After the end of the Cold War, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) failed to create a new strategy for growth as globalization advanced. It also didn’t cobble together a new national strategy to meet the drastically changing international environment. The scale of the domestic economy in 2008 was slightly smaller than that of 1996. During this time, the U.S. economy grew more than 1.5-fold. Japan’s unemployment rate for July, released just prior to the Aug. 30 Lower House election, hit a record high of 5.7 per cent.

Japan is now plagued with a declining fertility rate, a rapidly aging society, a weakening of farming and rural communities, the employment crisis of ‘the lost generation,’ the end of a shared sense that all Japanese belonged to the middle class and the increasingly precarious state of national finances. The economy and society are battered and our way of life is under threat. Japan’s international status is sharply declining. That is the dismal ‘status quo’ that the public wanted to break.

In hindsight, four years ago, voters may have taken Koizumi’s pledge to destroy the LDP at face value. They tried to do so by casting their ballots not for the LDP but for the ‘Koizumi party,’ so to speak. This time around, voters achieved the goal by handing the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) a landslide victory. The LDP as a ‘Cold War-era party’ no longer exists. With the emergence of a DPJ-led administration, a two-party political system — in other words a competition between two major parties with the ability to take the reins of government — has arrived. This is also an opportunity to deepen Japan’s democracy.

We journalists are also facing a historic opportunity and challenges.

We wish to accurately and dynamically report on the massive changes in this country that served as a primer to topple the government as well as the challenges facing the new administration. We are determined to strengthen our function as a media organization that acutely and penetratingly debates controversial issues.

The negative legacy that the new administration will inherit from the LDP-led coalition government weighs heavily. In particular, the DPJ administration must tackle the following strategic challenges:

・Alleviate anxieties over everyday life (and in the future) by dispelling employment insecurity and maintaining social security; in short, overcome crises that threaten people’s daily lives.

・Look beyond the current economic crisis and come up with a growth model that will solve problems by creating new demand and jobs for a low-carbon society in which everybody can lead long and productive lives.

The DPJ government must come up with measures to combine the two.

There is no such thing as a horn of plenty. The administration will not be able to actually tap the level of funds from revenue sources as it had hoped. Financial markets are sure to harshly test Japan’s fiscal discipline. What should the administration choose or give up? It should start by making its priorities clearer. Individual projects each have legitimate reasons of their own. But can the nation as a whole stay healthy the way it is now? Is that the future that Japan should attain? These crucial points are being questioned.

Instead of cutting off money-losing projects, successive LDP administrations passed on losses to future generations. The ‘politics of distribution’ that went unchecked when the economy was constantly growing has reached its limit.

The gear should be shifted to ‘politics of choice.’ By this, I mean a political style that takes what is needed and leaves what is not, by working out differences between interests of individuals and society as a whole, and makes an effort to win the understanding of those whose interests clash to reach a compromise. For that to happen, policy assessment standards and accountability and transparency of the policymaking process are indispensable.

To advance matters by ‘politics of choice,’ procedures, in other words, rules of democracy, will become even more important than in the past. Unless there is fairness between administrative services and taxes shouldered by those who benefit from them, it will be difficult to win the public’s understanding. A change of government is also an opportunity for citizens to seek a new equilibrium of benefits and burdens. We should take advantage of the opportunity to drastically slash unnecessary projects and advance debate on raising the consumption tax rate to restore fiscal health and maintain social security at the same time.

Furthermore, activating functions of democracy will be indispensable for Japan to recover its national wealth and strength.

Cozy relationships among political, bureaucratic and business communities, vested interests, wasteful use of taxes, special government-affiliated corporations and the practice of outgoing bureaucrats landing cushy jobs with industries they once oversaw are factors that have prevented the efficient distribution of resources, reform and opening of markets. In particular, the trend is most notable in such strictly regulated areas as agriculture, medical services, nursing and education. Sweeping away cozy relationships of politics, the bureaucracy and industries with ‘big cleaning,’ that the DPJ aims to do, is also important for freeing up potential talent that remains hidden because of regulations, and for encouraging growth.

Ideas buried within the bureaucratic system should be dug up and an effort must be made to encourage bureaucrats to demonstrate their abilities to the full. At the same time, the government is urged to draw on the will of various nongovernmental organizations and citizens to take part in public affairs to build a partnership. The change of government should give momentum to a move to advance participatory democracy.

This time, under the single-seat constituency system, voters directly realized a change of government by casting ballots. This crucial election will go down in history along with the first general elections in 1890 (the first free election in Asia), the first election held under the universal suffrage system in 1928, the 1946 election in which women were given suffrage for the first time and the 1958 election in which the LDP and the Socialist Party of Japan (JSP) vied with each other for the first time. This history of democracy also advanced in concert with the creation of the public realm through revolutionary advances of such media as newspapers, radio and television. And now, politics under a two-party system is about to kick off together with the Internet revolution.

Two-party politics is also presenting journalism with a major challenge. During the Cold War, it was the opposition parties, including the JSP, prosecutors and the media that took on the role of examining, criticizing and holding in check single-party rule by the LDP, and the bureaucracy that supported and simultaneously manipulated the party behind the scenes. But given the premise that the LDP was the only ruling party in this country, their role was to offer ‘criticism from the outside.’ In particular, the JSP had never been recognized by the voting public as an entity capable of running the government because of the party’s failure to digest the ideological essence of parliamentary democracy, market mechanisms and the Japan-U.S. alliance.

However, with the birth of a two-party system, such ‘criticism from the outside’ alone is inadequate.

A forum should be created and promoted to discuss public policies from various perspectives by weighing the differences between policies proposed by ruling and opposition parties, examining their actions and policymaking processes and assessing ‘achievements’ of the ruling camp and ‘alternatives’ of the opposition force. The parties involved should promote deliberations where they realistically and practically examine and analyze how their respective proposals stand up on the assumption that they are in a position to actually implement them. Rather than deciding which one is the winner, attention should be paid to the viewpoint of ‘dialogue’ to seek what points they can agree on or where there is common ground.

Such criticism will be ‘criticism from the inside.’ I believe it is the role expected of journalism in this age of two-party politics to create a forum of discussion for such ‘deliberations’ at a time when demagogic rhetoric that caters to the public tends to gain ground.

The DPJ will soon set about running the government. It has little time to prepare. Trial and error is unavoidable. It may suddenly make an about-face to meet changing circumstances. Perhaps we must accept such developments as labor pains to give birth to Japan’s two-party politics and democracy of public participation. Regardless of who takes the reins of government, we journalists will keep a watch on power. We will also keep on demanding the government for information disclosure and accountability.

At the same, however, we wish to follow the U.S. example and watch over the new administration for the first 100 days after its inauguration with the spirit to ‘give change a chance.’ We intend to devote ourselves to offer ‘criticism from the inside’ and hope to participate in the process to create Japanese democracy.

This article first appeared here in IHT/Asahi on September 10.