Koenkai
[1] Whereas the kinds of activities change according to the interests of different groups, they span an incredible spectrum of seemingly unrelated topics: baseball games, trips to hot-springs, sumo contests, golf tournaments, marathons, finishing competitions, Japanese chess, and so on.
The women's club – Olive-kai (taken after Olive Oyl from the famous Popeye cartoon) – organized several events for its female members throughout the year: cookie or mochi-making session, picture-framing class, outings to the circus, charity sales and monthly "mini-volley" matches.
Their daily tasks consist of visiting that area to listen to the demands from the people, reporting on the progress of different projects to them, distributing pictures of their sensei, or relevant information, etc.
10 young LDP Diet members revealed their spending account in 1989 and the sum reserved for koenkai equals 18.9 million yen a year.
[10] The membership fee collected at the beginning is barely sufficient for financing these projects, and members are often said to be more than reimbursed because their meager financial contribution is awarded with "trips to hot springs, sightseeing tours of the Diet building, records, fans, towels and souvenirs".
[1] With a 1000 yen entrance fee, a councilman from Fukuoka Chuoku took his koenkai members on a cruise around the city's bay "to contemplate the moon in the summer" (outsukiyukai), listen to jazz, enjoy prepared lunch boxes and play bingo.
[2] However, they still remained relatively scarce or weak, and even in fiercely competitive districts like Oita 2 and Yamaguchi 2, not all the conservative candidates had built their own koenkai.
[2] This changed in 1955 elections when koenkai were to an extent active, being utilised as an organizational base which incorporated the women's associations and local notables, both of which were seen as crucial in the popularity of a candidate.
As has been discussed previously, koenkai's leaders usually start out with their immediate circle of relatives and friends, and the area where they live is to be the first target of the vote-gathering campaign.
[14] Composed of households of respective areas, chonankai are official types of organizations under the supervision of the government for promoting apolitical activities related to culture, welfare, sports and the likes.
This results in the fact that koenkai's leaders may receive support from neighbourhood association via different channels, and this ultimately affects the residents' consent, to a significant degree, of chonankai endorsing a candidate.
As it became possible to win the election with a small number of vote, campaign strategy altered from appealing to a vast base of voters, to concentrating on securing firm and loyal support from citizens and cooperation.
Even though limited appearances in newspapers or on TV was accepted, politicians found themselves being forced to seek other vehicles of support, and koenkai were thought of as the perfect solution.
The koenkai of Kakuei Tanaka (田中角栄 4 May 1918 – 16 December 1993)– Prime Minister of Japan from 1972 to 1974 – has been recognised as the one that boasted the most far-reaching influence of its kind in Japanese political history.
Among these were very powerful figures, including the 26 out of 33 mayors of Niigata's separate municipalities, and half the number of city councils and prefectural legislature officials.
People living in other municipalities of Niigata quickly joined his koenkai and provided him with ardent support in expectance of favourable treatment in return.
This was a 3 days and 2 nights trip for members to spend time leisurely bathing and eating in Tokyo, touring the Diet building and Imperial Palace, watching musical at Asakusa and occasionally going to resorts at Enoshima, Atami and Izu.
[20] Aichi Kiichi (愛知 揆一 10 October 1907 – 23 November 1973) served as Japan's vice minister of Ministry of Finance in 1953 and won a Lower House seat for Miyagi First District in 1955.
In the summer of 1955, a series of talk sessions in the morning, speeches in the afternoon and dinner and alcohol at night were held for 45 days on end to gather interests from the people.
Aichi's koenkai activities were highlighted with more festivity at times, when a bicycle parade or gathering of 10,000 people in Sendai (Miyagi Prefecture's biggest city) would be organized.
Aichi-kai's influence over rural agriculture co-ops, or nokyo, small businesses associations of barbers, public baths, and restaurants remained significant.
First of all, the hierarchical element in structuring koenkai was abandoned and replaced with several sub-organizations of different sizes existing on equal terms.
More importantly, the theme that dominated Aichi-kai's activities was no longer drinking, singing and small talk, but instead it was a more urban-type, friendly relationship between the candidate and supporters.
Due to this, in order to capture a majority of seats in the lower house, larger parties like the LDP had to nominate more than one candidate in each district.
However, while there appears to be a slow decline, koenkai nevertheless remain quite a prominent feature of the electoral landscape, continuing to affect the relationship between party leaders and backbenchers.
Due to the high level of proportional representation in Japanese politics, it became difficult to establish the small-constituency system which the reforms had aimed to place heavy emphasis on.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi dissolved the House of Representatives after his postal privatization bill did not pass the House of Councillors, and in the subsequent election stripped "rebel" Diet leaders who had voted against the bill of their party endorsement, as well as dispatching "assassin" (shikyaku) candidates from the party to contest the districts of the rebels.
In 2009, the then DPJ Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama was engulfed in a funding scandal, which was partly a result of the huge expenses needed to run koenkai.
In 2009, the DPJ president Ichirō Ozawa was forced to resign as party leader after becoming embroiled in a fundraising scandal,[41] related to the alleged false reporting of land purchases and loans to his koenkai made between 2004 and 2005.
Members of political systems in countries around the world have also been found to employ similar clientelistic tactics, in order to garner support for votes.
