Lower house election: Sooner rather than later?

“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”
- Antonio Gramsci

AN ARTICLE APPEARING in the December issue of Sentaku magazine lays out the speculation that Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party will dissolve the lower house and call an election earlier than next summer, when it was originally expected.

The article, abridged and translated into English for the Japan Times, also makes the point that the three major parties are in “disarray”, and that Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda has trouble making up his mind. (A politer way of expressing that is to say he seeks out advice from many sources before deciding on a course of action.)

Several other sources have suggested recently that decisive leadership may not be one of the prime minister’s best qualities, with the usual corroboration from unnamed whisperers in his own party.

The article neglects to mention that the decision to dissolve the Diet may not be Mr. Fukuda’s alone to make. Reports before he was elected party president claimed that the party elders made one condition of their support the retention of the right to make that decision.

Over the long run, however, the most important information might be this:

Former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi rocked the Japanese political landscape in November by predicting that Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda would dissolve the Lower House and call a general election “in the near future.”…A ranking official of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party said, however, that Koizumi, rather than making a prediction, was expressing his wish for an early general election that would lead to a thorough reorganization of the political parties, now that a plan to form a “grand coalition” between the LDP and the No. 1 opposition Democratic Party of Japan has failed.

Like a fire under a pile of burning leaves, the trend toward the creation of a modern, ideology-based two-party system in Japan is slowly growing out of sight. It might yet erupt into open flame when we least expect it.

In the meantime, as Antonio Gramsci once observed, a variety of morbid symptoms are likely to appear until a new political arrangement is born.