Not ready for prime time

A RUN of dismal economic news has lessened the air of invincibility surrounding the government of Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister. Outside the bustling metropolises such as Tokyo, Osaka and Fukuoka, ordinary people are growing more vocal in their complaints that Mr Abe’s schemes are doing little for them. A rise in the consumption (value-added) tax in April, meanwhile, seems to have knocked growth badly—GDP in the second quarter fell by an annualised 7.1%, for instance. All fertile ground, you would have thought, for an effective opposition. Yet if the shine is starting to come off Mr Abe’s popularity, the opposition to his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) continues to be a crushing disappointment to voters.

Japan’s opposition parties have long been disunited and ill-disciplined. These flaws seem if anything to be deepening, whether inside the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), the biggest party, turfed out of government in an LDP landslide two years ago, or among a ragbag of smaller parties that surround the main two.

One outfit with early promise as a modernising force was Your Party, founded in 2009 by a defector from the LDP, Yoshimi Watanabe, son of a late LDP political heavyweight, and a rising star in the DPJ, Keiichiro Asao. Both chafed at the power of the bureaucracy and at the lack of market-minded attitudes in their respective parties; their new party appealed to younger professionals. Yet, in April, Mr Watanabe was forced to step down as party leader after he failed to account for how he spent a loan of ¥800m ($7.4m) from a friendly businessman. He is now calling for the resignation of Mr Asao, his successor as leader, for refusing to bring Your Party into alliance with Mr Abe, whose return to office in December 2012 Mr Watanabe supported. Weirdly, Mr Asao is putting up with the sniping.

Another troubled party boss is Banri Kaieda, head of the DPJ. For months, the party’s senior figures have been in open revolt. Mr Kaieda appears not to appreciate the depth of the crisis in which the party has found itself since its election defeat. Last month he managed to hang on to his position by reshuffling the party’s leadership to include some critics. But what many Japanese noticed in the new line-up of supposedly the most progressive mainstream party was a shortage of fresh talent and a complete absence of women. At least Mr Abe has five women in his cabinet, even if they are far from the most impressive women in politics.

While the DPJ struggles to propose alternative economic policies to Mr Abe’s, its leadership is split over his decision to reinterpret the constitution in order to give Japan the right to collective self-defence—coming to the aid of allies if attacked. The party has always had a large share of strict pacifists, but it also contains strategic realists who are strong supporters of the government’s move. Whether they will vote with the government when it tries to pass legislation on collective self-defence next year will be a stern test of party discipline, says Koichi Nakano of Sophia University in Tokyo. The LDP, for its part, aims to divide and permanently hobble the DPJ over the issue.

Japan’s political parties have long been fissiparous; politicians swerve off to found their own parties, as often as not coming back into the mainstream fold with little penalty. This time, some divine a potential “third force” in a slew of splits and envisioned alliances among the smaller parties. Yet nothing can conceal the policy chasms among these groupings. The Japan Restoration Party, headed by a self-regarding mayor of Osaka, Toru Hashimoto, last month merged with the far smaller Unity Party, a group of economic reformers. Yet the two sides continue to disagree over the big themes, including nuclear power, taxation and collective self-defence.

As for the DPJ, it seems torn between the market-illiberal, pro-union camp and market-minded reformists. Its modernisers hope that in alliance with a few smaller parties, such as Your Party, it might eventually become a force to be reckoned with again. It has plenty of cash to launch a comeback (the next general election is due by the end of 2016). There are signs that the party may go on the offensive at last. It held back from attacking Mr Abe’s economic programme during the height of its popularity last year, but now it is clear that the programme’s easy money has not succeeded in raising wages. The DPJ’s electoral strategist, Yukio Edano, reckons Mr Abe himself is the government’s chief weakness. The prime minister’s over-confidence, he claims, could set him up for a fall.

Just now, it is hard to think of a time when Japan’s formal opposition was less potent against the LDP. In fact, stronger restraints on Mr Abe probably come from the junior party in the ruling coalition, Komeito. Indeed, as a party founded on pacifism, it likes to describe itself as the LDP’s opposition. Though Komeito’s leadership eventually backed Mr Abe’s reform to allow collective self-defence, it cannot entirely ignore its pacifist and welfare-loving supporters in Soka Gakkai, a millions-strong lay Buddhist group.

And do not discount Mr Abe’s opposition within his own LDP. The party is still notable for the presence of powerful factions (though these are rarely formed along ideological lines). Moreover, many LDP members on its dovish wing expressed fury at Mr Abe’s visit last December to Tokyo’s Yasukuni shrine, which honours convicted war criminals alongside ordinary war dead. Relations with China, in particular, were damaged. In appointing Sadakazu Tanigaki, a pro-China liberal, as the LDP’s secretary-general, Mr Abe perhaps sought to head off his most threatening source of opposition.