Political corruption in Japan during the “1955 system”

The phenomenon of political corruption in Japan during the “1955 system” manifested itself in the shady nature of most financial flows ensuring the functioning of the system of one-party rule by the LDP. This shady system of financing essentially contradicted the spirit of the Political Funds Control Law and the Public Offices Election Law. It was almost impossible for the LDP MPs to ensure the functioning of their “political machines” without acquiring extraordinarily large monetary funds, so a significant part of them had to be obtained from dubious sources. As a result, political scandals erupted in Japan from time to time (the Lockheed scandal, the Recruit scandal, the Sagawa Kyubin scandal), revealing the enormous scale of violations of these norms and restrictions by politicians, as well as their regular abuse of political funds. At the same time, legal regulation of political funds was significantly more stringent regarding political parties, as compared to other organizations involved in political activities, including LDP factions and personal political structures maintained by individual politicians. Anticorruption laws were extremely vague in content and had many loopholes making it easy to evade them. They became an effective tool against corruption only after the radical political reform of 1994. The ethno-psychological peculiarities of the Japanese people also played a certain role in the spread of political corruption. In particular, it was the public opinion’s tolerance for moderate manifestations of corruption and the willingness to forgive those responsible if they show external signs of repentance. In addition, the weakness and fragmentation of the opposition, which prevented political scandals from having large-scale and painful consequences for the LDP, was a significant factor as well. The LDP got away with a lot of things because the opposition parties did not provide the voters with a real political alternative, and because their leaders were also involved in corruption scandals.

политическая коррупция, «система 1955 года», Либерально-демократическая партия, закон о регулировании деятельности политических фондов, политические скандалы, дело «Рикруто», политическая реформа, political corruption, the “1955 system”, the Liberal Democratic Party, Political Funds Control Law, political scandals, the Recruit scandal, political reform

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