LDP to Media: Don't Call Them 'Assassins'

Japan's Liberal Democratic Party Sunday asked the country's mass media to stop calling the candidates it's pitting against rebel LDP lawmakers in the upcoming general election "assassins," according to news reports. But bloggers were quick to reveal that a senior LDP official was one of the first to portray them in those terms.

In a letter to the media signed by Hiroshige Seko, deputy head of the party's PR headquarters, the LDP said that the party had not used the term itself and that the media's widespread use of it was damaging the image of its candidates because of its negative connotations.

A frequent role in samurai-era dramas, the term assassins, "shikyaku" in Japanese, has been widely used to describe the celebrity candidates that the LDP is fielding to unseat the 37 LDP members of the lower house of Parliament who voted against Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's signature postal reform bill. Their defection ensured the bill's defeat earlier this month.

In retaliation, Koizumi dissolved the Parliament and called a general election, while refusing to allow any of the "rebels" to run with the support of his party. Instead, he recruited a team of high-profile university professors, former TV personalities, and business leaders to campaign against them. The best known of these "assassins" is Internet entrepreneur Takafumi Horie, who, though he is nominally running as an independent, is receiving some LDP support.

Nevertheless, at the time of the writing of this article, early Wednesday morning Japan time, few media outlets seemed to be complying. In an editors' note Tuesday, the conservative Yomiuri Shimbun, for instance, rebuffed the LDP's request. "No one confuses the 'assassin' candidates with real killers," it wrote. Noting that the Prime Minister had himself said in July that he was trying to avoid to being "killed by the rebel army," which was seeking to undo his postal privatization initiative, the Yomiuri said, "the fact that the Administration is so nervous about this one expression shows that it's anticipating a tough race that it can't read until the votes are opened."

Several bloggers were quick to point out that contrary to the party's claims, an LDP official was one of the first to describe the celebrity candidates as assassins. Upon choosing the LDP's first "assassin," State Minister Seiichiro Murakami described the candidate – Environment Minister Yuriko Koike -- as the "LDP's Aya Ueto." Aya Ueto is a popular film star "idol" who acted the part of a ninja assassin in two remakes of the popular manga "Azumi," the latter of which just hit the theaters in March. As for Koike, though she has been active in politics since 1992, she is well known as a former television announcer who achieved prominence during the Gulf War as one of Japan's few Arabic-speaking Middle East experts.

Murakami's remark was apparently inspired by Shizuka Kamei, the most prominent of the LDP rebels. At a press conference the day before, he told reporters, "Does it make any sense to dispatch assassins to go after those rebelling? They will destroy each other, and thereby put the Democratic Party of Japan in office. It defies common sense. It's cruel and undignified," he said.

Ironically, observers suggest the Liberal Democrats may have actually benefitted considerably from the media's fixation with the "assassins," regardless of who first used the term. In an interview with The Asahi Shimbun, Chuo University Professor Steven R. Reed said Prime Minister Koizumi has been remarkably adept in using the media to shape the public's perception of the election, precisely because he has focused their attention on the "assassins."

"He has framed the issue in the best possible terms for himself and the LDP... He has picked an enemy he is sure he can beat because he is not really competing against Minshuto [the Democratic Party of Japan, the principal opposition party], but he is competing against the old guard of the LDP [the rebels]."