This opinion piece originally appeared in Nikkei Asia

Addressing a joint session of the U.S. Congress two weeks ago, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida cracked a joke about how he has rarely received such a warm welcome from the Diet back in Tokyo.

Indeed, while many observers saw his trip to the U.S. as a great success, back in Japan, Kishida is facing tough problems.

His biggest headache right now is the ongoing scandal around the funding of factions of his ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Kishida's achievements in foreign affairs, such as the successful hosting of the Group of Seven summit in his hometown of Hiroshima last year, and his trip beforehand to Kyiv to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, have often been more than offset by domestic setbacks.

These have included the exposure of close links between LDP politicians and the controversial Unification Church, Kishida's unpopular decision to hold a state funeral for assassinated former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and the chaotic rollout of a new national identity card.

As a result of such troubles, Kishida's public approval rating is hovering at a historic low. With voters going to the polls this weekend to elect new Diet members to fill three vacant seats, the LDP is not even fielding its own candidate in two of the races, and appears to be struggling in the third district although it is usually a party stronghold.

The factional funding scandal could have a lasting impact on Japanese politics. Factions have been central to governance and the distribution of key posts within the LDP since its founding in 1955.

The LDP's factions are relatively unique in that they command members' near-total commitment in respect to parliamentary votes and other key decisions, which are provided in exchange for the factional organization's financial support for operations and campaigning.

Fundraising parties have been an embedded element of the LDP's factional system. These worked in a straightforward manner: The more party tickets politicians could sell, the more money that would come in to their faction.

Individual top ticket sellers would also be rewarded with greater influence by their faction. Large factions, like the one previously headed by Abe, benefitted from selling a large number of party tickets.

This practice was largely legal, as long as the money raised was reported in accordance with the country's extensive election laws. In the current scandal, the problem was that some factions significantly underreported ticket sales.

Such moves, likely with the approval of faction leaders, allowed the factions and their members to evade limits on accepting contributions from individual donors and escape restrictions on how the funds could be used. Abe's faction and a faction headed by former party Secretary-General Toshihiro Nikai are considered to have been the most egregious violators, and their current leaders have been punished accordingly by Kishida.

Kishida has made a couple of bold moves in his handling of the scandal, particularly his decision to voluntarily testify to the upper house's political ethics committee when most other LDP officials resisted appearing, and his move to dissolve his own party faction in response to criticisms about underreporting of its fundraising.

Other factions were then, in effect, forced to follow suit, to the extent that only one of the party's six factions has held back from announcing its dissolution. This could thus be the end of LDP factional politics as we have known it, a development that could transform Japanese politics in a more policy-oriented direction.

As the head of the only faction left standing, former Prime Minister Taro Aso has become even more powerful. He now is not only a critical partner behind Kishida's current administration but also a potential kingmaker for the next government.

Another party figure commanding great influence these days is Yoshihide Suga, whose 2020-2021 prime ministership is being favorably revaluated. He began pushing against party factions long before the current scandal erupted and has been proven correct about their negative effects. As more LDP members become factionless, many are looking to Suga for direction.

Third, considering the severe punishment meted out to some faction leaders, it is noticeable that Nikai and Koichi Hagiuda have been left relatively unscathed.

Nikai shrewdly preempted the announcement of punishments by declaring that he would retire from politics. Hagiuda notably received the lightest punishment among the five top leaders of the Abe faction, likely reflecting Kishida's calculations that he might need his support ahead of September's LDP presidential vote.

The upshot of all this is that factional politics have been transformed but voting blocs will still be important. Kishida's flattening of the LDP party organization could give him more direct influence over many of the party's legislators. The weakening of the factions also means that individual politicians will be able to vote on legislation based on their own judgment rather than the preferences of their faction leader, which could potentially improve the policymaking process.

Yet media reports suggest the factions are moving quite slowly to actually dissolve themselves and dismantle their infrastructure. Only time will tell whether factional politics have been made a thing of the past or whether they will resurface in the LDP in a different form.

September's party leadership vote will give us a great indication of where things are going. Will Kishida be rewarded for rolling the dice on faction dissolution, or will it bite him in the back as Aso, Suga, and others summon the support to topple the prime minister?

In any case, a major transformation is taking place within the LDP, Japan's dominant party since its founding. The results could have a lasting impact on the country's politics.

On March 6, 2024, we lost Professor Makoto Iokibe, a giant in U.S.-Japan relations. Iokibe was 80 years old, but he could easily have passed for 60,  starring in a senior baseball league and playing active roles in Japan’s foreign policy debates until that fateful March day. His sudden passing due to acute aortic dissection has been met with tremendous sadness and surprise, particularly since he had just attended a meeting a few hours earlier.

Iokibe was a renowned diplomatic historian best known for his pioneering studies on the United States’ post–World War II occupation of Japan. But he was so much more. He wrote broadly about Japan’s modern history, focusing on its international relations, from how Meiji leaders learned from the West to how Showa leaders misdirected the Japanese Empire in the 1930s and 40s but rebuilt post-WWII Japan into an economic superpower (The History of US-Japan Relations: From Perry to the Present). 

Having experienced the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake at his home in Kobe, he got involved in post-disaster policymaking and disaster management efforts, chairing the government committees for reconstruction after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake as well as after the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquake. These issues became his second major focus, culminating in a recent publication, The Era of Great Disasters: Japan and Its Three Major Earthquakes. 

His influence extended beyond the scholarly world, as many leaders in recent decades sought his guidance in foreign policymaking. He was openly critical of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, but Koizumi, being a big fan of Iokibe’s works, listened to his advice on other foreign policy matters and appointed him the president of Japan’s National Defense Academy. Seeing that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was veering toward revisiting Japan’s official stance on World War II, particularly its victimization of Asia, he did everything he could to council Abe about the follies of disempowering Japan in the international community and empowering forces that sought to undermine Japan’s credibility as a global leader.

He was particularly close to Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, who, among recent prime ministers, has been most committed to managing challenging relations with the rising China. Iokibe played a leading role in Fukuda’s cabinet in mending Sino-Japanese ties and continued to attend to this increasingly important but thorny relationship. His stance about prioritizing the U.S.-Japan security alliance while maintaining China-Japan cooperation in the economic realm should continue to guide Japan’s foreign policy in the years and decades to come. 

On a personal note, Iokibe-sensei was a mentor and family friend who has helped and supported me in many important ways. Our grandparents knew each other as fellow economists. My father and Iokibe-sensei had been friends since graduate school. He and his late wife were always kind to my family, and I’ve known most of his children, most closely Kaoru Iokibe, a leading historian and political scientist of modern Japan at the University of Tokyo. 

Iokibe-sensei was always generous with his time with everyone around him, including myself, guiding me when I was not sure about my career direction and counseling me on contemporary political issues that Japan faces. Even though he was one of the most respected scholars with access to leaders of the highest echelon in Japan and in the US, he treated everyone with the same respect, humility, and infectious smile. 

I fondly remember hosting him for a talk multiple times at the University of Michigan where I was director of the Center for Japanese Studies, as well as at Stanford in 2005-06 when I was a visiting assistant professor at APARC. Always a sports fan and player, we would go out to watch a football game at a major stadium and he would also play baseball with our daughter in a neighborhood park. 

I never imagined that talking to him a few months ago at an award event in Tokyo would be the last time I’d see him, and I deeply regret that I couldn’t welcome him to Stanford again. His voice of reason will always whisper in my ears and, hopefully, in the ears of Japan’s policymakers. Thank you, Iokibe-sensei; I’m sure that you’re enjoying your time with your beloved wife up above. 
 

What policy options does the Japanese public prefer, and what might shift its attitudes? These are some questions the Stanford Japan Barometer (SJB) sets out to answer. SJB is a large-scale public opinion survey on political, economic, and social issues in Japan. Co-developed and led by Stanford sociologist Kiyoteru Tsutsui, the deputy director of APARC and director of the Center’s Japan Program, and Dartmouth College political scientist Charles Crabtree, a former visiting assistant professor with the Japan Program, SJB has so far published the results from its first two waves.

Wave 1 focused on issues related to gender and sexuality in Japanese politics, while Wave 2 focused on issues related to foreign policy and national defense. SJB findings fielded in these two waves indicate that most Japanese support recognizing same-sex unions, legalizing a dual-surname option for married couples, promoting women’s leadership in society, and that, in a Taiwan contingency, ​​Japanese people would be hesitant to fight China but would respond to a request from the U.S. military for logistical support.

Jointly with the Japan Program, GLOBE+, an international news outlet operated by the esteemed Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, is publishing a series highlighting SJB findings. Here, we provide an English translation of the first three pieces in this series. Additional articles in the series will be published sequentially.

PART I

How Question Framing Changes the Results of Public Opinion Polls: Japan Barometer's Attempt to Get at the "True Feelings” of Survey Respondents

View the original article at Asahi Shimbun GLOBE+ >

Asahi Shimbun GLOBE+ sat down with Tsutsui to learn more about the findings of SJB, its goals, and how it differs from other public opinion polls.

Asahi Shimbun GLOBE+: Why did you come up with the idea to start the Stanford Japan Barometer?

Area studies have been in decline within the social sciences. Although China research is developing, there has been a significant shift away from Japan studies. In 2019, the Asia Society of North America held a session titled “The Death of Japanese Studies.” It made me think that conducting large-scale research experiments with Japan as the theme could spark new developments in the field. The idea was that this effort would draw attention to Japanese studies and foster young researchers interested in Japan.

Asahi Shimbun GLOBE+: What makes SJB different from other public opinion polls?

First, we routinely administer the SJB to an extensive national sample comprising 8,000 Japanese residents. Another unique point is our focus on the type of questions asked to “sway” people's opinions. That is why we call it an experiment. Thus, one of the characteristics of SJB is that we create questions with different preconditions for a given problem and then compare the answers and see how these preconditions affect respondents’ attitudes.

For example, in the first wave of the survey, the theme was gender and sexuality in Japanese politics, and we asked respondents about the pros and cons of same-sex marriage, looking into what kind of influence the preconditions of the survey questions would have on the responses. We created eight types of such preconditions and randomly assigned them to respondents.

We presented some respondents with prompts about tradition and history, such as “In Japanese society, it is a tradition that marriage is between people of the opposite sex” and “Japanese society has tolerated romantic relationships between people of the same sex since the Middle Ages and the Warring States period.” We presented other respondents with preconditions about the fairness of same-sex marriages from the point of view of constitutional rights and human rights principles. We found that respondents tend to become more supportive of same-sex marriage when presented with an argument that not allowing same-sex marriage is unfair from the point of view of human rights and gender equality.

Asahi Shimbun GLOBE+: Generally, in public opinion polls, we take care to ask neutral questions, but you are intentionally doing the opposite.

That's right. By doing so, we can understand what kind of efforts are effective in moving people’s attitudes. As a sociologist, my research focuses on social movements, and I am very interested in the slow pace of change in Japanese society. Therefore, I want to understand why it hasn't changed much and how we can affect change.

In addition to opinions about same-sex marriage, we asked about respondents’ views of desirable attributes of a candidate for the House of Representatives in categories such as gender, age, and occupation. We also examined how the responses changed depending on a candidate’s political party and other factors.

By asking about desirable attributes of a candidate from multiple perspectives, you can elicit answers closer to the respondents’ true feelings. In the future, we plan to continue conducting experiments to see how the results change depending on these preconditions and the characteristics of the respondents.

Asahi Shimbun GLOBE+: What research themes do you have in mind for the future?

I want to research various fields and have already completed research on Japan’s defense spending tax increase and the Taiwan contingency situation. I also want to investigate topics like AI and immigration. In the future, I would like to open a public call for research themes to investigate with SJB.

Part 2
Do Japanese People Envision the Ideal Political Leaders as Females in Their 30s or 40s? Stanford Japan Barometer Finds Out

A recurring issue in Japanese public discussions on gender equality pertains to the underrepresentation of women in leadership roles, particularly in politics and business. To better understand the Japanese public attitudes toward this gender gap, SJB conducted conjoint experiments exploring the preferences of the Japanese public regarding candidates for a Diet seat. In this article, Tsutsui explains the method and results of this survey.

View the original article at Asahi Shimbun GLOBE+ >

This survey asked respondents about the following six attributes regarding candidates they would like to see in the next Diet:

• Age (from 32 years old to 82 years old in 10-year increments)
• Sex
• Marriage
• Number of children
• Academic background
• Occupation (11 options, including finance, business, foreign affairs bureaucrats, corporate managers and officers, governors, local legislators, homemakers, and others)

When asking the question, we created two “candidate images'' by randomly combining six attributes and asked respondents to choose them in a multiple-choice format. We then aggregated and analyzed the respondents’ answers. This complex method statistically allows us to get closer to the respondents’ “true feelings.”

As a result of the analysis, the combinations of attributes that received the most responses, or in other words, the “ideal candidate image'' that respondents thought of, were as follows:

Gender: Female
Age: 32 and 42 years old
Occupation: Governor and corporate manager/officer

These findings indicate that Japanese people wish to see more female leaders in their 30s and 40s become politicians. Additionally, 75% of respondents agreed that “there should be more efforts to increase the number of female members in Japan's Diet.'' Nearly all respondents, regardless of gender, age group, party support, or the strength of their support for the Kishida administration, favored having a female politician over a male one, and even among those who rated Japan as already diverse, many said they would prefer female candidates.

Based on these findings, we assert that a notable portion of the Japanese population sincerely backs women leaders. Furthermore, if a female candidate is nominated, she will likely get elected.

Conversely, the combinations of attributes with weak public support were as follows:
Gender: Male
Age: 72 and 82
Occupation: TV commentator, parliamentary secretary, financial bureaucrat

These results indicate that Japanese public opinion neither favors older male politicians nor desires people in occupations close to national politics.

The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has, in fact, actively supported women in elections in urban areas, including the Tokyo 8th Ward of the House of Representatives, which includes Suginami Ward. The reason is that "experience has shown that women are in demand," according to LDP officials. Interestingly, this sentiment coincides with the image of politicians desired by public opinion (women in their 30s and 40s, not older men), as highlighted by the Stanford Japan Barometer.

There may be an election for the Lower House of Representatives in 2024, and it will be interesting to see how many women will get elected after the supplementary and unified elections.

Part 3
The Liberal Democratic Party's Bold Strategy of Fielding Female Candidates: A "Survival Instinct" Consistent with Voters’ Desires

View the original article at Asahi Shimbun GLOBE+ >

The results of the first wave of the Stanford Japan Barometer match the LDP's policy of supporting women. The LDP, which has approved a string of candidates for the upcoming general election to dissolve the House of Representatives, has been fielding women mainly in urban areas. A typical example is Tokyo's 8th Ward (a large part of Suginami Ward). For a long time, the LDP's Nobuaki Ishihara dominated this seat. Yet he lost the 2021 Lower House election to Harumi Yoshida, a female newcomer to the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan. Ishihara was also unable to regain his seat proportionally.

In 2022, female newcomer Satoko Kishimoto won the Suginami Ward mayor election against the incumbent male candidate. Kishimoto supported mainly women in the 2023 Ward Assembly election, resulting in a female majority. The LDP responded by supporting a 42-year-old woman from the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry in Tokyo's 8th Ward.

In Tokyo's 18th Ward (Musashino, Fuchu, and Koganei), the home district of former Prime Minister Naoto Kan (Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan), who recently announced his retirement, the Tokyo Metropolitan Federation of Trade Unions also held an open recruitment campaign for women only. In addition, there has been a string of female candidates in Tokyo, including Tamayo Marukawa, who switched from the House of Councillors to the upper house of the Diet. That is because LDP officials have learned from experience that "women and young people, especially in urban areas, are the most likely to win now,” according to a senior LDP official.

In the supplementary elections for the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors, women won in the Chiba 5th district of the House of Representatives, the Wakayama 1st District of the House of Representatives, and the Oita Constituency of the House of Councillors. Men previously held all these positions, and the races were considered hotly contested.

Does the LDP have a philosophy that "diversity is important in politics, so let's increase the number of women"? No, not necessarily. When the LDP debated the Candidate Gender Equality Act (enacted in 2018), which calls for political parties to have an equal number of male and female candidates as much as possible, some LDP members protested, saying that forcing an increase in the number of women would lower the quality of politicians, that it was reverse discrimination against men, and that it would also not be a fair assessment of women.

LDP lawmakers were quick to say they were not against increasing the number of women, but it also seemed as if men were afraid of having their status threatened. The LDP's recent nomination of a string of women likely indicates a “survival strategy.”

If the voters prefer women, they will support women. Of course, the LDP is not basing its decision to field women on the results of the Stanford Japan Barometer. Still, the fact that the LDP is fielding candidates who closely match the preferred candidate image yielded in the SJB survey shows how strong the LDP's survival instinct is.

The LDP once even formed a coalition with the Socialist Party, which it continued to oppose as an opposition party. The LDP is tenacious and determined.