Social Media and Elections: Outdated System / Surrogate Candidates Threaten Fairness of Japan's Elections, Causing Local Govts to Lose Patience
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'As a candidate, I will seek to be elected.'
This is the sort of oath that candidates running for the Tottori-Shimane constituency in the House of Councillors election this summer must now submit, after a decision by the joint election commission for Tottori and Shimane prefectures.
Though the oath seems to state the obvious, officials decided on the measure to prevent so-called double-horsepower campaigning, according to the commission's director general.
In double-horsepower campaigning, candidates run in elections not to win, but to help another candidate secure victory.
The Public Offices Election Law limits the number of election campaign cars and flyers per candidate. Double-horsepower campaigning effectively doubles the amount of resources for a candidate, threatening the fairness of elections.
Swaying the Hyogo election
Double-horsepower campaigning was a prominent part of the Hyogo gubernatorial election in November, which was won by Gov. Motohiko Saito. The election was held after a whistleblower accused the governor of using his position to commit misconduct, such as harassment of others in the workplace, also called power harassment. The Hyogo prefectural assembly passed a no-confidence motion against Saito, who subsequently lost his position.
In the gubernatorial election that followed, Takashi Tachibana, leader of the NHK Party political group, became a candidate. 'I will offer legally valid support for Mr. Saito,' he said.
After Saito would deliver a speech, Tachibana would show up and tell those still left in the audience that Saito had never requested gifts or engaged in power harassment, and that TV stations were attempting to brainwash people.
A third-party panel, which investigated the allegations against Saito, reported in March that it had found 10 cases of power harassment by the governor. Although the panel did not find any illegality in the alleged acceptance of gifts, it asserted that it was generally true that he had brought back many local products he received during his work trips.
In the latter half of the election campaign, from Nov. 8 to 16, Saito's team posted advance notices on X about street canvassing at 40 locations. On eight of these days, Tachibana scheduled his election campaigning to take place at 16 locations that seemed to track Saito's schedule. He was in Tokyo for one day to see Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, who was meeting with parliamentary groups in the Diet building.
'I wanted to know what was true about the allegations against Mr. Saito, and Mr. Tachibana gave me the answers,' said a woman in her 60s who supports the Hyogo governor.
On a given day during the campaign period, posts on X referring to Saito and Tachibana outnumbered by about 80% to 820% those referencing former Amagasaki City Mayor Kazumi Inamura, who was running against Saito, according to analysis by University of Tokyo Prof. Fujio Toriumi. On seven of the 17 days in the campaign period, posts touching on Tachibana alone exceeded those referring to Inamura.
'Tachibana is an influencer who has a large number of followers,' said a person who was close with the Inamura team. 'I believe he significantly impacted the election results.'
Dubious legality
When Tachibana announced his candidacy for the Chiba gubernatorial election in March, he did not seek support for himself. Instead, he indicated he would back Gov. Toshihito Kumagai. But he withdrew because Kumagai said his support would be 'unwelcome.'
During the election campaign, Tachibana gave roadside speeches outside Chiba Prefecture, such as in Hyogo and Osaka prefectures, and continued to relate his own theories about the problems in Hyogo Prefecture, which were unrelated to the gubernatorial election.
The Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry has noted that surrogate candidacies may be against the Public Offices Election Law, since it limits the number of election campaign cars and flyers per candidate. However, the law has no specific clause banning the practice, and it does not account for candidates not seeking to win themselves.
'Double-horsepower campaigning obviously harms the fairness of elections and poses serious problems,' said Prof. Airo Hino of Waseda University. 'If elections continue to be conducted inappropriately, it will increase distrust in the electoral system. Effective countermeasures should be taken at the earliest possible stage.'
Slow to act
'We must move quickly to determine how election campaigns should be run, and do so in a way that will satisfy everyone,' Ishiba said in February as he answered a question at the Diet. At a meeting of the election campaigns council on April 1, ruling and opposition parties agreed to give top priority to discussing how to handle double-horsepower campaigning.
However, changes are not expected to be made in time for the upper house election this summer. As for the written oaths introduced in Tottori and Shimane prefectures, they are not legally binding.
'Individual constituencies shouldn't have to do this,' said Shimane Gov. Tatsuya Maruyama at a news conference on April 22. 'We're forced to clean up the mess caused by the failure at the national level to establish an election system.'
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However, that is not the same, at least not politically the same, as actually committing yourself to fight a future war, in circumstances that cannot be predicted and without knowing what America's own stance would be. To do so would be politically extremely difficult, especially for a government that currently lacks a majority in the Diet. Beyond domestic politics, the immediate risk would not be of a war itself but rather of such a commitment causing a further worsening of Japan's relations with China, to no obvious purpose. Abandonment has always looked the less likely of the twin dangers, for having Japan as its largest overseas military base has mattered so much to America and its regional presence in the Indo-Pacific that the idea of it deserting its Japanese ally has looked implausible. This remains true, especially given the emphasis being laid by leading figures in the Pentagon and the Republican Party on the contest with China for both regional and global supremacy. However, President Trump is well known to be highly transactional, especially in foreign policy. He has also indicated a strong sympathy for the very 19th century idea that great powers are entitled to have "spheres of influence" in the areas around their own borders. He has, for example, expressed a determination that America should gain control over Greenland, the icy territory that is part of Denmark but adjacent to the north-east coast of the United States, has declared that Canada should become the U.S.'s "51st State," and has insisted the U.S. should regain control over the Panama Canal. This makes it conceivable, even if still improbable, that at some point Trump could be tempted to accept Chinese control over its "sphere" of Taiwan and the South China Sea in return for China accepting US control over territories in its region. That would give China control over the main sea lanes surrounding Japan and a greatly increased ability to intimidate other countries in the region, including Japan, South Korea and the Philippines. This is, admittedly, a rather extreme scenario. The identification by most members of Trump's Republican Party of China as America's leading global adversary, and the strong support for Taiwan held by those same Republicans, makes it feel especially unlikely. Yet the fact that the idea of such a "grand bargain" with China is talked about at all simply underlines how unpredictable is the foreign policy of this American president, with the range of actions and outcomes during the remaining three and a half years of his term looking wider than under any U.S. president in living memory. The governments of every longstanding ally of the United States are having to live with this uncertainty, one which reflects a broader question: using a meteorological metaphor, does Trump represent a temporary extreme-weather event, like an especially severe typhoon, or does he represent climate change, a trend that will endure? The safest answer is that he is a bit of both: his extreme volatility and hostile manner can be seen as personal and thus temporary, but some of the ideas he is purveying have a broader resonance in the United States that could persist after he is gone. The central role that America plays in the security of the Indo-Pacific gives Japan little choice other than to adapt to whatever extreme weather emerges from Washington, DC. The more forward-leaning stance Japan has taken on defence, first under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and then with the new National Security Strategy under Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in 2022, has had the dual purpose of increasing Japan's contribution to joint deterrence operations with America and creating more long-term options for national security in case relations with Washington become more fractured. Continuing and even enhancing this strategy remains Japan's only viable plan. What Japan could perhaps invest even more time in is in its already impressive diplomatic efforts in north-east and south-east Asia. To cope with the Trump "typhoon" and to increase Japan's own leverage over Washington at any time of crisis, it makes sense to work more closely with other countries that face the same pressures, starting with South Korea but also extending south to Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia and Taiwan itself. All these countries are facing hostility from Trump over trade while also needing to invest more in their own security and economic resilience, in a region in which the two superpowers, China and the U.S., are both unavoidable presences but also habitual bullies. It therefore makes sense to work together on trade, technology, security and other issues as much as possible, to increase bargaining power as well as resilience. Japan has a key role, as well as opportunity, to drive this regional collaboration. The contradictory fears of entrapment and abandonment can never be eliminated, but through collaboration they can perhaps be mitigated.
