Japan is set to take a baby step toward rebalancing the age scales when lawmakers lower the voting age to 18 from 20 now, allowing teenagers into polling booths for the first time.
The move will bring Japan — where political power resides firmly with the gray of hair — into line with other developed countries and will extend the franchise to an extra 2.4 million 18 and 19-year-olds.
And not before time, teenagers says.
“Age 18 is not too young,” 17-year-old high-school student Shiori Toshima said of the rule change, which is expected to pass during the current parliament session ending next month.
“I will definitely go to vote,” she said. “I’d be happy to see my opinion affect politics, even just a little.”
Japan last changed its voting rules in the punch-drunk months after its 1945 surrender in World War II, altering the age at which citizens could cast their ballot from 25 to 20.
“Japan was one lap behind, but is eventually catching up” with global standards, said Ryohei Takahashi, who teaches at Chuo University in Tokyo and runs a nonprofit group that promotes youth participation.
“In Japan, politics has excessively reflected elderly people’s voices, which we call silver democracy,” Takahashi said.
About one-quarter of Japan’s 127 million population is aged 65 or over, a result of low birth rates over the past few decades and no significant immigration.
The proportion is expected to grow to about 40 percent in a few decades.
The inverted age pyramid that this represents has combined with a Confucian respect for elders and left Japan a country primarily run by, and for the benefit of, old people.
Welfare — chiefly pensions and public health, but also unemployment payments and child benefits — costs Japan a whopping ¥31.5 trillion (US$265 billion) a year, one-third of its entire national budget.
As the number of pensioners increases, so will the cost of paying for them, at a time when the workforce is shrinking.
Despite the diminishing tax base, politicians wary of the huge voting power of older people continue to pander to their desires.
“Old people vote for those who think of pensions, but for us, it’s a good chance to express what society we would like to create when we grow up,” 17-year-old Kumiko Ozawa said.
The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, which has ruled Japan for most of the past 60 years, is seen as being particularly preoccupied by the gray vote — its power base is the countryside, where average ages are higher than in the cities.
“The LDP had been reluctant to lower the voting age as its lawmakers have put the emphasis on elderly and stable voters,” said Tomoaki Iwai, professor of politics at Nihon University in Tokyo.
“The LDP has traditionally believed that young people are liberal” and therefore likely to oppose its conservatism, Iwai said. “But its allergy to younger generations is gradually disappearing.”
In fact, a mock election among young people held just ahead of the last national poll showed Abe’s LDP actually did better than in the vote that counted, Takahashi said.
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