The New Liberal Club Breakaway

On 14 June 1976, six members of the Liberal Democratic party (LDP), the conservative group in power, held a press conference to announce their intention to leave the party. A week later, with the press in tow, they appeared at LDP headquarters in Tokyo and formally resigned. Three days later, on 25 June, they announced the formation of a new conservative political group, the New Liberal Club (NLC). With the next election for the lower house of Japan's bicameral Diet slated for December at the latest, the NLC began a frantic effort to draw other conservatives to their cause. They managed to find the requisite twenty-five candidates willing to throw their lot in with the rebels,^[10] of whom seventeen won seats in the lower house election on 5 December 1976—a showing that fell short of the twenty seats necessary to secure the NLC's full legislative status in the Diet but was nevertheless widely hailed as a stunning victory for the club and yet another blow to the beleaguered LDP.^[11] Indeed, only through a postelection roundup of conservative independents were the Liberal Democrats able to hold their majority in the lower house.^[12]

In the years following the New Liberal Club's breakaway from its parent party until its demise in August 1986 (after a poor showing in the lower house election the previous month), the road it traveled was a rocky one. For all the attention that the NLC commanded at the time of its debut, and despite massive media coverage in Japan of the club's attempt to secure a foothold in the political landscape, the party even in the best of moments met with only limited success, and their efforts ultimately proved insufficient to keep the group alive. By early 1979 the media assessment

[10] To have the right to put forward candidates, a political group must offer a minimum of twenty-five candidates in a lower house election or ten in an upper house election; Wagatsuma Sakae, ed., Roppo zensho (Tokyo: Yuhikaku, 1967), 94.

[11] To have the right to introduce legislation, and thus to fit the official definition of a party, a political group must hold at least twenty seats in the lower house and ten in the upper house; ibid., 62.

[12] The LDP won 249 seats in the election, 7 seats short of a majority. When 12 independents joined the party following the election, the party's total increased to 261 seats, giving the LDP a 5-seat majority in the lower house.

was harsh. Summing up the view of many critics, the Yomiuri Shinbun observed that the club lacked the indispensable "3 S's"—seisaku (policy), soshiki (organizational structure), and shikin (funds)—necessary to survive as a party in Japan.^[13] In the lower house election of October 1979, the NLC captured only four seats, and in November the party's leader, Kono Yohei, resigned to take responsibility for the defeat and to meditate on the group's future.^[14] Demoralized by its loss of momentum after such a promising start and plagued by internal problems, the NLC for a time appeared to be near an end. Key members returned to the LDP. Although it partially recouped its losses by gaining twelve seats in the lower house election of June 1980, its showing in December 1983 was once again modest.^[15] After gaining only seven seats in the July 1986 double election, in August the group ended its decade-long existence and, coming full circle in the protest, returned to the LDP fold.^[16]

Why the quasi-party failed to take hold is less important, for our purposes, than why it arose in the first place. The club's electoral hold was minuscule; only occasionally in its decade of existence did it play a role of some significance in Japanese politics.^[17] Its major claim to fame is that following the 1983 election it helped to form the only coalition government Japan has had since the LDP was established in 1955. Yet even this success was not the NLC's own making: the poor showing of the ruling party in 1983 sent the LDP once again scrambling for an infusion of outside conservatives to give it a working majority—thus bringing in the New Liberal Club, with six members. For its contribution, the club received a cabinet post in the new government.^[18]

Let us now look more closely at the breakaway of the NLC. As suggested in chapter 1, protests are frequently spurred by an entire panoply of

[13] Yomiuri Shinbun, 8 March 1979.

[14] Asahi Shinbun, 27 November 1979.

[15] For the state of the NLC following the 1983 election, see Maki Taro, "Nakasone 'anrakushi' o takuramu Miyazawa vs. Takeshita no yamiuchi" Gendai 18 (March 1984): 122–139; Uchiyama Hideo, Uchida Mitsuru, and Iwami Takao," 'Hakuchu seiji' e no kitai to fuan," Ekonomisuto 62 (17 January 1984): 10–19; and Takabatake Michitoshi, "Jiminto gosan to jikai no kozo," Ekonomisuto 62 (3 January 1984): 10–21.

[16] One of the seven, former NLC chairman Tagawa Seiichi, held out; he formed his own one-member group, Shinpoto, in January 1987.

[17] Prior to its gain in the 1983 election, the major example of NLC influence was in the election of Ohira as prime minister in 1979, in which the NLC vote was decisive in Ohira's win over Fukuda; see Gerald L. Curtis, The Japanese Way of Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 32–33, 40–41.

[18] Ibid., 33–34.

contributing factors, and this case is no exception. In some ways, the secession was only one of numerous creaks and strains that the giant LDP, with its many warring factions, was feeling in the 1970s. In an era when the party's base of support was steadily eroding, it was to be expected that internal conflicts would intensify in the tug-of-war over accountability for the party's decline and in disputes over how further losses were to be arrested. Policy disagreements fueled the conflict from the outset, but by the time of the break the central issue was the Lockheed scandal and the broader problem of "dirty money politics" in the LDP. The secession was also a power play—the effort of a small group of mavericks to jockey for a more advantageous position in the conservative camp's power arrangements. Interpersonal rivalries figured in the breakaway as well and had their own elaborate history, what with Kono Yohei's famous political family's own long postwar record of challenging conservative authority.^[19] Even today reporters and scholars who have analyzed the rebellion are not in full agreement on why the Kono group left the ruling party.

Whatever other more immediate motives may have spurred the protest, the break at a deeper level may be seen as an episode of status politics that focused on the distribution and prerogatives of authority based on seniority. Kono Yohei, his two chief lieutenants, and most of the men who subsequently joined the cause were in their thirties and forties. Significantly, the departure of the original six from the LDP came at the culmination of a conflict that involved both the dissenters' status as juniors in a party hierarchy determined largely on the basis of seniority and the nature of the leadership exercised by a senior generation of LDP members. Thus, the stage for the protest was effectively set by the terms of status relations within the Liberal Democratic party itself.

In party politics, as in Japanese organizational life more generally, the distribution of authority is weighted heavily in favor of more senior people who monopolize the stakes of power—in the case of LDP seniors, money and posts—and allocate them to their subordinates on the basis of rank.

[19] In 1971 Kono Yohei's uncle, Kono Kenzo, staged a revolt against then prime minister Sato Eisaku by successfully running against Sato's close associate, Shigemune Yuzo, for the chairmanship of the House of Councillors (see Hans H. Baerwald, Party Politics in Japan [London: Allen Unwin, 1986], 94–95). Yohei's father, Ichiro, provides a much more dramatic example of defiance. In 1960, after the faction he headed failed to gain positions in the new Ikeda Hayato cabinet, he attempted to break with the ruling party by forming a "New Kono party" (Kono Shinto ). When only five or six of his initial fifty followers stuck with him, however, he abandoned the plan (see Togawa Isamu, Shosetsu Yoshida gakko, vol. 2 [Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten, 1980], 320–340; and Kishimoto Koichi "Konoke no hitobito," Chuo Koron 91 [August 1976]: 200–208).

Within the LDP, juniors are expected to acknowledge—indeed, celebrate—their superiors' authority through deferential behavior. As Takie Lebra has noted, for juniors, "not only doryoku ("strenuous effort") but kuro ("suffering") is expected of a young person who has ambition." ^[20] The payoff is long term: by punctiliously meeting role expectations, juniors can eventually enjoy power themselves.

Most legislative bodies employ some type of seniority principle in allocating leadership positions to members. Even those that do not formally rely on seniority obviously consider experience to be a major prerequisite for high positions. In Japan, however, as a reflection of organizational principles that are widely in operation in everyday life, what is unusual is the degree to which the seniority principle guides the allocation of rewards controlled by the ruling party, the degree to which power is concentrated in age superiors, and the degree to which access to leadership is governed by factors that are beyond the powers of the individual to change—specifically, political age (number of times elected) and, to a lesser extent, biological age.

The distribution of posts and other rewards by the LDP to its members is handled through the five to ten factions into which the party has been divided at any point since its founding, each of which is presided over by a senior LDP Diet member. Because the factions exist outside the formal organizational structure of the party, the allocation process occurs without resort to formal party rules through informal negotiations among status superiors. Although the LDP's official position as a party has been to regret and deplore—and, depending on the political mood of the moment, on occasion to outlaw—these factions, they remain the key unit by which the party distributes posts. Party, Diet, and cabinet positions, including the prime ministership, are parceled out on the basis of factional strength. Each faction head then distributes the faction's share of positions to the members waiting below.

Nathaniel Thayer describes the evolution of factions in the Liberal Democratic party after its creation in 1955; in so doing he sets out the terms of the party reward structure:

As the formal structure began to emerge, it also became hierarchical; politicians standing at the peak of the hierarchy got first shot at the cabinet and favored party posts. Position in the hierarchy was ultimately determined by the faction leader. He gave consideration to age and to the number of times a Dietman had been elected, common standards that are used throughout the party. But more

[20] T. Lebra, Japanese Patterns of Behavior, 75.

important criteria were length of time in the faction and degree of service to the faction. A new faction member started at the bottom of the pecking order.^[21]

As Thayer notes, position in the hierarchy of a given faction is determined by an intricate set of calculations that take into account political age, biological age, and performance criteria. Figuratively speaking, each newly elected LDP member is assigned a number within his faction and then waits in a queue until his number is called; he may be moved up in line on the basis of performance, but the queue itself is fundamental to the structure of authority within the LDP, and there is no way to avoid it entirely, no matter how faithful one's service to the faction.

The relation between biological age and political age is complex in the case of the Diet. Normally in Japanese organizations, biological age and time in service are congruent considerations. At the top of the organizational pyramid are the oldest persons, who also have the most experience; at the bottom are those who, in terms of both age and grade, are the most junior. This complementarity of attributes is maintained by hiring people of approximately the same age and educational background, who thus begin their ascent up the organizational ladder from a common base point. Because of the nature of Diet membership, however, which is almost never a first career for anyone, biological and political age are often out of sync, particularly in the case of persons who enter parliament in their late forties or early fifties after a long period in the bureaucracy and thus are senior biologically but junior in terms of experience. This incongruence is resolved by assigning priority to political age—specifically, the number of times elected to the Diet—and then further differentiating on the basis of biological age and service to the faction.^[22]

The seniority principle has been in place throughout the LDP's history. Indeed, most observers agree that it is far more institutionalized now than in the past. In the 1960s, for example, LDP members with outstanding backgrounds in business or the bureaucracy were occasionally appointed to the cabinet after having served fewer than five terms in parliament; today members routinely must serve six terms before being assigned cabinet posts.^[23] Because so many LDP politicians are waiting in line, moreover, reshufflings occur regularly so that virtually all six-termers will get a chance at a cabinet post (in fact, the average period of service in the cabinet today

[21] Nathaniel B. Thayer, How the Conservatives Rule Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 23.

[22] LDP Diet member Otsubo Kenichiro, interview with author, 4 June 1978.

[23] Curtis, Japanese Way of Politics, 88–90.

is only 278 days).^[24] As in all systems based on seniority, these arrangements represent great fairness and even-handedness from many standpoints. All incoming LDP members know that over the first fifteen or so years of their careers in the Diet, regardless how meager their talents, they will hold a succession of posts and will almost invariably serve at least once, if briefly, in the cabinet. In effect, then, the seniority principle presents a minimum guarantee of rewards.

The problem, of course, is for more ambitious politicians who wish to maximize rewards immediately. For them, there are few shortcuts to positions of power and responsibility, no matter how great their talents and abilities or impressive their background. Furthermore, beyond minimal assurances of posts, advancement within the party to the highest levels of power depends on accepting the terms of junior-senior relations and excelling within that framework.

The top power holders are members senior in political as well as (normally) biological age. This top group includes the faction heads, former prime ministers still in the Diet who have transferred factional leadership to junior men, and a few other senior men who function as power brokers in the party. To become a contender for prime minister generally requires ten terms in office, or some twenty-eight years of service, which puts most leaders well into their sixties or seventies before they are seriously considered. Although a few younger men have become top party leaders, their situation is unusual—the most prominent example in recent years being Nakasone Yasuhiro, who became a faction head at the early age of forty-seven upon the sudden death of his predecessor, Kono Ichiro. Nakasone was not young in political age, however, having served eight terms at the time of his elevation.

Seniority in political or biological age is no guarantee of a top role in the LDP, of course; many senior members, after securing the minimal rewards of the system, are never contenders for a greater share of power. (As Sato Seizaburo and Matsuzaki Tetsuhisa note, only 40 percent of LDP members are ever reappointed to a cabinet post.)^[25] Political and biological age (typically both) are, however, the essential preconditions to power.

The advice to junior men wanting to ascend the ladder to the top, then, is "Matte, matte" (Wait, wait). Besides waiting, the other key to success is service to the faction, a performance criterion shaped by the very nature of status relations in Japan's ruling party. LDP juniors are expected to ac-

[24] Ibid., 90.

[25] Sato Seizaburo and Matsuzaki Tetsuhisa, Jiminto seiken (Tokyo: Chuo Koronsha, 1986), 48.

knowledge their status superiors' authority in a number of ritualized ways: by employing a language of deference, bowing respectfully, and displaying an attitude of alertness to the expectations, both expressed and unexpressed, of superiors. For men older biologically but young in political age, the terms of behavior are adjusted somewhat, but some display of deference is required. For men who are junior in both senses, though, "service to the faction" becomes crucial if any advancement beyond the minimum rewards is desired.

Numerous forces operate to make the terms of performance acceptable. A major factor is the high degree of legitimation that traditional authority arrangements enjoy within the LDP. The ruling party (together with its predecessor conservative parties in the prewar period) has embodied and actively promoted traditional norms in junior-senior relations, extolling workers for loyalty to employers, housewives for service and devotion to their families, children for obedience to their parents, and Japanese people in general for work and sacrifices in the furtherance of national goals. Few institutions arc thus as committed to a traditional ideology based on hierarchy as is the LDP itself—and the instrumental and affective rewards for accepting these codes have been considerable.

One immediate reward, crucial to junior men for political survival, is funds. Many young faction members state openly that they belong to a faction primarily to get the funds that the faction head distributes to members for campaign and other political expenses. A critical gain for political hopefuls is the LDP endorsement of their candidacy, which, as many writers have pointed out, is an enormous advantage given the complexity of Japan's multimember, single-ballot constituency system. Factional membership provides as well a concrete basis for participation in the political life of the Diet. As veteran LDP member Matsuda Takechiyo once noted, young Diet members "have no [other] way of learning their trade. . . . They have no forum for their ideas. They get no important assignments because they have no political experience. They have nothing to do. Nothing to do and no place to be. It's no wonder they drift to factions."^[26] And of course, factional alliance means posts, the promise that, with the passage of time, minimal positions of leadership—and perhaps, further down the road, top positions—will at last be passed out to those loyal members waiting in the queue.

The affective rewards may also be high. As several junior Diet members interviewed for this study pointed out, the LDP is too large a group to relate to on a face-to-face basis. Factions break the whole into manageable

[26] Quoted in Thayer, How the Conservatives Rule Japan, 40–41.

units and provide a framework within which the individual can fit psychologically. Certain members gain additional affective rewards because of long-standing personal ties with the faction leader through family or earlier political connections.

When we consider that factional membership offers all these immediate financial, political, and psychological rewards, that it holds out the promise of still greater benefits in the future, and that no clear-cut way to gain these benefits exists within the present order except through the factions, then the practical constraints on objecting to the terms of factional membership seem powerful indeed. Given the present distribution of party authority, which grants so little power to junior members, it seems at first glance remarkable that a small group of juniors would have been prepared to defy the terms of party hierarchy and strike out on their own, renouncing all these seeming benefits. Why, then, did the LDP in the mid 1970s become a forum in which status-related grievances found expression?

First, age-structural changes in the party appear to have exacerbated the tensions of waiting to gain political seniority and privileges, for the LDP itself had been aging (see table 2). Following the postwar purges of conservatives and the general shake-up in Japan's leadership during the Occupation, the dominant generation within the LDP when it was formed in 1955 consisted of men in their fifties; in 1956 this group represented 41.4 percent of the party's membership, as opposed to less than 5 percent for the seventy-and-over group. By 1976, however, 40.6 percent of party members were sixty and over (and by 1987, 44.3 percent), with almost 12 percent of total membership made up of men in their seventies. Meanwhile, under-fifty membership increased in the 1970s as compared to the 1960s, leaving more age juniors waiting in line for future rewards.

Moreover, whereas in the 1950s and 1960s an ambitious LDP politician could hope to advance to the cabinet and to other key positions more quickly than his less motivated peers, by the 1970s routinized pro-

motion practices were becoming entrenched.^[27] Younger men were waiting for the opportunities to be had when a middle generation of men in their fifties moved up; but with so many posts held by older generations, there was nowhere for the middle generation to go. From the junior men's standpoint, the more fluid system of the past was giving way to a rigid arrangement with a guaranteed minimum of rewards but diminished opportunity for anything more. The mid-1970s media were attentive to this shift, thus mirroring the perception among the party's junior membership that the LDP leadership was dominated, and the reward structure therefore controlled, by a generation of grandfathers.^[28]

Second, reward-structural changes in the 1970s were at the same time causing considerable discontent. As discussed above, factional membership carries distinct financial, political, and psychological rewards that can offset whatever dissatisfactions juniors may feel regarding party status relations. Maximum benefits seem to be realized when a number of conditions are met. The financial advantages of factional membership, for example, are of greatest significance when the Diet member must rely on factional monetary assistance to support his campaign. The more financially independent the junior is, or the fewer the resources that the party is offering, the less advantageous factional membership will appear. The same argument holds for the political rewards represented by LDP endorsement and active campaign support as well as for the psychological benefits of factional membership, that it provides a meaningful basis for participation in the political life of the Diet: if endorsements do not promote electoral success, or if alternative opportunities exist for parliamentary participation, then factional membership clearly has less significance. Finally, a key benefit of factional membership exists in the form of future posts. To the extent that junior members believe in the senior generation's ability to command and to distribute these rewards, this factor obviously has great meaning.

When these conditions are considered, it is possible to see why LDP juniors in the early 1970s could have been experiencing less satisfaction from the terms of factional arrangements than in the past. Recent changes in the law had raised questions about the ability of the faction heads to keep up steady financial support for their members. The Political Funds Control Law passed during Miki Takeo's prime ministership forced disclosure of the names of contributors to the party and set limits on individual and corporate donations. In 1976, the year of the breakaway, the vari-

[27] Sato and Matsuzaki, Jiminto seiken, 42–44.

[28] For an analysis, see, for example, Ekonomisuto, 7 July 1977, 31.

ous factions raised only half the amount they had collected the previous year, and the LDP itself raised only 7.8 billion yen (30.6 million dollars), down 32 percent from 1975.^[29] Although today we can see that the law has in fact had little effect on money levels in political campaigning, which have ballooned in Japan as elsewhere, to politicians in 1976 there was good reason to believe that the financial rewards of factional membership might well be reduced in the future.

The political benefits of LDP endorsement had become increasingly questionable in the wake of the Lockheed scandal and the accompanying issue of party corruption, both of which reduced the value of having famous party members, often the faction head, stump on a candidate's behalf. The psychological benefits may likewise have lost some meaning as additional avenues for participating in the political life of the Diet became available to juniors. In the 1970s, for example, a number of study groups made up predominantly of junior representatives emerged in the Diet. These included the Shinpu Seiji Kenkyukai (New Breeze Political Study Association), established in 1971, the Hirakawa Society and Seirankai, both founded in 1973, and Kono Yohei's Political Engineering Institute (see chapter 6). Study group membership was in no sense a substitute for factional affiliation, since the factions still handled the distribution of posts, but it may have reduced some of the psychological dependence on the faction.

Finally, the future political benefits of factional membership were thrown into question in the mid 1970s by the Lockheed scandal, the party's declining base of popular support, and increased media speculation that the LDP would lose its parliamentary majority. As Kono Yohei noted, the faction's counsel to junior members of "Wait, wait" (matte, matte ) had meaning only when the listener believed that waiting would pay off.^[30] But with the LDP's own future uncertain, the party's ability to command and distribute government posts fifteen years down the road was subject to doubt.

All these changes affected the context in which junior LDP members found themselves just before the New Liberal Club breakaway in 1976. To understand why these particular juniors and not others were prepared to strike out on their own, we must look more closely at the rebels themselves.

The secession was led by Kono Yohei, who in 1976 was thirty-nine, and his two chief lieutenants, Yamaguchi Toshio, thirty-six, and Nishioka

[29] Derek Davies, "Japan's Great Debate," Far Eastern Economic Review 98 (4 November 1977): 20–25.

[30] Kono Yohei, interview with author, Tokyo, 5 June 1978.

Takeo, forty. Kono and Yamaguchi were both in their third term of office; Nishioka was in his fourth. In addition to their youth, the men shared certain important characteristics. First and foremost, all three were nisei, that is, second-generation politicians, either the sons of famous political fathers or with other close relatives in the LDP. Kono's father, Kono Ichiro, was an especially famous LDP politician; although he never became prime minister, at the time of his death in 1965 he headed one of the party's most powerful factions. The implications of being a nisei in Japan's political system are great, since voter loyalty, developed over a long period of time in a politician's electoral stronghold (jiban ), is generally transferable to a designated successor; thus, men who follow in the footsteps of famous politician fathers normally inherit safe seats. (Indeed, so marked are the advantages of being a second-generation politician that by the 1986 election, fully 38 percent of successful candidates were nisei .)^[31] Kono, Yamaguchi, and Nishioka all enjoyed financial independence as well, having comfortable personal incomes derived from family resources, let alone the financial connections that went along with an inherited seat.^[32] In this regard they contrasted with most young Diet members, who typically are preoccupied with raising funds to survive in hotly contested races.

The fact of being nisei had the further advantage of greater media coverage than was devoted to most junior Diet members. Kono Yohei's situation is of special note. Following his first election to office in November 1967, two years after his father's death, Kono joined the faction headed by Nakasone Yasuhiro, who had inherited leadership from Kono's father. This situation, in which the natural heir of a famous Diet member came under the care and tutelage of the same member's political heir, was the subject of much media interest. How would Nakasone treat the son of the man to whom he owed so much? Given Nakasone's own relative youth, could the young Kono ever hope to gain control of the faction that had once been his father's? The media found ample material with the political emergence of Kono Yohei, then only thirty years old.^[33]

One final characteristic results from the three men's shared situation as sons of politicians. Because they had inherited safe seats, all had run successfully for the Diet for the first time when quite young. Whereas at the

[31] Curtis, Japanese Way of Politics, 96.

[32] For a probing look at Kono Yohei's finances, see Kase Hideaki, "Kono Yohei ni aete tou—Anata no kinmyaku wa yogorete inaika?" Gendai 11 (May 1977): 56–79.

[33] See, for example, Akasaka Taro, "Kono shinto' hataage no shokku," Bungei Shunju 54 (August 1976): 254–258.

time of the breakaway most Diet members in the same age range (forty and under) were in their first or, in a few cases, second term, these three men were ahead for their years.

In light of these shared characteristics, then, Kono, Yamaguchi, and Nishioka had less to lose than other junior LDP men from engaging in status politics vis-à-vis those above them. Owing to their relative financial independence, the major attraction for factional affiliation diminished—all the more so because their inherited safe seats made their financial needs less serious, not to mention more predictable, than those of the average Diet member who is trying to build a political base from the ground up. Their safe seats also reduced the political benefit of LDP endorsements and help at election time. Kono is a case in point: in his first electoral attempt, with his father's name behind him, he ran first among the five candidates in his five-member district in Kanagawa Prefecture; from the outset of his political career, then, his need for party assistance was minimal. Other factors associated with being nisei surely reduced these men's psychological reliance on the factional tie as well. For one, media attention gave them visibility and identity independent of their factional identity; for another, their intimate familiarity with the political landscape almost certainly made them less reliant on the factions as a way of relating to the party.^[34]

Finally, these three must have viewed the promise of future posts in return for accepting the terms of LDP status relations with particular ambivalence. Whereas most young Diet members in the early 1970s—obscure, with few political or financial resources of their own—saw meticulous service to the faction and waiting as the only possible route to otherwise wholly unattainable leadership posts, such a course, with its promise of only minimal rewards, no doubt seemed arduous, frustrating, and interminable to juniors with so many initial assets. The privileged route that these "heirs apparent" followed into the Diet, moreover, surely made the terms of factional membership, with its emphasis on ritualized deference behavior, most difficult, if not actually painful. A general's son is, after all, in a special position to know and feel the agony of being a private.

The process by which Kono Yohei came to be dissatisfied with the party and reached the point of organizing a group in response was of long duration. On being elected to the Diet, Kono, like almost all newly elected ju-

[34] For analyses of the NLC candidates that weighed such factors, see Hosojima Izumi, "Hoshu yurugasu Kono shinto," Ekonomisuto 54 (29 June 1976): 10–14; and Hashimoto Akikazu, "Kono shinto o sasaeru kiban wa aruka: 'Kikento' no konnichi teki bunseki," Asahi Janaru 18 (2 July 1976): 12–16.

nior members, had quickly aligned with a faction. Within this faction, however, Kono soon began to feel increasingly discontented with both the way the party was run and his own prospects within the prevailing authority structure. As Kono puts it in an account written at the time of the breakaway, the doubts had been there from the very beginning: "In January 1967 I received the official approval of the Liberal Democratic party and became a member. In the nine and a half years since then, these very basic doubts have remained like dregs in my heart."^[35]

Kono's criticisms of the leadership and authority relations within the LDP were directed at its most basic features. For one, he objected to how leadership was exercised within the party: its overconcentration in the hands of a small number of senior men; the lack of turnover in the uppermost echelons; the top leadership's domination of party posts; the rivalry within the elite ranks for key posts, a rivalry impervious to the influence of other party members; and the types of decisions made at the top, which, according to Kono, were announced with no explanation of the logic or rationale involved and without reference to any coherent set of policies or principles. Another charge of special interest was that major generational differences in thinking—a kind of "perception gap"—divided the junior and senior members of the party, and that the senior leadership's way of thinking was alien to those below: "There is a large wall within the Liberal Democratic Party. . . . It seems to loom thick and high in front of us, blocking us." To portray this difference, Kono cites a phrase from the party platform: whereas Kono and his age peers would want to call for "the creation of a new ethics," the LDP senior leadership still talked in terms of "the establishment of national morals"; in other words, they used language that echoed the prewar world in which they had been educated.^[36]

All these objections can be seen as attacks on the closed nature of decision making within the party and on the terms of junior status. Kono notes the frustration and sense of hopelessness among juniors who voiced dissatisfaction with party policies or called for reforms, and the leadership's intolerance of dissent in the name of party unity. "I see democracy within the party," he writes, "become more and more limited each day." ^[37] And he observes the lack of channels for input by party juniors into matters of personnel or internal policy. Most observers hold that Kono had problems with the terms of factional politics from the beginning and was never an

[35] Kono Yohei, "Jiminto yo saraba: Hyaku no giron yori mo mazu kodo o—sore ga wareware rokunin no shinjo da" Bungei Shunju 54 (August 1976): 94–102, esp. 96.

[36] Ibid., 97.

[37] Ibid.

enthusiastic member of the Nakasone camp.^[38] This dissatisfaction with the Nakasone faction arose from various causes, including the faction's history, ideological differences (Nakasone was considered a hawk whereas on defense-related issues Kono advocated restraint), and disagreement over specific policy positions (Nakasone supported Satos second- and third-term reelection as party president, while Kono did not).

The point at which Kono's discontent with the party and factional arrangements began to be expressed in conflict behavior, together with the steps ultimately leading to the breakaway, will be explored in chapter 7. Behind that process, however, we consider briefly the broader changes taking place at the ideological level in Japanese society which support and, indeed, may spur changes in individual consciousness.

During the years prior to the New Liberal Club's secession in 1976, it was common for the media to decry "party gerontocracy." The LDP leadership, said the respected journal Ekonomisuto at the time of the breakaway, was a "group of grandfathers" whose views were no longer those of the nation.^[39] Younger Japanese—LDP members, business people, and the public alike—applauded the departure of Kono Yohei and his colleagues from the LDP, and surveys confirmed that the NLC had strong initial support among younger voters. This evidence suggests that the problems inherent in junior-senior relations in the party, and in organizational life more generally, are widely perceived in today's Japan; the public, especially younger voters, understood the rationale for the break well enough to support Kono and his five associates. It appears, then, that the "awareness process" by which inherent tensions over status inequalities manifest themselves is well advanced in society at large, particularly in cases involving intergenerational conflicts, which have their own long history in Japan. As the NLC's troubled path since the breakaway indicates, public comprehension of the issues at stake in a status-based struggle is no guarantee of continued support, but the larger process of ideological transformation is a powerful force, one supportive of change in individual consciousness.

Junior status and the problems surrounding it are readily comprehensible to the great majority of Japanese. Not only is every individual at any given moment junior to many people, but Japan's leaders, who have articulated and supported the traditional ideology of social relations, have themselves been juniors as well. Other types of ascribed status, however, do not

[38] Suzuki Tsuneo, former newspaper correspondent and secretary to Kono, interview with author, Tokyo, 29 May 1978.

[39] Ekonomisuto, 7 July 1977, 34.

have this advantage for attracting public empathy and support. Japan's leadership has been overwhelmingly male and majority Japanese. Thus, the conditions for status-based protest on the part of other groups, notably women and burakumin, have been somewhat different, even if all forms of such dissent are profoundly affected by the broad ideological changes just discussed. In the next chapter we shall consider the inherent conflict in status relations involving gender, by focusing on the protest of one small group of Japanese women civil servants regarding a duty assigned to them on the basis of sex: that of serving tea to their office mates.