［July 22, 2001 THE WASHINGTON POST］
Japanese Politics : the Koizumi Boost
Prime Minister's Popularity Could Be a Factor for Governing Party in Election
By KATHRYN TOLBERT
Washington Post Foreign Service
YOKOHAMA, Japan-In years past, if you were young, inexperienced and unknown, you had little likelihood of being picked to run as a Liberal Democrat.
But Japan's beleaguered governing party was casting about desperately for some new blood to try to reverse its reputation, which had fallen into decline. So party members in Kanagawa prefecture took the unusual step of staging a public search for a candidate to run in the House of Councillors election on July 29.
Out of that process of invitations, interviews and policy papers came Yutaka Kobayashi, a 37-year-old businessman and bachelor with a longtime desire to be in politics, brave enough to run under the Liberal Democratic Party(LDP) banner when the party's popularity was under 20 percent and falling.
"My mother said that if I ran as a candidate of the Liberal Democratic Party, it would be like sailing on a boat made of mud-I wouldn't last long" Kobayashi recalled as he hopped on a train between campaign appearances.
Then came Junichiro Koizumi. In three months, the new party leader and prime minister has dramatically reversed Liberal Democratic fortunes, and Kobayashi is looking like a sure winner.
"It's like we were struggling against a head wind and now we are soaring on a tail wind," said one campaign manager.
Koizumi hopes that his huge personal appeal will help other candidates like Kobayashi and give his party a victory, which would be seen as a mandate for his promised reforms. His face is everywhere. Kobayashi's campaign office is plastered with Koizumi posters, and his own campaign poster features him alongside the prime minister.
But polls show voters still drawing a distinction between Koizumi and his party. "Yes, I think he's good, but Koizumi is not synonymous with the LDP", said Hisako Kaneko, 62, of Saitama city, a self-described floating, or unaffiliated, voter. She said she won't support the Liberal Democrats' 77-year-old candidate in Saitama because she wants someone younger.
The governing party is aiming low in the election for the upper house of parliament, expecting to keep a majority only with the help of its coalition partners-New Komeito and the Conservative Party.
The party hopes Koizumi fever will translate into votes in big urban constituencies like Saitama, to the north of Tokyo, and Kanagawa, Koizumi's home prefecture, to the south. Tokyo's sprawl extends well into each, with most of their populations commuting to Tokyo. Kanagawa's industrial belt along Tokyo Bay is the largest industrial district in Japan, but the prefecture is trying to develop a high-tech sector.
Saitama has farmers in its northern half and Tokyo commuters in the south. The closer to Tokyo, the more unpredictable the vote, according to campaign managers.
The two prefectures have a combined population of more than 15 million and 12 seats in the upper house. Opposition parties have done well in these urban areas, where most voters unaffiliated; in the previous House of Councillors election three years ago, LDP candidates lost in both places.
"Japanese people, especially the people of Kanagawa, know that things cannot continue as they stand now," said Kanemitsu Shindo, 68, who works for a printing company in Yokohama, the prefecture's capital. "We do not get any benefit out of pork-barrel politics. All that goes to other constituencies."
Shindo has not voted for a Liberal Democratic candidate in recent years, preferring Ichiro Ozawa's Liberal party. But he said he was likely to go with the LDP this time, "with the notion that this is the final chance for the LDP."
"Japanese people are fed up with the closed-door politics of the LDP," Shindo said, "The LDP may think of Koizumi as an oddball, but he's not. The Japanese people have changed, and to us, Koizumi makes sense."
Kobayashi, running in his first election, offers himself-a political newcomer without name recognition or support groups-as evidence that the party is changing. He is the kind of politician that many Japanese say they want -not from a political dynasty and not an elite bureaucrat. He is a graduate of the Matsushita Institute of Government and Management, a school with just that aim-bringing new people into politics. Twenty-one of its 185 graduates are in parliament.
But Kobayashi said he had only a vague idea then about entering politics and left Japan to study at the Johns Hopkins Paul H.Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, thinking he would teach international relations at a Japanese university. His father's death brought him back to Japan in 1994 to run the family stationery store. A couple years later he set up a business offering information technology consulting and computer services.
Then a fellow Matsushita graduate told him that Kanagawa was searching for a candidate, and Kobayashi entered his name.
That he is 37 is a plus. That he is not married is not. He jokes in his campaign speeches about having to get up early each morning to wash and hang up his laundry before setting out to campaign. He points to his round face in the campaign posters and says he has lost five pounds through the exertion of campaigning. His audience of local Liberal Democratic supporters laughs with him.
"Members who have been elected many times are no good," said Masao Mugi, 75, who came to hear Kobayashi in Yokohama. "Having no experience is a good thing. He can learn."
Kobayashi gives his unconditional support to Koizumi's reform proposals. He and many other LDP candidates are calling so loudly for change that they sound more like the opposition Democratic Party. But not all LDP parliament members support Koizumi's call to privatize postal services, hold direct elections for the prime minister and use tax revenues now targeted for roads for broader purposes, leaving voters confused about whether a vote for a Liberal Democratic candidate helps or hurts the chances for reform.
"If they don't back Koizumi after the election, we'll kick them out next time," said Toshio Sunakawa, 74. He had come to Omiya Station, in Saitama prefecture, to hear Koizumi's vigorous, sleeves-rolled-up speech on behalf of his reform plans and the party's candidate, 77-year-old Taizo Sato, running for his third term.
Sunakawa, an LDP supporter, is not too happy with Sato. "It's time to turn things over to younger folks," he said.