Don’t say I never gave you anything.

I sifted through each individual web site of Japan’s lawmakers (members of the Diet) and placed any RSS feeds I found into Google Reader. Compared to the 722 seats in the Diet, only I only picked up 150 individual members with feeds.

That doesn’t mean Japan’s politicians are not active on the web. All but about 10 or so (mostly the elderly and entrenched – like “Don of the Upper House “Mikio Aoki” – or just too cool for the web – like our man Koizumi) had websites (another 10 members’ sites were down for various reasons), about 90% of them kept up-to-date content on the site, and a good majority provide a wealth of content either in the form of opinions or activities reports. There is, perhaps, a downside to that – they aren’t spending their time drafting legislation (in many cases the job of the PM’s office or autonomous bureaucrats). What I am saying, however, is that most of them are behind the times – lots of websites with early-2000s site designs, and one member even had a Geocities page!

But that aside, here are the links to the RSS feeds that were available, broken down by cameral and party affiliation (Click the party link to see the aggregator site):

Lower House (House of Representatives) (480 seats total; 114 feeds)

Liberal Democratic Party (295 seats as of 10/22/2006; 62 feeds)

New Komeito (31 seats, in a coalition with LDP to form ruling coalition; 3 feeds)

Democratic Party of Japan (113 seats; 43 feeds)

Japan Communist Party (9 seats; no feeds, but here’s their sweet English-language site)

Social Democratic Party (7 seats; 3 feeds)

Minor parties/unaffiliated (total 25 seats, includes Kokumin Shinto (New People’s Party, 4 seats) and Shinto Nippon (New Nippon Party, 1 seat); 3 feeds total)

Upper House (242 seats; 37 feeds)

Liberal Democratic Party (112 seats; 12 feeds)

New Komeito (24 seats; 6 feeds)

Democratic Party of Japan (80 seats; 19 feeds)

Japan Communist Party (9 seats; no feeds)

Social Democratic Party (6 seats; no feeds)

That’s 151 feeds, or about 21% of the members (this isn’t an exact total – one member had multiple feeds, of which I subscribed to 2). How is this useful? Well, not at all if you don’t read Japanese. But at least I will be checking back on it whenever I want to see what people are saying on a given issue, possibly keeping it updated after elections, but who knows? I was bored.

Now, it is possible that I missed a member’s feed for reasons including not seeing the link or it not actually being linked on the member’s official site. Also, a good percentages of the feeds I did find came after digging through the settings page of members’ “e-mail magazine” services, chiefly mag2. Also, many members had “blogs,” but either used primitive Japanese “diary” software, manually updated the sites the old school way, or simply didn’t offer a feed.

As far as I know, only two members’ websites have earned much recognition – those of members Taizo Sugimura and Hiroshige Seko (site included in LDP Upper House feeds). These two men have had strikingly divergent fates since being elected. Sugimura, who at 26 became one of the youngest Diet members ever when he earned a surprise proportional representation win due to the LDP’s landslide performance in last year’s lower house election. Thing is, he didn’t really have any special qualifications – he was an unemployed college dropout when he applied at the LDP to run for office on their ticket. Apparently then-LDP Secretary General Tsutomu Takebe simply liked the cut of his jib, and Sugimura was sold as a youthful representative of the millions of lollygagging young people in Japan known as “NEETs.” Since taking office “Taizo-kun” has managed to bungle one thing after another, making inappropriate comments like “when can we start eating at gourmet restaurants?” plagiarizing blog posts, and even making a mess of his own marriage proposal (covered here). Thankfully, these all took place during a time when a young DPJ member was screwing up on an even grander scale – formally accusing the LDP of Livedoor-related corruption with forged proof. Currently Sugimura’s site is down (probably on orders from above) and it’s unclear whether he’ll be running with the LDP’s blessing next time around.

Meanwhile, Seko, an Upper House member elected in 1998 and former PR executive, was basically given the lion’s share of credit for the aforementioned electoral win last year. His ideas, like the Bush-style move of placing a banner with an electoral slogal such as “no reform without postal privatization” behind a candidate when giving a press conference, won scores of praise, leading him to his current position as a kind of special adviser to PM Abe on public relations matters. His site is a careful record of his daily activities, almost like a personal datebook, and is pretty scant on policy. His campaign site gained some attention early in his political career because he was among the first to accept contributions by credit card, something of a populist move you can read more about (among other details about Seko) on Japan Considered. I’ve never seen it mentioned, but he reminds me a little of a Japanese Karl Rove.

Anyway, enjoy the feeds!

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 4th, 2006 at 2:37 am and is filed under Japan, Politics, Technology, 日本語. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.