Asian Topics on Asia for Educators || The Government of Modern Japan: Factions in Japanese Politics

Declining Importance of Factions

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Gerald L. Curtis :: As important as factional organizations have been within the Japanese political system throughout the period since the end of the Second World War, there is evidence now that they are declining in importance.

The reason factions are becoming weaker in Japanese politics is that, for one thing, the relationship between the faction boss and the other faction members is not as intense and personal as it was in the early years of Liberal Democratic Party rule, when a lot of these factions had formally been political parties in which the party boss had developed very close personal ties with the members of his own group.

Over time, as the faction leadership has moved from one generation to the next — now the third or fourth generation of leaders — the ties between the faction leader and the faction members have become much less emotional, much less personal, than used to be the case.

Also, and perhaps the most important reason why factions are becoming less powerful in Japanese politics today is because factions can no longer raise as much money as they used to raise. Most importantly, the faction leader is unable to raise the huge amounts of money that is required to survive in Japanese political life. It is estimated that it costs a back-bencher — that is, a Japanese politician who has only been elected once or twice and is not a particularly powerful figure in his party — it is estimated that it costs even a back-bencher at least a million dollars a year to be in public office in Japan. That is, to be able to hire a staff, rent office space, do all the things that politicians have to do to continue to get support from their constituents.

It used to be the case that a faction leader would provide most of the money that the members of his faction needed for that political life, and in return the faction member gave the leader his loyalty. So, when the faction leader said we're going to support so-and-so for the next party, in the next party presidential election, the faction members could be counted on to do as the leader wanted them to do because they depended on the leader for their political money. But over time, as politics has become more expensive, and overtime as the Japanese law relating to campaign contributions has become more severe, it has become less and less possible for the faction leader to raise enough money to provide the majority of the money needed by his members.

So today in Japanese politics almost all Japanese politicians raise most of the money that they use by themselves, and that means their dependence on their faction boss is much less than it used to be, and so there is a lot more independence on the part of individual Diet members, and the faction leader cannot count on their support necessarily when he wants it.