4. Results

The following paragraphs present the three most frequent types of assumed ineffective campaigning observed, with the first resulting from weather conditions. Both election campaigns took place in the summer, which in the urban areas of Tōkyō and Kanagawa can be physically taxing. Still, many candidates conducted policy speeches in the midday sun in front of train and subway stations or next to busy roads. Their audience was scant: only a few people passed the campaign teams and hardly anyone stopped to listen. In Tōkyō's Shimokitazawa, for example, Nakamura Keiichirō, candidate for the People's New Party (PNP, kokumin shintō), delivered a policy speech, standing in the sun in front of the train station. A thermometer at a nearby building read 38C. Only four passers-by stopped and listened for less than a minute. Other candidates were hardly more successful when they delivered speeches outdoors on hot or rainy days.

During the 2007 HC-election, Hosaka Sanzō (LDP) had parked his campaign truck next to a covered shopping street called ‘Sun Mall’ in Tōkyō's Nakano. Four local LDP politicians were standing on his campaign truck, taking turns to deliver speeches of about three to five minutes. Although the number of passers-by was clearly larger than in Shimokitazawa, and some smokers were standing at a public ashtray not far from the campaign truck, only a handful of people paused to listen. Two of the four local politicians did not mention Hosaka in their speeches but instead emphasized their own name and achievements for the constituency. The other two mentioned Hosaka twice, but also used the opportunity to stress their own political agenda. The only people applauding – and very briefly at that – were the politicians themselves. Hosaka was not present during these speeches.

During the 2009 HR election, several candidates used Azamino station in Kanagawa to address their voters. On different occasions I observed Liberal Democrat Fukuda Muneyuki, ‘Your Party’ candidate Eda Kenji, and Kojima Hiroyuki from the ‘Happiness Realization Party’. All three of them chose a speech of up to 15 minutes to address thousands of people passing during the morning rush hour. While in the evening, some commuters would wait for their busses and possibly listen to the politicians for a few minutes, the time most commuters spent in the morning within the acoustic reach of the campaign megaphones, however, extended to a maximum of 15 seconds. The content of the speeches was clearly lost on the audience as passers-by would catch only a sentence or two. As the speaking candidates also hardly mentioned their own name in the course of their speeches, the opportunity to raise name recognition was squandered.

These are three typical examples that serve as illustrations of the many instances in which apparent ineffective campaigning occurred.Footnote ⁹ To confirm this impression I had tried to conceive of at least one alternative campaign instrument that would be more effective in the observed situation. In this way I could be more confident that I had not only identified probably ineffective activities, but also that there were better alternatives. The following list juxtaposes both.

1. 1. Speeches or electoral chanting during periods of rain or great heat

2. Alternative: Campaign team moves like a caravan through covered shopping streets

3. 2. Local politician rarely mentions candidate in his supporting speech

4. Alternative: Repeated, short messages including the candidate's name

5. 3. Long policy speech during rush hour in front of train station

6. Alternative: Repeated, short messages including the candidate's name

Equipped with concrete examples of apparently ineffective campaigning, I entered the second stage of my research and approached practitioners with my observations. The answers I received showed among other things that (i) there are different kinds of effectiveness, (ii) consequently, not everything that appeared ineffective was ineffective, and (iii) the question of effectiveness is not always considered during campaigns.

When asked about the source of their knowledge regarding election campaigns, all candidates replied that they had acquired it from watching or participating in previous election campaigns. First-time candidates such as Marukawa Tamayo (LDP) were supported by professional campaign staff and managers delegated from politicians who were not running at that election. Independent candidate Kawada Ryūhei also based his 2007 HC campaign preparation on what he had observed in previous campaigns, but also took advice from his mother, who had been a national lawmaker for the SDP. She also introduced veteran practitioners to Kawada's team. In addition, his campaign was shaped by the experience of activists who had previously supported other SDP candidates and had joined Kawada's team ahead of the 2007 election. In comparison to other independent candidates, he consequently enjoyed the support of a relatively large and well-versed group.

Campaign tactics employed by candidates fielded by the Happiness Realization Party (HRP) were standard instruments also applied by the established parties. Although their party headquarters had provided HRP campaigners with printed (flyers, manifestos, etc.) and other campaign material, they had hardly been counseled on how to conduct a campaign. The very young party simply did not have the personnel and time to do so. Instead, local teams and candidates, both recruited out of the religious mother organization ‘The Science of Happiness’ (kōfuku no kagaku), had decided on their tactics based on their material resources and what they knew from other campaigns.

The teams’ respective understanding of who the main target groups were occasionally led to differences in campaign tactics. For example, the multi-member HC district of Tōkyō, with five seats up for grabs and more than 10 million voters, required a concentration on particular target groups. The campaign of Marukawa Tamayo, for example, clearly targeted young voters and male voters. Counting on the visual attractiveness of Ms. Marukawa and her moderate popularity as a TV announcer, her campaign featured relatively few and short policy speeches, but a lot of personal contact and hand shaking. Ironically, possibly the most effective campaign instrument was not a creation of her team, but that of voters: men in particular frequently approached her with their cell phones asking for pictures to be taken with her.

While the selection of target groups sometimes distinguished campaigns, virtually none of the 20 respondents was aware of the existence of any empirical study regarding the effectiveness of campaign instruments. Leading staff members agreed that the advice and common knowledge circulating among practitioners consisted of passed-on experience and was largely the result of assimilation in which candidates had compared their campaigns to those of others.

When asked about the perceived effectiveness of electoral campaigning, 17 of the interviewees explicitly criticized the Public Office Election Law for preventing campaigning in Japan to fulfill its democratic purpose, namely offering voters informed choices by presenting policies and discussing them. Restrictions on the tools allowed would partly force campaigners to resort to second-best strategies that indeed would often not be effective in the sense of appealing to and reaching voters.

Confronted with examples that I had observed and considered to be ineffective, candidates reacted differently. Ten of the 12 candidates who had conducted speeches or electoral chanting during periods of rain or great heat doubted the effectiveness of these activities. They were aware of the scant audience they had enjoyed and five of them even questioned whether their campaign planning had always been appropriate. A first-time candidate told me after his successful bid for an HC seat in 2007 that in future campaigns he would reduce the number of outdoor speeches, which he considered to be of little use, and conduct more indoor meetings with organized voters instead. An unsuccessful candidate of the 2007 HC election stated that the only effective outdoor speeches of his campaign had been the ones in close proximity to big events, such as baseball games at Tōkyō Dome. Like seven other interviewees, however, both men pointed out that outdoor speeches had been a major ingredient of campaigns for many decades and therefore were understood to be a standard technique.

Five practitioners met my question with the response that it was still better to reach very few voters than none at all. They and others also explained that the schedule for the day sometimes prevented teams from changing place, time, or electoral instruments. As a result, single parts of a campaign are understood to be less effective than originally expected, even before they are launched. The will and the ability to modify plans and to look for alternatives obviously differ from team to team and day to day. In many cases, however, practitioners seem to hold on to their schedule regardless of the degree of effectiveness they can achieve. When external support is part of a specific electoral performance, for example, alterations in the prearranged course of action seems particularly difficult. One candidate explained that although one of his electoral speeches hardly attracted any listeners, he had to continue because the head of his party was scheduled to arrive – he, however, eventually failed to show.

Surely, the (in)effectiveness of a campaign tool varies depending on time, place, and target group. Some ‘audiences’ are more perceptive than others. For example, during my field research in 2009, I conducted ten counts of 15 minutes duration each to capture the pick-up rate of a candidate's campaign leaflet by passers-by (Table 1). I selected five train stations and conducted one count each in the morning between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m., and one in the evening rush hour between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. While the lowest pick-up rate was 3.21%, the highest amounted to 15.57%. These results confirm the impression of practitioners, namely that the perceptiveness of ‘crowds’ with regards to electoral campaigns varies considerably.

Table 1.

Pick-up rate of election flyers

Another case in which one kind of electoral activity developed a different degree of effectiveness due to its target group could be found in the campaign of Ueda Isamu. The Kōmeitō politician tried to defend his HR seat in an SMD in Kanagawa during the 2009 campaign and was often spurred on by as many as 50 to 100 spectators. They all appeared to have come for the sole purpose of listening to Ueda and were not passers-by who had stopped. Considering the support Kōmeitō candidates usually enjoy from the religious movement Sōka Gakkai and the high degree to which its members are organized, it seemed likely that Ueda's audience also consisted mostly of Gakkai members. Not all of those I approached were willing to answer my question of how they knew that Ueda was campaigning at that particular place at that time, but those who did confirmed that they had learned about the event from the religious organization or fellow Gakkai members. Clearly, for Ueda the challenge of these campaign speeches was first of all to consolidate political mobilization, not to convince voters, to trigger their initial interest, or cement his name in the memory of the audience.

A second type of ineffective campaigning that I asked candidates to comment on consisted of policy speeches delivered at train stations during rush hour. As explained above, not only were the contents of these speeches mostly lost on the audience, but such speeches also wasted the opportunity to raise the recognition of the candidate's name among voters. In explaining their actions, all candidates said they considered it important to present political convictions, with eight of them adding that this should be as important as, or even was tantamount to, maximizing effectiveness. When asked about the fact that hardly anyone stopped to listen, six of them replied that they would alternate between repetition of their name and policy speeches, while three said they did not consider the question of effectiveness at all times. One candidate explained that he hoped commuters would remember one of his policy proposals and later check on his website for details. When questioned how commuters would know his name, he referred to the flags his team put up at the station, to the pamphlets his assistants would distribute, and his repetitive mentioning of his name. Three observations of this candidate's campaign speeches at train stations showed, however, that four of his six flags only carried a slogan and no name, his assistants had little success in distributing pamphlets to passers-by, and contrary to the candidate's statement he hardly interrupted his policy speeches to mention his own name.

The four local politicians I interviewed explained they hoped to ‘transfer’ the support of their voters to the national candidate. By stressing the good partnership and cooperation between themselves and the candidate, local politicians would portray the latter as favorable for improving the people's life in the electoral district. They regularly appeared as speakers alongside the national candidate. In 15 of the 22 cases in which I observed such performances, local politicians did not restrict themselves to simple messages and repeating the candidates’ names, but delivered speeches of five to ten minutes. In 13 of these speeches, the local politician spent more time talking about his own achievements as praising the actual candidate. This apparent departure from campaign purposes was even more apparent when such speeches were delivered during rush hour to hurrying commuters. Nine of the national candidates shared the expectation that local politicians would be useful in mobilizing voters. The fact that the campaign speeches of local politicians often barely featured the national candidate was partly explained by the desire to present instead (local) policy issues. Eight candidates stressed that they were generally grateful to local politicians for supporting their campaign and that letting them talk about their own achievements would create an additional incentive for them to join the campaign. Maintaining a good working relationship was considered important, even though it came at a price.

These answers suggest that some campaign activities are not only directed toward voters but also toward the campaign organization itself. Some of the apparently ineffective activities appear in a different light once they are looked at from this internal perspective. When asked how their campaign performance affected their teams, all candidates confirmed that they tried to motivate their staff by being a good role model in terms of dedication, commitment, and fighting spirit. The Japanese term usually mentioned in this context was the verb ‘ganbaru’ which carries the meaning of ‘relentless fighting’ and ‘never giving up’. All candidates added that this was an important task as head of a campaign team and that they did their best to fulfil the expectations of their staff in this respect.

This apolitical secondary virtue also affects the evaluation of campaign speeches, because it is believed to attract voters. Dabney (Reference Dabney, Martin and Steel2008) used the term ‘campaign performance’ to describe the attempts of candidates to leave voters with the impression of being highly dedicated and accessible. One instrument to stress this dedication is to put up a signboard with the number of outdoor speeches the politician has already delivered. In Dabney's study, Usami Noboru claimed 2,500 speeches; I observed Fukuda Mineyuki crossing the 3,000 mark.

Local politicians as well as staff members confirmed the significance of ‘ganbaru’ as a means to motivate the team as a whole. They also agreed that a lack of commitment on the part of the candidate would probably diminish the motivation of staffers, especially in those cases were team members were spending even more time on the campaign trail, making preparations beforehand in the mornings, and clearing up at night. All candidates expressed a feeling of obligation not only to return the favor of the many helping hands, but also to prove that they themselves were worth the support. When asked for concrete examples of ‘ganbaru’, practitioners mentioned, among others, those campaign activities that were otherwise understood to be mostly ineffective: persisting to campaign in the heat or pouring rain, or addressing public spaces even when there was hardly any audience.