Managing once again to grab defeat from the jaws of victory, Japan’s main opposition party the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has suffered complete chaos over the past several days. After considering alliances with either smaller opposition parties or a grand alliance with the long-time ruling Liberal Democrats, DPJ leader Ichiro Ozawa resigned after party insiders refused to back his grand alliance proposal over the weekend, described by some as turning his guns on his own party.

Chaos was slightly calmed earlier today when Ozawa pulled a Ross Perot and withdrew his resignation. But the DPJ has fumbled, just months after winning a historical election in the upper house over the summer and upseting the cabinet of one of Japan’s most (initially) popular prime ministers in memory.

Time sums up the situation more coherently here:

Before former Prime Minister Juinchiro Koizumi swept onto the political scene in 2001 as a destroyer of Japan’s long-enshrined traditions of political factionalism and seniority, there was Ozawa. After an early political start as an upper house LDP parliamentarian in at the tender age of 27, Ozawa wove in and out of no fewer than five political parties, destroying everything in his path. A firm believer in realpolitik, Ozawa worked behind the scenes to realign coalitions and alliances, leaving a trail of political causalties — mostly in the form of failed coups against the LDP, which has ruled Japan virtually unchallenged since World War II. Upstaged by Koizumi’s five-year term as Prime Minister, Ozawa returned to the limelight after being elected to head the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in April 2006. Under his leadership, the DPJ wrested control of the upper house of Parliament from the LDP in July, an historic loss that ultimately led to the resignation of Koizumi’s successor, Shinzo Abe, and opened the door to what could have been the first real two-party system in modern Japanese history.

And then things took a strange turn. Last week Ozawa held closed talks with Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda over an unpopular defense bill that Fukuda would rather negotiate on than attempt to force through Parliament. Ozawa returned to the DPJ leadership with Fukuda’s suggestion for a giant LDP-DPJ coalition, saying that he thought working with the LDP would better reflect the DPJ’s policies. Not surprisingly, senior DPJ members disagreed; many criticized Ozawa for entertaining thoughts of sleeping with the enemy. In a Sunday press conference, Ozawa claimed that this refusal was tantamount to a vote of no-confidence, and announced his intention to resign.

I hear people mourn the DPJ’s petty internal squabbles as an obstacle to the party becoming a real opposition that could make Japan a vibrant two-party democracy. My response to that is the title of this post. The DPJ is a jumbled mess of socialists, right-wingers, protectionists, economic liberals, and many more who share nothing in common except vague opposition to the sometimes-conservative, sometimes-reformist Liberal Democrats. The DPJ makes for a good salon to criticize this establishment, but as an opposition party it has no hope of forging real alternative policies or a replacement government without fracturing internally. Or as a friend recently said, the party is like a freight truck trying to navigate the narrow back streets of Japan—it can forge onwards, but has a heck of a time maneuvering.

Were Ozawa to resign, it is more than likely that his replacement would be one of the same recycled former leaders of the party (Kan, Hatayama, you Japan-hands know who I mean). For an opposition party, the losers who keep the party in the minority sure do keep an uncanny grip on power (unlike the LDP where leaders with even a trace of failure are chopped). The future of the DPJ is unknown, but becoming a real opposition party never felt so far despite being so numerically close.

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