[Those
searching for an answer to how Japan could reinstall its old guard need look no
further than the predominantly rural election district that includes Kanazawa, a small city on the
frigid Sea of Japan. On a recent evening, about 100 supporters of the local
Liberal Democratic candidate braved a hailstorm to gather in a community center
surrounded by barren rice paddies. ]
KANAZAWA, Japan — The lesson of Japan’s
last major national election was that the nation’s growing hunger for change
had seemed to reach a threshold, a craving that became more intense after the
Fukushima disaster exposed the failures of a collusive political system that
protected the nuclear industry.
Now,
just three years after that election and less than two years after the nuclear
crisis, voters appear poised to hand power back to the Liberal Democratic
Party, which they kicked out in the historic
vote in 2009
that ended its virtually uninterrupted hold on power for half a century.
It
is still possible that other parties could win enough votes in the lower house
election on Sunday to force a coalition government. Polls show up to half of
the voters are undecided, itself a sign that the hopes generated three years
ago for reform have faded. But forecasts of vote tallies by major newspapers
have been unanimous in predicting a resounding victory for the Liberal
Democrats, whom many Japanese blame for creating the country’s deep economic
and political problems.
News
reports regularly feature photos of a smiling Shinzo Abe, a
nationalistic former prime minister who, as party chief, now appears likely to
get a second chance at running the nation.
Those
searching for an answer to how Japan could reinstall its old guard need look no
further than the predominantly rural election district that includes Kanazawa, a small city on the
frigid Sea of Japan. On a recent evening, about 100 supporters of the local
Liberal Democratic candidate braved a hailstorm to gather in a community center
surrounded by barren rice paddies.
They
sat politely listening in stockinged feet as the candidate, Hiroshi Hase,
explained that his party was much more reform-minded than before 2009, when
this district voted for the opposition despite the Liberal Democrats’
still-formidable rural vote-gathering machine. Then, after bowing deeply, he
laid out a party platform that in some ways sounded unchanged from decades
past, emphasizing increased public works spending — the sort of vote-buying
move that many Japanese say helped create the nation’s huge debt problems.
When
the speech ended, members of the audience stood to yell “Fight!” while punching
their fists into the air.
But
some people later said they were disappointed at the lack of bold measures to
end Japan’s long malaise. Still, Toru Kondo, 49, a furniture maker, said he
would vote for the Liberal Democrats to show his disgust with the incumbent
Democrats. He voted for the Democrats in the last election in this former
Liberal Democratic stronghold, only to feel betrayed by their failure to
deliver on promises to end Japan’s long economic and political stagnation.
“Personally,
I’m about 51 percent in favor of the Liberal Democratic Party, and 49 percent
against it,” he said. “I know the party created Japan’s problems, but it seems
the only choice.”
Experts
say that sentiment is shared widely across Japan, where disgruntled voters seem
determined to punish the Democrats not just for failing to rein in Japan’s
powerful central bureaucracies, but also for mishandling the nuclear crisis.
At
the same time, most voters have not viewed as credible alternatives a host of
new parties that have sprung up with offers of more radical reform. Voters were
captivated earlier this year by the brash and decisive young mayor of Osaka, Toru Hashimoto,
who became for a time Japan’s most popular politician with promises to break
the central ministries’ stifling grip.
But
even his new party’s fortunes faltered after he decided against running for
Parliament, precluding his becoming prime minister, and instead joined forces
with Shintaro
Ishihara,
the octogenarian, ultranationalist former governor of Tokyo. And an antinuclear
party that tried to capitalize on Japanese foreboding after the Fukushima
disaster made little headway.
Mr.
Kondo and more than a dozen other voters said in interviews here that they were
leery of supporting yet another untried newcomer. “So long as a third political
pole fails to form, the only way to throw out the Democratic Party is to go
back to the Liberal Democratic Party,” said Takao Iwami, an author of books on
politics.
What
exactly that would mean for Japan is somewhat unclear, as the Liberal Democrats
follow the well-worn path of trying to focus on what their audiences want to
hear, and as the challenges facing Japan shift with China’s ascendance. Despite
Mr. Hase’s emphasis on the old-style economics of construction projects, the party
is offering at least one important economic change: saying it would tackle the
high value of the yen, which has crippled Japanese exports and accelerated an
industrial hollowing-out.
And
while Mr. Abe, the party leader, is one of the country’s most vocal
nationalists, it is unclear how he would handle a dispute with China, Japan’s
largest overseas market, over islands in the East China Sea. In his last term
as prime minister, Mr. Abe was considered a fence-mender, making Beijing his
first official stop after taking office in an effort to end hard feelings over
the previous prime minister’s visits to a shrine where war criminals from World War II are honored. But Mr. Abe has campaigned on
building a stronger military to check China’s growing assertiveness.
Some
experts say the wild swings in public support for the country’s leading parties
are at least partly a result of the decades of virtual one-party rule. Large
parties, like the Liberal Democrats, have tried to offer something for
everyone, rather than offering an ideology to build loyalty.
“We
are still seeing the creative destruction of the old postwar, one-party
system,” said Gerald L. Curtis, a professor of Japanese politics at Columbia
University.
The
lack of voter passion has perhaps been captured best by one of the dominant
images of the campaign: photos of former Prime Minister Naoto Kan, of the
governing party, who is running to maintain his parliamentary seat in a Tokyo
suburb. They show him standing on a white box bearing a slogan that is the Japanese
equivalent of “no nukes,” appealing desperately to passing commuters who mostly
ignore him.
[Interviews
with friends, neighbors and local residents, and an analysis of public records,
revealed details of Ms. Lanza’s life and death. To some, she was a social
member of the community, a regular at Labor Day picnics and
ladies’ nights out. To others, she was a woman dealing with a difficult son and
maintaining a public face “with uncommon grace.” ]
By Matt
Flegenheimer And Ravi Somaiya
NEWTOWN, Conn. — She was “a big, big gun
fan” who went target shooting with her children, according to friends. She
enjoyed craft beers, jazz and landscaping. She was generous to strangers, but
also high-strung, as if she were holding herself together.
Nancy
Lanza was the first victim in a massacre carried out on Friday by her son, Adam
Lanza, 20, who shot her dead with a gun apparently drawn from her own
collection, then drove her car to Sandy Hook Elementary School, where he
killed 26 people, 20 of them small children, officials said.
Their
family had been disrupted by divorce in 2008. Ms. Lanza split from her husband
of 17 years, court records show, and he moved out. Adam stayed with his mother.
His
former high school classmates said they believed that he had Asperger’s
syndrome or another developmental disorder. Ms. Lanza had an older son, Ryan,
who did not live with them.
News
reports on Friday suggested that Ms. Lanza had worked at the elementary school,
but at a news conference on Saturday, the school superintendent said there was
no evidence that Ms. Lanza had ever worked at the school as a full-time or
substitute teacher, or in any other capacity.
The
authorities said it was not clear why Mr. Lanza went to the school.
Interviews
with friends, neighbors and local residents, and an analysis of public records,
revealed details of Ms. Lanza’s life and death. To some, she was a social
member of the community, a regular at Labor Day picnics and
ladies’ nights out. To others, she was a woman dealing with a difficult son and
maintaining a public face “with uncommon grace.”
Many
of those who knew her were at a loss to describe what she did for a living.
(Her ex-husband is an executive at General Electric.)
Ms.
Lanza, 52, was a slender woman with blond shoulder-length hair.
She
often went to a local restaurant and music spot, My Place, where she sat at the
bar, according to a manager there who gave her name only as Louise. Ms. Lanza
typically came to My Place alone, said another acquaintance, Dan Holmes, owner
of Holmes Fine Gardens, a landscaping company in Newtown, who also met her at
the bar.
At
craft beer tastings on Tuesday evenings, he recalled, she liked to talk about
her gun collection.
“She
had several different guns,” he said. “I don’t know how many. She would go
target shooting with her kids.”
Law
enforcement officials said they believed that the guns were acquired lawfully
and registered.
Ms.
Lanza spoke often of her landscaping, Mr. Holmes recalled, and later hired him
to do work on her home.
Last
week, he dispatched a team to put up Christmas decorations at her house —
garlands on the front columns and white lights atop the shrubbery.
After
the work was complete, Ms. Lanza sent Mr. Holmes a text: “That went REALLY
well! Two people took care of the gardens and gutters and one decorated. Very
efficient and everything looks great! Thank you!”
Jim
Leff, a musician, often sat next to her at the bar and made small talk, he said
in an interview on Saturday. On one occasion, Mr. Leff said, he had gone to
Newtown to discuss lending money to a friend. As the two men negotiated the
loan, Ms. Lanza overheard and offered to write the man a check.
“She
was really kind and warm,” Mr. Leff said, “but she always seemed a little bit
high-strung.”
He
declined to elaborate, but in a post on his personal Web site, he said he felt
a distance from her that was explained when he heard, after the shootings, “how
difficult her troubled son,” Adam, “was making things for her.”
She
was “handling a very difficult situation with uncommon grace,” he wrote.
She
was “a big, big gun fan,” he added on his Web site.
Neighbors
recalled Ms. Lanza as sociable, a regular at Labor Day picnics and “ladies’
nights out” for a dice game called bunco.
“We
would rotate houses,” said Rhonda Cullens, 52, a neighbor since Ms. Lanza moved
to Newtown with her husband and two children. “I don’t remember Nancy ever
having it at her house.”
Ms.
Cullens said Ms. Lanza had never discussed an interest in guns with her, but
spoke often about gardening — exchanging the sorts of questions typical of the
neighborhood: What can you plant that the deer would not eat? Is such
maintenance worth the trouble for a house like the Lanzas, perched on the back
of a steep hill and scarcely visible from the street?
“She
was complaining, ‘Here, I’m doing all this landscaping up here and nobody can
see it,’ ” Ms. Cullens recalled.
But
for many of those on Yogananda Street, where the Lanzas lived and where the
police had cordoned off much of the block on Saturday, the recollections about
Ms. Lanza were incomplete.
“Who
were they?” said Len Strocchia, 46, standing beside his daughter as camera
crews came through the neighborhood. “I’m sure we rang their door bell on
Halloween.”
He
looked down the block, then turned back to his daughter. “I’m sure of it,” he
said.
Susan
Beachy and Thomas Kaplan contributed reporting.
