Aug. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Sho Sogame, like many young Japanese, says he doesn’t plan to vote in this month’s national election because politics is dominated by old men with no interest in him.

“It’s such an old person’s society,” said Sogame, a 25- year-old Tokyo hairdresser who didn’t vote in the 2005 contest. “If they had straightforward policies aimed at young people, I’d pay more attention.”

Campaigning for Japan’s Aug. 30 election kicked off yesterday, with polls showing the ruling Liberal Democratic Party may lose power for just the second time since 1955.

While youth apathy isn’t unique to Japan, the stakes are higher in a nation with the longest life expectancy and lowest birth rate among major economies. Sogame is among a growing number of people not paying into a failing pension plan that will need to support almost a quarter of the population by 2014.

“The current system will definitely go bankrupt and our generation will definitely lose out,” said Kensuke Harada, 23, president of ivote, a student organization that encourages young people to vote. “Policies needs to be enacted that take into consideration my age-group as well as Japan’s decreasing birthrate and falling pension payments.”

Japanese in their sixties cast almost twice as many votes as those in their twenties at the last lower-house election, creating an incentive for politicians to court older voters. More than 10 percent of lawmakers are aged 70 or older.

Workplace Laws

Workplace laws are one example of how policies favor the elderly to the detriment of society, said Robert Feldman, head of Japan economic research at Morgan Stanley in Tokyo. Because companies can’t fire older workers even when they’re unproductive, young people are increasingly relegated to temporary positions without benefits.

“Privileges for the older people in society are coming at the expense of the young,” he said. “If I were a young Japanese I would be furious about the way older workers are protected at my expense.”

The unemployment rate for people between the ages of 15 and 34 is 7.7 percent in Japan compared with 4.4 percent for those between 45 and 64, according to government data.

With fewer younger people holding down full-time jobs, the pension system is under stress, and Japan’s Health Ministry projects a 20 percent cut in benefits by 2038. About 50 percent of people in their 20s were contributing to the system in 2008, down from 55.4 percent in 2001, according to a government report.

Japanese companies automatically deduct pension contributions from a full-time worker’s salary. Part-time and self-employed workers are asked to make a premium payment on their own, sometimes allowing them to skirt it.

Youth Voters

Given the apathy of young voters, more needs to be done to attract them to the polls, including changing election laws dating back to the 1950s, said Kan Suzuki, 45, an upper house lawmaker with the opposition Democratic Party of Japan. The law bans promotional literature and images once the campaign begins, meaning lawmakers can’t communicate via e-mail and the Internet, he said.

Almost 60 percent of people between the ages of 23 and 28 get political information from the Internet, according to a survey of 120,000 people conducted by MDN Net Survey System.

“It’s an obvious fact that Japanese politicians have placed a disproportionate weight on older people’s opinions simply because of their high turnout in the election,” said Zenko Kurishita, a 26-year-old DPJ member who last month became the youngest person to be elected to the Tokyo legislature.

Defeating Incumbent

Kurishita, who defeated a 70-year-old incumbent after declaring his candidacy nine days before the vote, said his success shows young people can participate. “Before I decided to become a politician, I also felt politics wasn’t related to me at all,” he said.

About 45 percent of young people voted in Japan in 2005, while about 49 percent voted in the 2008 U.S. presidential election, according to data from Japan’s Association for Promoting Fair Elections and the U.S. Census Bureau. Older voters turn out in far larger numbers in Japan; about 82 percent of those between 65 and 74 cast ballots in Japan’s last lower- house election compared with 70 percent in the 2008 U.S. presidential race.

“Politicians can’t help but make policies that favor old people,” said Yuko Kitajima, 26, vice-director of Dot JP, a non-profit organization that seeks to encourage young people to become active by finding them internships with politicians. “Policies that affect younger people always end up being postponed or given smaller budget allocations.”

Drinking Parties

Established last year, ivote, which is run by 11 students from institutions including Tokyo and Chuo Universities, aims to make voting “cool.” It has organized drinking parties with politicians, signing up close to 1,000 people for e-mail alerts.

The Tokyo election board printed election schedules on paper fans and toilet paper as a gimmick to attract young people. Other local authorities distributed coasters to bars that displayed voting instructions.

Attracting young people to politics is essential as Japan gets older. At the current rate the nation’s labor force will shrink 16 percent by 2030 from 66.6 million workers in 2006, according to the health ministry.

“With the emphasis only on policies aimed at the elderly, more and more young people will ultimately end up feeling disillusioned with politics, said Yuriko Koike, 57, a lawmaker and former LDP defense minister. “This is a vicious cycle that we’re falling into,” she said in a column on her Web site.

To contact the reporter responsible for this story: Anna Kitanaka in Tokyo akitanaka@bloomberg.net; Momoko Nishijima in Tokyo at mnishijima@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: August 18, 2009 20:56 EDT