In a democracy, the nation’s representatives are in principle chosen by the majority of the electorate. In practice, however, if the actual voter turnout is, say, 70%, the majority is only 36% of the voters. That is, you can rule the country if you get 36% of the electorate to vote for you. Representatives who win the majority of the vote thanks to a special group of supporters will push policies beneficial to those supporters, creating an extremely solid support base. There are quite a few people in power who practice politics to benefit special interest groups that support them or their own party, rather than for the benefit of the people as a whole. That’s why in many cases people who didn’t vote for them or those who supported the opposition do not stand to benefit. In other words, the tax money paid by the remaining 64% – those who don’t belong to special interest groups – will be used for mainly such policies. Meanwhile, there’s a tendency in Japan to choose leaders of organizations in advance through discussion, rather than by voting. To pave the way for the success of these discussions, a “nemawashi ” (a sounding out) is conducted of all the parties involved. The nemawashi generates the feeling that everyone’s standpoint has been respected allowing people to make concessions. There’s no bad feeling afterwards as the opinions of those who weren’t chosen were respected and conflicts arising from differences of opinion are thus avoided.