<http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,451375,00.html> Identity crisis has Japan in turmoil
Crisis of faith in party, state and finances rocks country
Special report: Japan
Jonathan Watts in Tokyo Wednesday March 14, 2001 The Guardian
If it had not been for the protesters, a passer-by might have mistaken the annual conference of the Liberal Democratic party in Tokyo yesterday for a mass funeral. Coaches and limousines disgorged thousands of mostly elderly men in dark suits who pressed with an air of preoccupation into the Budokan martial arts hall. Their sense of unease, frustration and pessimism was palpable - and understandable.
As elderly grandees and regional delegates slowly filed in, the Nikkei average of the Tokyo stock exchange was plunging to 16-year lows, the yen was weakening to levels not seen since early 1999 and the opposition party was submitting a censure motion in parliament against the prime minister, Yoshiro Mori.
This conference had been billed as the last hurrah for the unloved premier, who signalled his intention to resign last Saturday. But as Japan slipped closer towards economic and political turmoil, many delegates acknowledged that it could also be the swan song for a party that has ruled Japan for all but one of the 46 years since it was formed.
"I think this will be the last convention of the LDP, unless we open up," said Taro Nakayama, a former foreign minister. "We've held on to power for too long. The whole nation is suffering from system fatigue."
The secretary general, Makato Koga, said the party faced the biggest crisis since its foundation in 1955. Other senior politicians said it was past the point of recovery.
"This is not one party, it's a conglomerate that encompasses everything in hell," said Ken Mizota, an MP whose seat is in danger in a July upper house election that the LDP is expected to lose by a landslide. "It would be better if we made a clean split."
The growing sense of self-loathing in the LDP reflects a national crisis of confidence that has built up over the past 10 years of economic stagnation - a period widely referred to as "the lost decade".
In part, that anxiety is the product of globalisation as foreign firms take over domestic giants like Nissan and Yamaichi Securities, while new sounds, images and ideas flood into the country through the internet and satellite channels.
Equally, though, Japan could be described as a victim of its own success. Having spent more than 150 years trying to catch up with the west, the economic bubble of the 1980s suddenly propelled Tokyo to superpower status. When that bubble burst so did the national aspirations.
"Japan simply lost its way," said Ryu Murakami, one of the country's most influential novelists. "We never thought about what we'd do after we achieved our goal."
For a nation that has long put a heavy priority on the need to teach a "way" for everything from bushido (the way of the warrior) to chado (the way of tea), the sudden loss of direction has been traumatic and liberating.
Most of the losers are those who were once closely associated with the LDP. Office workers at large firms, who were once revered as corporate warriors and rewarded with jobs for life, now fret about resutora (restructuring) and falling social prestige.
Unemployment is at a record high of 4.9%, bankruptcies are surging and the suicide rate among middle-aged men is alarming.
A growing number of young graduates are shocking their parents by taking up part-time work that gives them more freedom.
The past few years have seen a rash of scandals surrounding bureaucrats who gave favours in return for trips to hostess bars, surgeons who killed patients by leaving implements inside their bodies, and police who continued with mah-jongg drinking parties rather than respond to urgent calls for assistance.
Confusion and turmoil have been most apparent in education. Amid record levels of violent juvenile crime, teachers are warning of a breakdown in classroom disc ipline and falling academic standards.
Psychologists say that up to a million teenagers are withdrawing from society, holing up in their rooms where they feel more comfortable relying on their parents and playing with a computer than making friends and fending for themselves.
It has hardly reached the stage of a youth rebellion, but Japan's media was horrified earlier this year when 20-year-olds at regional coming of age ceremonies heckled the speakers (often bigwigs in the local LDP) and set off firecrackers.
In response to such concerns, the LDP has flip-flopped in the past five years between pushing for more individualism and creativity - seen as crucial if Japan is to adapt to fast-moving global trends - and reviving the prewar aim of nurturing social morality and group consciousness - to counter what is often depicted as the pernicious influence of the west.
In most schools, the contrast between the two approaches is strikingly clear in the appearance of sports teams: in baseball - a sport that has long been Japanised to embody the spirit of sacrifice, hard work and team loyalty - the players arealmost militarily regimental, often sporting uniform skinhead haircuts; whereas in football - seen as an international and modern game in which individual skill is emphasised - the players are far more likely to have dyed hair and dreadlocks.
Women have the most to gain from the changes taking place in Japan. Under traditional Confucian values, they were expected to obey their fathers and husbands and in the workplace they were often relegated to the status of "office flowers" whose primary purpose was to be decorative.
In recent years, however, they have put off marriage and children and been more inclined to divorce. As a result, Japan's birth rate has plunged to 1.34 for each woman, one of the lowest levels in the world. The gerontocracy of the LDP has been slow to realise that women's bargaining power has increased sharply because Japan needs them to make up the gap in the workforce and to have more children.
Women voters, however, have noted the change. "I used to think that politics was something best left to men, but now I increasingly find myself listening to women politicians and thinking they seem much more honest and capable," said Yuko Abe.
With Mori's ratings at 6% and the LDP barely above 20%, young members and those from urban constituencies know the party must change to survive.
But like Japan after the climax of its economic-growth drive, the LDP is struggling to find a Plan B. Delegates said yesterday they were worried that no obvious candidates had come forward to replace Mori.
Towards the prime minister, who described himself on Monday as someone who had been treated like a "little baby picked up under an overpass", there was a surprising amount of sympathy, as well as resignation about the impact of his departure on the party and Japan.
"I don't think Mori's resignation will change anything," said one elderly regional delegate who declined to give his name. "We've become a powerless people with no one to follow. Eventually Japan will fix itself, but it'll take 20 or 30 years."