to be honest … We have to be tolerant — that is true liberalism.”
He added: “We have fewer and fewer people who have actual memories of war. That’s why we have to actively think about what happened in the past.”
Shigeru Ishiba, the outgoing prime minister
THE ASAHI SHIMBUN/GETTY IMAGES
The remarks are a cause of annoyance to supporters of Takaichi, a follower of the late Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, who sought to draw a line under soul-searching about Japanese conduct in the war. She has spoken out against immigration, at a time when small parties espousing anti-immigrant views are winning support.
Ishiba speaks for many others who are concerned by her nationalism, including those within her own party and Komeito.
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For 26 years Komeito has mobilised its network of local supporters to campaign for the LDP, and laid to one side its pacifist politics in return for a voice in a government of conservative politicians with whom it has little ideological common ground.
Komeito is the political arm of the influential religious organisation Soka Gakkai, and the coalition between an organisation of pacifist Buddhists and the increasingly conservative LDP has often seemed unnatural.
Komeito MPs argued that from their position within the government they were able to exercise a moderating influence on the LDP that would have been impossible from opposition. According to Japanese media, Saito secured just such a concession from Takaichi on the controversial matter of the Yasukuni Shrine, where the souls of Japan’s war dead — including executed war criminals — are revered as Shinto deities.
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Takaichi is a regular worshipper, but she has reportedly agreed not to pray there at the shrine’s autumn festival this month, an act that would have provoked rage in countries invaded and colonised by Japan, including China and South Korea.
However, there was no compromise on a matter of greater concern to Japanese voters: the ways in which the LDP raises political funds. Komeito, known as the “clean government party”, was annoyed at Takaichi’s appointing as LDP deputy secretary-general Koichi Hagiuda, who has been embroiled in a scandal about an illegal party slush fund.
In August he was found guilty and fined under the Political Funds Control Act because his office failed to report 23 million yen (£113,000) in income. Even Takaichi referred to him recently as “damaged goods”. But she has rejected proposals by Komeito to tighten rules on political funding.
Evidently the party has concluded that its association with the LDP has become a political liability.
“We aim for a new form of politics based on cooperation with other parties,” Saito said. “It was sometimes difficult for Komeito to put forward its own proposals, and there … were many instances where we had to restrain ourselves.”
Despite the setback to Takaichi, the LDP remains the biggest party in the Diet and opposition parties will have to overcome dissent among themselves to agree on a candidate to stand against her.
AloJapan.com