The meaning of the Upper House election

On Thursday campaigning for the House of Councillors election scheduled for 11 July begins, as 440 candidates vie for 121 seats. (Michael Cucek has the breakdown here.)

The significance of this election has been thrown into clear relief since Kan Naoto took over from Hatoyama Yukio as prime minister and head of the DPJ. What once looked to be a referendum on the leadership of Hatoyama and DPJ secretary-general Ozawa Ichirō — a referendum that polls suggested that the DPJ would not win — is now an election on the future of Japan, perhaps to an even greater extent than last summer's historic House of Representatives election. If the DPJ can retain control of the upper chamber, it will have three years before it will have to face the voters again in an election, provided that no snap election is called in the meantime. Those are three years that the government can use to make tough political decisions that a government with a shorter time horizon might be less inclined to make, like, say, a consumption tax increase.

And so this election is critical for Japan's future. For the Japanese people, there's not much of a choice. Under the DPJ Japan now has a prime minister who is everything that his predecessor was not: Kan is clearly willing to take a position, stick to it, and make his government follow along. He is devoted to clean politics and dynamic political leadership, and under his watch the DPJ once again looks like a party capable of bringing substantial change to how Japan is governed.

Much of the discussion during the campaign will focus on the government's plans related to the consumption tax and deficit reduction more broadly. But once again this election is less about the competing policies offered by the DPJ, the LDP, and the smaller parties than about how Japan is governed. The choice is between unified DPJ government that will face few institutional checks as it attempts to introduce sustainable growth, sustainable government finances, and sustainable social security and a divided system in which the government will have to cobble together working coalitions in order to pass legislation in the upper house (or use its lower house majority to pass legislation over the upper house's objections).

In other words, voters have to decide whether they're willing to tolerate an "elective dictatorship" for the next three years as the Kan government sets to work implementing the DPJ's modified but still ambitious political program or whether they would prefer that the LDP, Your Party, Komeitō, and the other parties retain a perch from which to challenge the government and retard its progress.

The DPJ can win a majority — but what will it mean?

Having tabulated the predictions made over the course of my election handbook, I think it's appropriate that I return and answer my initial question.

Can the DPJ win an absolute majority?

Based on my district-by-district predictions, I think the DPJ could win 279 seats, the LDP 159 seats, Komeito fifteen seats, the JCP and PNP seven seats each, the SDPJ five seats, Your Party three seats, LDP-affiliated independents three seats, and small parties (affiliated with the DPJ) two seats.



In other words, the DPJ would gain 167 seats, the LDP would lose 144 seats, Komeito would lose sixteen seats, the JCP would lose two seats, the SDPJ would lose two seats, the PNP would gain two seats, and the number of independents and representatives from small parties would fall by two.

Before I go into the implications of the DPJ's winning so substantially, it was worth recalling the words of the great philosopher Yogi Berra (or, alternatively Niels Bohr — what a pair): "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." The number 279 is not in and of itself important. I suspect that my figure is probably the upper bound of a range in which the DPJ will likely win, and there is still time for the LDP to retake seats on the margins. What I think my survey suggests is simply that by looking at the race from the bottom up, it does seem likely that the DPJ will exceed the 240 seats needed for an absolute majority.

Given that the DPJ is already committed to a coalition government, however, the symbolic importance of a DPJ victory may be more important than its importance for a DPJ-led coalition, although the DPJ would presumably have more bargaining power with its coalition partners having a majority of its own. If the DPJ wins as decisively as my estimate suggests, it will truly mark the end of the LDP's permanent rule. Unlike in 1993, there will be no doubts about the public's having voted for "change." The DPJ will have a mandate. What that mandate means may, as I previously suggested, be unclear, but the DPJ will have the power to act, forcing its rivals to reconsider how best to oppose a ruling party with this level of support.

At the same time, however, the public will expect the government to act. Having an absolute majority will likely mean higher expectations for a DPJ government, its lack of a majority in the upper house notwithstanding. Of course, the higher expectations that will accompany a DPJ majority will make the July 2010 upper house elections even more important to the government.

In short, a DPJ majority could be both a blessing and a curse: public affirmation that the DPJ has arrived as a ruling party, accompanied by expectations that the DPJ do something with its mandate. Indeed, arguably at least one factor in the LDP's likely defeat will be that it squandered the mandate it received in 2005. That should be a warning for the DPJ.

What, meanwhile, would this outcome mean for the LDP? Naturally it will mean a certain amount of disarray, with faction chiefs and other party leaders losing their seats. The factions have already seen a precipitous decline in their influence within the party in matters other than the selection of sub-cabinet officials. Would a landslide defeat that includes losses by several faction leaders be the final blow to the influence of factions, as the LDP's survivors reorganize themselves along more ideological lines? After a general election the fight in the LDP will be to determine who should be nominated to run in the next general election, presumably a fight between traditionalists in places like Kyushu and Shikoku who think that the party needs to return to its roots and Nakagawa Hidenao and survivors from urban districts who think that the defeat shows why the party has to focus on winning in places other than Kyushu and Shikoku. Does anyone think that the factions would play the leading role in determining who will get the LDP's endorsement in single-member districts?

In the nearer term, the same question goes for the campaign for the party's leadership, which will be held in the weeks following the election? Especially given the breakdown in recent party elections, does anyone think that the forthcoming LDP presidential election will be decided along factional lines?

If the LDP indeed loses as badly as it appears it will, the fight within the LDP for the soul for the party will be brutal and protracted. Ozawa may not need to do anything to help the LDP tear itself to pieces. It will likely emerge stronger from defeat, but it will not be the same LDP. In the end, the LDP may find itself looking for candidates like the DPJ's this year: younger, a bit more female, and perhaps some bureaucratic experience (but not too much) or else backgrounds in finance or the media. It will certainly have no problem saying no to a DPJ government.

South Kanto, a (mostly) urban battleground

The South Kanto regional block, comprised of Chiba, Kanagawa, and Yamanashi prefectures, sends thirty-four representatives to the Diet from single-member districts and another twenty-two through proportional representation. Yamanashi, with only three electoral districts, is an unusual fit alongside Kanagawa with its eighteen districts and Chiba with its thirteen. This block is densely urban: Kanagawa has 3,726 people per square kilometer, while Chiba has 1,165 people per square kilometer. Yamanashi, by contrast, has only 198 people per square kilometer.

In 2005, the LDP did extraordinarily well in South Kanto. In 2005, the LDP and Komeito combined to win thirty-one of thirty-four SMDs and thirteen of twenty-two PR seats. This result is remarkable considering that in 2003 the LDP and the DPJ were virtually even in the block: in the SMDs in 2003 the DPJ won seventeen while the LDP and Komeito combined for seventeen, and in the PR voting government and opposition each won eleven seats.

Chiba

In Chiba, the DPJ's one incumbent is party heavyweight Noda Yoshihiko, currently acting secretary-general under Okada Katsuya. While he won by just under 1,000 votes in 2005, he won by more than 50,000 votes in 2003. His seat should be secure.

Beyond Noda, DPJ candidates were revived in three districts. In the first district, Tajima Kaname ran against Usui Hideo, a longtime LDP incumbent, and lost by less than 20,000 votes. Tajima actually defeated Usui in 2003. This year he will face Usui's son Shoichi, a former prefectural assemblyman. Given Tajima's past success, he should have little difficult defeating a hereditary LDP candidate in a tough year for the LDP and hereditary candidates.

Nagata Hisayasu, the DPJ's candidate in the second district in 2005, also won a PR seat, but was disciplined by the party for his role as the instigator of the Horie email scandal and then was booted from the House of Representatives. He died earlier this year in a death judged to have been a suicide. Despite his ignoble end, Nagata had enjoyed considerable success in the second district, suggesting that the DPJ still stands a chance of reclaiming it. Yamanaka Akiko, the LDP incumbent, had served a term during the 1990s as a representative of the New Frontier Party before returning to the Diet in 2005. Her challenger is Kuroda Yu, a four-term member of Chiba's prefectural assembly. Kuroda should succeed at unseating Yamanaka.

The seventh district features a DPJ candidate who was the incumbent in 2005 but was relegated to the PR block. Matsumoto Kazuna, the LDP candidate who defeated him, was forced to resign due to a corruption scandal. In the by-election to replace him, the DPJ's Oota Kazumi won, but will yield the seventh district to Uchiyama Akira, the losing candidate in 2005. Facing Uchiyama will be Saito Ken, the LDP's candidate in the by-election to replace Matsumoto. Saito lost narrowly, but will likely lose by a larger margin in this election.

Elsewhere in Chiba, the DPJ has strong candidates in the third district, where Okajima Kazumasa will try to reclaim the seat he lost in 2005 from incumbent Matsuno Hirokazu; the fifth district, where Murakoshi Hirotami will try to reclaim the seat he won in 2003 from LDP incumbent Sonoura Kentaro; the sixth district, where Ubukata Yukio, who served three terms as a DPJ member before losing in 2005, will try to reclaim the seat from Watanabe Hiromichi, the LDP candidate who Ubukata had defeated in 2003; and the eighth district, where Matsuzaki Kimiaki, yet another loser in 2005 who had previously served three terms in the Diet, will face Sakurada Yoshitaka, the four-term LDP incumbent who unseated him in 2005. The DPJ's candidates in these districts are strong, and in the third and the fifth districts the DPJ candidates should be helped by the absence of JCP candidates.

However, like in Saitama the LDP may be vulnerable throughout Chiba. In the ninth district Mizuno Kenichi, a four-term incumbent who won by 60,000 votes in 2005, is facing a tough battle against DPJ candidate Okuno Soichiro, a former post ministry official who has the support of postal interest groups. In the thirteenth, LDP incumbent Jitsukawa Yukio has a rematch with DPJ candidate Wakai Yasuhiko, who lost by 21,000 votes in 2005 but lost by only 6,000 in 2003 and won a PR seat. Wakai should prevail this year.

Three members of the Aso cabinet are up for reelection in Chiba. In the tenth, the incumbent Hayashi Motoo will once again battle Yatagawa Hajime, a former Chiba assemblyman who lost to Hayashi in 2003 and 2005. Hayashi, the chairman of the National Public Safety Commission, won by a sizable margin in 2005 but defeated Yatagawa, then running as an independent, by only 13,000 votes in 2003. In the eleventh district, Mori Eisuke, Aso's justice minister, should cruise to reelection against an inexperienced DPJ challenger. In the twelfth district Defense Minister Hamada Yasukazu, a five-term incumbent, faces first-time candidate Chugo Atsushi, a former local assemblyman in Futtsu city. These three incumbents should be safe, although Hayashi's seat is probably the most vulnerable.

The DPJ may come away with ten of Chiba's thirteen seats.

Kanagawa

The LDP's position is even stronger in Kanagawa than in Chiba, with the LDP and Komeito's having won seventeen of eighteen SMDs in the prefecture in 2005. The DPJ was actually completely shut out of Kanagawa, as the remaining seat was won by Eda Kenji, then an independent, now a leader of the YP.

The DPJ will have a hard time picking up ground in Kanagawa, not only because the LDP has strong incumbents in the prefecture, but because the JCP will be running candidates in thirteen districts. JCP candidates did not make the difference between winning and losing for DPJ candidates in 2005 given the overwhelming margins of victory enjoyed by LDP candidates, but in closer races this year their presence could be decisive — after all, in several districts the party's candidates received as many as 30,000 votes in 2005. The JCP may not equal its vote from 2005, but the party's candidates in Kanagawa cannot be ignored.

The LDP's most secure incumbents are Matsumoto Jun in the first district; Suga Yoshihide in the second district; Amari Akira in the thirteenth district; and Kono Taro in the fifteenth district. (Although as a sign of Amari's concern about the safety of his seat, he will be running simultaneously as a PR candidate, which he did not do in 2005.) The race in the tenth district, where four-term incumbent Tanaka Kazunori will be facing DPJ challenger Jojima Koriki, who until 2005 represented Tokyo first as a PR member and then as a representative from Tokyo's thirteen district. Tanaka won relatively narrow victories in 2000 and 2003, but with Jojima's being new to the district — and JCP candidate Kasaki Takashi also in the race — Tanaka should eke out another victory.

Despite the controversy surrounding his candidacy, Koizumi Shinjiro, son of former Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro, should successfully win the seat vacated by his retiring father in a race that should at least be interesting, as the DPJ is running twenty-seven-year-old lawyer Yokokume Katsuhito against Koizumi fils. The LDP also has the upper hand in the seventeenth district, which is being vacated by the retiring Kono Yohei. The race to succeed Kono pits two thirty-something first-time candidates who have graduated from political academies and worked as researchers against one another, the LDP's Makashima Karen against the DPJ's Kamiyama Yosuke. The race will likely be close — an independent is also running, which could hurt Kamiyama. Makashima probably has the advantage.

There are several districts that are wide open. The third district may be a tossup. LDP incumbent Okonogi Hachiro won handily in 2005, but fought close elections against a DPJ candidate in 2000 and 2003. His rival is Yokohama city assembly member Okamoto Eiko, who would probably win in a two-way race but has to also compete with JCP candidate Furutani Yasuhiko and Your Party candidate Kato Masanori, both of whom could make a difference in a close race.

The fourth district too is open due to Asao Keiichiro's decision to leave the DPJ and join the YP, resulting in a three-way race between Asao, LDP incumbent Hayashi Jun, and DPJ candidate Nagashima Kazuyoshi. Hayashi, a one-term incumbent, won the seat in 2005 over a DPJ incumbent in another race with a divided field — the combined votes received by the DPJ incumbent, the JCP candidate, and a New Party Japan candidate matched Hayashi's 119,000 votes. This race essentially pits Asao's personal vote against the appeal of the DPJ label: who can peel off the most support from the others? Hayashi may survive as a result.

The eighth district also features a three-way race between incumbent Eda, DPJ challenger Yamazaki Makoto, a Yokohama assemblyman, and LDP candidate Fukuda Mineyuki, who finished third in 2005 behind retiring DPJ member Iwakuni Tetsundo and Eda but still won a PR seat. 2009 may see a repeat of 2005, when Eda beat Iwakuni by 10,000 votes, with Fukuda another 5,000 behind Iwakuni.

The DPJ should have an easy time in the fifth district, where Tanaka Keishu, the incumbent defeated in 2005 should be able to defeat Sakai Manabu, the Koizumi child who unseated him. Tanaka had previously won the district by sizable margins and should prevail, despite the JCP's fielding candidate Iwasaki Hiroshi. While the JCP has received 30,000 votes in the district in the past two elections, Tanaka won in 2003 in spite of the JCP vote and should do so again this year.

The sixth district is currently held by Komeito representative Ueda Isamu, who first won the seat in 2003 when he defeated this year's DPJ challenger (and then incumbent) Ikeda Motohisa by roughly 500 votes. Ueda expanded his margin of victory to 20,000 votes in 2005. The JCP, which received enough votes in 2005 to have made up the difference between Ueda and Ikeda, will be fielding candidate Fujii Midori — but Ikeda will likely prevail nevertheless.

The seventh district should be a pickup for the DPJ, as the seat is being vacated by retiring LDP incumbent Suzuki Tsuneo. The DPJ candidate is Suto Nobuhiko, who won the seat in 2003 and did well enough in 2000 and 2005 to win PR seats. The LDP's candidate is Suzuki Keisuke, of no relation to Tsuneo, who was elected to the Diet as a PR member from South Kanto in 2005. Given Suto's past success, he should win this seat easily.

The ninth should be particularly safe for the DPJ: Yamauchi Koichi won the seat as an LDP candidate in 2005 but recently left the party and will be running as a PR candidate for the YP in North Kanto. The LDP has yet to pick a candidate to run against the DPJ's Ryu Hirofumi, who lost by 4,000 votes to Yamauchi (after winning the seat in 2003 from DPJ member Matsuzawa Shigefumi, now Kanagawa's governor). The JCP will be fielding a candidate again — Tonegawa Takenori — after receiving approximately 15,000 votes in 2003 and 2005, but Tonegawa should have little impact on the outcome.

The DPJ should also retake the twelfth, with Nakatsuka Ikko, its incumbent from 2005, going against LDP incumbent Sakurai Ikuzo. The JCP is fielding candidate Watanabe Chikako, but the absence of SDPJ candidate Abe Tomoko, who received 26,000 and 35,000 votes in 2003 and 2005 respectively, should be a boost for Nakatsuka.

In the fourteenth district, LDP incumbent Akama Jiro — who won his first term in 2005 over DPJ heavyweight Fujii Hirohisa — faces a tough reelection fight against Kanagawa assemblyman Motomura Kentaro. The JCP, which received 23,000 votes in 2005, is fielding a candidate again, Akama Tomoko. The field also features an independent, Kuga Kazuhiro.

The sixteenth district features a rematch of the district's 2006 by-election, which pitted third-generation LDP candidate Kamei Zentaro — succeeding his recently deceased father — against DPJ candidate Goto Yuichi. Kamei won by 29,000 votes in 2006, but as a first-term hereditary member Kamei may be particularly vulnerable to the national shift.

The eighteenth district, first created in the 2002 redistricting, was won by the DPJ in 2003 and taken by the LDP in 2005. The LDP incumbent, Yamagiwa Daishiro, lost in 2003 but gained a PR seat, and then won by more than 30,000 votes in 2005. His challenger, Hidaka Takeshi, won the seat in 2003 (and won a PR seat as a Liberal Party candidate in 2000), and as a former secretary to Ozawa Ichiro, will have Ozawa's personal support.

The LDP should win eight seats in the district, the DPJ eight, and the YP two.

Yamanashi

Yamanashi prefecture, with its three districts, will be fairly straight forward. The DPJ's Ozawa Sakihito, a close confidante of Hatoyama Yukio, has won the district the past three elections and should win easily again. In 2005, the prefecture's second and third districts were affected by the postal privatization battle. The LDP representatives in both districts were ousted from the party and were elected despite the presence of Koizumi assassins. In the second district, Horiuchi Mitsuo, a ten-term incumbent, was readmitted to the LDP in 2006 and faces the DPJ candidate who finished in a distant third in 2005, Sakaguchi Takehiro. Nagasaki Kotaro, the LDP candidate who finished second in 2005, left the LDP and will be running as a candidate from Hiranuma Takeo's group. The result will probably be that Nagasaki will finish third and Sakaguchi second.

The third district, which also featured a postal rebel versus an assassin in 2005, will be simpler in 2009. Hosaka Takeshi, the rebel, won in 2005, returned to the LDP in 2006, but voluntarily resigned from the Diet in 2008 to campaign for the mayoralty of Kaishi city in Yamanashi. The result is that Ono Jiro, the LDP candidate in 2005, will run in 2009. The bad news for the LDP is that Ono finished 10,000 votes behind Goto Hitoshi, the DPJ candidate, in 2005. The DPJ should be able to win this seat, giving the DPJ two seats to the LDP's one in Yamanashi.

Proportional representation

Once again using the d'Hondt method simulator, Yomiuri's latest poll numbers for PR voting, and turnout data from 2005, I will try to get a rough estimate of how well the DPJ might do in PR voting.

Without being able to factor in the impact of the YP, it may be possible for the DPJ to take the thirteen seats won by the LDP and Komeito in 2005, leaving the governing coalition with eight, and the JCP with one.

It seems possible for the DPJ to win thirty-three of fifty-six seats in South Kanto, with the LDP's taking nineteen, YP's taking two, and Komeito and the JCP taking one each.

"The DPJ that does not do any pork-barrel spending"

Watanabe Yoshimi and Asao Keiichiro, who, along with Eda Kenji are the three "partners" at the head of the Minna no to (Your Party), gave a press conference at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan this afternoon to explain their purposes to the foreign press.

The value of the talk was in providing information about how the new party views its relationships with the LDP and the DPJ.

About the LDP, Watanabe was unambiguous: "From the start," Watanabe said, "I have said that this party will not serve as a complementary party to the LDP." The YP, like the DPJ, stands for seiken kotai, for regime change. But Asao stressed that regime change cannot just be about changing the party in power. It must be about changing how Japan is governed. (I made the same point in my own remarks at the FCCJ last week.)

In other words, the YP's hope is that it will be in a position to serve as the DPJ's conscience, an idealistic voice reminding the DPJ of the importance of genuine regime change. When asked, Watanabe could not deny the fundamental similarity between the DPJ's and the YP's manifestos — available here — but said that the devil's in the details, that the DPJ's proposals are vaguer, that the DPJ depends, for example, on union support and so cannot go as far as the YP. But the fundamental aims are the same. The YP wants fundamental administrative reform, drastic changes to how public money is spent, regional decentralization, reconstruction of the social safety net, and changes to Japan's economic model to ensure that the country has the money to pay for social security. Like the DPJ, the YP reaffirms the importance of the US-Japan alliance, but also wants an "equal" alliance — and says, in a phrase that I think exemplifies what the DPJ wants to do in the alliance, that Japan should "say what must be said and demand that which should be demanded." It also emphasizes a foreign policy of "Japan at Asia's center," echoing Hatoyama Yukio's call for greater economic cooperation in Asia.

Not surprisingly, given the similarities between the manifestos, Watanabe stressed that the YP is open to a post-election coalition with the DPJ.

There is much to like in the YP's manifesto, but I find the party's idealism a bit frustrating. It is all too easy for a party fielding fifteen candidates to talk about eliminating this and ending that and stress that it won't do any pork-barrel spending. But the DPJ is trying to win a majority nationwide — the act of cobbling together enough support to win a majority means that compromises are inevitable. Is there a democracy in the world, after all, that is free from pork-barrel spending in one form or another? The question isn't completely eliminating waste but making government transparent, so the public is in a position to judge whether its money is being wasted and punish elected officials who go to far in wasting public money. This, of course, is the value of the DPJ's agricultural income support program, for example, which would make government support more transparent than the byzantine system of subsidies in place today. The same goes for amakudari, Watanabe's bete noire — it is much easier for a party to call for outright ban to a practice like this when the chances are against its ever being in a position to do something about it. (Although, to the YP's credit, its manifesto includes a call for ending the practice of encouraging bureaucrats to retire early, which might actually do some good in limiting the demand for amakudari positions.)

Of course, whether the YP will be able to serve as the DPJ's conscience will depend entirely on how will the DPJ performs in the general election. Naturally the best possible outcome for the YP is the DPJ's depending on it to wield a majority in the House of Representatives — but this scenario strikes me as highly unlikely. Meanwhile, should the DPJ win a majority of its own, the YP's voice can be easily ignored. It would be a shame if this group's ideas were completely ignored, but perhaps it is inevitable that the YP will be absorbed by the DPJ. Much as it is difficult to see why anyone would vote for Hiranuma Takeo's conservative "third pole" when they can vote for the LDP, so it is difficult to see why voters would vote for the YP when they can vote for the DPJ. If the DPJ manages to perform as well in the election as some have suggested, Watanabe, Asao, and company may be able to do more good within the DPJ than as a small party outside the DPJ.

Another Koizumi child leaves the LDP

As expected, despite their tenuous position in the party (and their bleak electoral prospects), the LDP has not seen young reformists rush to exit the party and sign on with Watanabe Yoshimi's Your Party.

Only a small number has left, one by one, and with only a week until the campaign officially begins, presumably not many more will leave. The latest is Shimizu Seiichiro, who won a Tokyo PR seat in 2005 and opted to leave the party Monday. He is seeking to run as YP's candidate in Tokyo's twentieth district.

It is getting harder to see the YP having much impact on this election. Watanabe will win his seat in Tochigi, Eda Kenji will be reelected in Kanagawa-8, Asao Keiichiro may well be in a position to win in Kanagawa-4, but beyond the nascent party's three heavyweights, the party's candidates are unlikely to score victories in single-member districts. For the YP to have a strong showing, it needed to trigger a media "boom," but it seems that in the excitement surrounding a likely DPJ victory on 30 August, the creation of the YP will be of marginal importance in this election. Perhaps in a close election three seats could be the deciding vote for a coalition government, but if the DPJ does as well as it appears it will do, the YP's votes will be inconsequential.

It seems that the significance of the YP is in giving Koizumi children like Shimizu and Kanagawa-9 candidate Yamauchi Koichi another chance to win a Diet seat against long odds.

What's in a name?

With his party's launch scheduled for 8 August, Watanabe Yoshimi has finally revealed its name.

Minna no tō.

Apparently the official English translation will be "Your Party." I'm not sure which is worse, the name in the original Japanese or its translation. I realize that Japanese parties have run the gamut when it comes to names, and their names often say little about the party's policy orientation: as the old quip goes, the Liberal Democratic Party is neither liberal nor democratic, nor a party. But surely the name of Watanabe's new party sets some kind of record as the worst ever name for a Japanese political party.

First, I'm simply annoyed with the English translation. Your Party isn't the name of a party: it's the negation of a party's name. Instead of an adjective that might reveal something about the party, there is the empty possessive pronoun "your."

Second, whose party is it? The Japanese suggests that it's "everyone's" party. What does that mean exactly? Given Watanabe's struggle to find candidates for his group — at this point they number five, Watanabe, Eda Kenji, DPJ outcast Asao Keiichiro, and LDP refugees Yamauchi Koichi and Hirotsu Motoko — the party's ranks hardly constitute "everyone." Incidentally, if Michels's iron law of oligarchy holds, a party that belongs to everyone is a logical impossibility. Sooner or later power will be consolidated in the hands of leaders: "Who says organization, says oligarchy."

Seriously though, couldn't they have come up with anything better? I leave it to you, my readers, to leave your suggestions for an alternative name in the comments.

To answer the question in this post's title, there is nothing in this party's name. Bad names certainly haven't paralyzed Japanese parties in the past (with an exception perhaps for the Japanese Communist Party, which may not perform as well in the general election as many expected earlier this year). In the case of the YP, a splinter party by any other name would be just as impotent. Watanabe's party seems premised on the idea that a realignment is bound to happen sooner or later, and the YP will be ready whenever that happens. It will probably stand to gain should the LDP's reformists get wiped out this month, as those reformists may gravitate to Watanabe in a bid to return to the Diet. Accordingly, the party's first real test will probably be in the 2010 upper house election than in this month's general election.

But Watanabe and his happy few are swimming against the tide. This month's election will likely continue the trend towards a two-party system. After all, the DPJ will surely gain some seats at the expense of other opposition parties.

Meanwhile, it is unclear what the YP offers to voters that the others don't. Watanabe might claim to be the purest proponent of administrative reform, but he is hardly alone. With any hint of economic neo-liberalism being played down, the YP is just another party promising to make the bureaucrats pay.