Division between Tokyo and Others

Campaign for quadrennial nationwide local elections started on Thursday, urging every candidate to public speeches and meetings until the day before voting on April 12^th. While Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been enthusiastic in regional developments as a strategy for his economic growth policy, local communities were getting into jeopardy of elimination with unstoppable decline of population. The local elections this year is all about survivability of community, which the people in Tokyo cannot understand.

An expert group released its report on population in Japan last April, which predicted thirty percent of all cities, towns and villages would disappear with consecutive loss of residents. Each of those local entities will suffer from steep decline of population in productive age and women leaving local community, searching for preferable environment for raising children.

So, maintenance of population is one of the biggest issues for local elections this year. National parties have prepared local campaign policies to tackle with those problems, all of which were insufficient for easing worries of the people. Upholding a slogan of “regional revitalization,” Liberal Democratic Party raised a campaign policy of easing subsidy for local community and jobs for young agers. LDP’s viewpoint of bureaucratic distribution does not change forever. Democratic Party of Japan held abstract goals for growth, not learning from their failure as the leading party.

So, self-determination is the key concept for local communities, as long as central government is not reliable for their sustainability. However, most communities have very few choices.

Only two gubernatorial elections out of ten have a structure of viable competition with candidates both from LDP and DPJ. The rest of them are de facto reconfirmation of incumbent governors with multi-partisan support, including LDP and DPJ, except Japan Communist Party. Even in the election in Hokkaido and Oita, in which LDP and DPJ raised their own candidates, policy for regional revitalization showed no great difference each other.

One exception is energy policy. One candidate for the Governor of Hokkaido challenges national energy policy dependent on nuclear power, while the incumbent makes nothing clear on her policy on nuclear energy. Voters in regional communities has a very few options for their future local politics. Bureaucratic power from Tokyo is too strong for local communities to have original and revitalizing visions for their future, with lack of proper handlings of politicians.