By Natsumi Mizumoto
     In the heated election four years ago, young voters who normally skip the polls jumped on then Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's reform bandwagon and afforded his Liberal Democratic Party an overwhelming victory.
     Now that a change of administration is on the table, they may well show up again in the Aug. 30 general election, more likely this time to the advantage of the Democratic Party of Japan, though not necessarily out of enthusiasm for the main opposition party, said advocacy group leaders of the same generation.
     ''This will be, in my view, the most crucial and meaningful election in postwar Japan. I'm excited,'' said Kensuke Harada, a 23-year-old student at the University of Tokyo who was below the voting age of 20 in the previous House of Representatives election in 2005.
     ''Whether or not the administration will change or Japan will be better for it, I don't know, but I'm expecting some sort of change in trend. I'm lucky to have reached an age when I can cast a ballot,'' he said.
     Yotaro Kobayashi, a 28-year-old researcher at a private think tank, and 35-year-old entrepreneur Daigo Sato said people of their age brackets like to see things change, and must have realized through the 2005 election that their individual votes can help sway the outcome.
     Sharing a sense of crisis that the low turnout of younger voters is a major reason why the world of politics has hardly addressed their generations' interests but tends to serve the elderly, the three are campaigning to boost the participation rate in different nonpartisan groups.
     Harada is spearheading a project to have young voters register with an e-mail reminder service of the voting date at the website of his student group ''ivote,'' by taking to the streets with fellow students and visiting other student circles of various kinds.
     As a key member of a group named Rights that has called for lowering the voting age, Kobayashi drew up with like-minded young experts in other areas a proposed manifesto for younger generations in the hope of winning attention from political parties.
     Sato has helped college students take an interest in politics through his nonprofit organization ''dot-jp,'' which runs an internship program and has arranged for more than 9,000 students over a decade to work at the offices of lawmakers and local assembly members.
     ''The reason many young people don't go to the polls is not because they are indifferent to politics. They have their own opinions, discontent and things to say,'' Sato said. ''If they think something would change, they will take action.''
     In the 2005 election, the turnout of people in their 20s and 30s jumped around 10 percentage points to 46.20 percent and 59.79 percent, respectively, from 2003, though still a far cry from 83.08 percent of voters in their 60s and 69.48 percent of those aged 70 and older, internal affairs ministry data show.
     While admitting their preference to see a change of government, however, neither Kobayashi nor Harada expressed all-out support for the DPJ and were rather skeptical about its policy platform.
     ''Having discussed the manifestos released by parties with other members, not a few of them preferred the policies of the LDP to my surprise,'' Harada said. ''The mood was that after all, they don't think the DPJ will make Japan better, but nothing will change unless power is once given to it.''
     ''Young people are more responsive to a change,'' Sato said. ''Although they have had a hard time and policies to take care of them are again not an issue, they always side with a call for change.''
     They hope a higher turnout by young voters will help draw the political spotlight to the problem of the unfair burdens being placed on the younger parts of the population, such as the snowballing public debt and social security costs, as society rapidly grays.
     ''Young people all know that we will have to pay the price for such dole-out policies as the cash handout'' which the government distributed earlier this year to each household, Kobayashi said. ''Unless we raise our voices, Japan will become unsustainable.''
     As a reason to expect a relatively high turnout in the upcoming election, he said, ''The previous election showed that under the single-seat constituency system, even a slight gap of, say, 51 to 49 can affect the end result so much, while voting or not voting had made no difference before.''
     The young, however, only have a little more than five years left to change the situation and have their voices heard in politics, warns Waseda University political professor Tomonori Morikawa.
     Morikawa argues that as a result of the low youth turnout, policies have been formulated in such a way that people aged 24 to 34 will suffer a roughly 25 million yen deficit in their lifetime balance of tax and social security duties to benefits, while people in their 70s enjoy a 15 million yen surplus, meaning a maximum generation gap of 40 million yen.
     He had thought the problem might be solved if more young people went to the polling stations, but recently found that the window of opportunity will close in 2015, when the whole population from 20 to 35 will be outnumbered by voters aged 70 and older as long as their turnout stays around 70 percent, he said.
     ''The coming five years is the last chance. Unless young people make a move, Japan will not change forever,'' said Morikawa, who has felt particularly alarmed since Prime Minister Taro Aso turned his back on Koizumi's fiscal austerity, which he said would have helped reduce the pain for future generations.
     Belonging to the last age group not to lose much in the lifetime balance of public payments, the 53-year-old professor said he now wants to encourage seniors to turn their eyes to the bills for the benefits they now enjoy that will be passed on to their offspring.
     Sato said the strict and complex Public Offices Election Law is also to blame for the low turnout of young voters, having himself bumped into extensive restrictions in organizing activities to boost the rate.
     ''If the law only controls such corrupt practices as vote-buying and liberalizes all other efforts, candidates can do every kind of things out of the box to make their campaigns attractive to citizens,'' he said.
==Kyodo