Metástasis cerebrales

In this section, I describe the general candidate selection rules for the DPJ and its kōbo system. Incumbent MPs are given priority over others and are re-nominated automatically, in most cases, in the DPJ. Candidates who lost two elections in a row are not nominated for a third time, unless it is agreed on in a fresh selection process that there is no better candidate available. Only when the district has no incumbent or held-over candidate from the previous election, does the party look for a new candidate. In such a case, the regular candidate selection process for an HR race is initiated at the district level.

Figure 2.4 shows the basic structure of the DPJ organization. Below the national headquarters, there are 47 prefectural units called “kenren.” A kenren is a federation of local DPJ

23 _{After major breakaway by the Ozawa faction in July 2012, the DPJ once again faced the daunting task of}

filling many vacant districts. However, in contrast to the pre-2009 election period during which the constant supply of kōbo applicants was sustained by the prospect that the DPJ would take over power soon, the unpopularity of the party attracted few aspirants to its kōbo. Interestingly, it was under the LDP, now in opposition, that kōbo developed into an established practice, in more decentralized and diverse manners. The largest difference to the DPJ kōbo was the fact that the LPD kōbo after 2005 was always conducted at the prefectural level, for each specific district that opened up. A selection committee either at the prefectural or district level would preside over the process. This institutional design reflected the history of a decentralized structure of the LPD local organizations.

chapters within the prefecture, and the chapters are organized at different levels such as towns, villages, cities, HR districts, and HC districts. The kenren office has the final say on any decision within the prefectural boundary. When there is a vacancy, the HR district chapter works with the kenren in selecting a candidate. The kenren then asks the national headquarters for endorsement, which will make the nomination official. For candidate selection for any national offices, the national headquarters reserves the final say. When the district chapter and the kenren fail to field or agree on a candidate, the headquarters takes over the selection process. This was common, especially in the early 2000s, since the DPJ was a relatively young party with weak local organizations in many prefectures. This is where the national kōbo comes in.

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The order of a typical DPJ kōbo process between 2000 and 2009, as described by DPJ headquarters officials, is shown in Figure 2.5.24 _{An applicant had to pass three hurdles in order}

to become an official DPJ candidate: passing the kōbo screening (stage 1), securing informal nomination for a district from the district chapter and the prefectural branch (stage 2), and getting

the district-designated nomination officially approved by the national headquarters (stage 3). Technically, the kōbo system covered only the first stage, and all non-kōbo candidates also had to go through the latter two steps. Below, we start from the first stage of kōbo, and then review how the latter steps looked in the eyes of kōbo screenees.

The kōbo recruitments for national elections were directly conducted by the national headquarters. The headquarters had to take charge because kōbo was used to find candidates to run in vacant districts when the kenrens could not find anyone on their own. The national party leaders made it clear by the 2005 election that the party would try to field candidates in all 300 SMDs. The party also attempted to use kōbo as a public relations opportunity for enhancing its image, and the first step of the kōbo process began by putting large, flashy ads in major newspapers, spending about 50 to 100 million Japanese yen each time. The first stage screening took place at the national headquarters office. The applicants submitted curricula vitae and essays, which were examined by five to six DPJ officials. A party official who had participated in this paper-screening process described the selection criteria as follows:

There were applicants who tried to show off their policy expertise in the essays. For example, a guy who worked for a bank discussed a grandiose economic theory in his essay. We paid absolutely no attention to those policy-related parts. Rather, we looked for applicants’ enthusiasm, or let’s say, guts, in their essays. They were working for first-tier banks or companies, and they would have to quit in order to run in an election. We needed to know whether they were truly determined to pursue a new political career.25

Those who passed the initial document screening advanced to the next round of screening—in-person interview sessions. The chair and the vice chair, both incumbent MPs, of the party’s election campaign committee participated in this stage. They interviewed each applicant for about 20 minutes on what he or she wanted to do as an MP and in which district he or she wished to run. Interviewers again paid less attention to applicants’ policy expertise than their personality, in an attempt to figure out whether the applicants could endure, sometimes “irrational” (as a party official described), hardships in electoral campaigns, get along with the local party office holders and supporters, and pursue a political career for an extended period of time. There was a reason behind this electorally oriented approach to the screening. The DPJ was a hodgepodge of groups with different backgrounds and support bases, thus the selection committee could not use policy orientations as selection criteria. This condition led to screening based on not only curricula vitae but also on superficial virtues that were not necessarily related to becoming a good MP. For example, in addition to education and career records, English test scores, experiences of living abroad, youth, and good appearances were signals the committee often relied on. It is said that the DPJ kōbo produced a generation of young good-looking elite-like MPs who might have been more attractive to voters than their older cohorts, but lacked strong party loyalty and common policy goals.

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Although the total number of applicants for the DPJ national kōbo increased from 564 in 1999 to nearly 2000 in 2009 (Figure 2.6), the odds of passing this first stage of screening remained about one to nine (Figure 2.7). Only those kōbo-screenees who passed the first stage were eligible to advance to the next stage—seeking district nomination. The headquarters served as an intermediary by matching these screenees and the kenrens with vacant districts. In matching, the applicants’ personal roots in the district or prefecture counted heavily. Finding districts to run in was often the toughest hurdle for kōbo applicants. Less than 20% of the kōbo screenees eventually became official party candidates and ran in elections. When the DPJ was an opposition party, it had many districts with no official candidates. Many of those vacant districts were either solidly LDP with little prospect for any DPJ candidate to win, or already had informal local favorite sons, making it difficult for parachute kōbo candidates to land in. An incumbent MP who was one of the early-time kōbo successes described his experience as follows:

After I passed the kōbo screening, the national headquarters simply handed me a piece of paper with the list of “vacant” districts where official candidates had not been nominated yet. I kept working for a company while travelling across Japan on my own expense every weekend, looking for a district to run in. More than once, I found the district

marked as “vacant” on the list already embracing a local favorite.26

Table 2.1 shows the timing of each of the three stages of kōbo as they actually took place for the 2000-2009 HR elections. The periods for the second stage are punctuated by the first and the last cases to obtain district nominations. The fact that it took some candidates more than a year to obtain a district nomination after passing the initial kōbo screening shows how difficult it was to overcome the second hurdle.

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Figure 2.8 shows the percent of applicants who managed to overcome the second hurdle. The number of candidates was narrowed down by 12% in the first stage, and 18% in the second stage. Only 2% of the initial applicants ended up running in the HR elections. This makes the kōbo process look extremely exclusive at a glance. It is, however, difficult to judge the quality of competition because the party never revealed any details about the applicants except for those who were officially nominated. We do not know the identity, profession, age, background, and prior political experience of those applicants who were not nominated. Running for a public office in Japan means one has to quit his or her current job before the election, in most cases. No

one wants to quit before knowing if he or she gets the party’s nomination and can actually run in an election. Few people would apply for kōbo if their names were not kept confidential, and that is why no party has ever released its list of kōbo applicants. Non-disclosure of applicant lists, on top of the closed-door screening with unclear criteria, makes the whole kōbo selection process extremely non-transparent. We do not know what criteria selection was based on or what pool of people those candidates came from.

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The third hurdle, approval by the national headquarters, was not an automatic rubber stamp. The person was not officially regarded as a DPJ candidate until obtaining final approval from the headquarters. Although the national headquarters normally tried to respect local selections and most of the local choices ended up being endorsed, it would suspend approval or even replace candidates if kenren-chosen candidates seemed too weak in the polls or did not seem to be campaigning hard enough.