Socialst Setback in Japan
NAOI, TAKEO
Recent electoral defeats reflect disenchantment with the party's leftist foreign and domestic policies Socialist Setback in Japan By Takeo Naoi TOKYO PREMIER NOBUSUKE KISHI'S Liberal Democrats...
...The party's poor showing was particularly conspicuous in Tokyo, where no Socialist candidate emerged victorious...
...The June 2 election was for 127 of them, representing one-half of the House that is elected every three years, and two vacancies caused by deaths...
...as the common enemy of both Japan and China...
...A majority of the Japanese people has become increasingly alienated by the Socialists' foreign and domestic posture, and this is surely what accounts for their unexpectedly poor showing in the elections...
...Recent electoral defeats reflect disenchantment with the party's leftist foreign and domestic policies Socialist Setback in Japan By Takeo Naoi TOKYO PREMIER NOBUSUKE KISHI'S Liberal Democrats emerged from the June 2 elections to the House of Councilors with a total of 132 seats in the Diet's upper chamber, as compared with the Socialist party total of 85...
...Particularly unappealing has been the Socialist party's apologetics for the foreign and domestic policies of both Communist China and Russia...
...Accompanying these developments was a series of threatening notes from Moscow and Peking, calling for Japan's withdrawal from its security arrangements with the U.S...
...Thus the Socialists are in a position, as they were before the election, to block any move to change the Constitutional provision which bans the country's possession of "war potential...
...The Government party won 71 seats, a gain of five, for its total of 132...
...And if the Japan-U.S...
...The Liberal Democrats elected eight prefects, to two for the Socialists...
...Ocasional reports of corruption in some Government departments also affected public opinion adversely...
...They also advocate the abrogation of Japan's relations with the Republic of China on Taiwan and the establishment of normal relations with Peking...
...security pact by a security arrangement linking Tokyo not only with Washington, but with Peking and Moscow as well...
...Thus, many people felt they had no alternative but to vote for the Government party, which can hardly consider this a clear-cut popular vote of confidence...
...The editorial did not content itself with generalities...
...Both parties more or less maintained their pre-election strength...
...On foreign policy, the Socialists advocate the replacement of the Japan-U.S...
...Actually, the Socialists had some good reasons to believe they would attain their pre-election goal of a gain of 15 to 20 seats...
...In this connection, a fatal blunder was probably made by the party's mission to Peking last March, when party Secretary General Inejiko Asanuma identified the U.S...
...The general consensus is that this election confirms a trend revealed by the nation-wide municipal and prefecture elections last April...
...For example, the Tokyo Asahi Shimbun, Japan's largest independent daily, editorialized on the Socialist defeat in the following way: "The returns in the House of Councilors election indicate that the Socialist party's popularity is on the wane, even in the urban districts which have long been considered its stronghold...
...Though a two-thirds majority of the Diet's lower house can enact ordinary legislation rejected by the upper chamber, it requires a two-thirds majority in both houses to amend the Constitution...
...This trend was confirmed by the Diet election earlier this month...
...In the municipal council elections in April, the Liberal Democrats established a better than two-to-one margin over the Socialists in both council seats and popular votes...
...The Socialists won 38 seats, a gain of seven, for their total of 85...
...And SOHYO's recent ad hoc agreement to cooperate on limited objectives with Japan's Communist party only accentuates Socialist dissension...
...About the only thing working in the Government party's favor was the steady economic progress achieved during its tenure...
...These election results are being interpreted here as less a victory for the conservatives than a defeat for the Socialist opposition...
...The left-wingers, on the other hand, control a majority of the Socialist Diet members and enjoy the full support of the powerful SOHYO and the "progressive" intellectuals...
...All three Socialist candidates were beaten there, while the Liberal Democrats won two of the four seats they contested...
...Kishi's personal popularity had been declining for some time...
...From now until August, when the next party Congress is scheduled, there will doubtless be a heated debate on this point within the party...
...But the Socialists previously growing popularity seems to have been checked, owing largely to their increasingly leftist orientation...
...Such action has frequently been condemned in the press and other public organs as "criminal collective violence," rather than the normal strike activity that is protected by law...
...It is unlikely that the party's fundamental differences will be resolved even at its August Congress or immediately thereafter...
...in fact, it has gone so far as to encourage it...
...It specifically noted the peculiar unattractiveness of the Socialist emphasis on "mass movement and mass action" outside the Diet and the party's appeal to class interest rather than national interest...
...The party's Central Executive Committee met a week after the election and flatly recognized its defeat...
...See Takeo Naoi's article...
...In order to regain its popularity, the Socialist party must demonstrate that it is a parliamentary political party in the real sense of the term...
...In recent years, some of the unions associated with SOHYO, the leftist-dominated General Council of Japanese Trade Unions, have tended to extremism, often resorting to violence during strikes...
...and for a political and trade rapprochement with the USSR and Red China...
...Very significantly, one of the three Socialist candidates in Tokyo was Soji Okada, chief of the party's International Affairs Department, who had joined the Socialist mission to Peking last March for the purpose of enhancing his prestige at home...
...Moreover, just before the election, the Tokyo District Court ruled that the stationing of United States troops in Japan, under the bilateral security agreement, violates the Japanese Constitution...
...For the Liberal Democrats, this represented a gain of 10.4 per cent of the seats and 9.6 per cent of the votes, as compared with the Socialist gain of 4.9 per cent of the seats and 4.8 per cent of the popular vote...
...Although they are backed by public opinion and by part of organized labor, the right-wingers are a minority in the party...
...A low turnout is ordinarily considered a boon for the Socialists, since they can rely upon a large bloc of "organized votes" from the trade union movement...
...The Japanese people have had a recent surfeit of elections, and the weather was bad when they went to the polls on June 2. As a result, only about 58.8 per cent of the electorate turned out, one of the lowest proportions of the postwar period...
...Of the four most important prefectures—Tokyo, Osaka...
...The Socialists now have one more than the necessary one-third of the total number of seats, which is enough to enable them to prevent the Liberal Democrats from pushing through their proposed reform of the "pacifistic" clauses in the 1946 Constitution...
...Perhaps only a crushing electoral defeat or series of defeats, or a party split, will serve that end...
...The House of Councilors holds 250 seats...
...security treaty is not abolished outright, the Socialists at the very least oppose the projected revision by which Japan would assume an even greater role in Pacific defense...
...This infantile conception of "class war" has been criticized even by sources that are frequently friendly to the Socialists...
...And it should be remembered that strategic Hokkaido had been in their hands for three successive terms after World War II...
...April 13—Ed.] The Socialist domestic record has also been losing its appeal for the people...
...It may be pointed out that the party's present character and policy do not appeal to the general voting public...
...The Government party's weakness ought also to have been an aid to a Socialist election victory...
...The remaining seats were distributered among a few minor parties...
...But reports of the meeting indicate it went through no "agonizing reappraisal" of the crux of the party's problem—whether it is to be a class party or a national party...
...Hokkaido and Fukuoka—the Socialists won only the latter...
...In addition, internal dissension within the majority party only seemed to grow-sharper as the election approached...
...The Government party won a total of 1,601 council seats, as against 562 for the Socialists...
...But the Socialist party has done nothing to check this tendency to violence...
...Japanese Socialist Mission to Peking...
...A closer look at the results of both the April and June elections demonstrates the extent of the Socialist failure...
...It seems pretty clear that such policies are rejected by the Japanese people...
...Nevertheless, the Socialists were unable to capitalize on these varied favorable circumstances...
...This did not help them at all in contesting the conservatives in the vital Tokyo election district...
Vol. 42 • June 1959 • No. 26
