Act On National Flag and Anthem (Japan) - Political Ramifications

Political Ramifications

Members of the DPJ were allowed by party leaders to vote based on their own conscience; the party leadership itself was split. Hatoyama overcame his opposition and voted for the bill, along with DPJ Secretary General and Tsutomu Hata. Kan voted against the bill. With the exception of the DPJ, each party voted strictly along party lines, and none among them broke party discipline. Ironically, Hatoyama wanted to use his vote for the bill as a call to his fellow DPJ members for unity. Half of the DPJ supported the bill, reducing the numbers that would have opposed it and making it easier for the bill to pass. The split of the DPJ vote showed the lack of unity of its members.

Another factor that played into the passage of the bill was the coalition of the LDP, the Liberal Party and the CGP. In the Diet, the union between the LDP and the Liberal Party gave them a majority in the lower house but not in the House of Councilors. The leadership of the LDP considered Ozawa to be a traitor because he left the LDP in 1993, yet the LDP needed him and his party to form a coalition to govern. Although the CGP had a relatively small number of seats (52) in the lower house and had nothing in common with the LDP in terms of policy, it was tempted by the idea of being part of the ruling cabinet and supported the LDP in passing the bill. The Social Democratic Party had to abandon key party platforms—such as their earlier opposition to the symbols, security treaties with the United States and the existence of the Self Defense Forces—to join the coalition. Despite the concessions of the SPDJ, the LDP did not advance any of the traditional platforms championed by the SPDJ. Eventually, those policies advocated by the SPDJ were removed from the national policy debate. The only party that stuck to its stance throughout the debate was the Communist Party; the CGP (New Komeito), Liberal Party and SDPJ switched sides to support the bill.

Such vote switching led a writer for The Japan Times to question the rationality of the country's politics over the passage of the bill. The Act is one of the most controversial laws passed by the Diet since the 1992 Law Concerning Cooperation for United Nations Peacekeeping Operations and Other Operations, also known as the "International Peace Cooperation Law" which committed Japan to United Nations peacekeeping operations, a deviation from Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, which calls on the country to renounce the "use of force as means of settling international disputes."