The fact that handpicked candidates could be registered as kōbo-qualified ex-post reminds us of the behind-the-scenes nature of the entire kōbo process. After all, not just the list of applicants was never released, but also the decision-making during the screening was kept confidential. The process of assignment to districts was the least institutionalized part of the whole kōbo process, and the lack of transparency often confused not just the outsider aspirants, but also the insiders. In Chiba, a prefecture in the greater metropolitan region with 13 SMDs, as
many as six kōbo candidates ran in HR elections between 2000 and 2009. Although there were some successful cases of kōbo candidates from the prefecture, a kenren leader (also a prefectural assembly member) offered a grimmer picture from the loser’s perspective based on his own kōbo experience.
I was the only one to formally apply for kōbo, requesting to be assigned to that specific district. But the headquarters added two more competitors from nowhere who did not even apply for kōbo, and I was made to compete against them. The headquarters told us to campaign for a certain period in the district so that they could evaluate our ability to mobilize by conducting polls. The result of the polls was never disclosed.…One day, I received a call from the headquarters. I knew that I was not selected. They never told me why.…There is no transparency. It’s politics. Factions and deals.34
We can easily imagine that there were many other cases of fixed kōbo like this elsewhere. Stories like this never appear in newspapers, and there is no way we can verify these interviews against some official records. Still, we should note that what the party official described was not a corrupt incident but an expected practice in line with the institutional design. The national headquarters staff admitted what could have been confusing for kōbo applicants.
There are people who don’t understand. They think just passing the kōbo screening ensures their nomination in some district.…We have to tell them, “It’s not like that. Kōbo does certify that you are suitable to become our candidate. But, there are also people who raised their hands outside kōbo. Prefectural assembly members, for example. They, too, are entitled to compete. Kōbo is just like a semi-final game. It allows you to proceed to the final. But, kōbo is not the only path to the final.”…But, we started to recommend to those assembly members and other (insider) applicants to officially file for kōbo.
Otherwise, people doubt the fairness of our selection process.35
At Stage 2 in Figure 2.5, non-kōbo aspirants were allowed to join the competition. In other words, Stage 2 was the regular starting point for all before the extra path through kōbo was added. This was the point that was not easy for some kōbo applicants to digest, and that made the kōbo system susceptible to manipulation by the headquarters.
The institution of DPJ kōbo opened up the door to candidate selection, but by no means guaranteed transparency or fairness in the selection process. For example, the party headquarters could use kōbo to disguise their manipulation of faction-based selections. One example was the second district of Fukuoka, where a special election for the HR seat was held in April 2005. Masanori Hirata was nominated as a candidate after a vote at a special joint committee by the kenren and the headquarters.36 He belonged to the political training academy run by an
extremely influential faction boss, Ichiro Ozawa, and it was said that Katsuya Okada, who fought
35 Interview S2, July 4, 2012.
36 The predecessor DPJ incumbent resigned over a scandal regarding falsification of his academic records, and
it was an uphill fight for the DPJ. The DPJ Fukuoka kenren tried to field its own candidate, but could not agree on a single person. To this, the national headquarters tried to interfere, take leadership, and assign a kōbo candidate to fill the district, which made the kenren disgruntled. In the end, they set up a special committee with nine members from the kenren and four from the headquarters. The headquarters recommended two candidates from the national kōbo pool who had passed the screening: Masanori Hirata, a lawyer who worked for a UK-based investment management company, and an ex-bureaucrat from Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare. The kenren promoted an ex-executive of a foreign finance company. The committee voted on these three competitors and Hirata was selected. Mainichi Shinbun, November 11, 2004.
over the campaign chieftainship with him, picked Hirata in an attempt to appease him. The selection was, on the surface, carefully managed to mend the schisms within the kenren, between the kenren and the headquarters, and within the national headquarters. However, the composition of the special committee was deliberately designed so that at the end, the national headquarters could prevail. The headquarters even used the opinion polls to influence and sway the committee vote.
As the example of Fukuoka shows, the DPJ kōbo screenees did function at times as the reserves of candidates the national leaders could use at their leisure. However, as the same case shows, the kenrens did not always let the national headquarters exert influence over nomination decisions easily. Moreover, the joint committee in the Fukuoka case was a very unusual compromise that the national headquarters had to make. Below, we look into the mindset of the local party officials who did not look at the national headquarters-led kōbo favorably.