Land of the Rising Sun is running to stand still, writes Gamal Nkrumah Trying to preview an uncertain future is a disconcerting exercise. The Japanese economy is over the worst of the global financial meltdown. Indeed, it is becoming increasingly likely that Japan will avoid recession this year. The recent surge in world financial markets has permitted Japanese borrowers to refinance themselves. That said, the economic outlook remains rather uncertain and very dependent on the Western world's performance. As long as America escapes a full-blown financial crisis, Japan would be doing swimmingly. Expectations concerning the new Japanese government of Prime Minister-elect Yukio Hatoyama should be recalibrated. What the new government must provide is an alternative to the staid Japan that has alienated its young and let them down. The statistical indicators of contemporary Japan are unsettling. Some 44 per cent of the country's workforce are part-time. Inflation, or to be more precise, deflation stands at minus 2.20 per cent and economic growth rate continues to grind to a halt at a paltry 0.2 per cent per annum. Three things connect these numbers. First, the results of the latest Japanese elections come as no surprise to Japan watchers. Second, Japan is no longer virtually a one party state. Third, the Japanese electorate is disgruntled and dissatisfied with the status quo. Economists forecast that deflation will curb any bounce back from Japan's worst post-war recession. Japanese conglomerates complain that deflation is fast eroding profits and is forcing them to keep cutting wages which plummeted by an unprecedented seven per cent. Deflation and unemployment will inevitably be the gravest challenge facing the winners of last weekend's general election. The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) founded only in 1998 was widely expected to do well. Its 308 seats give it a most comfortable majority in the Japanese parliament (the Diet) -- there is a militaristic streak in the Japanese national psyche that was for some obscure reason highly influenced by the Prussians. The Liberal Democratic Party, the war-horse of post- WWII Japanese politics, monopolised power for half a century and embodied, or perhaps epitomised, this Prussian orientation. It scored badly -- 119 seats or 26.7 per cent of the vote. During the 2005 elections it scooped 300 seats as opposed to the 112 seats the DPJ secured. Like all astonishing numbers, their true import must be taken with a pinch of salt. The New Komeito Party, founded by conservative Buddhists also in 1998, managed to garner the support of 11.5 per cent of the Japanese electorate's vote holding 21 seats, down from 31 in the previous parliament. It was the Japanese Communist Party, however, that was the unsung hero of this year's poll, bucking the tide and hanging on tenaciously to the nine seats it held in the previous parliament, even slightly increasing its votes to five million, far ahead of the now discredited Social Democrats. Like all astonishing numbers, they do not actually mean much. Yes, they do hint at something new, something afoot. But it would be totally foolish in the extreme to jump to conclusions about Japan's political future. The figures are purely pointers. For its imperfections, the Japanese political system has served the country well -- or so the electorate seems to think -- over the past five decades. How any of this would help manage Japan's economic and export sector is unclear. Japanese industrial conglomerations are now too large to fail. They constitute an inalienable feature of the bloated Japanese economy, and a permanent fixture of its financial institutions, and would pull the whole edifice down if they collapsed. Many Japanese now believe that these institutions have become too big for Japan's good. All those interested in Japan's prosperity must remain on their guard. The classic Japanese novel Kanikosen -- The Crab-Canning Ship -- in which workers are depicted as rising up against capitalist exploiters has emerged as a bestseller this year. Curious in the model capitalist country of the postwar period. "Working conditions dramatically changed for younger generations in 2002 when new temporary working laws were introduced. Today, more than one in three Japanese is in temporary work. They have almost no rights, no security, no future," warned Kimitoshi Morihara, the deputy director of the Japanese Communist Party's international bureau. "The political climate in Japan is changing and more young Japanese are becoming politically aware because these issues have long been ignored by other parties," he explained. In the scale of things, this is no small change. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) protected the interests of the rich and powerful for more than half a century. The only attempt to defy this scenario was the short-lived socialist Katayama government in the late 1940s was quickly quashed by the American occupying forces. The brief rule of Socialist Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa in 1993-94 collapsed under similar pressures. True, crumbs trickled down to the masses but now the feast is over and the tables are being cleared. It is in this context that the DPJ has risen like a phoenix from the ashes of LDP. The LDP supports corporations and the DPJ supposedly champions consumers and workers, but in actual fact many of the DPJ leaders are ex-LDPers, some pundits noting tongue-in-cheek that rats are known to flee sinking ships. Moreover, with absolutely no compunctions, Hatoyama himself was a leading LDP light before abandoning ship. The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) came into being as a merger of several opposition parties, including the Democratic Socialist Party of Japan. Members of the Parliamentary Citizens' Action League feign concern for the underdog and the end result is there are more liberals in the DPJ in the LDP, alias Democratic Liberal Party. Hatoyama hails from a prominent political dynasty nicknamed Japan's "Kennedy family". Ironic that the last of the Kennedy's was buried even as Yukio Hatoyama was being hailed as Japan's JFK. His great grandfather Kazuo Hatoyama was speaker of the Japanese Diet of Japan during the Meiji era. His paternal grandfather Ichiro Hatoyama was the American-approved prime minister in the 1950s and his father was former foreign minister Iichiro Hatoyama. The platform of the DPJ calls for an end to the free-wheeling, free market neo-liberal policies imported from the United States in the 1990s. How will the end of 50 years of unbroken rule by the LDP impact relations with Washington? Both the US and Japan now have supposedly "liberal" (that is, nice) leaders who mouth the sweet nothings that the increasingly disgruntled young and not-so-young disadvantaged want to hear. Both landslide victories on either side of the Pacific have given the respective elites a breathing space, but how long will that charade last? Outgoing Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso conceded defeat and apologised for his poor performance, which is more than can be said of George W Bush or his eminence grise Richard Cheney. The Japanese Communist Party is the only real alternative opposition. Founded in 1922, long before there was any conception of LDPs and DPJs or what-have-you, the Japanese Communist Party espouses socialism and democracy and opposes militarism. But lest we forget, it is part and parcel of the Japanese political establishment, forming an integral part of the dynamics of the unique Japanese multi-party democracy. It doesn't advocate socialist revolution even though it is highly critical of Japan's security alliance with the US. Japan's communists call for unarmed neutrality, the severing of security ties with the US, defense of the postwar constitution, and no doubt pulling out of US misadventures such as the occupation of Afghanistan -- the only party expressing the will of the Japanese people on this vital foreign policy issue. It has the second largest showing of any Communist Party in the G8 after Russia. It is inspiring mainly young people to join at a rate of more than a thousand a month. Unlike the two major conservative parties that curry favour among the conservative ruling circles, the communists speak from principle calling for real change that meets the aspiration of the Japanese nation. They know that just relying on even more reckless economic stimulus measures would not suffice.
