In the past I’ve written about the apparent apathy displayed by Japanese youth (or should that be ‘young people’) towards politics, but apathy may play less of a role than the relentless progress of population decline, particularly in rural areas. Evidence of the sharp decline in even relatively young people participating in regional politics because of the sheer lack of people of appropriate age to stand as candidates was made all the more evident by this article that appeared in the Nishi Nihon Shimbun on Wednesday.  Gokasechō, located in northern Miyazaki Prefecture, is set to have a town election in order to elect new members, yet as of the 22nd not a single person has put up their hand as a candidate. This is, according to the prefectural electoral office, the first time this has happened since records started to be collected on local elections in 1982, and speaks volumes about the crisis in ageing that affects rural districts across Japan.

In this state of affairs, any incumbents who happen to sit on town or village councils will presumably be re-elected by default, given there are no other candidates standing for election. The current mayor of Gokasechō, Ogasa Mayumi, says that they tried to get some young people and women to stand as candidates, yet were rebuffed with reasons such as not wanting to quit work or that it would be a burden on the family. Another reason highlighted in the article is that the remuneration for sitting on the town council is a mere 188,000 yen a month, which is well below the standard living wage and is the lowest such wage among all councils in the prefecture.

For those younger people living in rural areas, which in the case of Japan is something of a rare phenomenon, politics does not have much of a lure, for unlike city or even prefectural councils the decisions made at the local level are rarely influential and lack any of the ‘glamour’ associated with high-profile councils. Local council members often have to finance their own campaigns, which puts an additional burden on them when, in the case of younger town or village residents, they are still trying to establish their place in society and have other debts to consider.

Demographic squeeze is a problem that Japan has faced for over a decade, but the effects of that have mostly been confined to the welfare and education sectors. The steady regression in political participation in the regions has yet to be replicated in major urban centres, but it is only a matter of time before it does.  When that happens, expect to see a whole lot more advertising from the traditional political parties trying to make up for lost time and depict politics as ‘cool’, but by then the ship will have well and truly sailed. 

In a system dominated by access to party funding and generational politicians, the position of the independent representative will mostly depend on personal wealth and popularity, which is why politics will become a platform for entertainers and high-profile celebrities. This will serve to only emphasise the politics on urban areas and exacerbate the drop in political participation in rural areas. And this trend will continue unabated, for without an influx on new representatives local councils will stagnate and disappear, further marginalising the rural vote to the benefit of an entrenched and aging political class.  

Here’s an idea for a potential thesis. I wonder if anybody has taken the time to track the attitude towards women expressed by members of Japan’s ruling political class (aka, the LDP) and see if they have undergone any sort of progress in the last 30 years, because judging by commentary made this week by (serial gaffe meister) Asō Tarō and Lower House member for Nagasaki Kato Kanji, things don’t appear to have changed much at all. This is, after all, a party whose past members have condoned gang rape, proposed national awards for women who have more than 4 children, said that women were “machines to give birth”, said that women have ‘narrow vision’, said that women who don’t have children shouldn’t receive social welfare benefits, and so on (there are plenty more examples, but time constraints mean only the most recent and prominent could be assembled here).

For a party that has a specific platform to help women play a greater role in society, clearly something is amiss.  It might derive from the fact that Japan has the fourth lowest level of female participation in parliamentary politics among the OECD nations, with it ranked 159 out of 193 countries. A national assembly that has so little female representation is not likely to put much emphasis on issues concerning women, and most of those women in such parliaments find themselves pressured to conform to the views of the majority of their colleagues. 

It may also derive from the fact that a majority of those in the executive of the LDP are from a wealthy, privileged background, and whose privilege means that the women around them are likely to either have no formal employment or income source of their own, and whose only role has been that of mother (and briefly at that, given the prevalence of nannies and maids in these households). Any women they have come into contact with have been junior staff in their parliamentary offices, or general administrative staff in companies they have (briefly) worked for or in the Diet building. Their expectations towards women have been formed by their narrow interactions with them, and so their concept of women’s societal role is confined to ‘baby maker’ and little else.

What would be interesting to compare is whether these kinds of gaffes were as common or more prevalent in the past or whether awareness of them has only increased as a consequence of the spread of social media.  It would also be interesting to compare the type of commentary made to see whether any progress has been made in attitudes, or whether attitudes have remained fixated on certain select topics.  Of course not all members of the LDP share these views, and those comments made by LDP members that discriminate against women appear to be more of a reflection of their individual prejudices than an actual political platform, but their comments do their party no favours.