Freedom in the World 2004 - Japan

Political Rights: 1
Civil Liberties: 2
Status: Free
Population: 127,500,000
GNI/Capita: $35,610
Life Expectancy: 81
Religious Groups: Shinto and Buddhist (84 percent), other, including Christian (16 percent)
Ethnic Groups: Japanese (99 percent), other (1 percent)
Capital: Tokyo

Overview

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi faced renewed criticism of his reform program from within his own Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) after an upstart opposition party made strong gains in Japan's November 2003 elections. Conservative LDP members argued that their ruling party's struggle simply to gain a parliamentary majority showed that the party's core supporters largely reject Koizumi's prescription to end Japan's long economic malaise. Koizumi argued instead that the legislative gains by the reformist opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), indicated that most voters want precisely the kind of changes that he proposes.

Japan has been a parliamentary democracy since its defeat in World War II. The conservative LDP has dominated postwar Japanese politics, winning all but one election since it was created in 1955. During the Cold War, the LDP presided over Japan's spectacular economic ascent while maintaining close security ties with the United States. In what became known as Japan's Iron Triangle – the close nexus of the LDP, big business, and the bureaucracy – LDP governments spent heavily to benefit big business and their rural stronghold, large corporations in turn filled the ruling party's coffers, and Tokyo bureaucrats imposed a thicket of regulations to protect mom-and-pop businesses, who voted overwhelmingly for the LDP.

The LDP's sole election loss, in 1993, followed a string of corruption scandals in the late 1980s that brought down Prime Minister Noburu Takeshita and other top LDP politicians. After a fractious reformist government collapsed, the LDP returned to power in 1994 as the head of a three-party coalition.

Japan's current economic woes stem from the collapse of its stock and real estate markets in the early 1990s. The crash saddled Japanese banks with tens of billions of dollars worth of problem loans, and successive LDP-led governments in the 1990s largely failed to contain the fallout.

As the banks' problem loans helped drag down the economy by choking off lending and eroding consumer confidence, the government pumped around $1 trillion worth of stimulus spending into the economy during the decade. The extra spending did little to revive Japan's economy, the world's second largest, but helped jack up its huge public debt, now around 150 percent of economic output, the highest proportion among wealthy countries. Many consumers have cut spending because of job insecurity and in order to save more for retirement in the event that Japan's swelling debt and its greying population overwhelm the state pension system.

Koizumi stepped into this economic quicksand in 2001 following the resignation of unpopular Prime Minister Yoshiri Mori. The prime minister wants to slash red tape, cut wasteful rural spending, and force banks to clean up bad loans. The LDP's conservative old guard have blocked many of these changes, which they fear will inflict economic pain on the farmers, small-business owners, and construction companies that are the ruling party's staunchest supporters. For their part, many economists warn that making deep cuts in public spending and forcing banks to clean up bad loans rapidly could, in the short term, accelerate Japan's vicious economic cycle of weak consumer spending, deflation, tight credit, anemic corporate profits, and layoffs. Cleaning up small banks, for example, could require cutting off credit to thousands of small companies that are the economic backbone of provincial cities and rural Japan.

At the heart of Koizumi's agenda are the goals of eroding the political influence of special interests and of putting politicians, rather than Japan's powerful bureaucrats, in charge of policy. These changes resonate with many voters, who recently have elected several governors who ran as independents behind detailed manifestos that emphasized accountability. So far, LDP conservatives have blocked or watered down many of Koizumi's core plans, such as to privatize Japan's highway corporations and $3 trillion postal savings system. The prime minister accuses these bodies of wasteful public works spending aimed at securing LDP votes.

Under a turnout of less than 60 percent, the LDP won 237 seats in the 480-seat house in the November 9, 2003 snap elections for the lower house. After the vote, it gained a simple majority by welcoming three independents into its ranks and merging with the tiny New Conservative Party, which won four seats. The DPJ gained 40 seats to finish with 177. This was the largest tally for any opposition party since 1958, though changes in the size and electoral structure of parliament make comparisons difficult. While most of the DPJ's gains came at the expense of smaller, leftist parties rather than the LDP, its success may herald the emergence of a two-party system in which voters have a credible alternative to the LDP. Many argue that the lack of such an alternative has kept the LDP in power even as Japan has been plagued for more than a decade by recession, deflation, weak banks, struggling firms, and mounting public debt.

The LDP's victory was helped by Koizumi's high personal popularity among Japanese voters, several consecutive quarters of economic growth, and an uptick in employment after the jobless rate equaled a postwar high in May, hitting 5.5 percent. Like Koizumi, the DPJ, led by Naoto Kan, called for deregulation and spending cuts, while also pledging to decentralize power to Japan's provinces and hike taxes to fund social security outlays.

Under Koizumi, Japan has continued to expand its role in international peace keeping and security. Japanese troops have participated in several UN peacekeeping missions since 1992, Japanese warships provided logistical support to U.S.-led forces during the war in Afghanistan, and in 2003, parliament approved the dispatch of 1,000 troops to Iraq to provide logistical support to U.S.-led troops and humanitarian aid. The ongoing crisis over North Korea's nuclear weapons program has increased debate over the need to boost the capacity of Japan's already formidable military, which is limited to a self-defense role by the country's pacifist constitution.

Political Rights and Civil Liberties

Japanese can change their government through elections and enjoy most basic rights. The lower house of parliament has 300 seats that represent single-member districts and 180 that are chosen by proportional representation. The upper house has 152 single-member seats and 100 chosen by proportional balloting. Despite recent reforms aimed at curbing the power of the bureaucracy, senior civil servants, rather than elected politicians, largely shape policy, generally with little transparency.

Japan's press is independent, though not always outspoken. The European Union has formally complained about the exclusive access to news sources that major media outlets often enjoy as members of Japan's 800 or more private press clubs. As club members, these media outlets receive information from government ministries, political parties, and private firms that is often unavailable to reporters from foreign or small publications, who are shut out of some clubs. Journalists who belong to the clubs generally do not report aggressively on the conditions of ailing banks or companies and other sensitive financial issues. In a rare killing of a journalist in Japan, the bound-and-stabbed body of freelance reporter Satoru Someya, noted for his investigative reporting on organized crime in Tokyo, was found in Tokyo Bay in September.

Japanese of all faiths can worship freely. Buddhism and Shintoism have the most followers. In the wake of the 1995 terrorist attacks in the Tokyo subway by the Aum Shinrikyo cult, parliament amended the Religious Corporation Law to give the government greater oversight of the operations and financial affairs of most religious groups. The law applies only to religious groups that register voluntarily as "religious corporations," but most do register in order to receive tax benefits and other advantages.

China, South Korea, and other regional countries frequently lodge protests against passages in Japanese history textbooks that try to justify the country's occupation of other Asian nations before and during World War II and downplay the imperial army's wartime atrocities in occupied lands. These abuses included forcing tens of thousands of women to work as sex slaves. The Education Ministry, moreover, often censors textbook passages that it considers too critical of Japan's wartime record.

Japan has many well-funded and active civic, human rights, social welfare, and environmental groups. Trade unions are independent and vigorously promote workers' interests. In a key labor concern, the International Labor Organization has criticized laws that prevent police, soldiers, and firefighters from joining unions or staging strikes. Civil servants can join unions but cannot strike, and they face restrictions on bargaining collectively. Around 21 percent of Japanese workers belong to trade unions. Private advocacy groups accuse some employers of exploiting or discriminating against foreign workers, who often cannot speak Japanese and are unaware of their rights.

Japan's judiciary is independent, and defendants generally receive fair trials. Human rights groups say, however, that the criminal process is flawed because defendants often have little access to counsel before their trials. This is because the criminal procedure code allows police and prosecutors to restrict a suspect's access to counsel during an investigation and bars attorneys outright from being present during interrogations, even after indictment. Moreover, rights groups, bar associations, and some prisoners allege that police at times use force to extract confessions from suspects or to enforce discipline among detainees. Appellate courts recently have overturned convictions on the grounds that they were based on coerced confessions.

Foreign and domestic human rights groups have long criticized Japanese prisons for subjecting inmates to severe regimentation that at times includes barring them from talking to each other or even making eye contact. Punishments include forcing inmates to sit motionless for hours at a time, preventing them from washing or exercising, and restraining them with leather handcuffs, the human rights group Amnesty International reported in 2002. Amnesty International has also criticized the secrecy surrounding death row and executions in Japan. Death row inmates typically are notified only two hours before their execution, and their family members are not informed until after the execution takes place.

Japan's three million Burakumin, who are descendants of feudal-era outcasts, and its tiny, indigenous Ainu minority continue to face discrimination in mainstream society, according to the U.S. State Department's human rights report for 2002, released in March 2003. The government funds programs to promote Ainu culture and to boost the economic status of Burakumin.

Meanwhile, Japan's 636,000 ethnic Koreans, most of whom are native born, face "deeply entrenched societal discrimination," the U.S. State Department report said. Moreover, Koreans and some 1.77 million other "foreign residents" are not automatically Japanese citizens at birth. Instead, those seeking citizenship must formally apply and submit to extensive background checks. Separately, some foreigners trying to enter Japan allegedly are mistreated while being interrogated by immigration officials. Those who are denied entry sometimes are held under harsh conditions in privately run facilities prior to being deported, and some asylum seekers are denied fair hearings, Amnesty International said in 2002.

Japanese women have full access to education but face employment discrimination in the private sector. They frequently are tracked by their companies into nonmanagerial careers and generally are disadvantaged in hiring and pay, recent statistics and government surveys show. In addition, sexual harassment on the job is widespread. The law bans both sexual discrimination and harassment in the workplace, but authorizes only light sanctions for corporate violators. One in three Japanese women experiences some form of physical abuse in their homes, a 1998 government survey found. In another concern, the government does not respond aggressively to cases of women and girls being trafficked into Japan, the New York-based Human Rights Watch alleged in June, although some traffickers have been prosecuted.