State-funded network still airing views of defeated politicians

After booting them from power in a landslide vote, many Japanese were hoping to forget about the Liberal Democratic Party and its 55 years of rule, at least for now.
But not NHK.

The night of the election, when the opposition Democratic Party of Japan trounced the ruling party by a 3:1 margin, NHK paid special attention to the victory of young LDP candidate Shinjiro Koizumi, the son of former LDP leader Junichiro Koizumi.

The day after the election, when Japanese were experiencing real democratic change for perhaps the first time, NHK news featured an all-party discussion, where it allowed LDP Secretary-General Hiroyuki Hosoda to browbeat the victorious Katsuya Okada and criticize the DPJ’s plans to reward the public with free roadways and education.

It’s as if the public had never spoken, had never fired Hosoda and the LDP. NHK, which has grown accustomed to propagating the views of the almighty LDP, was apparently the last to get the message that Japanese citizens have had enough of old-guard politicians.

It’s hard to imagine CNN, after Obama’s historic victory, allowing John McCain to shoot the air out of the Democrats, or the BBC hosting a forum to gang up on a party just given a massive mandate to rule.

NHK didn’t stop there. All week, the network played up the race for the LDP leadership, as if anyone cares. It also ridiculed rookie DPJ lawmakers in their 20s and 30s, suggesting they wouldn’t know how to carry out their duties.

And then, moments after the Diet selected Yukio Hatoyama as Japan’s new prime minister, NHK focused yet again on LDP golden boy Koizumi, as if he, and not the DPJ, is the future hope of Japan.

To be fair, some of NHK’s younger reporters have dared to stick microphones in the faces of mandarins on their way to work in Kasumigaseki. They’ve also endeavored to delve into the battle shaping up between entrenched officials and the DPJ’s bureaucracy-busters, such as Naoto Kan and “Mr. Nenkin,” pension expert and former journalist Akira Nagatsuma. But overall, NHK, as well as many elements of the Japanese and foreign media, has failed to realize that Japan’s election is nothing short of a social revolution, and a blow to the old-boys’ network nationwide.

This was not just a protest vote against Taro Aso and the LDP. During the campaign, DPJ posters called for upheaval in terms usually associated with Iraq: seiken kotai – regime change. That means toppling not only the LDP oligarchy, but also the conservative males who suppress the ambitions of women, young males and minorities, and the construction companies who have littered Japan’s mountains, rivers and beaches with concrete. In particular, Japanese citizens are demanding an overhaul of the feudalistic bureaucracy, which Douglas MacArthur and U.S. occupation forces allowed to remain intact in order to stabilize the country after the war.

Working-class Japanese, especially younger women, have had it with oyaji – older men in government and business who resist change, duck responsibility and treat Japan as a private club, keeping women as tea-servers at work, hostesses at bars and neglected wives at home. Members of the normally apathetic younger generation, who expressed their alienation the past 20 years by refusing to vote, have children or seek higher education and training, finally woke up and demanded change.

The victory of young over old is a tectonic shift in Japan, where a third of the population is over 60. Eriko Fukuda, a 28-year-old woman, beat former Defense and Finance Minister Fumio Kyuma, 68; Mitsunori Okamoto, 38, beat former Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu, 78, who had held his seat for 49 years; Osamu Nakagawa, 58, beat former Foreign Minister Taro Nakayama, 85, who is credited with building Osaka’s international airport.

While NHK acts as if the LDP will soon return to power, the public won’t easily forgive the previous government for losing 50 million pension records, running up the highest debt in the world, squandering funds on pork-barrel projects, and tarnishing Japan’s international image by permitting the slaughter of whales and dolphins. Yet NHK continues to grant the LDP more air time than it ever gave opposition parties in the past.

Seeking balance, many foreign reporters have also credited the LDP with building Japan out of the ashes of war. But ordinary Japanese, who endured decades of long commutes and unpaid overtime to develop the country, feel damasareta – cheated by the LDP, who kept the fruit for themselves – a major faux pas in this communal culture.

While many overseas papers such as the Financial Times have accurately termed the election “a revolution,” a number of foreign TV networks have accused the DPJ of lacking a clear direction and mandate, when the opposite is true. The DPJ immediately scrapped the budget (which bureaucrats, under LDP orders, submitted the day after the election, if you can believe it). They set up a National Strategy Bureau and an Administrative Reform Council, with powers to send 100 legislators into ministries to wrest power from unelected civil servants. And they also ordered revisions to operations at numerous dams – no small feat in this “construction state.” As for foreign policy, Hatoyama has promised not to anger China and Asia by visiting Yasukuni Shrine, while on the environmental front, the government has said it will reduce carbon emissions by 25 percent.

For the first time in 20 years, Japanese are expressing hope in the future, and a belief that change is possible. TV Asahi and newscaster Ichiro Furutachi are leading the way by educating viewers about the country’s new direction in clear, conversational Japanese. As for NHK and other reactionary elements in the media, they should take care not to shoot down Japan’s fledgling reform movement.

Otherwise, the public will turn their anger on them, not just the LDP. ❶