If you had tried to make this month’s events swirling around the Tokyo Olympics a drama, you’d have been laughed out of the writer’s room.
For months, Japan’s top political brass – including the government of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)’s Suga Yoshihide and Tokyo Governor Koike Yuriko – have been scrambling to save the 2020…err, 2021 Tokyo Olympics. Initially scheduled for last year, the government reluctantly put off the event until this summer. It was clear even to the most dedicated pro-Olympics sycophant that the COVID-19 pandemic would just make it impossible.
Amidst all of this travail, Tokyo Olympics chief Mori Yoshiro fired the gaffe heard ’round the world. His comment that women cause meetings “to run long” was quickly picked up by the international press and condemned worldwide.
Despite the outcry, it took almost a week before Mori resigned. A former Prime Minister, he is one of the LDP’s elder statemen. Many LDP officials expressed concern that, with Mori gone, the Tokyo Olympics would essentially be doomed. But Mori couldn’t seem to keep his mouth shut. He drew more criticism later in the week when he tried to defend his statements by saying he “doesn’t talk to women much.”
Echoes of the Ehime Maru
In the end, Mori realized he wouldn’t be able to withstand the clamor and stepped down.
This wasn’t Mori’s first brush with controversy. Astute Unseen Japan readers may remember our article on the Ehime Maru, the disaster in 2001 when a US Navy submarine sunk a ship full of Japanese students. Mori was PM at the time. His insistence on finishing his golf game after he got wind of the tragedy caused his public approval rating to plummet to the single digits. He resigned shortly after.
And mind you, it’s not like Mori is the first LDP politician to make a discriminatory statement about women. Every year, a group of feminists in Japan hand out awards for the most sexist or gender-discriminatory statement by a politician within the year. In 2019, all but one of the politicians up for nomination were LDP members.
Some critics chalk Mori’s statements up to his age. The word 老害 (rougai; gerontocracy) has been used a lot lately to lament that Japan’s aging population is setting the country’s social progress back.
But at least two authors argue that the problem isn’t Mori’s age – and it isn’t confined to Mori. Rather, they say, they’re reflective of much darker, deeper issues in Japanese politics.
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“The LDP’s True Nature”
If you’ve been a Member for a while, you may remember my article on LDP politician Sugita Mio. In that write-up, I shared some observations from author Furuya Tsunehira, a former right-wing magazine editor who now tracks the words and behavior of his former comrades-in-arms. Furuya was able to track exactly how Sugita rose to power – and reminded everyone that her history of execrable statements long preceded her hot take that LGBT people shouldn’t receive government money because they’re “unproductive”.
Last week, in a new article for Newsweek Japan, Furuya tackled the Liberal Democratic Party as such. His first argument concerns Mori, in which he notes the politician’s lifelong propensity for gaffes. During his time at PM, for example, Mori referred to Japan as “the land of the Gods” – a huge misstep in a country that’s supposed to separate state and religion. He also casually remarked that independent votes should “just sleep in” instead of going to vote.
当時の森氏の年齢は62歳で、総理の年齢としては標準的であり決して老人ではない。「神の国発言」の評価はともかく、元来こうした復古的イデオロギーや世界観を持っており、それがそのまま加齢しても修正されずに残存しただけである。
Mori was 62 at the time – average age for a Prime Minister and by no means elderly. Criticism of his “Land of the Gods” remark notwithstanding, he’s held this anachronistic ideology and worldview since then – it’s as it is now because he hasn’t done anything to fix it as he’s aged.
Furuya then catalogs other LDP politicians who’ve expressed the same outdated worldview – some of them going back decades.
For example, Nikai Toshihiro, leader of the so-called Nikai faction of the LDP, in 2018: “The war [World War II] and post-war generations who lived hand-to-mouth never said, ‘Having kids is too hard so let’s not do it.’ Now we have people who selfishly think they’d be happier not having kids.” Nikai, born in 1939, is hardly young – but he’s also not old enough to remember that much of World War II and its aftermath.
Then there’s Aso Taro. Aso made headlines in 2019 when he won an “award” for the year’s most sexist statement. But his gaffes stretch all the way back to 1979, when he first ran for the Diet. He became infamous overnight for referring to voters in an address at a train station as “the common folk” (下々の皆さん; shimo-jimo no minasan). He was 39 at the time – hardly an old man. “Aso didn’t develop an authoritarian personality as an old man,” Furuya writes, “he’s had one since his youth.”
Recurring Racism
Then there’s former Prime Minister Nakasode Yasuhiro, who had two international headline-making gaffes in the same year. First there was this gem in 1986: “In America they have Blacks, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans and whatnot, so the intellectual level is lower than Japan.” He followed that up later in the year by referring to the people of Japan as “a single race” – a characterization that the country’s native Ainu most certainly did not appreciate.
Two years later, Japan faced another international crisis when LDP politician Watanabe Michio said that Black people in the US file for bankruptcy so they don’t have to pay off their debts. America’s Congressional Black Caucus demanded an apology for the statement. Three years later in 1991, Watanabe, then serving as Foreign Minister in the Miyazawa cabinet, also referred to the Japanese as “a single race.” The government had to issue its own official declaration that Japan isn’t a country of a single race in order to put out the resulting fire.
Furuya concludes:
要するに、傲慢になったり、権威的になったり、市井の市民感覚からどんどんと遊離していく自民党政治家の感覚というのは、彼らが「老人・老害」ゆえだからではなく、彼らが「もともと」そういった感性や価値観（地金）を持ったまま自民党の重鎮になっただけに過ぎないのである。
In short, the perception of LDP politicians didn’t become arrogant, authoritarian, and separated from that of the person on the street because of aging, but merely because people who had that as their original personality and worldview (their true character) became leaders in the LDP.
A Systemic Failure to Purge
Similarly, in an interview with Asahi AERAdot, director and psychiatrist Kazuda Hideki disputes the notion that Mori should have been booted from the Tokyo Olympics using his age as a pretext. “The problem isn’t age itself. You can talk about changes as people get older in a statistical fashion but that can’t necessarily be applied to individuals.”
Rather, said Kazuda, the problem is that “it’s hard for people to be fired or demoted in Japan once they’ve come to power.”
Kazuda says he sees the same problem in Japanese businesses, where the lifelong employment systems and seniority by service still linger as accepted frameworks. While there are talented older people in the upper brass of such businesses, many who aren’t are promoted or allowed to linger in management simply because it provides employees with a sense of security as they age.
これは日本のあらゆる組織にあてはまることで、私が身を置く医学界も例外ではありません。日本の大学では医学部教授の言うことがいくらおかしくても、医局員は逆らうことはできない。「先生まずいですよ」なんて言ったら飛ばされるだけです。
This applies to all organizations in Japan. And the medical world, to which I belong, is no exception. In Japanese universities, no matter how many crazy things a professor at a medical school says, the medical staff can’t contradict him. If you say, “Doctor, that’s not a good look,” you’ll just be sent away.
Watching media coverage of Mori’s ouster, it seems most of it still centers around the rougai argument. Mori’s just too old, the story goes. Japan’s political institutions need some young blood. That’s a shame, because I think Furuya and Kazuda both offer excellent points. The LDP’s discriminatory attitudes are baked deep into its leadership. And Japan’s institutions across the board could do a much better job of valuing ability over seniority.
Until and unless both of these things change, you can guarantee that Mori’s gaffe won’t be the last we hear coming from within Japan’s dominant political party.
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