[paper] Populism and Koizumi Politics

Masakazu Yamazaki

Born in 1934, Mr. Masakazu Yamazaki is a dramatist, a critique, and the President of University of East Asia. He is also a member of the Advisory Board of Genron-NPO. He is the author of "The Era of Great Division (Daibunretu No Jidai)", Truth of History and Justice of Politics (Rekisi No Sinjitu To Seiji No Seigi) and many other works.

The common characteristics of "populism" are that it attempts to win the support of the people by appealing to the baser elements of their nature, such as irrationalism, xenophobia, or jingoism, and uses the emotional power that is generated to attack the establishment. Populism adopts a form of participatory democracy or reflects grass-root voices in politics.

Common political techniques among populists

First, they stimulate people's emotions and appeal to their sentiments rather than to their reason. In addition, the sentiments to which populists appeal usually stimulate hatred and an "us versus them" mentality. Once such angry emotions are stimulated, it is necessary to find an enemy against whom they can be used.
Second, when populists win they start taking matters into their own hands. They bully other politicians, attempt to "reform" institutions by making them serve their own ends, and try to take permanent control over the system, all of which may eventually lead to fascism.

Third, in the process of its formation, populism ignores procedures to realize its ends, process and institutions. On the contrary, populism attacks every institution and procedure as an enemy against its aim.

Democratic politics and populism

Populism can be ironically said as a mutant derived from democracy or democratic political institutions. This can happen because pure democracy has an essentially problematic structure.

We need to realize that fundamental danger lurks in the very democratic institutions themselves. Therefore, it is important for us to create a device to forestall this danger. In particular, direct democracy, or politics wherein a plebiscite is held on every item, is extremely dangerous in that it opens the way to populism.

Place for political debate is bulwark against populism

In a sense that is quite different from direct democracy, political institutions or devices such as the agora of ancient Greece, or town meetings held at the time of the founding of the U.S. and still held in New England, are necessary. In such forums people can gather to hold an assembly in which they can express their emotions, exchange their views and, through the free discussion of pros and cons, can shape their ideas and policies. This was a healthy feature of earlier democracies but in the world of today, and under current democratic institutions, such forums are difficult to find. However, if an intellectually sophisticated forum for political dialogue is organized, it would be a most effective bulwark against populism.

Is Koizumi politics populism?

I do not necessarily think that strong popular support for the Koizumi administration is a manifestation of populism. Rather, the current Koizumi phenomenon is not populism but a mere reversal of people's self-abhorrence.
Thus far, Japanese journalism continues to engage in creating and perpetuating absurdly negative images of the Japanese government and its political leaders. In the case of former Prime Minister Mori, his portrayal in the media was so offensive that his true personality was negated. As a result of such behavior people continue to have negative images of their own governments and leaders.
The strength of the negative images disseminated by the media have made people long for national leaders that were also respectable persons. Therefore, no sooner had the media reported that this time around Japan's leader seemed to be a relatively good person, than public emotion immediately reversed itself. In part, the public's support for and liking of Koizumi is so strong because their loathing of pervious leaders was so deep.

Furthermore, the Japanese people think that Koizumi's reforms make sense and in the course of implementing these reforms, his popularity can lead to a soft-landing somewhere else.

However, when we look at the recent gubernatorial elections, no one can deny that there were signs of populism. If we do not take appropriate measures, such a propensity may yet develop in Koizumi, or appear in some future leader whom we do not yet know.

Therefore, I am looking forward toward a debate on this issue at "Genron NPO."