Japanese Politics Since the 1990s: Intolerable Solutions to Intolerable Problems

A description of the current Japanese government must begin with the fall of its last iteration. The glittering world-dominating supertechnological of the 1980s fell apart in 1990, when the real estate and stock speculation bubble burst, leaving the money in ’s banking system tied up in loans given to stock and real estate speculators. In the early 90s, with the borrowers nearly bankrupt and their collateral devalued, the banks lacked the resources to make any new loans (Lecture notes, 10/14). Only a massive restructuring and deregulation could increase the growth of the economy, but the Japanese electorate consistently voted against policies that would result in mass lay-offs and bankruptcy (McCargo, 68). This economically intolerable depression and its socially intolerable solution would form the fulcrum of political conflict until the present day.

As the business world fell apart, the politicians it supported became increasingly unstable. Soon, “the costly structure of doing business within the country—with its political bribes, high entertainment costs, and irrational and often whimsically interpreted regulations—led to demands for political reform” (Pempel, 141). This tension produced a crisis in 1993, when the Liberal Democratic Party, which had controlled the government since 1955 (McCargo, 93), fell to a vote of no confidence put forth by the opposition parties (Schlesinger, 268). The opposition had little hope of deposing the LDP alone, but the driven LDP reformist Ozawa Ichiro used internal tensions within his party to produce a splintering of new opposition parties (Schlesinger, 270). These new parties joined forces with the Socialist Party of Japan to take control of the government.