SUFFERS SETBACK IN JAPANESE ELECTIONS
The main feature in the elections in Japan January 29 was the setback suffered by the Socialist party. The ruling Liberal-—Democratic party won 277 seats in the chamber of 486 members, one less than it had before. The Socialist party won 140 seats, a loss of four. The Democratic Socialist party won 30 seats, a gain of 7. The Communist party won 5, a gain of one; and the Komeito (Clean Government party) elected 25 candidates out of the 32 it ran in its first electoral bid.
Percentage-wise in the popular vote, the Liberal-Democrats slipped from 54.67% in the November 1963 elections to 49.09%. The Socialists went down slightly from 29.03% to 28.05%; while the Communists gained a bit, going from 4.01% to 4.76%.
The Communist party got 2,100,000 votes as compared with 2,400,000 for the Komeito candidates. — -
The Liberal-Democratic party went into the elections under a heavy cloud due to sensational exposures of widespread corruption among its leaders. The Socialist party, however, failed to gain from this. Two reasons have been advanced for the incapacity of the party to take advantage of the-situation: (1) Some of its own leaders were involved in corrupt deals; (2) the party is a strong protagonist of normalizing relations with the People's Republic of China; but the present factional strife in Peking has created a very bad impression among Japanese voters.
Thus the main gainer in the election was the Komeito. This is a reactionary formation, the political arm of the Sokka Gakkai Buddhist sect. Its electoral theme was "against both big business and the left-wing labor unions," a stance reminiscent of the fascist formations in Europe. , *
If a certain shift to the right occurred in the Japanese electorate, as a preliminary analysis would seem to indicate, one of the reasons is the series of defeats to the revolutionary movement that have occurred in the past several years, the main one being in Indonesia in 1965. While. these defeats may not have been directly reflected in the consciousness of the Japanese voters, there was no great new victory on the international scene to inspire and encourage them and help propel them in the direction of revolutionary socialism.
' The fact remains that Japanese capitalism is incapable of opening up any: broad perspective for the Japanese people. It has become closely tied to*the American war machine and its adventurous escalation in Vietnam. The prognosis for Japan thus remains one of continued dissatisfaction and unrest among the masses and uneasiness over what the conflict in Vietnam may lead to.