Introduction

In the Prison Notebooks, Antonio Gramsci writes that “the counting of votes is only the final ceremony of a long process” (quoted in Przeworski and Sprague 1986: 7). Although one can interpret this remark in many ways, for my purposes it means two things: first, that politics – winning and keeping power – is a structured process in which votes are only occasional indicators of continuing, long-term struggles. The study of electoral outcomes alone never suffices because the greater part of politics – institution building, agenda setting, coalition formation – happens well before voters go to the polls. Second, elites consciously shape those processes, making deliberate choices within and about them. Politics, then, concerns both “long processes” and the strategies pursued by the political actors who drive them.

This chapter explores the “long processes” of Japanese politics. In particular, it takes up the puzzle of long-term conservative rule and its petit-bourgeois social bases, the groups that would seem likely to be among the greatest enemies of the conservatives and their pro-industry policies. Rice agriculture and small retail served as the chief social bases of conservative rule from the 1950s into the 1990s. Together, agriculture and retail supplied some three-quarters of the vote of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in the 1950s and nearly one-half in the late 1980s. The two sectors owed their electoral clout not only to their numbers but to their high turnout, stable conservative support over time, organizational strength, and bloc-like voting behavior.