Beyond the Gender Gap in Japan by Gill Steel;

Author:Gill Steel;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Michigan Press (limited)

Mobilization

The past and current LDP leaders have held two competing ideas for party’s organizational structure. One view positively evaluates the party’s decentralized and pluralistic structure as democratic and as a source of the party’s dynamism and creativity, highlighting the role of the decentralized structure in facilitating intraparty competition. A second view emphasizes Page 138 →the need for a centralized party structure modeled after western European parties based on mass organizations (Nakakita 2014). The LDP’s parliamentary supremacy had relied more on individual MPs’ support organizations (kōenkai) than on party organization. Until 1994, the election system in the House of Representatives was based on multimember districts with single, nontransferable votes (MMD/SNTV). This meant that LDP candidates running in the same district had to compete against each other for conservative voters. In order to obtain personal votes, most individual candidates have established many kōenkai across every quarter of their districts and maintain them by continuously organizing various events and gatherings, even in the absence of an election. Even after the election system changed in 1994, kōenkai remain the core organization with primary responsibility for mobilizing personal votes for candidates. Typically, candidates create small groups covering different types of voters in their districts; membership in these groups is divided by, for example, geography, vocation, age, and gender (Krauss and Pekkanen 2011, chapter 3). Often, women’s groups are established separately. A wife of a candidate/MP sometimes becomes the driving force for mobilizing female supporters. She first makes friends with the mothers of her children’s friends. Through these friends, she then develops a female supporters’ network. Some of these wives organize events, parties, or volunteer activities (Otake 1988). When parliament is in session, the husband (the MP) must stay in Tokyo on weekdays, so the wife often attends meetings in his place in the local district.

The LDP has also worked to organize female supporters of the party. When the LDP was formed by the union of two existing political parties in 1955, it established Women’s Divisions within its party organization. The local Women’s Divisions of the party were established in the party’s regional chapters across the country. The Women’s Affairs Division, composed of MPs and party staff, was placed in the party headquarters. Often, the wives of MPs or local notables headed the local Women’s Divisions.2 The core members of the local Women’s Divisions were—and still are—married, older or middle-aged women. They are opinion leaders among women in their communities. Some hold several posts outside the party, such as leaders of women’s community organizations (chiiki fujinkai), leaders of women’s sections of the JAs (Japan Agricultural Cooperatives), and local welfare commissioners. Under the 1955 regime, membership in the LDP’s local Women’s Divisions and membership in the women’s community organizations often overlapped (Curtis 1971, 160; Liberal Democratic Party 1978, 115–16). Women’s contributionsPage 139 → during electoral campaigns were enormous, because they could call upon the face-to-face networks they maintained in their local communities (Liberal Democratic Party 1978, 116). It is a matter of political life and death for a candidate to garner support from the LDP’s local Women’s Divisions (Curtis 1971, 161–62).

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