民衆党総選挙外国人参政権

The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ)'s presidential election is scheduled to take place on Sept. 14, and, thanks to a provision in the party's constitution, permanent foreign residents who have registered as members or supporters of the DPJ will be able to vote.

The election is between current Prime Minister Naoto Kan and Ichiro Ozawa, who is the most powerful politician in Japan.

The DPJ is the majority party, and therefore the winner of the Party election will become the prime minister. This means in effect that the 900,000 permanent foreign residents in Japan may have some sway in the outcome of the election.

Not all of those are eligible to vote - you have to be 18 or older and either a registered party member or a "supporter" - so it statistically unlikely that foreigners will cast the deciding vote. (Moreover, as noted above, those who have yet to register with the DPJ as either a member or supporter will not be eligible to vote in the upcoming election.)

The right wing in Japan is predictably up in arms about this turn of events. Both the Sankei Shinbun and Yomiuri Shinbun have editorialized about the dangers of foreigners influencing the choice of the prime minister. The majority of Japan's permanent foreign residents are Koreans, who make up more than 500,000 of the total.

The opposition Liberal Democratic Party does permit all party members to participate in its party elections - but limits membership to Japanese nationals.

The DPJ's constitution however states that anybody aged 18 or older can become "party members or supporters, including Japanese living abroad and permanent foreign residents of Japan" - and all are eligible to vote in the DPJ election.

To join the Party as a member costs 6,000 for one year; supporters pay only 2,000 yen. Both have voting rights.

It is possible to register online. Doing so now will allow you to vote in the next election - not on September 14th. Elections are generally held every two years.

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菅直人

Japan's new Prime minister, Naoto Kan, came to office after the resignation of his predecessor Yukio Hatoyama early last month, becoming Japan's fifth premier in only four years.

A native of Ube in Yamaguchi Prefecture, Kan studied physics at Tokyo Institute of Technology and has a background in patent law and as a grass-roots activist.


Kan served as Health Minister in a coalition government headed by the LDP in 1996 and is popular for his role in admitting the Japanese government's responsibility for the spread of imported HIV-tainted blood among hemophiliacs in the 1980s.

Kan has led the DPJ before when he stood unsuccessfully against the LDP's Junichiro Koizumi in the 2003 general election, but stepped down in the wake of the unpaid pension contributions scandal sweeping through Japan's lawmakers at the time. Kan is seen as an opponent of Ichiro Ozawa's influence within the DPJ.


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鳩山由紀夫

He came, he dithered, he went. Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has resigned after less than eight months in office to take responsibility for breaking an election promise to remove a US military base from Okinawa.

Since the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) swept to power in the general election last September, Hatoyama's ratings have begun to plummet and he has resigned along with kingpin Ichiro Ozawa to give the DPJ a chance in next month's Upper House elections.



Besides his policy flip-flops over the marine base in Okinawa, Hatoyama has been involved in a financial scandal over donations made to him by his wealthy mother and has even been criticised for his choice of shirts.

Possible successors to Hatoyama include veteran Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Naoto Kan, lantern-jawed Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada and the smooth apparatchik Seiji Maehara, who is the present Transport Minister.

Born in 1947, Hatoyama replaced Ichiro Ozawa as leader of the DPJ earlier last year, after the latter became embroiled in an on-going financing scandal involving political donations from a construction company.

Hatoyama is a rich, blue-blooded, hereditary politician and a grandson of a former conservative party prime minister, Ichiro Hatoyama (1883-1959) - one of the founders of the LDP.
Hatoyama's father Iichiro Hatoyama was Japan's foreign minister for a period in the 1970s. His brother Kunio Hatoyama is now a maverick politician and green-advocate.

Yukio Hatoyama is a graduate of Tokyo University with a PhD from Stanford University in the US.

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日の丸　性犯罪　自民党



It’s official: two days before they receive their worst drubbing in over 50 years, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is utterly desperate.

I came home last evening to find the glossiest and most copiously-sized election-related pamphlet I have received so far in my mailbox. It was from the LDP. It may as well have been from local right-wing nutcases.

It has two photos on the front: one, at the top, of a not-one-hair-out-of-place, rigorously Soviet-style, LDP meeting at which an LDP dignitary, perhaps the madly unpopular Aso Taro, is at the podium under two flags: the Rising Sun (AKA Hi-no-Maru) and the LDP party flag. The caption: “A general meeting of the LDP with the Rising Sun flag.”

Then it shows another photo at bottom: an (unruly?) line of Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) characters waving to an audience – minus any flags on stage! The caption: “A general meeting of the DPJ without the Rising Sun flag.”

Between the photos reads as follows:


(Note: The Japan Teachers’ Union is the arch enemy of the LDP and has been at loggerheads with it for decades over, among other things, the singing of the national anthem and the raising of the Rising Sun flag – which it considers relics of a war of aggression – in schools.)

From thereon in, the tirade is all about the Japan Teachers’ Union, and the DPJ doesn’t get a lot of mention. But that’s because we now know, thanks to the cover, that “DPJ = JTU.” Got it?

Inside, the pamphlet carries on the shrill panicky tone of the cover, saying how the JTU supports education that paints the Japanese as cruel tyrants in China in the years before and during WW2, and tries to stop Japanese children loving their own country.



And then it really scrapes the bottom of the barrel: sexual deviancy - involving kids! From page 5, the sanctimonious tone adopted throughout gives way to a gasp and shudder of scandalized Fox News-style horror.

According to the Liberal Democratic Party, the JTU occupies the extremest of positions regarding sex education, including support for the right to choose one’s own gender.

This is “backed up” by a picture of two dolls with their clothes half pulled off, which it states were used to teach about sex and childbirth to children. And, as a result of this heinous education, a mother in Fukuoka had to pull her first year elementary school son – who had been subjected to such outrageous tuition – off his little sister, onto whose netherparts he was pressing his penis! And, worse still, a mother from Miyazaki was subject to the indignity of witnessing her third year elementary school son having gay sex with a classmate in his room (so it says). And all because of the JTU, and sex education, and the DPJ, and, and … and … the fact that Japanese voters are thoroughly fed up with shameless LDP bullshit.

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