Psephy's ~ologies: Tracking Koike's ambition 12

Thursday, October 19, 2017

Tracking Koike's ambition 12

Tracking Koike's ambition, Day 12, 12 October 2017

You have to hand it to the various party leaders, they are all keeping up fairly punishing schedules, appearing beside their respective party candidates all over the country. Most of them have their own electorate battles to run as well; Abe and Koike have the country and Tokyo to run, respectively.

It is apparent that people are drawn to seeing Koike appear. It adds extra pressure and expectation on her that doesn't exist in quite the same way for other party leaders (although Edano continues to draw numbers). Koike's party, Kibo, lays out the next day's schedule prominently on twitter and follows through with photos, video and wrap up comments by Koike at the end of the day.

I guess they are lucky that the campaigns are relatively short.

This evening's media highlighted an interesting two-candidate race in Nigata 4, between two women, Kaneko Megumi for the LDP and Kikuta Makiko, formerly of the Old Dems and standing as a non-aligned independent but with endorsement from JCP and Shamin. Both have parliamentary experience with Kaneko winning the electorate from Kikuta a couple of elections ago. As a member of the old Dems, Kikuta has spent the last two terms in parliament on the back of her party's proportional list; this time as an independent, she doesn't have that safety net. The media has pitched the battle between the two as having much 'bad blood' and Kaneko has the added ignominy of having been in headlines earlier with her husband's extra-marital affair becoming public (he was also a parliamentarian). Politicians are paying for affairs these days in ways they haven't previously.

For Kikuta, everything is on the line; for Kaneko, she has the party list to fall back on. This one is a real challenge no doubt for voters...another electorate to watch.

And in other news, media outlets are already predicting numbers and 'winners' based on electorate surveys. They are projecting a 300+ win for an LDP-led coalition, prompting some discussion via twitter (courtesy of AP reporter Yuri Kageyama) as to why there doesn't seem to be a liberal alternative in Japan. (Another part of this project.)

We'll see, there are still ten days to go.

In case you're wondering...

Thank you for visiting. My blog is like many others, mostly a way to extend my conversations on Twitter and/or comment on all the politics as the need arises. Politics is broadly defined here and, as I get older, I am trying to philosophise about life and politics--hence the '~ologies' (the 'psephy'--silent p--is short for psephologist, one who analyses elections).
At present, I'm seeking to find better ways for us, the electors, to engage with those, our elected. I am concerned about where too much apathy towards our politicians might lead us. I actually think the onus is on our elected representatives to engage with us as well.
I'm doing this via explorations of the idea of the 'social contract', espoused most famously by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the 18th century, but flavoured by others including Machiavelli, Hume, Locke, Kant, Mill, Arendt and Maruyama. These philosophical threads weave their way through all my posts here...they are ideas we need to revisit.

I am also a passionate educator and, after some three decades in Australia and in Japan, you'll find I have a bit to say about that too. In April 2016, I relocated to Tokyo to take up a position in the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Law at Musashino University. I'll be teaching Japanese politics and peace studies to Japanese students, in Japanese. These views are my own and any resemblance to actual events is likely to be coincidental. But such are our constructed lives and opinions.