Koenkai

A kojin koenkai (or koenkai ) is a candidate's personal support organization. While not unknown in prewar Japan, koenkai in their present form did not become widespread until the postwar period.^[6] In the

early 1990s one Japanese voter in every seven had an affiliation with a candidate's koenkai (Watanuki 1991, 70–71). An association of supporters outside the formal party organization, the koenkai is "a mechanism through which a number of benefits . . . are distributed to members in exchange for support for the candidate at election time" (Watanuki 1967, 67). In essence, a koenkai is an umbrella organization under which many smaller support groups, managed by local politicians, link the candidate with constituents at the grassroots level. There are two basic types of koenkai: those that organize the vote and those that act as channels for political contributions.

Koenkai come in various sizes and are not unique to LDP candidates. Perhaps the largest koenkai of all time is the "Bokuyukai," which boasted 150,000 members, of Ono Banboku, a powerbroker in the early days of the LDP. More modest in size, though not in exposure, is former Prime Minister Tanaka's "Etsuzankai," which during its heyday consisted of 313 local chapters and 95,000 members (Fukuoka 1985, 25). The koenkai of a veteran Lower House MP from Kyushu was more typical in size, embracing some 20,000 members, only a quarter of whom were registered party members. When asked why so few of his supporters were formally affiliated with the party, the MP responded that if the rest of them were to become formal party affiliates, it would cost him ¥60 million a year in membership fees (pers. interview). Apparently, then, at least in some districts, koenkai members are not expected to pay their own party dues.

Kanemaru Shin, the one-time "don of all dons" in the public works arena, developed a koenkai that had eighty-nine branches dispersed throughout eight regional blocks. The vote-gathering "Kushinkai" claimed the allegiance of over three-quarters of the municipal mayors and six of the prefecture's thirty assemblymen. It is said that long-time Governor Mochizuki Komei, had close ties to the kingmaker—ties that allegedly paid huge dividends in the form of public works projects to construction contractors, who in turn reciprocated by funneling political funds to the governor. As the Sagawa scandal revealed, construction firms channeled large flows of money into the "Kenshinkai," Kanemaru's local fundraising organ. For example, many of the more than six hundred construction firms affiliated with the Yamanashi Prefectural Contractors' Association routinely contributed to the Ken-

shinkai. The expectation was that local contractors would "donate" as much as 5 to 10 percent of the total amount of a public works contract to Kanemaru in gratitude for his political brokerage.^[7]

One function of a koenkai is to act as a transmission belt for communicating the needs and interests of its members to the candidate. As a Lower House representative commented, interaction with koenkai members permits politicians to monitor public opinion continuously.^[8] Such clientelism is not unique to Japan. Similar observations abound in the literature on Italian politics under the Christian Democrats, where clientelism was said to be "an efficient and effective way through which the political allegiances, preferences, and demands of citizens are brought to weigh on public policies" (La Palombara 1987, 59). More importantly from a candidate's point of view, such organizations mobilize voter turnout and provide pipelines of political money. Perhaps the paradigmatic illustration is Tanaka's Etsuzankai, with its vote-gathering apparatus in the Niigata Third District and a nationwide fundraising network (Matoba 1986, 163). Former Prime Minister Takeshita, a Tanaka protégé, is said to have controlled a network of 10,000 fundraising koenkai , each of which extracted ¥10,000 in monthly membership dues. A typical Tokyo-based fundraising koenkai of a typical LDP candidate collects between ¥10,000 and ¥50,000 in monthly dues from each corporate member (Fukui and Fukai 1992, 6–7).

In return for these monthly contributions, koenkai constituents expect their representatives to intercede on their behalf in matters such as securing jobs, arranging marriages, mediating with government agencies, securing government subsidies, and a host of other personal affairs; how the representative votes on matters of national interest are of little concern. One need not spend a great deal of time in a koenkai office to see just how much time and effort candidates and their staff devote to catering to constituents' personal needs: "It is something analogous to caring parents giving sweets to their children" (Kyogoku 1987, 228). In particular, claiming credit for the preferential allocation of public works projects is an effective means for parliamentarians in Tokyo to bond with local political elites and constituents. The koenkai newsletter gives each candidate an opportunity to claim credit for building cultural halls and schools, and channeling subsidies and other policy benefits into the district.^[9]