Abe Road: Kuwata Keisuke’s Beatles Parody

In May 2009, when the Japanese LDP government was in a weakened position, Kuwata Keisuke, lead singer of popular rock band Southern All Stars, performed a parody of the Beatles’ Abbey Road on his weekly television show. Backed by a band performing an uncanny cover of the album, he rewrote the lyrics into commentary on corruption in Japanese politics, fiscal problems, the death penalty, and other political issues. This performance was highly unusual: Japanese recording artists rarely engage in politics. The recording and broadcast industries disallow lyrics on controversial topics, and management discourages artists from engaging in politics. Kuwata staged his rebellious gesture as a “mishearing” of a well-known album. Kuwata transformed Abbey Road into political parody through linguistic sleight of hand. Kuwata chose Japanese lyrics with similar vowels and consonants (as demonstrated by their proximities on the International Phonetic Alphabet) to make them sound like the original English lyrics. By presenting his acrid commentary as a parody of this much-loved album and thus framing it as humorous entertainment, Kuwata was able to publicly criticize Japanese politicians.

Japanese Politics: An Introduction

The study of Japanese politics has flourished over the past several decades. This Handbook provides a state-of-the-field overview for students and researchers of Japanese. The volume also serves to introduce Japanese politics to readers less familiar with Japan. In addition, the volume has a theme of “evaluating Japan’s democracy.” Taken as a whole, the volume provides a positive evaluation of the state of Japan’s democracy. The volume is divided into two parts, roughly corresponding to domestic Japanese politics and Japan’s international politics. Within the domestic politics part, there are four distinct sections: “Domestic Political Actors and Institutions,” covering the Japanese Constitution, electoral systems, prime minister, Diet, bureaucracy, judiciary, and local government; “Political Parties and Coalitions,” covering the Liberal Democratic Party, coalition government, Kōmeitō, and the political opposition; “Policymaking and the Public,” covering the policymaking process, public opinion, civil society, and populism; and, “Political Economy and Social Policy,” covering industrial, energy, social welfare, agricultural, monetary, and immigration policies, as well as social inequality. In the international relations part, there are four sections: “International Relations Frameworks,” covering grand strategy, international organizations, and international status; “International Political Economy,” covering trade, finance, foreign direct investment, the environment, economic regionalism, and the linkage between security and economics; “International Security,” covering remilitarization, global and regional security multilateralism, nuclear nonproliferation, naval power, space security, and cybersecurity; and, “Foreign Relations” covering Japan’s relations with the United States, China, South Korea, ASEAN, India, the European Union, and Russia.

The Japanese Constitution

The Constitution of Japan is the oldest unamended supreme law in the world. This chapter examines the determinants of constitutional stability and its implications for Japanese politics. First, cross-national constitutional data shows that the COJ is uncommonly short, leaving many details regarding political institutions to be determined by law. This makes it possible to alter institutional rules through regular legislation, lessening the structural need for constitutional amendments. Second, strong disagreements among elites and citizens have insulated the COJ from polarizing reforms. While a supermajority of legislators support amendments in principle, there is no consensus on which provisions to amend or whether to prioritize them above bread-and-butter socioeconomic issues. Public opinion is similarly divided, but the most consistent support is for progressive priorities, such as adding new rights to privacy and the environment, rather than for conservative targets desired by the LDP, particularly Article 9.

The Era of Coalition Government in Japan: The Institutional Logic of Surplus Majorities and Strange Bedfellows

For nearly four decades after its establishment in 1955, Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party formed every government alone. Since mid-1993, however, coalition government has been the norm in Japanese politics. Interestingly, every coalition since 1999 has included a party with a lower house majority by itself. Nonetheless, these majority parties have taken on coalition partners. This chapter shows that the logic of “oversized” coalition government in Japan is driven in part by parliamentary bicameralism, and partly by the mixed-member electoral system, which incentivizes the formation of long-lived pre-electoral coalitions.

Kōmeitō: The Party and Its Place in Japanese Politics

This chapter surveys the history, operation in coalition, support base, and key policies of Kōmeitō (the Clean Government Party). It begins with an overview of party typologies and argues that Kōmeitō is not easily placed in any comparative political science category. The chapter then delves into the party’s history, detailing its origins in 1964 as an outgrowth from Sōka Gakkai, an influential Japanese lay Buddhist organization. It discusses Kōmeitō’s increasing institutional disaggregation from Sōka Gakkai after its formal separation in 1970, its role in changing Japan’s political system in the 1990s, and its entrée into governmental coalition with the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) from 1999. The analysis extends to the present and draws on elections data, party publications, interviews with Kōmeitō politicians, ethnography within Sōka Gakkai, and other sources to track ways the party has relied on Gakkai vote-gatherers to secure a pivotal position within Japanese politics, even as its adherent supporters have become increasingly diverse and liable to critique the party their religion founded. It concludes by considering challenges Kōmeitō faces from within Sōka Gakkai, from the LDP, and from Japan’s demographic, political, and societal shifts.