Japan: Multi-Party Drift and Okinawa Reversion

Abstract

The rapid economic growth of Japan, which now rivals the United States and the Soviet Union in the output of many major industrial products, continued in 1968. Unflagging industrialization also continues to increase urbanization and the consequent erosion of rural support for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). On the other hand, the increasing modernization benefits the main opposition party, the doctrinaire Japan Socialist Party (JSP), even less. Despite its rather popular opposition to the Vietnam War and to military cooperation with the U.S., the JSP made an even worse showing in the July upper house Diet elections than it had in the 1967 general elections for the House of Representatives. The dissatisfaction within the party, especially that of the more radical factions with the more pragmatic ones, threatens to fragment the JSP even further, as shown by the extraordinary struggle over the selection of the Secretary General in October. The party convention had to be postponed and then recalled-a confusion which has not occurred since the major split of 1951. The simultaneous gains by other smaller parties continue the drift toward a multi-party system which became evident in the 1967 elections. The pace of domestic change is only exceeded by events abroad, which have crowded in upon Japan more than usual and serve to indicate the close interaction between the external and internal politics of the country. Relations with the U.S. were troubled by military cooperation in connection with the war in Vietnam and tension over Korea. External relations were also disturbed by the worsening international payments problems of the U.S., Britain and France, and also by the invasion of Czechoslovakia which threatens to pose obstacles to nuclear disarmament. At the same time that these events propelled Japan toward greater self-assertion and independence they also demonstrated Japanese integration with the world at large. The growing popularity of the demand for the return of American-occupied Okinawa (the main island of the Ryukyus under U.S. control for over twenty-three years) was demonstrated by the first popular election of the Chief Executive of the Ryukyus on November 10 on the platform of immediate unconditional return of the islands. The election of a more conservative American President and a more radical Okinawan one is likely to lead to a serious clash over the explosive issue of the U.S. bases there and in Japan. The attempts of many conservative Japanese politicians to