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Politically Excluded “Commoners”

A Gendered Pathway to Participation

National politics is far removed from everyday voters. This chapter sharpens the focus on Japanese women voters, a segment of the electorate that raises a theoretical and empirical puzzle. As a group, Japanese women face institutional, structural, and cultural constraints that conventionally depress political participation. These conditions have arguably contributed to higher rates of nonpartisanship among women, another factor that cor- relates with political disengagement. Yet more Japanese women than men have turned out to vote in every election across Japan for over three de- cades. In this chapter I focus on women because their patterns of electoral participation run counter to what theory would predict. If national politics is far removed from everyday voters, it should be harder for women to close the gap between themselves and political elites. How Japan women both close the gap and exceed expectations can deepen understanding of how to promote participation among disaffected, marginalized, and un- derrepresented voters in established democracies.

In earlier chapters, I used national survey data to outline the broad pa- rameters of a national discourse about voter dissatisfaction with national

Martin, Sherry L.. Popular Democracy in Japan : How Gender and Community Are Changing Modern Electoral Politics, Cornell University Press, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/apus/detail.action?docID=3138176. Created from apus on 2020-03-18 08:48:19.

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politics to establish the generalizability of these views and associated political action repertoires. Men and women are dissatisfi ed for the same reasons, but the way they come to articulate and act on these views differs. In this chap- ter, I analyze focus group discussions with women voters to gain a deeper understanding of the experiences and resources that keep women politically engaged. Talking to women provides insight into the factors that help them to overcome multiple demobilizing infl uences to remain actively engaged in electoral politics for long-term change. Are the factors that bolster women’s participation gendered? If so, can the factors that sustain women’s partici- pation in an environment characterized by a deep distrust of elite politics be cultivated in less active segments of the electorate?

When Japanese women talk about voting, they invoke larger narratives about self-improvement and community development that are achieved through education and lifelong learning, independently and in the com- pany of others. Election results and policy changes between election cycles tell voters something about how well the linkages between parties and candidates and the public are working. The responsiveness of parties and candidates—or lack thereof—informs voters about how to adjust par- ticipatory strategies, often in ways that do not fi t neatly into normative and measurable categories of democratic participation. The women in my focus groups vote because they learn something about politics in doing so. The ballot box is a site of knowledge production, the outputs of which be- come resources that are reinvested in electoral politics and participation in other political spaces. Japanese women revive discussions about education and democracy and provide interesting insights into how marginalized groups generate and use knowledge for their own empowerment. What they learn, how they learn it, and what they do with this knowledge is the focus of this chapter.

A Gendered Pathway to Participation: Women Now and Neighborhood Friends

Participants in my fi rst group, Women Now,1 were professional women ranging in age from their late twenties to their mid-fi fties. All had struggled

1. Names of all groups and participants have been changed to preserve confi dentiality.

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with how to balance work and family responsibilities at some point in their lives. Women in my second group, Neighborhood Friends, were house- wives who joined a local group to help foreign students such as myself to negotiate the challenges of living abroad. As discussed below, Women Now participants belong to a community of shared interests that was pulled to- gether for our conversations, though individual members had no prior contact. Neighborhood Friends was a preexisting group whose members had regular face-to-face contact outside of the focus group setting. I select these two groups because the contrasting cast of characters echoes themes about Japanese politics and citizen engagement that are common to all of my groups. Even though the groups’ goals and the participants’ initial rea- sons for membership differ, the benefi ts of participation are similar. These two groups of women see themselves as involved in very different peda- gogical enterprises that nonetheless draw attention to how social construc- tions of gender in Japan are connected to the common challenges women face in their public and private lives. Further, the two groups represent two different types of organizational structure that suggest how women in- volved in a broad array of civic groups evolve strategies that are function- ally similar, but operationally dissimilar, to engage in politics.

Women Now is signifi cant because it belongs to a universe of orga- nizations that uses the internet as its primary hub for recruitment and contact.2 Internet-based organizations tend to be ephemeral, and the po- tential for collective organizing via the internet is highly variable (Gottlieb and McLelland 2003).3 Internet organizations cannot be tied to a place,

2. For an overview of women’s internet activity in Japan and a closer look at a broad range of groups similar to Women Now, see Onosaka (2003). Popular press reports also track Japanese women’s use of the internet for social and economic empowerment (Guth 2000, Kunii 2000).

3. There is a longstanding debate about whether the internet facilitates the building of social capital or contributes to its erosion by displacing face-to-face interaction with computer-mediated interaction between solitary and disassociated individuals. Evidence suggests that the internet does not erode social capital, a resource needed for collective action; it becomes a tool that people inte- grate into their preexisting social repertoire. People already predisposed toward broadening their scope of social interaction are likely to use the internet in addition to face-to-face interaction with family, friends, and neighbors (Curtice and Norris 2007). Gottlieb and McLelland (2003), in the introduction to Japanese Cybercultures, acknowledge that perspectives on the internet as an em- powerment tool for marginalized groups are mixed. The internet is inarguably invaluable in con- necting individuals and groups with similar concerns who do not share the same physical spaces and, as such, can lower the costs of collective organizing. However, internet users continue to face limitations. As much as it creates potential for organizing, it can also inhibit it. Older generations

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members may never meet face-to-face, and resources to cover operating costs are scarce. This internet-based organization frames itself as a reli- able source of information about workforce challenges that are specifi c to women working in Japan. Its “users” self-identify as “working women,” a functional label that facilitates connections among single, married, and di- vorced working women, with or without children. While highly educated professional women are overrepresented, blue-collar women are welcome too.4 According to Women Now users, the website was a tool to facilitate grassroots activism by helping like-minded individuals to fi nd one another in an ever-changing social milieu. Today the website remains, but the site has not been updated since late 2001. Though the online site has lapsed, my experience with these women suggests that Women Now left its legacy in new groups and relations that cannot be easily traced.

Neighborhood Friends resembles a study circle or hobby group; some members describe participation as an extension of interests and experi- ences from their school days. Neighborhood Friends is linked to a specifi c international student dorm and its environs in Tokyo; members live in close proximity to the dorm, which allows them to maintain close con- tact with one another and the students that they assist. There are count- less such “friendship associations” across Japan. Activities vary and include language learning and exchange and cultural events involving different countries. While most of the Neighborhood Friends members had limited or no experience traveling abroad, all were interested in learning more about life outside of Japan through the experience of helping foreign stu- dents adjust to the demands of life in Japan.5

of activists who are not technologically savvy but know a lot about making a “virtual” movement “real” are beyond the reach of younger activists who use the internet as their primary tool for com- munication and have little on-the-ground experience with organizing. Connecting these two dif- ferent skill sets and experiences would increase movement potential.

4. It is not inconceivable that white-collar women will fi nd themselves employed in blue-collar jobs later in their life course. Pressure for women to quit their job upon marriage and/or the birth of the fi rst child remains strong in Japan. The structure of the labor market makes it diffi cult for women who had occupied high-status jobs to reenter the labor force in similar positions. Most women reen- ter the labor force in part-time and temporary positions (Brinton 1993).

5. I defi ne Neighborhood Friends as more “legible” than Women Now due to the legitimacy that the Ministry of Education has long bestowed on cultural exchange activities. International ex- change activities were promoted by local governments and civil and grassroots organizations in the 1970s and 1980s; “promoting mutual understanding through people-to-people exchanges became the task at hand” (Commissioner’s Advisory Group 2003, 5). Analogous to the discussion about

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Women entered into both these groups because they were facing a prob- lem common to similarly situated women. Broadly defi ned, the problem was how to establish a space for achieving one’s personal goals that exists independent of care-giving roles and other constraints that women face in Japan. Women Now users became involved in the network because they were seeking child care solutions that would allow them to continue ca- reers that they found extremely gratifying before marrying and having children. Hoshino-san was working in the computer industry when she quit to have a baby:

In my case, I honestly didn’t think that there was anything fun about being a full-time housewife. That got me to thinking about why this pattern was still so widespread. . . . I stayed at home for about two and a half years and I began thinking that there was something wrong with that type of lifestyle. So I fi nally joined a group of mothers who were feeling as stressed as I as a result of staying home and doing housework. It was then that I became aware of gender problems.

Hoshino-san then became involved in citizens’ movements focusing on women’s lifestyle issues and child development. She joined various cir- cle activities and the ward’s cooperative to deepen her interest in quality- of-life issues. Sato-san followed a very similar trajectory. After working for six years as a computer software developer, she quit her job to have a child and become a fulltime housewife. Isolation set in within the fi rst four months, and Sato-san searched for social outlets in her community; as she said, “I found many women who share the same thoughts as I did, and I found peace of mind.” She began to volunteer with groups at the ward level that were interested in improving social services and the environ- ment for children. “From there,” she said, “I began to look at gender is- sues.” After a while, she decided that she wanted to work again, raising her child while having a part-time job, and took a job with an environmental association that is building an international network. In the meantime, she

lifelong learning policies in chapter 5, the state encourages international exchange to promote goals that McVeigh describes as “economic nationalist.” For a discussion of the role that “international- ization” plays in defi ning Japanese national identity among women attending junior colleges, see McVeigh (1996).

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participates in and organizes citizens’ movements in her neighborhood “as a hobby.”

Neighborhood Friends members were mainly housewives who saw the organization as a means to further their own interests while fulfi lling family responsibilities. Yamada-san, a fi ve-year veteran of the association, “became involved because it’s close to my home and I had an interest in learning about life abroad. And it was something that I could do while my children were young.” Miyazaki-san was a member of mothers’ clubs at three different YWCAs and joined Neighborhood Friends after meeting a foreign student who had joined one of these groups for mothers. While the guidance that Neighborhood Friends extended to foreign students could be framed as an extension of their care-giving responsibilities, the women in this group took time out from their own families during evenings and weekends. Women often left their families behind when they attended events at the international student resident hall. Even though husbands and children played important supporting roles during the labor-intensive festivals, there was little doubt that the women were the main partici- pants. Whenever students needed assistance, their primary contact was a woman.

Participation in the groups and networks that led my focus group par- ticipants to Women Now and Neighborhood Friends helped them to de- velop a shared narrative about how gender and politics affected their life opportunities and choices. In the case of Women Now, gender troubles motivated women to seek out the network in the fi rst place. These work- ing women were having trouble balancing work and family responsibilities and discussed the cultural, structural, and institutional impediments that they faced. After exhausting available public and private resources in their efforts to strike a balance between work and family, Women Now mem- bers realized that they were limited as individual women seeking to live outside dominant, gendered social norms. Owada-san, a medical researcher in her fi fties, complained that “since it’s still a male-oriented society, I end up being somewhat of an outsider.” At the very least, joining a community of online users reassured them that there were other women with similar experiences and concerns.

Neighborhood Friends did not have careers as a site for self-actualiza- tion; they joined an existing group that promoted internationalization. While scholars such as Brian McVeigh (1996, 2004) raise the specter of the

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state’s interest in promoting internationalization as a means of defi ning Japanese-ness through constant comparison with the “other,” comparison also exposes fi ssures in the social construction of gender that then become a focus of group inquiry (Kelsky 2001).6 While cultural exchange fostered critical comparisons between the status of women in Japan and women in the international contexts encountered by Neighborhood Friends, in all of the focus groups I conducted women asked questions and offered their impressions about the status of Japanese women compared to their Ameri- can counterparts.

Admittedly, the women in my focus groups, especially those living in Tokyo, are more progressive than the average Japanese voter. Shimabukuro- san, one of the women in the World Café group (see table i.3) who lived near a U.S. army base, used the political views of the Americans she met to con- textualize her own views through comparison and contrast. She found that U.S. military personnel were “totally against liberals. They do not like the idea of supporting teenage mothers on welfare or giving money to people who are not working.” In contrast, in 2001 the consensus among women in this group and in every other group I interviewed was that Japan’s top policy concern should be creating a strong system of social welfare. This is consistent with existing research showing that the LDP is less popular with urban voters and that fl oating voters are overrepresented in urban elector- ates. Traditionally, calls for social welfare reforms and attention to quality- of-life issues such as environmental pollution control have originated in urban Japan.

Women Now

In early 2001, I read a news article about a website called Women Now that was devoted to addressing issues in the daily lives of working women in Japan. I contacted Reiko Nakajima, a working mother who was volunteer- ing her time to manage the site, about my project; she agreed to assist me in assembling the website’s users for a focus group. On a Saturday afternoon in June 2001, six Women Now users joined me in a conference room at the

6. Kelsky (2001) argues that “the West” in the Japanese imagination becomes, in the hands of women, a tool for critiquing and resisting societal expectations about appropriate roles for women over the life course.

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Tokyo Women’s Plaza, a public space for women located within walking distance of the fashionable Omotesandō, Japan’s Rodeo Drive.

There are two stories that I want to tell about Women Now. The fi rst is a story about the practices in which like-minded individuals who are meeting for the fi rst time engage to become a politically concerned group with a shared narrative about politics, gender, and politics and gender. The second story is about the content of the narrative that develops.

“Virtual” Ties to a “Real” Network At the beginning of our two hours together at the Tokyo Women’s Center, Women Now participants gath- ered quietly, taking seats arranged in a semicircle, and patiently waited for my informant and me to initiate and guide the discussion. Within thirty minutes, everyone was excitedly talking at once and raising their voices to respond to women sitting on the other side of the group. In the second hour, the participants were so engaged in discussion that I feared that we would overstay the two hours for which I had reserved the room; my in- formant and I had decided that two hours was the most that we could rea- sonably expect these busy women to commit to in advance. As the second hour drew to a close, it was clear that participants would unoffi cially con- tinue the discussion over food and drink in a nearby izakaya (a Japanese- style tapas bar). Women exchanged contact information before proceeding to the izakaya to make sure that opportunities to do so were not lost when individual participants’ schedules fi nally began to impinge upon the day, causing them to drift off one by one. I accompanied them to the izakaya for a quick bite to eat but did not keep the tape running. The space was no longer mine; Women Now users had turned the focus group into their own resource.

The focus group was an opportunity to do the business of creating and solidifying new relationships so that the members could continue to meet in smaller groups independently; they transformed a temporary structure into something permanent. The transformation began in the focus group and continued in the izakaya, where discussions became more personal over a shared meal. I left early out of respect for the practice of build- ing personal ties in which these women were engaging; I did not want my presence as a researcher-student to undermine the authenticity of this practice, nor did I want to become a permanent member of the group and shed my identity as a researcher-student. Months later, my informant told

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me that some of my focus group participants had remained in contact and continued to meet.

I was wholly unprepared for—but pleased by—the prospect that the focus group brought together members of a “virtual” group and turned them into a “real” group. This unexpected outcome encouraged me to re- fl ect on my own role as a researcher and the group dynamics that unfolded in producing it. As much as I am a researcher of women and politics, I also positioned myself as a student of women and politics. I make this distinc- tion to underscore the asymmetries in power associated with each position; a researcher is an authority relative to her informants, while the student is a novice. Though Japan researchers warned that I might encounter diffi - culties in bringing together a set of unacquainted individuals to talk about politics, I found that the biggest challenge was getting women to acknowl- edge and feel confi dent that their individual perspectives on politics rep- resented a wealth of information. Women were quick to disavow political “expertise” and could not understand that what they were telling me was of value. I assured them that what people do not know about politics is as interesting as what they do know, because the reasons offered for not knowing are informative. The way that people talk about their knowl- edge gaps exposes the defi ciencies of democracy in linking elites and their constituents. I tried to set aside my expectations about the stories that I should be hearing in my focus groups and entered the room prepared to learn something about women and politics that I did not already know. As “facilitator” of the discussion, I made it clear that I was not there to teach, but to be taught. I asked questions to get the conversation started but en- couraged participants to redirect the conversation; I did not assume that I had asked the “right” questions and was looking forward to uncovering unanticipated answers. As facilitator, my role was to make it easy for ev- eryone to talk. Participants quickly shifted from “educating” me to sharing their personal experiences and using that information to fi nd a common ground. Much later, refl ecting on my focus group experiences, I realized that I had activated familiar narratives about learning that helped partici- pants to settle into familiar practices of knowledge production.

McVeigh (1996) attends to the “how-to” rituals that accompany learn- ing in Japan. The work of fi nding a common ground was done in the self-introductions in which Women Now participants verifi ed that they were all members of the same online community who were meeting for the fi rst time. Introductions established a sense of security and trust among

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participants, as they confi rmed that they all occupied a shared ideologi- cal space. Women introduced themselves as working mothers, divorcees, professionals in male-dominated fi elds, and reluctant returnees from work and study experiences abroad. Women used their hobbies, interests, and activities at home, work, and in the community to drop cues and to hint at the social malcontents and political agitators lurking underneath their professional exteriors. Oyama-san, a former Japanese language instructor in her fi fties, shared: “I went to the U.S. to study in the 1970s and was stu- pid enough to return to Japan afterwards. Gender roles were more sharply defi ned then. You were frowned upon if you wanted a divorce. Happily the bubble economy collapsed, and people’s thinking began to change.” Self-revelation allowed these women to move quickly to talk about more delicate topics and issues that they were passionate about (quality-of-life issues for women and children), how their passions emerged from the con- text of their everyday lives, and why they decided to participate in citizens’ movements and other political actions to make small practical changes in their own lives while pushing for large-scale policy changes that would change women’s status in Japanese society.

User-Generated Knowledge The story of Nakajima-san, aged twenty- eight, and her entry into the online network and other groups of work- ing women was echoed by other members. After having her fi rst and only child, Nakajima-san began researching child care options so that she could return to her job with a foreign fi rm based in Tokyo. She was living in To- kyo’s Edogawa ward at the time. According to Nakajima-san, the former ward mayor had very traditional beliefs about women’s roles. He believed that it was a woman’s responsibility to remain in the home to care for chil- dren. Nakajima-san believed that the ward mayor’s position was impor- tant in explaining why Edogawa ward had not changed its public daycare policies to refl ect changes that had been instituted in other Tokyo wards and, at the behest of the central government, across Japan.

The national government had promulgated the Angel Plan just two years earlier in an effort to reverse Japan’s low birthrate by making it easier for women to remain in the workforce after having children.7 While the

7. For an overview of the plan, see Chitose (2003). “The Basic Direction for Future Child Rearing Support Measures,” commonly known as the “Angel Plan,” was formulated in 1994 and represented the collaborative efforts of the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MHW), the Ministry

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Angel Plan served as a catalyst for change in the local provision of nurser- ies, other features of public child care that undermined women’s ability to balance work and family responsibilities remained intact in Edogawa ward. Edogawa ward had a low ranking among Tokyo’s twenty-three wards in its availability of quality child care facilities. Nakajima-san could not enroll her son in a public daycare facility until he had reached one year of age, because there were no facilities for infants. Nakajima-san began to plan her family’s move to Bunkyō ward, one of the top Tokyo wards in the provision of child care facilities, to coincide with her son’s fourth birthday, because Edogawa ward did not have facilities for children over four years of age either. At the time of the focus group, Nakajima-san and her family had just moved to Bunkyō ward a few months earlier.

Nakajima-san persevered at her job, when similar child care dilem- mas cause most Japanese women to quit their jobs as a matter of course. Conditions at home and work were optimal and provided insulation from social censure from neighbors and acquaintances who might be critical of Nakajima-san’s decision to continue working while her son was still young. Nakajima-san was very vocal in her belief that she could be a good mother while having a fruitful career. In fact, the two goals were inter- related; she wanted to provide an alternative model of womanhood for her young son. The foreign fi rm she worked for allowed her to pursue a professional career without the expectations that marriage and mother- hood would or should lead to early retirement or fewer responsibilities

of Education, the Ministry of Labour, and the Ministry of Construction. The Angel Plan encour- aged local governments to adopt measures that would (a) help parents reconcile work and family responsibilities; (b) improve the quality of child-rearing within the family; (c) provide affordable housing to families with children; (d) target child development; and (e) over a fi ve-year period be- tween 1995 and 1999, lower the economic burden imposed by having children. The MHW collab- orated with the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Home Affairs to prioritize the expansion of daycare, devising the “Five-Year Emergency Measures for Childcare Services” to facilitate the expansion process (Roberts 2002). The 1999 “Basic Principles to Cope with a Fewer Num- ber of Children,” formulated by six ministries and referred to as “the New Angel Plan,” specifi ed broader objectives within the areas of employment, health, education, housing, and child care. The cabinet’s “Basic Direction for Policies Supporting Work and Childcare Compatibility,” articulated in 2001, broadened the role of fi rms and reaffi rmed the need to expand child care through longer hours, more fl exible services, and the help of local communities (Chitose 2003). The 2002 “Mea- sures to Cope with a Fewer Number of Children Plus One” built upon the prior “Angel” plans and went a step further in its recognition of the need to change working patterns among men as well as women (Chitose 2003).

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that would hamper her chances of future promotion. She took a year-long maternity leave that did not impinge upon her opportunities for advance- ment when she returned to the company. Nakajima-san attributes her ability to pursue her career to a supportive family, both on her side and her husband’s side. Her mother-in-law is a foreign-language instructor who fi rmly believes that a woman should have her own fi nancial resources.8

In the three years between her son’s fi rst and fourth birthdays, the pe- riod during which he could be enrolled in public daycare in Edogawa ward, Nakajima-san found other mothers who were equally frustrated by the inadequate services provided by the ward. Nakajima-san “was think- ing we could form our own interest group of working mothers, people who wanted to continue working after becoming mothers, and mothers who wanted to return to work.” Together they could raise the consciousness of other women to mobilize enough support to present a petition to the ward offi ces. Nakajima-san described their early initiative:

Our fi rst challenge [was] to show why women cannot be completely satisfi ed as mothers. Society has to change its way of thinking. Of course if you look at today’s youth, young men and women, their way of thinking is slowly changing. Young women who enter companies these days still end up quit- ting. But according to many surveys that ask about consciousness, many more people are saying that they would like to return to work soon after raising their children.

During this period, the ward directly elected mayor was replaced by an equally conservative successor. Though the new mayor did not issue an outright challenge to women to mobilize against him, his conservatism in- spired Nakajima-san’s group of working mothers to redouble their efforts to convince the full-time housewives in the ward to support their quest for better public child care. According to Nakajima-san, the distance be- tween full-time housewives and working women helped to explain the replacement of the ward mayor with another socially conservative politi- cian and the ability of ward politicians to resist changes in the provision of

8. For a discussion of role constraint, its sources and the forms of social censure that non- normative behavior provokes, see Pharr (1981). The experiences of the women activists who are the focus of Pharr’s book underscore the importance of role models, often women relatives, in helping young women to live outside of socially prescribed roles.

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local child care services that had been mandated by national bureaucrats and politicians. The views of full-time housewives and working women were, in some cases, diametrically opposed; demand for child care among housewives was lower, especially among those who believed that the pres- ence of the mother was vital to a child’s development. Nakajima-san, as a working mother, identifi ed herself as a minority in Edogawa ward: “Since there are so many full-time housewives in Edogawa-ku, I realized that I was in the minority as a working mother.” Consequently, she changed her strategy to “use tactics suited for working from a minority standpoint.” The internet was her key instrument. Nakajima-san complained that many of the housewives in the ward lacked “a consciousness that extended beyond the ward level”; current housewives were unable to see themselves and working women as subject to the same social, economic, and political constraints. Before becoming mothers, they, too, had had to confront the inevitable tradeoff between work and family, a decision constrained by national policies that support a male breadwinner/female caregiver social welfare system.9

Nakajima-san saw the internet as offering several benefi ts to her mis- sion to mobilize working women and mothers to lobby political elites for better provision of child care: “I thought I would have better luck on the internet because I would fi nd fewer housewives and more people like myself.” She used the internet “to fi nd information and contacts, and share what I learned” to work toward a society in which women could be both workers and mothers. Her own research led her to conclude that more young women wanted to continue working after having children because they did not accept that motherhood would or should be the role by which they defi ne themselves as individuals. She voiced her belief that her viewpoint would have greater traction with younger women and men, whose perspectives on work and family were changing. The inter- net enabled her to take her message beyond the boundaries of Edogawa

9. For a discussion of how Japan’s social welfare policy mix has forced women to make tradeoffs between work and family, see Schoppa (2001, 2006). Over time, increasing numbers of women have chosen to work and delay marriage and family, with some opting out altogether. This has resulted in sub-replacement birth rates that, when combined with the rapidly aging soci- ety, are altering the population pyramid to pose a threat to the viability of the pension system and making a labor shortage an inevitability.

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ward to build alliances with younger voters while continuing her efforts to forge alliances with housewives locally.

I followed up with Nakajima-san in July 2010. I learned that a member of her working mother’s group, who I will refer to as Ono-san, had won a seat on one of Tokyo’s ward assemblies where, among her policy priorities, she advocated for better child care. Nakajima-san credits the efforts of her working mother’s group for helping a well-qualifi ed, but under-funded candidate win as one of the top vote-getters fi elded in the 2007 election. Elections for the ward assemblies in Japan are at-large, meaning that in an election for a council that has forty seats (about the size of Ono-san’s assembly), voters cast one vote for their preferred candidate and the top forty vote-getters secure a seat. Ono-san emerged among the top ten. This is an impressive fi nish for a political newcomer who ran as an indepen- dent candidate (unaffi liated with any party). But, members of the working mother’s group—even those located in other wards—campaigned vigor- ously on her behalf, mobilizing their networks and riding in the sound truck to blast her name and slogans throughout ward neighborhoods. A former businesswoman and married mother, Ono-san has been bitten by the political bug and aspires to higher offi ce.

Women’s confrontations with the structural conditions that sustain tra- ditional gender roles in their everyday lives and impede attainment of per- sonal goals shape their attitudes about gender, politics, and the relationship between the two. Other Women Now users became active in a variety of groups concerned with the status of women, because soon after quitting their jobs they confronted what they considered the isolation and drudg- ery of being a full-time housewife and began to think concretely about the broader structural conditions that made the male breadwinner/female caregiver family so desirable, if not widespread. These women’s experi- ences underscored the importance of women creating knowledge for other women that is specifi cally designed to raise consciousness about gender in society and empower women politically to change their own situations.

Women Now users are “studying” gender problems and politics to share knowledge with other women while preparing themselves for an engagement in politics beyond voting. Some talk about this as a linear pro- cess. Oyama-san had “just begun studying” because she plans to become a more active participant in increasing women’s participation in Japanese politics and society. Her ultimate goal is to promote women’s participation

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in international causes such as environmental conservation. Maeda-san engaged in the comparative study of cultures and religions because her dream is to found a women’s community and learning center devoted to helping women to overcome cultural differences. Study and participa- tion are complementary processes; one informs the other. Nakajima-san learned from her experiences lobbying local political elites for more child care and adjusted her participatory strategies to increase her future chances of success.

Women Now users stress the importance of women assuming respon- sibility for their own political education and of using their own lives as primary sources, due to the defi ciencies of schools, the media, and politi- cal parties. Women Now users’ critique of political learning in Japan is comprehensive. “The problem with education is that there needs to be more of a focus on how to think about solving political problems rather than just memorizing how old you need to be to vote. Because there is no focus on actual problem solving,” argues Owada-san. “I think that consciousness among Japanese is low.” Preparation for college entrance exams perpetuates an overemphasis on rote memorization that has di- rect consequences for political leadership in Japan: “The Japanese elite are people who don’t have any questions. They’ve spent so much time preparing for exams that they did not have time to develop other skills.” Political elites struggle to stand outside of the system to critique it when it is in greatest need of change. One group participant suggested that the educational environment should include more content “about the histo- ries of other nations rather than just focusing on Japan. Comparison with other nations would enable us to look at ourselves differently.”

In the meantime, mass media coverage of politics was not suffi cient to help voters make informed choices. Television and newspapers focus more on gossip than political debate, and the tone of reporting has turned nega- tive. Oyama-san worried that fi rst-time voters lack information: “People who are new to voting don’t have any basis for making decisions. If they only hear all of the negative things, they cannot fi nd the positive points in the policy positions of any particular party.” Another woman chimed in: “If you depend on the media for information, you end up not being able to make any judgments based on the information that they give.” However, even the media faces challenges in producing detailed political coverage rich in policy content when the parties do not speak clearly. In recognition

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that media content cannot be disentangled from the quality of elite political practices—that is, the failure of politicians to raise and debate important questions—a third voice sneered, “If you took a poll on this, you’d fi nd out that it’s a vicious cycle.” These are all themes that are echoed by a national random sample of voters, the focus of chapters 1 and 2.

Women Now’s website is a portal to a wealth of information and user- generated knowledge that helps women to fi ll in these critical gaps in polit- ical information. The website packages that knowledge in ways that enable women, individually and in groups, to learn about the social conditions that structure relationships between Japanese women and men. Gender-specifi c constraints also make it diffi cult to achieve what Owada-san envisions as an “ideal gender balance. Men and women are able live alone and reach their fullest potential as individuals. Shouldn’t a partnership between the two lead to a better outcome for both partners?” To accomplish this, soci- ety’s “way of thinking” must change. The website offers multiple resources that refl ect its users’ efforts to balance learning with creating and sharing new knowledge that informs their participatory strategies.

The structure of the homepage positions Women Now as a networking organization that links similarly minded people in cyberspace while provid- ing details that give users the option for face-to-face contact with individu- als and groups. The fi rst thing that site entrants read is a link to single- or multi-issue interest groups and individuals concerned with improving the status of women and children in Japan across the public and private sphere. The following items appear on the menu of available choices: domestic vio- lence; sexual harassment in the workplace and schools; child abuse; separate surnames after marriage; equal employment; nursery care; single mother- hood; and women’s medical care and reproductive health. Clicking on one of these issues puts visitors in touch with “informal,” inchoate networks of concerned groups and individuals. Scrolling down uncovers another link to “formal,” registered organizations. Links to government social services and the texts of laws that specifi cally address women and children inform women of their rights and welfare entitlements. Considered within the broader context and tone of the site, it is clear that links to governmental sources underscore the state’s complicity in generating the constraints that have led women to this site. Women are instructed on how to work within the system to change it. Lists of family-friendly organizations are provided for job-seekers and as models of alternative ways of adapting the workplace

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to enable women to balance work and family responsibilities. There is a schedule of upcoming events. Finally, there is a link to an English-language page in recognition of the fact that foreign women living in Japan face simi- lar constraints in their own countries and by virtue of living and working as a woman in Japan.

Women Now challenges the still-dominant impression that women know less about politics and therefore are less politically engaged. Women Now users, in generating their own knowledge from the context of their ev- eryday lives and using it to inform political action, are leading by example. They are encouraging other women to empower themselves by studying and sharing their personal experience as a means of collectively generating knowledge about broad social patterns and common structural constraints faced by similarly situated women. This information is used to critique government and to develop strategies to petition elites for political change. Women position themselves as the “knowers” in society; elites should be listening to everyday people. This stance is re-articulated by Neighborhood Friends.

Neighborhood Friends

In June 2001, I met with members of Neighborhood Friends in the cafete- ria of the foreign students’ dorm where they spend most of their volunteer hours. Our conversation took place at a critical juncture in Japanese poli- tics. Junichiro Koizumi had replaced the unpopular Yoshirō Mori as prime minister only six weeks prior to our meeting, and the House of Council- lors election was less than three weeks away. Voters rapidly replaced the cynical tones they had used to talk about the Mori administration with an excitement and optimism about the future of Japanese politics. As noted earlier, the Mori administration’s approval ratings had plunged to single- digit lows by the time of his departure. In contrast, Koizumi was elected to the prime minister’s offi ce with a record-high approval rating. The new prime minister was called a “maverick” politician, and expectations that he would change the course of Japanese politics ran high. Koizumi’s election to the LDP’s highest post occurred in an open process in a party known for backroom decision-making, and Koizumi pledged to reform Japanese politics even if it meant destroying the LDP. If Koizumi were to realize any of his campaign promises, voters’ chances of infl uencing political elites would improve.

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There are two interlocking stories that Neighborhood Friends tell about politics. One is about the wealth of knowledge held by “everyday Japanese” voters like themselves, and another is about learning about poli- tics through the experience of political exclusion. This group talked about why they did not know what they thought they should know about poli- tics. The fault lies with elites rather than with supposedly “uninformed” voters. Despite all of their efforts to collect information to engage with politics, they were excluded. Instead of disengaging from politics alto- gether, these women analyze the conditions of their own political exclu- sion as political output. They transform the reasons for the participatory constraints they face into information about how and why the political system is performing poorly. Like Women Now, Neighborhood Friends turn their everyday experiences into political knowledge. Participation in Neighborhood Friends is one example of how “everyday Japanese” create new learning experiences over the course of life. Lifelong learning, even if not explicitly political, builds confi dence in “knowing what I know.” Con- fi dence in one’s own knowledge and judgment is transferable to politics and is evident in group participants’ assured diagnoses of contemporary political dynamics in Japan. What women know is valuable because it is available only from their particular vantage point as “everyday Japanese” voters. Women use their experiences to challenge the legitimacy of elite political knowledge—how elites know what they know and how they come to know it. What political elites know is inherently illegitimate if they have not learned it from everyday voters.

The Value of “Everyday” Knowledge The members of Neighborhood Friends talked about themselves as “average,” “regular,” or “everyday” vot- ers. Though gender and class condition their experiences with the politi- cal world, they make no claims to a unique perspective that is theirs alone. Rather, these women are members of a politically excluded class of diverse groups and individuals who relate to one another as marginalized demo- crats. Political elites do not have life experiences in common with everyday voters, and they have little incentive to connect with “average” Japanese be- cause they can be reelected by appealing to a narrow constituency of citizens with interests and experiences that place them outside of what is considered mainstream Japan as well. Though women may be overrepresented among the underrepresented, the experience of political exclusion can also be claimed by men. Women acknowledge that the growing distance between

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everyday voters and political elites means that more men who occupy sim- ilar class positions also stand outside of elite politics. What Neighborhood Friends mean when they say that they are “average” or “non-elite” is that class makes a difference, as becomes clear when this group is com- pared to an all-male international friendship association and Women Now users.

This all-female group contrasted sharply with another international friendship association with an elite, all-male membership. Upon arriving at the University of Tokyo (Todai), where I was a visiting graduate research student, an older man from an “OB group” (old boys’, or alumni group) was assigned to be my mentor. Mori-san, was a spry retired businessman in his seventies whose job had taken him and his family to the Global South where he lived and worked for several years. Many other foreign students had similar mentors who checked on our well-being, invited us into their homes, and took us to interesting sites and events around town. Their job was to help us to navigate the intricate inner workings of the vaunted paths that they traveled and that we would presumably travel in our own work.

The gender and class composition of the group makes a difference in the experiences and resources of members and refl ects the different structural conditions that members face in the world. The OB Friendship Association and Neighborhood Friends occupied two very different worlds that were separated by multiple status distinctions, with education and class being most apparent, in addition to gender. Mori-san and his colleagues had fi rst- hand international experiences that many Neighborhood Friends could access only indirectly, through cultural exchange. Further, the Neighbor- hood Friends did not have the types of associational ties that could gain its foreign friends more “status” points in Japanese society. These cumulative differences are apparent in how members think about and exercise political infl uence and power. Todai alums are overrepresented among top politi- cal, bureaucratic, and business elites. When it comes to political claims- making, they are already on the inside track. These are not people that Neighborhood Friends would consider “average” Japanese.

The Todai OBs have more in common with a political class that Neigh- borhood Friends characterize as male-dominated, moneyed, and heredi- tary. Neighborhood Friends echoed an adage common in Japanese politics: only those with kaban (fi nancial resources), jiban (a local support base), and kanban (recognition) can successfully run for offi ce. These resources remain

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important to candidate success even after electoral reforms intended to eliminate the institutional incentives that made these resources necessary were adopted in the mid-1990s.10 Women and other political outsiders typ- ically lack the resources needed to navigate a direct route to elite politics. Successful women candidates often have the same “quality” characteristics of their male counterparts and, like men, frequently inherit a koenkai (can- didate support organization) upon the death or retirement of a male rela- tive. One Neighborhood Friend noted that “Obuchi-san’s daughter, even without doing much, has a political base,”11 and others immediately made the connection between these structural conditions and the overrepresenta- tion of hereditary politicians in the Japanese system. The cultivation of the resources for entry into the national political elite is tightly linked to class background. And women extended this truth to include the bureaucratic and business elite that make up the building blocks of Japan, Inc., a nega- tive term that conjures up collusive relationships between government and business and popularized by the Western press during the miracle years of the 1980s. In the minds of voters, the everyday people on the outside of elite politics, this term is truer today than it was nearly three decades ago.

Neighborhood Friends would consider the Women Now participants’ life experiences as distant from their own as those of the OB Friendship Association’s members. Women Now users look more “elite” than most of the men that Neighborhood Friends encounter in their everyday lives. Women Now focus group participants were more educated, enjoyed higher-status jobs, and had more international experiences. Despite these

10. During the pre-reform era, the single nontransferable vote cast within a multimember district system pitted candidates from the same party against one another, resulting in an empha- sis on name recognition and the delivery of pork as candidates were unable to make distinctions on the basis of ideology. Additionally, short and highly regulated campaign periods made it nec- essary for candidates to evolve some means of maintaining close ties with their support bases be- tween elections. Under the multimember district system, koenkai coordinated and maximized votes within districts by ensuring that no one candidate received excess votes that would cost the party district seats that might compromise the electoral chances of another candidate from the same party. Koenkai are maintained year-round so that voters can be easily mobilized in the event of snap elections and during the short campaign period. The single-member district system has not undermined the basic need for a loyal base of electoral support (see Flanagan et al. 1991).

11. Keizō Obuchi was prime minister from July 1998 until April 2000. His tenure was cut short by a fatal stroke, and his daughter Yūko Obuchi was elected to his seat the same year. For a discussion of the institutional incentives that benefi t politicians’ relatives who seek offi ce, see Taniguchi (2008).

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differences, Neighborhood Friends valued their experiences as important sources of information precisely because they are mainstream, more com- mon than uncommon. Like Women Now participants, Neighborhood Friends pieced together what they know about politics from the contexts of their everyday lives and saw local knowledge as a resource that elites have dismissed out of hand. They would be happy to talk more about poli- tics if more people, especially elites, asked them.

Neighborhood Friends participants, acutely aware of the national poli- cies at work in their everyday lives, position themselves as the best judges of national government performance on the ground. Participants fi nd government performance lacking across a number of dimensions: trans- parency, accountability, responsiveness, effi ciency, and effectiveness. From their vantage point, democratic processes in Japan are not working well due to the distance between political elites and everyday citizens. There are multiple measures of distance.12 First, the life experiences of political elites separate them from everyday voters. Consequently, political elites are ill-informed because their life and career paths give them little experi- ence with the world that “average” or “everyday” Japanese inhabit; there is no common ground between elites and voters, making it diffi cult for elites to intuit what voters need. In the absence of common experiences, the importance of listening to the public to determine the common good increases. Unfortunately, the political process is top-down and not bottom- up. Voters’ voices must travel a long path up the political chain. They have to contact politicians indirectly, through national organizations or peak associations. Alternatively, they can participate in citizens’ movements, petition campaigns, and demonstrations. In contrast, policies generated by elite decision makers are rapidly evident on the ground in the form of public works projects—roads, runways, cemeteries—that Neighborhood Friends did not ask for and do not need. Indirect channels of interest ar- ticulation and direct “pipelines of pork” are a second feature of the political

12. The discussion in this paragraph echoes political critiques articulated by Robin LeBlanc’s housewife citizens (LeBlanc 1999, ch. 2). They too arrive at the conclusion that elite politics is “far” and use a similar rationale. The political world was distant because housewives had no personal connections to it; they were not intimately familiar with anyone who was a member of the political elite. Housewives said that their values were incompatible with the exclusive and corrupt practices that were characteristic of elite politics and took pains to distinguish their grassroots efforts to pro- mote community change from “politics.” Physical barriers also distanced women from elite poli- tics. The halls of national decision-making were far from home and offered none of the supports (for example, child care) that would allow women to enter as valued participants.

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distance between voters and elites. Finally, distance is the increasing length of the path between voters and elites; the impression that this path used to be much shorter, but has lengthened with time, is strong. Elite attention to the wealth of information that everyday voters possess is one fundamen- tal step toward erasing literal and fi gurative distances between voters and elites and setting Japanese politics back on the right path.

The political issues that Neighborhood Friends members did not talk about are a striking indication of the gulf that has opened between voters and elites. In the middle of a prolonged economic recession, Neighbor- hood Friends did not talk about economic reforms or refl ect on the era of high economic growth in nostalgic tones, even though these women came from middle-income families that were feeling the pinch of the recession. They expressed few disappointments over continued LDP dominance in politics. Instead, they critiqued the Japanese way of politics and proposed that better outcomes could be attained through better communication be- tween voters and political elites.

People-Power Politics Taking the citizens’ right to question and receive answers from the political system for granted, participants developed ex- planations for why the social and institutional mechanisms that facilitate communications between citizens and elites do not work as well as they should. Neighborhood Friends saw politics as limited by its own insti- tutional structures and internally generated norms that have become in- creasingly restrictive over time. Seniority norms in the dominant LDP, for example, constrained the circulation of knowledge among political elites and between voters and political elites. Politicians were routinely promoted to top positions in government and the party on the number of times reelected, with little regard for expertise and policy vision. Lead- ers without specifi c policy goals and a long-range vision led to a hol- lowing out of national electoral politics. Voters were uninformed due to these defi ciencies in the political process, despite their best efforts to do their own information gathering. The reasons that focus group par- ticipants gave for not knowing what they should know about politics became the very substance of their critique of what ails contemporary Japanese politics.

The primary problem is that politics is top-down and insulated from voters’ pressures. Respondents use their primary points of contact with the state, public works projects and street-level bureaucrats in ward offi ces

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and local police stations, to talk about politics more generally. Asakura- san calls the ward offi ce every time she notices a new construction project on the same street. Each time she gets a partial explanation for why work crews are there. Sometimes there is a problem with a gas leak; other times it is a sewage problem. Changing, incomplete, and often confl icting in- formation fuels multiple and interlocking diagnoses about what plagues Japanese politics. First, there is no transparency. Offi cials tell the public about problems only when they can no longer be hidden. “Sometimes we don’t even know how long something has been a problem. We only know when it’s really bad. . . . Take the earlier problems with blood donation as an example.”13 Second, bureaucratic administration is fragmented or “piece- meal” (katawari); information about overlapping tasks is not shared across jurisdictional boundaries. Third, lack of transparency makes it diffi cult for taxpayers to track and infl uence how their money is spent, but unnecessary and redundant public works projects are the visible proof of waste, ineffi - ciency, and corruption. As one Neighborhood Friends member said, “Our taxes are used to build roads that we don’t need.” Given the opportunity, Neighborhood Friends would tell political elites that they have little need for the seemingly ubiquitous public works projects that they do not see as vital to their quality of life.

According to participants, the “average” or “ordinary” Japanese person does not have the expectation that she can directly contact an elected of- fi cial. Nor does the “average” Japanese think that her voice, alone or in concert with others, will make much impression on politicians. That par- ticipants identifi ed themselves as “average” Japanese was evident in, and substantiated by, the initial confusion that greeted my initial question about the types of people who infl uenced politics. A long discussion ensued about what “infl uence” meant; an “ah!” of relief and understanding followed my explanation. It was “natural” that an American would ask this question, since Americans are accustomed to initiating contact with politicians. This was not the case in Japanese politics—although it should be. Rather, as one Neighborhood Friends member said, “There are ways for us to do so indirectly through national organizations.” The limitations of this tactic

13. This informant is referring to the HIV-tainted blood scandal that broke in 1996 and im- plicated high-ranking Ministry of Health and Welfare offi cials who had knowingly released un- treated blood products in the 1980s, exposing hemophiliacs to the AIDS virus.

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are implicit in the desire “to be a nation where women’s thoughts, ideas, perspectives actually do represent fi fty percent.” Not being heard is a com- mon experience for average women voters.

The discursive thread that links Neighborhood Friends members to Women Now participants is the adamancy that political elites should lis- ten to everyday voters because citizens offer a broader perspective on the “common good.” After all, democracy demands that citizens be the prin- cipals and political elites be their agents. Though money-power politics has eroded institutional structures and moral norms that enable citizens to hold political elites accountable, everyday people seek strategies for regain- ing power. Engaging in their own practices of knowledge creation is one means by which voters empower themselves to use existing institutional mechanisms for exercising control over political elites. Voting is just one institutional tool at the disposal of voters interested in accomplishing this task. In recent years, political observers have increasingly laid the blame for ongoing LDP dominance and the government’s failure to implement economic and administrative reforms at the feet of voters who are too apathetic, uninformed, and risk-averse to kick the scoundrels out. Neigh- borhood Friends stress that they are holding up their end of the contract between voters and representatives, thereby absolving themselves of any guilt in perpetuating the status quo, even though other citizens might be implicated. As they shift the remaining bulk of responsibility for creating and correcting these political imbalances to elites, they continue to pressure for change from below.

Voting as Protest

Despite the media buzz surrounding Koizumi’s election as prime minister, Neighborhood Friends members had not succumbed to “Koizumi fever.” At this particular political moment, Koizumi had yet to prove his staying power, the fi rst obstacle to accomplishing his campaign promises. Japan had had six prime ministers over the preceding seven years. Respondents said that there was little reason to become too invested in the prime minis- ter as a source of political change, because the position is indirectly elected and, in their recent experience, turnover is too rapid. Because the premier is indirectly elected, respondents complained that they did not have the

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opportunity to approve or disapprove of his past performance, rewarding or penalizing him accordingly. In fact, they were unsure whether the re- sults of the upcoming election would disrupt the partisan balance in the National Diet and threaten Koizumi’s newly won position. At this junc- ture in Japanese politics, it was not clear that Koizumi would become a politician to vote for, when voters had grown accustomed to voting against political parties and candidates.

Neighborhood Friends problematize the dominant tendency to view national politics narrowly, as a horserace that is all about winning. Rather, voters stay engaged in electoral politics because voting is an iterative game and every election offers parties and voters alike a chance to win. If Neigh- borhood Friends and “average” Japanese voters have nothing to win, it is not immediately clear how or why voting promises enough utility to warrant showing up at the polls at all. But sometimes winning is about losing. Focus group respondents see turning out as an opportunity to pro- test by voting against candidates and parties they do not want to win. As one Neighborhood Friends member put it, “To say I have a lot of interest [in elections] means that I absolutely want some person to lose.” Reject- ing the alternatives is sometimes the best choice a voter can make under contemporary Japanese political conditions. Thus, it would be a mistake to view protest voting as a show of unconditional support for the winner. The winning candidate should not interpret victory as a mandate but rather as a message about what is not working.

If the responses of Neighborhood Friends members are any indication, any conclusions about the depths of women’s political interest and engage- ment made on the basis of who wins elections is necessarily incomplete. How can the depths of individual political interest and engagement be assessed when there is so little for voters to be interested in? The Neighborhood Friends members watch television news and read newspapers but fi nd the candidates’ and parties’ electoral messages devoid of content. The lack of clarity from parties and candidates, they rightfully complain, makes it dif- fi cult for voters to distinguish the differences between the options they have been presented with. They are painfully aware that they are making the best electoral decisions possible with limited information.

Protest voting has precedent in Japanese politics (Reed 1999), especially among women (Iwai 1993; Iwamoto 2001). An oft-noted example is the 1989 House of Councillors elections, when women voters were credited

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with delivering the LDP its fi rst major postwar loss. Women voters sup- ported the Socialists to protest the LDP’s passage of an unpopular con- sumption tax and Prime Minister Sōsuke Uno’s sex scandal. The JSP ran a record number of women candidates, who ran on a “clean politics” plat- form. Women voters’ support resulted in a then-record number of women (twenty-two newly elected women brought the total number of women councilors to thirty-three)14 candidates elected to the Diet in the “Madonna Boom,” and Takako Doi became the fi rst female party leader and speaker of the House of Representatives. This was interpreted as a protest, a warn- ing to the LDP to clean up its act, because this deviation from traditional patterns of support occurred only in the “less powerful” Upper House, and traditional patterns of LDP support seemingly reasserted themselves over subsequent elections.

That “protest” has remained salient in the voting repertoire during oth- erwise “normal” elections is signifi cant because it provides an impetus for ongoing electoral engagement among voters who might otherwise abstain. But it also indicates a narrowing of choices; voting for the opposition is not an effective protest if the opposition looks just like the party in power. While voting against specifi c candidates and parties is not the most direct strategy for pressuring national elected offi cials to adopt a new direction, it is an effective means for choosing the least objectionable option. One Neighborhood Friend member echoed this sentiment. Every election, she looks at all the candidates and concludes that she does not want to be repre- sented by any of them: “I feel as though all of our choices are losing ones.”

Voting remains an effective means of bringing about political change. First, as discussed in previous chapters, the voting calculus for individu- als and communities changes in subnational elections. Participation in local elections is a means of changing national politics from the ground up. Sec- ond, voting works in tandem with other forms of political participation. As Nakajima-san related, when her ward president was replaced by an equally conservative successor, she adjusted her strategies to reach out to the women

14. In 1989, there were 252 seats in the House of Councillors and one-half (126) were up for reelection every three years. Twenty-two new women were elected and women held 11 seats that were not up for reelection that year. As a result, the total number of women elected was 33. None- theless, 22 successful women candidates elected at one time to the House of Councillors was a re- cord high. In combination with the sitting councillors, the representation of women in the Upper House hit a then-record high (Iwai 1993).

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who had helped him to win to produce a different outcome in the next elec- tion. Elections and electoral outcomes are a measure of political change, however incremental, and inform voters about other places in the system to reinvest their energies, either to bring about change through alternative avenues or to increase their chances of “winning” in elections the next time around. Third, voting against particular parties and candidates may repro- duce the status quo, but it effectively guards against some other possible set of political outcomes. Finally, when we take a long-range view of Japanese politics, we see radical and rapid changes over the course of the postwar period that were enabled by actual or threatened electoral outcomes (Calder 1988). Just as voting is an opportunity to punish, it is also an opportunity to reward.

Increasingly, voters are afforded the opportunity to reward, and they await future possibilities to do so more often. Focus group participants rewarded younger candidates, mavericks, candidates who spoke and lis- tened. They rewarded not policy proposals but political behaviors that they thought should extend to politics as a whole. Candidates who break the mold symbolize a yearning for a more inclusive politics. Change will ex- tend from inclusion, because inclusion means that “average” Japanese will see herself refl ected in the political process. Focus groups tell us about the nature of contemporary Japanese politics as seen through the eyes of Japa- nese women (exclusive), the role they envision for themselves (infl uential), and their efforts to be more effective principals by assuming responsibility for their own political education. Women prepare themselves to take ad- vantage of opportunities to change politics by engaging in the same types of practices on the ground that they would like to see reproduced in inter- actions between political elites and citizens.

The strategies that motivate vote choice in Japan are much more com- plex than originally assumed. We already know that voters protest against the national political establishment by voting against the governing party or casting a “sincere” vote for a fringe party that they support even though it has no chance of winning. According to Kawai and Watanabe (2010), un- like strategic voters whose electoral choices are driven by calculations about how their votes will make the most impact, sincere voters always vote for their preferred candidates and parties even if they have no chance of win- ning. Strategic voters do not want to “waste” votes. Voters abstain, split their tickets between single-member district and proportional representation

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seats in the House of Representatives, eschew partisan identifi cation, and move from one category of partisanship from one election period to the next. Voters “divide” government by voting for the opposition parties in House of Councillors elections and the familiar LDP in the traditionally more powerful House of Representatives.15 Typically, the more local the election, the more nonpartisan it has been. However, nonpartisan conser- vatives sympathetic to the LDP have held the majority of subnational as- sembly seats because traditionally it has been benefi cial for local politicians to cultivate ties with national LDP politicians to facilitate the fl ow of public works to their districts (Scheiner 2005, 2006). The increase in local citizens’ parties and the DPJ efforts to strengthen its local base to win more national seats offer an additional outlet for voters to send a message to national poli- ticians through their local vote choices. Local elections function as a kind of referendum on national elections, a warning signal to national elites that they will be penalized if they do not adjust their policies and practices in the period preceding the next election.

15. Now that the opposition controls the House of Councillors, political observers are revis- iting the conventional wisdom that the House of Representatives is stronger than the House of Councillors. The House of Councillors has operated as a rubber stamp throughout the postwar pe- riod because the LDP has been the largest party in both houses of the Diet and never faced a uni- fi ed opposition prior to the current decade.

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