A leisurely breakfast at the station preceded our first journey aboard the Shinkansen, the Bullet Train! I know I am beginning to sound like a nerdy trainspotter, but I couldn’t have believed how beautiful it was both inside and out. Like a sleek white and blue eel, it slid into the station to our platform. Inside it felt more like an aircraft than a train. No narrow walkways but wide aisles with large seats and plenty of legroom. Exactly on time, we pulled out of the station and were soon whizzing through the countryside at over 150 mph, covering the 330 miles to Kyoto in under three hours. This is rail travel as it should be.
Early afternoon and we arrived in downtown Kyoto and immediately headed for our bed and breakfast. I had booked this online and so wasn’t sure what to expect. Down a back alley, behind a row of restaurants near Kyoto University, we found the place we would call home for the next few days: a genuine, typical Japanese home. Our hosts, Keiko and Juno were there to greet us and help us settle in. The house itself was compact to say the least, without much furniture but everything in its place. It is a salutary reminder how little we actually need to live comfortably, though I am not looking forward to living life at ground level for the next few days. But what a chance to see how Japanese people really live!
We decided to stroll around our part of Kyoto to get our bearings. What a lot of bikes! Is this because we’re near university, or is this a Kyoto thing? I now understand why Japanese language students were such a menace on the streets of Cambridge. Bike riding not only shares the pavement with pedestrians, but also only seems to have a front light. Still, with typical Japanese respect, there seem to be few accidents. Dominic has also noticed how many ‘boxy’ cars there are on the roads. Lots of cars like the Nissan ‘Cube’, which looks a bit like, well, a cube. What is going on with car design? Am I being too cynical in suggesting that this is the latest rouse from the car companies to overcome opposition from the environmental lobby? Instead of attracting buyers with the lure of sex appeal, now cars look entirely functional, allowing car owners to argue that their usage is based entirely on need rather than desire.
We stayed on foot for the day and, after booking our tour of the Imperial Palace via the Imperial Household Agency Office, headed for a café recommended in the Rough Guide. Near the Imperial Gardens, the café seemed to have a confusing advertising strategy, with a welcome in French and a street sign from Oxford Street, London. Dom employed the ‘when in Rome’ policy for food and settled down to a croque monsieur!
The rest of the evening was spent exploring the city, wandering down narrow streets near the river, and through the vibrant shopping area, when we came across a political rally. Japan goes to the polls in a general election on August 30th and, unlike most elections for the past fifty years, it may lead to a change of government. The Democratic Party of Japan (Labour) is poised to take over 300 seats in the 480 Lower House of the Diet giving it power for only the second time in half a century. The last time they beat the Liberal Democratic Party (Tories), their government last only a year! Despite winning a landslide four years ago, the LDP have squandered their majority, with four prime ministers in as many years. The current leader, Aso, was popular with the Party but has been a disaster among voters (sound familiar?)
The rally we watched was the leader of the Japanese Communist Party which may form part of the coalition in the next month or so. Though the next few weeks will be momentous, politically, it is hard to sense the prevailing mood. There have been lots of vans with loudhailers plying their wares in the busy shopping areas, and posters everywhere, but little evidence otherwise.
The Japanese political system of proportional representation does give the lie, of course, to the idea that PR produces unstable governments, with the LDP having rules almost continuously since the war. They use the Alternative Vote system with constituency and list members, a system I have previously pooh-poohed as less fair. I am now warming to it, in that it does create two categories of member which might prove useful. One would hope, for example, that the list might allow for a greater balance of candiates from under-represented groups. It would also allow for a small group of professional politicians to be elected who are released from constituency responsibilities. So, for example, Cabinet ministers, if constituency members could ‘swap’ with list members during their tenure to ensure adequate representation of those constituents. It could also be that those experts drafted into government at the moment through peerages, could be placed on the lists instead, or could serve in a part-time Senate. It has the advantage of retaining the constituency link whilst providing proportionality. My concern is, of course, that the lists are stuffed with hacks and has-beens looking for a cushy number, but we must relie on the parties using them properly. One way is to ensure open lists with ‘above the line’ voting, as in Australian Senate elections, where voters have the choice of voting for a party or individual candidates.
All that from one political rally!
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