Japan's Liberal Democratic Party | Tokyo on Fire скачать в хорошем качестве

Japan's Liberal Democratic Party | Tokyo on Fire

The Liberal Democratic Party of Japan (aka, 'The LDP'), has been Japan's most prominent political party since the end of the Second World War. In this episode of Tokyo on Fire, Host Timothy Langley and Advisor Michael Cucek explore the whys, hows, and whats, of what supports the LDP's grip on power, and how - even when faced with increasingly virulent public opposition - they're still the end-all-be-all of the Japanese political scene. Access the full transcript at: https://langleyesquire.com/japan-s-li... --- Timothy: Good afternoon, everyone! Welcome back to Tokyo On Fire! Today is July 17th 2015. Our burning issue today is the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan. The Liberal Democratic Party is the political party that's been in power since 1955: it's had a couple of hiatus out of power. We're going to be delving into why the Liberal Democratic Party is so powerful and what its influence is on Japanese politics. Today I'm joined once again with my co-host Michael Cucek. Michael Cucek is the author of the foremost blog on Japanese politics in English, it is entitled Shisaku. He is an Adjunct Professor at Sofia University, where he is teaching budding bright minds on Japanese and US politics. Michael, welcome to the show again. Michael: Well, it's great to be back. Timothy: Thank you very much. We're talking about the LDP and their dominance in Japanese politics. They lost a little bit of a gap there: the Prime Minister Shinzo Abe came back roin and he has reestablished his position; he's really kind of melding things to kind of bend to his ways, there's been a lot going on here. Michael: Well, the Prime Minister is riding on a wave of the LDP's return to power. The return to power was not guaranteed and in fact most people called them out in 2009, when they lost to the Democratic Party of Japan, the DPJ. They can't come back, but in a rather different form than the way they went out. Mr. Abe has been helping build up the party, but at what might be a cost that he'll have to bear down the line. Timothy: Let's talk a little bit about the LDP: how it was formed, where it came from and perhaps why it can so legitimately weld such political power in Japanese politics. Michael: It's been around since 1955 when two conservative parties called the Liberal Party and the Democratic Party merged. The merger was forced upon them by the merger of two of the (other) socialist parties. The concept that Japan needed to be under conservative rule was not something that the Japanese people necessarily have held as a unified whole, but nevertheless is the basic line that is both acceptable to the United States, Japan's major ally, and also to the Japan's business community. These two forces, along with politicians, have been basically deciding how Japan has been run since 1945. Timothy: It's not incorrect to say that the United States had a heavy hand in melding this kind of formation of the Liberal Party and the Democratic Party, so that the the economy could get on its feet, so that Japanese politics could settle down, so that the constitutional framework could begin to operate for the benefit of the Japanese constituency. Michael: Japanese conservatives, of course, had a big burden in that they were first associated with the march toward the war that took place in the 1930s and 1940s and one would think that the United States would really want to cause their power to crumble away, but then the Cold War intervened, which made their anti-communism far more important than their historical legacy. So, the United States actually helped fund, through the Central Intelligence Agency, the early years of the unified party. Timothy: Well, that's not too different than what happened in Germany too. Michael: Now that we have open archives from the time, now that the 30 or 40 year gap has ended, we've seen that the United States had a very strong influence, if not a controlling hand, in the arrangement of the conservative parties, at least in their first years. Later on, in the 1960s, they took off on their own: the LDP did because it was able to take credit for the huge economic boom, when there were 10% per annum growth rates and person's income would actually double it over a ten-year span. They could take credit for that and they were at the time, at least given the benefit of the doubt. What has to be known though is that the LDP has not been a popular party: during its first 30 years of existence, it rarely went above 35% in terms of the total number of votes or at least a total number of persons saying that they were supporters of the party. Right now, we have that exact same number 35 percent, so that it has never been a party of the majority of Japanese citizens. It has always been about the the party of about a third of the electorate, at best, and in its dark days, it was down into the 20s, into the low 20s, in terms of [...]