What is the Rainbow and Greens?

The deadlock of the established politics

Japanese politics is facing a significant number of serious problems at the moment. Entering the aged society, the inadequacies of the old-fashioned welfare policies are giving the elderly citizens hardship and worry. The politics relying heavily upon public investment is resulting in the well-known political corruption of the country and 64.5 billion yen public debt in the central and local governments. At the same time, politics focusing only on economic development led to environmental degradation everywhere. As a result Japan's environment is now almost in a fatal state.

Moreover, what we are afraid is that Japanese politics has no capability of dealing with the critical state mentioned above. The coalition government formed of the Liberal Democratic party (LDP) as the core is concerned only with prolonging its grip on power, and can think of nothing but maintaining its old-styled politics. Allegedly for the way out from the economic downturn of the 1990s, the government issued a significant amount of government bonds, and has maintained its political foundation by throwing public money around. When the limit of such money-throwing policies came to be recognized by public, then they changed the election system in order to hang onto the central power.

On the other hand, the oppositions have not been capable of giving rise to any fundamental changes in the current Japanese political structure. They do not possess any new approach or policies for fundamental economic transformations, which are essential in order to break through the current critical state. Such a deadlock situation has made citizens politically apathetic and tired of politics. Many citizens seem to be indifferent to politics, and locked into their personal lives. As a result, the number of unaffiliated voters has increased, and the voting rates in recent elections stayed unprecedented low. It is possible to say in this context that Japan is now facing the crisis of the representative democracy.

New movements in politics

Responding such a decrease in problem-solving capability of the government, movements to transform the contemporary politics from the civil society side became intense. There have been many local referendums regarding construction of nuclear power plants, industrial wastes disposing facilities, and the US military bases in the 1990s. There, we can see citizens as bearers of political responsibilities who are protesting against the old-styled political process involving little local participation or no democratic discussion in deciding the future of the region. There is a symptom of revitalization of activities conducted by some new social movements on conservation of environment, against nuclear power plants, and watching the way in that tax money is spent by local and the central governments.

In the sphere of politics, new social movements are becoming more and more visible. Local elections in the 1990s, more women are winning parliamentary seats and making some changes in the traditional political arena, which has long bean extremely masculine. The local election of the Nagano prefectural governor on the 15^th of October 2000 had a dramatic result. A campaigner, who is a novelist and supported mainly by grass roots movements, defeated another candidate who seemed to have been in the lead due mainly to the massive support from established political parties and local politicians. On the 22 ^nd, we witnessed another outstanding election result. An activist whose son contracted the HIV virus because of the administrative misconduct of the Ministry of Health won over the other candicates who were supported by the nation-wide political parties such as the LDP, Democrats, and Social Democrats.  These incidents tell us that many citizens are disappointed at the established political parties and politicians, and now waiting for a new political current.

Japanese politics has been dominated by the LDP for 38 years, from 1955 to 1993, still conservative force seems to be predominant even now. The parties in power maintained its domination by distributing budgetary expenditure among the interest groups in the form of public investment. The power of conservative forces is even more visible in rural areas where more feudalistic social systems are prevailed. However, recent electoral results show that there are earthshaking changes in Japan's political climate.

The Rainbow and Greens is one of the movements emerged out of the political context mentioned above. We are the children of the new political generation.

The inception and evolution of the Rainbow and Greens

The Rainbow and Greens became a political organization in the August 1999. In the April 1999, citizens having been political leaders of new social movements in each area attempted to produce a new political current by running campaign for the nation-wide local elections. We, as politically conscious citizens, listed up some candidates running for politics of new generation, and co-operated with them under the name of "the Rainbow and Greens" as temporal coalition. We developed a campaign by declaring a manifesto named "Seven Open Text" and creating a slogan "changing politics from the provinces."

The result was that 133 candidates out of 226 we supported got elected. It includes 5 prefectural politicians, one city mayor (Hiroshima). After that, we formally launched the Rainbow and the Greens.

The Rainbow and Greens is a decentralised organization and has a principle of democratic administration. We have nine regional blocks, and each block is administrated independently. While important issues of the organization are decided at the Annual General Meeting where all members are invited, basic and administrative issues are handled in the Representative Meetings where 28 local representatives from all blocks gather and exchange opinions. There are four spokespersons (genderly impartial: two from each gender) elected out of the Representative Meeting members.

The Local Policies Information Centre has also been set up as an attached institution, conducting many activities such as publishing a journal "the Rainbow and Greens" (quarterly publication). There are 11 project teams in the institution aiming for development of policy-making ability of the Rainbow and Greens.

We have 138 local politicians as of the July 2000. They are co-operating with non-politician members, conducting political activities inside and outside of each local diet (though they are often minorities), and making alliances with some new social movements.

The Rainbow and the Greens as representation of new politics

As we mentioned, the Rainbow and the Greens consists of politicians as representative of new social movements and citizens acting to become alternative political forces. The term "Rainbow" represents our respect for diverse identities and their alliance, while the term "Greens" means a replacement of the current political economy putting priority only on economic development with a political economic system coexisting with natural environment. In this sense, the Rainbow and Greens is a political movement, which embodies a new ecological politics.

It is embodied in its organisational and administrative style, which is planned in accordance with the principles of ecological politics. While it is based upon participatory political ideas and decentralisation, we proposed original policies in seven areas in order to re-establish democracy. These areas are environment, public investment, gender relations, social welfare, education, security, and economy and employment. This means that we are developing new policies towards an alternative society. In the economy and employment, for example, we have set several different goals based upon economic and labour policies for environment and peoples' everyday lives. They includes, to secure employment by work-sharing, to achieve 35 weekly working hour, to create more jobs by promoting welfare industries, to restore local economies and job opportunities by revitalising the primary industry, to introduce a direct income compensation system for those working in the industries related to destruction of forests, to replace environmentally destructive public investment with conservational public spending.

The current Japanese politics has not been centred upon any principle or concrete policies. It is unfortunate that it is not principle or concrete policies that mobilise people in Japan. It is rather some old-fashioned interests such as family relations and local development. As we noted above, however, the stories of the election in the Nagano prefecture and Tokyo shows that the decrease in political influence of such old styled interests, and that there is tendency in citizens to evaluate candidates with their political principles and policies. We declare ecological politics, and attempt to persuade voters by making the policies more practical and applicable to the reality.

The Rainbow and Greens as a member of the Global Greens

We all agreed at the second Annual General Meeting in Tokyo, in August 2000 that we will participate in the Global Green Conference and the world wide green network, which will be set up at the Conference. In the area of globalisation in which capital and money freely transcend state boundaries, the issues we have to deal with are also becoming more global in its scale. We believe that we are in need to establish alliance with ecological politics of other nations. Since the Rainbow and Greens is a newly born movement, it needs to learn experiences, knowledge and information from all the other participants of the Conference. We are willing to start the international co-operation with colleagues of the world ecological politics.

We have not yet obtain a seat in the national diet, nor have we any substantial experience to form a cabinet. However, as a member of the Global Greens, we would like to increase our political influence, and to contribute the world wide protest against the globalisation of capital and finance as well.