By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, January 10, 2010; A16
TOKYO -- Shrewd, stern and baggy-eyed, Ichiro Ozawa has prowled the back rooms of power in Tokyo for more than four decades. Last year, he masterminded an election victory that crushed the political party that ruled Japan for nearly half a century.
Yet after the historic vote, as his Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) took power, Ozawa chose not to join the government. Instead, he served officially as his party's secretary general and unofficially as its all-powerful political wizard. The local press dubbed him the "shadow shogun."
Now, with the new government stumbling, its poll numbers sinking and another national election looming, Ozawa, 67, has stepped out of the shadows and is beginning to wave his wand.
He played a major role in undermining Finance Minister Hirohisa Fujii, who resigned last week. Ozawa has also handed down directives on social spending and highways toll rates to Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, whose leadership ability he has reportedly criticized in private.
In a remarkable display of foreign-policy chutzpah, Ozawa last month led a 645-member, five-airplane pilgrimage of lawmakers and other leaders on a visit to Beijing, where he met with Chinese Premier Hu Jintao.
The DJP has questioned the long-held traditional alliance between Japan and the United States, with Hatoyama so far refusing to follow through on relocation of a U.S. Marine base on Okinawa sought by Washington.
In Washington, Ozawa is viewed with a mixture of alarm and understanding. Some in the Obama administration portray him as a Rasputin-like character plotting to push Japan away from the United States. Others understand him as an old-time pol, more interested in winning elections than in international affairs. Ozawa, they recall, was a mastermind behind the defeat of the once powerful Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in 1993. That victory proved short-lived, though, when Ozawa botched the handling of a coalition government.
Asked to explain Ozawa's new role in governing Japan, the head of the DPJ's international department, Yukihisa Fujita, said in a statement: "Government policies are overseen by the cabinet led by prime minister Hatoyama, and party affairs by the secretary general Ozawa. There is a division of labor with close cooperation and leadership between the two."
But Japan's two most influential newspapers -- which are not friendly with the new government -- have detected a new form of two-headed rule. The Yomiuri newspaper calls it "dual-governance." The Asahi suggests "there is another prime minister outside the cabinet."
Japan's election schedule virtually guarantees that Ozawa's relative influence will expand into mid-summer, when there is a vote for the upper house of parliament. The DPJ needs to gain just seven seats in that 242-member chamber to win a majority, which would give it commanding control over parliament for several years. The party already dominates the lower house, and analysts here agree that Ozawa is likely to lead his party to another sizable win.
There is, however, a legal roadblock confronting the ever-more-visible DPJ shogun. The Tokyo prosecutor's office wants to question Ozawa about $4.31 million from his political fund that was used to buy real estate in Tokyo six years ago. Ozawa agreed this week to meet with prosecutors, although the seriousness of his legal difficulties over the unreported land purchase is not yet clear.
The investigation is an echo of a separate fundraising investigation that last year forced Ozawa to resign as head of the DPJ and forfeit his chance of becoming prime minister. In that case, as in the current one, Ozawa said his aides acted without his knowledge.
There are questions, though, about the political motivations of the Tokyo prosecutor's office, which has old allegiances to the Liberal Democratic Party, the former ruling party.
This winter, the rise of Ozawa's public profile has roughly coincided with the falling poll numbers and perceived leadership failures of Hatoyama, who took over the DPJ last summer after Ozawa stepped down as party leader.
Hatoyama's approval numbers have plummeted in the past three months from above 80 percent to below 50 percent. Part of the reason, according to newspaper polls, is indecision on key policy matters. Still, his party remains far more popular than the LDP, which has collapsed since losing the election in August and is now supported by less than 20 percent of voters.
Ozawa is a champion of the DPJ's most popular new policies, pushing to strip policymaking authority from bureaucrats and give it to elected officials. He has also forced increased transparency in how the government spends public money, opening up a process that for decades was kept behind closed doors, with decisions often made by senior bureaucrats who later took jobs in companies that received public money.
"The people see Ozawa's toughness and admire his emotional strength," said Harumi Arima, a political analyst in Tokyo. "It is because of him that people feel the DPJ will actually change things and make thing better. They feel Hatoyama is a weakling."
Other analysts say that while Ozawa is unquestionably a powerful voice in the government, he is not the only one -- and that he shares control with Hatoyama and the new finance minister and former deputy prime minister, Naoto Kan. "To say that Ozawa has single control doesn't reflect reality," said Koichi Nakano, an assistant professor of political science at Sophia University in Tokyo.
Still, there is a perception that Ozawa, if Hatoyama continues to stumble, may take over the government after the summer election. "Deep down, Ozawa wants to win that election and become prime minister," said Arima. "He wants the honor, as well a mark in history that he has changed Japan."
Special correspondent Akiko Yamamoto and staff writer John Pomfret in Washington contributed to this report.
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