Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called a snap election, but populist Yuriko Koike from the Party of Hope presents a real challenge.
A powerful figure from the political establishment squares off against a plucky populist from the entertainment world who has never been a candidate for the office before. Wait… haven’t we seen this movie recently?
On October 22, yet another powerful country hosts a cliffhanger contest at the ballot box, as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called a snap election, hoping to boost his electoral coalition at the expense of the foundering Democratic Party of Japan. But a populist wedged her way onto the national scene to steal the thunder—and possibly the election—from Abe’s politically dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).
A Brazen Political Outsider With “Hopes” To Rally Japan’s Masses
The challenger to the LDP is the most unlikely of political upstarts. While the Berlin Wall was crumbling, Yuriko Koike was covering it for Japanese TV as a reporter. After a career in the media, Koike chose to try her hand at politics, joining the LDP, a post-World War II fixture in the Japanese Parliament, known as the Diet.
Wait… the LDP? That’s right: Koike, the greatest threat to the Liberal Democratic Party’s continued stranglehold on Japanese politics was once a member of that ruling party, and a member of the lower house from 1993 to 2016. She was even elected as Tokyo governor, an impressive position in Japanese politics. And if she is elected the new prime minister, it would be a first for a woman in Japan.
With the implosion of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), a relatively ineffective party on the left, the 65-year-old Koike decided to form the “Party of Hope” in the last few weeks. Its political positions, key advisers, and even the role Koike might take with this new party after the election is fueling electoral uncertainty even more than North Korean nukes.
The Audacity of (the Party of) Hope
The rise of this new political force is result of Koike’s charisma and the dissolution of the DPJ. But what does the party stand for? Analysts have been scratching their heads trying to answer this question. Perhaps that’s a characteristic of a populist party: trying to be all things to all people.
Could it be a party of the left? Many of its members come from the now-defunct Democratic Party of Japan. The DPJ, while a little more moderate than predecessors like the Japanese Socialist Party and Japanese Communist Party, is still very much a pro-government and pro-labor party, in opposition to the pro-business LDP.
The Party of Hope itself insists that it’s a centrist party, perhaps to appeal to the widest base possible. Koike calls her plans a “ middle of the fairway ” style to differentiate her party from the DPJ of the past and the current right-of-center LDP.
