He leads the fundamentalist wing of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) made up of those who believe that the party’s fate and future are indelibly written down in the party Manifesto of 2009.

On the other side of the ledger are the revisionists and their standard bearer Prime Minister Kan Naoto, known as ‘the pragmatic one.’ Kan voters are the members of the DPJ who believed from the outset that the 2009 Manifesto was provisional – a nice collection of mutually incoherent ideas that taken together could attract enough votes for the DPJ’s candidates to win control of the country.

Currently the revisionists control the government and the party, holding virtually all the major posts. Their hold is tenuous due to Kan’s having been suckered by the bureaucrats of the Ministry of Finance into talking about raising the consumption tax – a not terribly unpopular plan now, but a few months ago political poison – on the eve of the House of Councillors election. When the party did unusually poorly in that election, it gave the fundamentalist wing the ammunition necessary to attack Kan and his followers for having sunk the party’s fortunes.

The battle for the House of Councillors probably had been lost months earlier, at a time when the fundamentalists themselves largely held control, due to the fecklessness of their prime minister Hatoyama Yukio and his and Ozawa’s myriad legal troubles.  That reality, however, has been neatly swept under the rug.

Despite the cynicism of some, there is much good news to be found in this new-style presidential battle.

First, the battle is between centrist views. What Ozawa and the DPJ fundamentalists are insisting upon is not radical change – merely a reversion to the promises that the party has already made to the voters. The revisionists, for their part, are not asking for a complete rollback of all of the DPJ’s 2009 promises – only that the party be realistic, fulfilling promises to the extent that is justifiable both politically and fiscally.

Second, the battle is being fought out in the open over policy rather than in the private rooms of high-class restaurants over spoils. There are two crystal clear policy platforms, with little prevarication over what certain words mean. Furthermore, although there is no direct voting, a huge chunk of the vote – 300 points for the party members and 100 points for local assemblymen – will depend upon expressions of public satisfaction or dissatisfaction with one candidate or the other.

Third, this is not a life-or-death struggle for the DPJ. The persons who have aligned themselves with Kan, the party moderates and fiscal conservatives, survived and even thrived under three years of Ozawa’s leadership of the party. They thrived under the puppet prime ministership of Hatoyama Yukio. They are not going to bolt the party just because Ozawa is in charge again.

As for the Ozawa supporters, while they are fanatical in some senses, they are not stupid. Most are from marginal districts where the voters could just as soon switch back to the LDP in the next House of Representatives election. Defecting from the DPJ with Ozawa following an Ozawa defeat could easily mean a quick fall into political irrelevance and electoral defeat.

Fourth, both the fundamentalist and revisionist sides cling to alternate branches of mainstream DPJ philosophy. To the fundamentalists’ credit, they hold fast to the belief that a pledge to the public is not just a tool to be discarded once the election is over. The revisionists’ belief that one cannot promise one’s resources, both financial and political, to one interest group, then turn around and promise those same resources to another group, is also commendable. For the revisionists one must sell sacrifice and offer promises in equal measure. In this, they have the support of the vast majority of the public, whom when asked about the promises in the 2009 Manifesto, said they would be satisfied if they were honoured ‘to a certain extent’ (aru teido ni).

So although comments abound about the closeness of the Democratic Party to fissioning, it is best to be sanguine.  Some agitators within the party’s ranks may talk about unbridgeable differences. But these comments do not represent reality – they should be viewed as an individual stuffing whatever comes to mind into the voracious maw of the media beast.

Moreover, while some of the members of the revisionist camp may seem to be rigid  ‘my way or the highway’ types, they are for the most part patient, somewhat older members of the party, willing to bide their time after a reversal of fortune. They know that in politics what goes up must come down. Ozawa’s allies and followers, while numerous, are for the most part decidedly lesser politicians than those in the anti-Ozawa camp. While the pro-Ozawa partisans will be insufferably triumphant should Ozawa emerge victorious, their shortcomings will soon compel the party leadership to call upon the talents of the party’s anti-Ozawa first-stringers.

The wild card in this presidential race and its aftermath is that one of the candidates is Ozawa Ichiro, Japan’s least popular politician. If Ozawa prevails in the intra-party contest, the populace at large could feel a sense of letdown, if not out-and-out disgust. The election of party leader is, as Kan relentlessly points out, the election of the leader of Japan.  The victory of a man who is broadly mistrusted and disliked as virtual president will likely leave the populace feeling cheated, no matter how legitimately the election is carried out under party rules.

However, one of the striking side-effects of this extraordinary two man contest is the chance it is giving the populace to have a second look at Ozawa, without the filters of journalists and other politicians.  They may like what they see and hear, giving him some breathing room to prove himself, should he prevail in the leadership contest.

So rather than despair at the possibility that Japan might be going through its third leadership transition in a year, the world should take pleasure at sight of Japan choosing its next leader through a transparent, timely process based on the open debate of policy and the suitability of the candidate for the seat behind the prime minister’s desk.

Michael Cucek is a research associate at the MIT Centre for International Studies.

This article was originally seen here in Shisaku.