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Japan Elections and Political Funding
Partly as a result of revelations following the Recruit
scandal
of 1988-89, the problem of political funding was intensely
debated
during the late 1980s and early 1990s. The scandal arose
as a
result of the dealings of Ezoe Hiromasa, the ambitious
chairman of
the board of the Recruit Corporation (a professional
search service
that had diversified into finance and real estate and had
become
involved in politics), who sold large blocks of untraded
shares in
a subsidiary, Recruit Cosmos, to seventy-six individuals.
When the
stock was traded over the counter in 1986, its price
jumped,
earning individual investors as much as ¥100 million (for
value of
the
yen--see Glossary)
in after-sales profits. The persons
involved
included the most influential leaders of the LDP (usually
through
their aides or spouses) and a smaller number of opposition
party
figures. Although such insider trading was not strictly
illegal, it
caused public outrage at a time when the ruling party was
considering a highly controversial consumption tax. Before
the
scandal ran its course, Takeshita Noboru was obliged to
resign as
prime minister in April 1989, a senior aide committed
suicide in
expiation for his leader's humiliation, and former Prime
Minister
Nakasone Yasuhiro resigned from the LDP--becoming an
"independent"
Diet member--to spare the much-tainted party further
shame.
Regarding the background issue of political funding, a
group of
parliamentarians belonging to the ruling LDP estimated in
1987 that
annual expenses for ten newly elected members of the Diet
averaged
¥120 million each, or about US$800,000. This figure, which
included
expenses for staff and constituent services in a member's
home
district, was less than the average for Diet members as a
whole,
because long-term incumbents tended to incur higher
expenses. Yet
in the late 1980s, the government provided each Diet
member with
only ¥20 million for annual operating expenses, leaving
¥100
million to be obtained through private contributions,
political
party faction bosses, or other means
(see The Liberal Democratic Party
, this ch.). The lack of public funding meant that
politicians--especially, but not exclusively, members of
the LDP--
needed constant infusions of cash to stay in office.
Maintaining staff and offices in Tokyo and the home
district
constituted the biggest expense for Diet members.
Near-obligatory
attendance at the weddings and funerals of constituents
and their
families, however, was another large financial drain: the
Japanese
custom requires that attendees contribute cash, handed
over
discreetly in elaborately decorated envelopes, to the
parents of
the bride and groom or to the bereaved.
After revelations of corrupt activities forced the
resignation
of Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei, postwar Japan's most
skillful
practitioner of "money politics," in 1974, the 1948
Political Funds
Control Law was amended to establish ceilings for
contributions
from corporations, other organizations, and individuals.
This
change forced Diet members to seek a larger number of
smaller
contributions to maintain cash flow. Fund- raising parties
to which
tickets were sold were a major revenue source during the
1980s, and
the abuse of these ticket sales became a public concern.
Another
related problem was the secrecy surrounding political
funds and
their use. Although many politicians, including members of
newly
appointed cabinets, voluntarily disclosed their personal
finances,
such disclosure is not compulsory and many sources of
revenue
remain obscure.
Proposals for system reform in the early 1990s included
compulsory full disclosure of campaign funding, more
generous
public allowances for Diet members to reduce (or, ideally,
to
eliminate) their reliance on under-the-table
contributions, and
stricter penalties for violators, including lengthy
periods of
being barred from running for public office. Some
commentators
advocated replacement of the lower house's multiple-seat
election
district system with single-seat constituencies like those
found in
Britain and the United States. It was argued that the
multiple-seat
districts made election campaigning more expensive because
party
members from the same district had to compete among
themselves for
the votes of the same constituents. It was hoped that the
smaller
size of single-seat districts would also reduce the
expense of
staff, offices, and constituent services. Critics argued,
however,
that the creation of single-seat constituencies would
virtually
eliminate the smaller opposition parties and would either
create a
United States-style two-party system or give the LDP an
even
greater majority in the lower house than it enjoyed under
the
multiple-seat system.
In contrast with multimillion-dollar United States
political
campaigns, direct expenses for the comparatively short
campaigns
before Japanese general, upper house, and local elections
were
relatively modest. The use of posters and pamphlets was
strictly
regulated, and candidates appeared on the noncommercial
public
television station, NHK, to give short campaign speeches.
Most of
this activity was publicly funded. Campaign sound-trucks
wove their
way through urban and rural streets, often bombarding
residents
with earsplitting harangues from candidates or their
supporters. No
politician, however, could expect to remain in office
without
considering expenses for constituent services the most
important
component of campaign expenses.
In the summer of 1993, the LDP government of Miyazawa
Kiichi
was brought down largely as a result of its failure to
pass
effective political reform legislation. The minority
government of
Hosokawa Morihiro that succeeded it proposed legislation
to ban
direct contributions by companies or unions to
parliamentary
candidates and to divide the Diet equally between 250
single-seat
constituencies and 250 seats distributed by proportional
representation.
Data as of January 1994
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