Aug 18

WIT LIfe #48: Rousing the (Young) Electorate

Article/Journalism, Japan Trends, Translating/Interpreting, WIT Life Add Comment (1)

WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Interpreter/Translator/Writer Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken, 2000-03).  Recently she’s been watching Fujisankei’s newscast in Japanese and sharing some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations.

As we get further into August, the weather is not the only thing heating up in Japan.  People are greatly anticipating the national elections to be held at the end of the month, as many expect that at this time Prime Minister Taro Aso’s Liberal Democratic Party will lose its grip on power for only the second time in over half a century.  Voter surveys show that the Democratic Party  is favored to beat the LDP.  This largest opposition party vows to put more money in the hands of consumers, and support has soared for them and their ambitious election platform which includes cash allowances to families with children, free tuition and lower gasoline taxes.  I am now visiting prisons across the country with a Japanese delegation from the Justice Ministry, and they are watching the daily developments back home with baited breath as the August 30 election date approaches.

According to an article in the Daily Sun newspaper earlier this month, Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (aka MIC) is engaging in various strategies to try and increase the country’s voting rate.  It is implementing various measures to enlighten the populace, but is especially focusing on young voters by using technological tools such as the Internet and cell phones, as well as advertising at unconventional places such as driving schools.

The reason such attention is being paid to young voters is that they have traditionally been the group with the lowest turnout for elections since 1966.  In the last 10 years alone their voting rate was 38% in 2000, 36% in 2003 and 46% in 2005, about half that of the 60-year old demographic.  For the first time in 14 years, an image character has been adopted and an average girl in her 20s was picked to appeal to youngsters.  The reason they went for a non-celebrity as opposed to previous choices of stars such as Iron Chef host Takeshi Kaga and actress Ai Kato was the idea of having young people be able to actually envision themselves as the ones going to the polls.

MIC is also supporting university groups such as the one that calls for people to “Let your voice be heard by the Diet!”   Another student group called “ivote” offers the service of sending a text on election day to those who request it to encourage them to vote, and it strives to register 100,000  people.  The group held a recent rally in Shibuya where 40 members handed out 1000 flyers, and a separate student group gathered in Osaka to give out 3000 of theirs.  Perhaps through such efforts notoriously apathetic young Japanese voters will turn out in record numbers for the upcoming historical election.