Throughout the period of LDP dominance, the vast majority of the party's legislators entered national elective politics via two broad occupational routes. First, as we saw in the previous chapter, former high-level
government officials descended into the parliamentary arena from positions in the central state bureaucracy. Second, local elected politicians have ascended to the national parliamentary arena after building supportive coalitions at the grassroots level or after serving apprenticeships as staff assistants for a member of parliament. Until the 1970s, the descending angels played a disproportionately visible role in party affairs, especially in the uppermost leadership stratum. However, after the 1970s the numbers of former bureaucrats among LDP backbenchers as well as party leaders
steadily decreased, and the grassroots politicians became progressively more dominant. This shift seems to have been the product of a broader demand for candidates able to provide a greater range of constituency
services. Experienced in local elective politics and sensitive to the needs and interests of constituents within the district, grassroots politicians were the logical candidates to satisfy the electorate's desires.
One way to trace the increase in career politicians is to look at the trends in the age at which legislators enter national elective politics and the age at which they assume positions of party leadership, since candidates who consider politics as a primary career will tend to enter national elective
politics at an earlier age and remain longer than their amateur predecessors.
Between 1955 and 1992 successive classes of LDP backbenchers have been younger, even as there has been a steady gerontrification among party
leaders, LDP legislators, and Lower House MPs as a whole. During this period
the mean age of
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conservative backbenchers has fallen from 50 to 46, while party leaders are four to six years older on average than their predecessors. In other words, while LDP backbenchers are entering the political ring at a younger age, they need to labor longer in order to ascend to the coveted positions of formal legislative influence.
Longitudinal trends in the age at which legislators who rose to the level of cabinet ministers were first elected to the Lower House also illustrate the rise of career politicians in Japan. Between 1955 and 1971 approximately half of all cabinet appointees were older than 45 when first elected to the national parliament. But between 1972 and 1976 about 70 percent of
cabinet appointees were younger than 45 when first elected, and since then this figure has not dropped below 60 percent.
It is also revealing to look at the age of LDP backbenchers in each of the pre-Diet occupational routes (descending from the ministries or ascending from local politics). The mean age of descending angels upon entering the Diet dropped from 54.5 in 1958 to 46.8 in 1990. Moreover, the number of high-ranking ex-officials among the LDP backbenchers has declined since the early 1960s (see Figure 2). Relative to the average LDP backbencher, former local politicians tend to be older, while ex-staffers tend to be younger.
Lacking both the ties to powerful organized interests that ex-bureaucrats often wield, as well as the benefits of "inheriting" a proven personal
campaign machine, the majority of local politicians have to invest more time in constructing personal bases of local electoral support. In contrast, since a substantial share of former staffers are the offspring or close relatives of MPs, they tend to make their bid for a place in the national parliamentary ring at an earlier age than either the local politicians or the ex-officials.
The average tenure of LDP legislators in national elective politics has also been increasing. For example, LDP legislators who left the Lower House between 1958 and 1963 had served on average nearly 15 years, while those who left between 1983 and 1990 had served on average nearly 30 years.
The number of terms legislators serve before securing a coveted position as cabinet minister or one of the top posts in the LDP's leadership has also climbed, from an average in 1956 of over 5 terms, to nearly 10 terms in 1976. The institutionalization of
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Figure 2.
High-Ranking Ex-Officials Among LDP Backbenchers, 1958–1990 SOURCES . Based on data from various years of Kokkai benran;
Jinji koshinroku; and Asahi senkyo taikan .
the LDP's promotional ladder is also exemplified by the sharp decline in the number of first-term cabinet appointees who had served fewer than four electoral terms. Between 1965 and 1993 only two Lower House members were "singled out" (batteki ), as compared with nineteen in the 1950s (Sato and Matsuzaki 1986, 39–47).
The influx of "hereditary politicians" is another indication of the rise of the career politician. In the 1990 elections, 38 percent of all LDP backbenchers and 50 percent of all LDP leaders were hereditary politicians.[5] Over time, a Lower House seat has come to be viewed as a family heirloom, the
supportive constituency as a family-owned business, and control of each as something that an incumbent can transfer to a designated successor. Of course, members of political families have always benefited from
opportunities to meet influential people and glimpse the inner workings of government. Should they choose to seek office, they will have broader name recognition than candidates from less distinguished families. In Japan, more importantly, these scions inherit an organized and tested campaign machine.
First, the key supporters and officials of these personal campaign organizations tend to be more willing to shift their allegiance to an
incumbent's designated heir rather than to an outsider. These insiders also know that the hereditary politician will inherit fully formed pipelines of political money (Igarashi 1986, 112). This advantage is all the more significant because a large share of campaign contributions
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are drawn from business sources headquartered in Tokyo and other
metropolitan areas, which may be far from the home district. The bequest system serves both sides: campaign contributors enjoy a longer time horizon to reap benefits from their political investments, and hereditary politicians can take advantage of the political capital accrued by their forebears.
To the extent that more LDP MPs have come to consider politics as a primary career, they must focus on enhancing the security of their incumbency. The principal activities to this end are constituency service, credit-claiming, and distributive pork, particularly public works projects that can be strategically targeted. In order to build reliable bases of grassroots support and
causeways for channeling the enormous flows of political funds needed to sustain a successful political career, many LDP MPs, as the zenekon scandal revealed, bartered their legislative influence.