Katsu's drinking efforts

This story has only been told once. I had drinks and dinner with Katsu a few weeks ago, in Shinjuku, and was reminded of this story.

Back in 1992 I was visiting Tokyo as I do annually.  My good friend Murayama, Katsu took me out several nights in a row to the standard tiny five seat bars on the upper floors of seven story buildings.  This was my chance to see Katsu, my only chance that visit.  He spent several months going to these bars every night recruiting the owners. 

Katsu had formerly been a main staffer in the Japanese Socialist Party which was now called the Social Democrat Party.  What Katsu was doing was trying to talk the women bar owners into putting their names on the Tokyo ballot for the up-coming National Diet (Congress) election.  The way Japanese elections worked in that period, five or six candidates names appeared on every district ballot for each party and the voters choose up to five names, which could include a mixture of parties.  Katsu was trying to fill up all the local ballots with a list of the full five names.  He was desperate and was trying  to get any working person to run for legislative office. 

 Katsu failed to get more than 2-3 names in all the districts he was trying to fill.  If he had succeeded he would have changed history.  In July 1993 the following summer's election saw a wild swing in favor of the Social Democrats and other anti-LDP parties who would have filled up the Diet if they had enough candidates listed on the ballots, but as it was, all the candidates that they did have listed were elected. There just weren't anymore names on the ballots for the voters to select, so the Social Democrat Party and their allies in the political movement didn't completely win.

That July was the first year since 1955 that the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was voted out of office, by a coalition of Katsu's Social Democrats and other anti-LDP parties. The big issue for Japan at the time was strong opposition to any military or peacekeeping efforts outside Japan, and the Recruit scandal.

The following year I got to hold a meeting with all the Social Democrat Party Congressional representatives in the Diet. They included all young women bar owners whom Katsu had talked into running for office.