61130    "On the day that marked a new era in the political arena in Japan, as expected the tense faces of the enthusiastic audience peered out row after row in the tightly crammed public gallery of both Houses...."

61131    In its morning edition for March 30 of that year, the Tokyo Nichi-Nichi Shimbun, the forerunner to the Mainichi Newspaper, reported the enactment of the new law.

61132    The system called "election" is considered by far the best and wisest system among the political systems conceived by humankind.

61133    The electoral system in Japan began in 1889 with the adoption of a mainly single-seat constituency system, and the Universal Suffrage Law for Men is the prototype of what is currently the system coming into place.

61134    The end of the Cold War presented a situation where any political party can come into power, and while Japanese politics has come out of its 38-year domination by the Liberal Democratic Party, at the same time, the new politics has lost sight of the "value" of the political objective to replace the dead-end politics of influence peddling, thus sending Japanese politics as a whole into an aimless state.

61135    Social conditions show a mixture of only two extreme attitudes toward politics: pent-up discontent and avoidance or disenchantment.

61136    The time has come for us to sit down and start to plan on how we will again capture the "value" aspired by politics as well as define specific objectives that have real relevance in the context of post Cold War world and the twenty-first century.

61137    It just so happens that this year is 1995, the "year of choice."

61138    For a start, we want to go over the political mechanism, which is completely overlooked yet it is naturally important.

61139    First of all, are not both politicians and voters assuming that Diet members are "agents" as opposed to "representatives" ?

61140    Are we not forgetting that Diet members represent the entire nation as opposed to being mandated by individual constituents or regions?

61141    Additionally, have we misplaced the mechanism where, unlike the bureaucratic institution, people can have direct control over politics?

61142    You may say, "Why, it's so obvious."

61143    However, when we trace the history of how politics have become distant from us, this is where we arrive.

61144    Because we have this misconception that Diet members are "agents" working for regions, individuals, or industries, our electoral system has been reduced to "the best and wisest system but distorted" where those who have bridges and roads built in their own ridings to benefit industries and the like are considered "good Diet members."