A Japanese Tea Party Revolt?

By: EW News Desk Team   Date: 14 February 2011

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EconomyWatch, News Desk Team

 

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14 February 2011

When Takashi Kawamura won a landslide re-election victory as the mayor of Nayoya on February 6th – he put on a pair of black rubber boots while supporters poured buckets of cold water over his head.

Mr Kawamura then declared a “kind of tea party” had been born in Nagoya, one of Japan’s largest industrial cities.

Alongside political ally Hideki Omura who’d won governship of surrounding Aichi prefecture (home of Toyota) – Mr Omura declared “This is a citizen revolution”.

National media called the election results “provincial fuss” – saying voters had just had enough of Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), and would back even the quirkier rivals as an alternative.

However Mr Kan’s vote was predicted before the April elections for 13 governers, 44 prefecture assemblies and numerous mayorships and municipal assemblies.

The media though, may have overlooked some details – Nagoya citizens gave Mr Kawanmura three times the votes of his PDJ rival, and three quarters of them supported a referendum to break up the current Nagoya assembly.

“Should Messrs Kawamura and Omura manage to stuff the new assemblies with their supporters in the spring elections, they could help unleash forces of decentralisation in Japan. Both intend to merge the city and prefectural governments, to create a regional block to draw investment and jobs away from Tokyo and help reshape government to cope with an ageing society. They plan to cut local taxes by 10%, slash salaries for elected officials, and shed overlapping public services.”

Tokyo sees these moves as being tyrannical – although the two politicians have struck a chord.

“Officials in cash-strapped Aichi receive up to ¥28m ($340,000) as a perk on retirement. That compares with ¥20m at Toyota. The prefecture’s debt, meanwhile, stands at ¥585,000 yen a citizen.”

Following the Aichi revolt, Osaka prefecture’s governor, Toru Hashimoto is campaigning to build similar megaplopolis – facing opposition from local mayors.

Niigata and other prefectures also want to merge with their capitals.

“Too many municipal administrations exist, with shaky tax bases, and indeed prefectures too."

“Mr Kawamura reckons the movement will come to resemble the alliance of fiefs in western Japan that helped topple the shogunate in the 1860s. Mr Omura, less prone to hyperbole, says that all big Japanese cities are in a struggle to compete with the likes of Shanghai, so why should Tokyo have all the advantages? Competition, he says, takes place not between nations, but rather cities. No wonder Tokyoites want to belittle the movement.”

Full article from The Economist

Liz Zuliani

EconomyWatch.com


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