Starting Points: Yukio Hatoyama

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Sep 16, 2009

Japan sees historic change, Hatoyama elected prime minister, forms DPJ-led Cabinet - Daily Yomiuri)

Democratic Party of Japan leader Yukio Hatoyama, standing, bows as he is applauded by fellow lawmakers after he was elected the nation's 60th prime minister at the House of Representatives plenary session Wednesday.

Democratic Party of Japan President Yukio Hatoyama was elected the nation's 60th prime minister in a special Diet session convened Wednesday. He officially announced the lineup of his Cabinet later in the day.

Hatoyama formed the nation's 93rd cabinet, which was then sworn in at an attestation ceremony at the Imperial Palace, launching the DPJ-led government in coalition with the Social Democratic Party and the People's New Party.

It is the first time for the Liberal Democratic Party to hand over the reins of government in 16 years.

The 172nd Diet session was convened Wednesday, with the session to run through Saturday.

Hatoyama was named prime minister at the plenary session of the House of Representatives that started at 1 p.m. and then at the House of Councillors plenary session that started at 2:30 p.m.--in each case by a majority vote including votes by the SDP and PNP members.

Before Hatoyama was named prime minister at the lower house, the DPJ's Takahiro Yokomichi was elected the speaker of the lower house and former Defense Minister Seishiro Eto of the LDP was elected the vice speaker.

With regard to the Cabinet posts, DPJ Acting President Naoto Kan was named deputy prime minister and national strategy minister. Kan also will serve as the state minister in charge of economic and fiscal policy until the government abolishes the existing Council on Fiscal and Economic Policy.

Hatoyama appointed Hirofumi Hirano, chief of the DPJ executives secretariat, as chief cabinet secretary, and former party Secretary General Katsuya Okada as foreign minister.

DPJ Vice President Seiji Maehara was named construction and transport minister and will also serve as state minister for disaster management and Okinawa and the northern territories. Akira Nagatsuma, acting chairman of the DPJ Policy Research Committee, was appointed health, labor and welfare minister.

Other DPJ members who were given portfolios included the party's top adviser Hirohisa Fujii, who was named finance minister; party Vice President Tatsuo Kawabata who became education, science and technology minister; and Kazuhiro Haraguchi who was chosen as internal affairs and communications minister. Hatoyama appointed upper house member Keiko Chiba as justice minister. Policy Research Committee Chairman Masayuki Naoshima was given the post of economy, trade and industry minister, and Vice President Toshimi Kitazawa was named defense minister.

The posts of deputy chief cabinet secretaries for parliamentary affairs were given to Yorihisa Matsuno from the lower house, and Koji Matsui from the upper house.

From the DPJ's coalition partners, SDP leader Mizuho Fukushima entered the Cabinet as state minister in charge of consumer affairs and the declining birthrate. Fukushima's portfolio as state minister also covers gender equality and food safety issues.

Under a ruling coalition agreement, PNP leader Shizuka Kamei was named state minister in charge of financial services and postal reform.

Former Justice Minister Hiroshi Nakai was named chairman of the National Public Safety Commission and state minister in charge of abduction issues.

Former Policy Research Committee Chairman Yoshito Sengoku was appointed state minister in charge of the newly established administrative renewal council.

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Aso Cabinet resigns

The Cabinet of Prime Minister Taro Aso resigned Wednesday, ending its administration about a year after it was formed in September last year.

At a press conference held after a special Cabinet meeting at the Prime Minister's Office, Aso said the new government should promote economic measures and making a contribution to the international community.

"The economic recovery is only halfway through. I hope [the new government] makes an effort to solidify the economic recovery. I greatly hope it will appropriately deal with terrorism, piracy" and other international issues, he said.

Looking back over his 358 days as prime minister, Aso said, "It was a short period of time, but I did my best for Japan."

"I was able to respond promptly to a global recession said to be the worst in a century. I think I can be proud of myself for implementing drastic economic measures, such as compiling four budgets," he said.

Referring to the Liberal Democratic Party's presidential election to be held Sept. 28, Aso said: "We should unite [the party]. Someone who can do the job based on an analysis of what the problem was for the LDP" is desirable as the new party leader.

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NEW CABINET (Sept. 16, 2009)

Prime Minister / Yukio Hatoyama, 62

Deputy Prime Minister and National Strategy Minister / Naoto Kan, 62

Internal Affairs and Communications Minister / Kazuhiro Haraguchi, 50

Justice Minister / Keiko Chiba, 61

Foreign Minister / Katsuya Okada, 56

Finance Minister / Hirohisa Fujii, 77

Education, Science and Technology Minister / Tatsuo Kawabata, 64

Health, Labor and Welfare Minister / Akira Nagatsuma, 49

Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister / Hirotaka Akamatsu, 61

Economy, Trade and Industry Minister / Masayuki Naoshima, 63

Construction and Transport Minister / Seiji Maehara, 47

Environment Minister / Sakihito Ozawa, 55

Defense Minister / Toshimi Kitazawa, 71

Chief Cabinet Secretary / Hirofumi Hirano, 60

National Public Safety Commission Chairman / Hiroshi Nakai, 67

State Minister in Charge of Financial Services and Postal Reform / Shizuka Kamei, 72*

State Minister in Charge of Consumer Affairs and Declining Birthrate / Mizuho Fukushima, 53**

Administrative Renewal Minister / Yoshito Sengoku, 63

(* People's New Party, ** Social Democratic Party)

(Sep. 16, 2009)

Sep 13, 2009

Taking Helm in Japan, Party Is Wary of Divisions - NYTimes.com

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

By MARTIN FACKLER

TOKYO — As the newly elected Democratic Party works to assemble what will be only the second government in Japan’s postwar history not to be led by the Liberal Democratic Party, it is treading carefully to avoid infighting that could split the ideologically diverse party or drive a wedge between it and its coalition allies.

Since smashing the Liberal Democrats’ nearly uninterrupted half-century monopoly on power two weeks ago, the center-left Democrats and their leader, Yukio Hatoyama, 62, have hurried to fill top posts in the party and his incoming cabinet and to cobble together a coalition with other parties before their government’s formal accession to power on Sept. 16.

The party is working under unrelenting scrutiny from the news media and from Japanese citizens still affected by the bitter aftertaste of their only previous experience with non-Liberal Democratic rule since 1955. That government, which took power in 1993, lasted less than a year before collapsing amid bickering and defections.

Nightly news broadcasts, which are dominated by detailed coverage of the political maneuverings within the newly formed coalition, frequently feature veterans of the earlier failed government who offer lessons from their brief, rocky time in power.

While there have been no major bumps so far, warning signs are already appearing.

On Wednesday, when Mr. Hatoyama and the heads of two smaller anti-laissez-faire parties, the Social Democratic Party and the People’s New Party, agreed to form a coalition government, they left unresolved disagreements over the status of 50,000 American service members in Japan. Mr. Hatoyama has spoken in vague terms of re-examining the American military bases, while still trying to remain close to Washington, but the leftist Social Democrats want the bases removed.

There have also been signs of division in the Democratic Party since Mr. Hatoyama gave a top party position to one of the party’s most powerful men, Ichiro Ozawa, in what analysts say was an attempt to keep his loyalty. But in doing so, Mr. Hatoyama raised concerns by other Democrats that the party was embracing a shadowy kingmaker whose money-oriented political style closely resembled that of the Liberal Democrats they defeated.

Those critics fear that Mr. Ozawa, 67, will compete with Mr. Hatoyama for control of the party; Mr. Ozawa was a member of the 1993-1994 government, and political analysts have blamed his clashes with other coalition members for contributing to its demise. On Thursday, many Democrats lobbied to have Seiji Maehara, a young proponent of clean politics, included in the new cabinet to help offset Mr. Ozawa’s influence.

Mr. Hatoyama has tried to dispel concerns that he is creating competing centers of power.

“This will not create a dual power structure,” Mr. Hatoyama, the presumptive next prime minister, told reporters. He added that policy would be set by his cabinet and not the party.

Still, the barest hints of fissures within the party have made news in a nation keen to see if the Democrats can pull off the daunting task of essentially dragging the country into a true multiparty system.

The 1993-94 government, which included eight small parties and groups and was first led by Morihiro Hosokawa as prime minister, lasted only 11 months. Its quick collapse drove disappointed Japanese voters back into the arms of the Liberal Democrats, where they stayed until the election.

While there are many differences between now and 1993 — the biggest being the fact that a single, large party, the Democratic Party, has beaten the Liberal Democrats — the mistakes of that earlier government still cast a shadow, according to veterans of that coalition.

“It took 16 years to get this second chance,” Mr. Hosokawa, who retired from politics in 1998, said in an interview. “Lack of cohesiveness has always plagued efforts to build a second big political party.”

Mr. Hosokawa said the Democrats’ main weak point might be their broad manifesto of campaign promises, which would be hard to achieve quickly enough to satisfy Japan’s recession-weary voters. The party is trying to reinvigorate Japan’s sclerotic system of government by empowering elected politicians and consumers over the bureaucracy and industry, and to blunt the pain from globalization with a stronger social safety net.

Instead, Mr. Hosokawa said, focusing on a few high-profile policies would make it easier to keep the party on the same track and offer voters results.

“They need a single flag to stand under,” he said.

Adding to the difficulty will be the fact that Mr. Hatoyama heads a party that is broad and often hazy in its identity.

The party was formed in 1998 as a motley grouping of former Socialists and defectors from the conservative Liberal Democratic Party. Since then, it has tried to forge a unique culture and identity, with mixed success.

By finally winning power, the party has been robbed of its main source of unity, say political analysts and former politicians. The glue that held the Democrats together has been a shared desire to end the Liberal Democrats’ rule.

“The Democrats are like wet, unformed concrete, which still lacks a mold,” said Atsuo Ito, an independent political analyst who wrote a book on the party. “Just holding power may be enough to keep the party together at first, but eventually the party will need shared beliefs to keep from flying apart.”

Sep 2, 2009

Shift in Japan Presents U.S. With a Stranger as a Partner - NYTimes.com

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By MARK LANDLER and MARTIN FACKLER

WASHINGTON — Japan’s landmark election presents the Obama administration with an untested government, creating a new set of imponderables for a White House already burdened by foreign policy headaches in Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea.

Inside the administration, the historic change in Tokyo is raising concerns that Japan may back away from supporting key American priorities like the war in Afghanistan or the redeployment of American troops in Asia, according to senior officials.

Specifically, the newly elected Democratic Party says it may recall the Japanese naval forces from a mission to refuel American warships near Afghanistan. And it wants to reopen an agreement to relocate a Marine airfield on Okinawa, which requires Japan to pick up much of the cost for moving thousands of Marines to Guam.

The victory of the Democrats on Sunday means the White House must deal, for the first time in decades, with a Japanese government that is a complete stranger, and one that has expressed blunt criticism of the United States. The party’s leader and presumptive prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, recently spoke out against American-led globalization and called for a greater Japanese focus on Asia.

Despite the party’s campaign rhetoric, its leaders insist they will not threaten the alliance with the United States, particularly when Japan faces a fast-rising China and a nuclear-armed North Korea. Senior American officials said they expected Japan to remain a bulwark in Asia, even noting that the new government, unburdened by history, could play a more central role in negotiating with North Korea.

But for the most part, the United States is perplexed by what one official described as a “seismic event,” with unknown consequences for one of its most important relationships.

“The election of a new party could produce new ways of doing things, which we will have to adjust to,” said a senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the matter. “You’ll have this period of unpredictability.”

The big question many in Washington are asking is whether the vote was a harbinger of a deeper change in Japan, away from its historic dependence on the United States.

“There is a fear of dramatic change in the U.S.-Japan alliance,” said Michael Auslin, an expert on Japanese foreign policy at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. “No one knows what will happen next, or even who to talk to for answers.”

The Democratic Party struck a chord with its talk of improving ties with China and other neighbors, reflecting the fact that Japan’s $5 trillion economy has grown more dependent on commerce with its neighbors.

Fears of Japanese drift seemed to be confirmed last week when an article by Mr. Hatoyama, excerpted and translated from a Japanese journal, appeared on the Web site of The New York Times. It stirred a hornet’s nest in Washington by casting Japan’s embattled economy as the victim of American-inspired free-market fundamentalism. Yet it also stressed the importance of the American alliance.

Mr. Hatoyama’s views sent many in Washington’s diplomatic establishment scurrying to learn more about him and the Democrats. That highlighted a problem: While American officials and academics have spent decades cultivating close ties with the Liberal Democrats, who have governed Japan for most of the last half century, they have built few links to the opposition.

Some Japan experts said it would be a mistake to read too much into Mr. Hatoyama’s remarks, and Japanese officials privately conveyed that same caution to the Obama administration.

“It was an indication they still haven’t figured out what they’re going to do in power,” said Michael J. Green, a professor of international relations at Georgetown University who served on the National Security Council during the last Bush administration. “This could get confused and dysfunctional for a while.”

Stung by the reaction, Mr. Hatoyama appears to be back-pedaling and engaging in damage control. On Monday night, he said he had not intended for the article to appear abroad, and said it was being misinterpreted. “If you read the entire essay, you will understand that it is definitely not expressing anti-American ideas,” he said.

Professor Green noted that in many ways, relations between the United States and Japan were smoother now than in years past because the trade disputes of the 1980s and 1990s were largely settled.

He said the new government would find that some of its proposals, like reopening talks on the relocation of the Futenma Marine airfield on Okinawa, were unrealistic, given the years it took to negotiate that deal. For the Obama administration, he said, the challenge will be to give Japan’s new leaders a face-saving way to back down.

Japan, experts said, could play a more muscular role in talks with North Korea if, as expected, the Democrats turn down the heat on the issue of Japanese abducted by North Korea decades ago, a perennial sticking point for the Liberal Democrats.

And Obama administration officials said they were eager to dispel perceptions in Japan that a better relationship with China would somehow undermine its alliance with the United States.

“We have no desire to see our defense commitment tested by battle,” a senior official said. “We see no contradiction between Japan reducing frictions with China and a strong Japan-U.S. alliance.”

In recent years, many Japanese have thought the United States took the relationship for granted, paying more attention to China.

Traditionally, the United States has sent high-powered diplomats or political figures to Tokyo. But the Obama administration chose to send a big campaign donor, John Roos, as ambassador, passing over a longtime Asia hand, Joseph S. Nye Jr., who had been championed by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Administration officials counter that Mr. Roos, a Silicon Valley lawyer, will be influential because he has the ear of President Obama.

Political analysts and former diplomats say the Democrats are so sharply divided ideologically — between pacifist former Socialists and flag-flying former Liberal Democrats — that they will avoid treading too heavily on divisive foreign policy issues for fear of splitting the party.

Policy analysts also say the Japanese public would turn against the Democrats if they undermined the Washington alliance, pointing out that the opposition won because of anger with the incumbents’ failed economic policies, not because of a desire to change the nation’s reliance on the United States, which remains widely accepted here.

“They do not have a mandate for changing the alliance with the U.S.,” said Yukio Okamoto, a former adviser to several prime ministers on foreign affairs.

Mark Landler reported from Washington, and Martin Fackler from Tokyo.

Aug 27, 2009

Energized Voters Seem Poised to End LDP's Half-Century Rule in Japan - washingtonpost.com

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, August 27, 2009

TOKYO -- Japanese voters are on the brink of doing something they have not been willing to do in more than half a century: throw the bums out.

The opposition Democratic Party is surging toward what polls predict will be a landslide victory Sunday. It would end 54 years of near-continuous rule by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which led Japan to stupendous postwar wealth but in recent years has become stagnant, sclerotic and poisonously unpopular.

The opposition party's leader, Yukio Hatoyama, 62, an elegantly attired, Stanford-educated engineer, seems to derive much of his popularity from the simple act of being a sentient replacement for Prime Minister Taro Aso, whose tone-deaf leadership over the past year has made him an object of derision, even in his own party.

In the election's final week, Hatoyama is drawing big crowds for his signature stump speech, which savages "the long-term reign of one party gone rotten."

Although voters seem energized by the opportunity to flush the LDP down the drain of history, they are much less certain about what will replace it.

"I am not sure of what the Democratic Party is saying or what it will do, but there has to be a change in power," said Hideo Enomoto, 58, who sells industrial machines and who listened this week as Hatoyama spoke outside a commuter train station during the evening rush hour.

Senior LDP leaders acknowledged this week that the Democratic Party is on the verge of a historic win that may provide it with a commanding two-thirds majority in the lower house of parliament and the ability to decide policy all by itself. The Democratic Party already controls the less powerful upper house.

The prospect of tossing the LDP out of power has created the highest level of voter interest in a general election to date, according to a survey by the Yomiuri newspaper. In the poll, 89 percent of respondents indicated interest in the vote.

As its marquee incentive for dumping the LDP, the Democratic Party is promising that it will pay parents as much as $276 a month to raise a child until he or she graduates from junior high.

Japan has the world's lowest percentage of children and highest percentage of elderly. It's a slow-motion demographic disaster that the LDP has long ignored and that the Democratic Party hopes to turn into electoral gold.

"If that money is going to come, then it is well worth voting for the Democratic Party," said Aya Koike, a 20-year-old who came with her two infant children to listen to Hatoyama's speech. She works nights in a Tokyo restaurant but could quit if the government began paying her $552 a month to look after her kids.

Many young women in Japan are reluctant to have children because of the lack of affordable day care. Promising to "take the anxiety out of child rearing," the Democratic Party has said that it will eliminate waiting lists for cheap public day care and remove tuition fees for high school.

Hatoyama's party is also promising to do away with highway tolls, cut business taxes and increase the minimum pension -- all without raising the consumption tax in the near future. The party also says that it will somehow find a way not to increase the staggering government debt, which is the highest among industrialized nations, at 180 percent of gross domestic product.

"It is doubtful that they can really deliver on all this," said Richard Jerram, chief economist at Macquarie Capital Securities in Tokyo. "Once they win, maybe they will water down their promises. If they don't, it is going to be problematic."

The Japanese economy, although it returned to growth in the second quarter of this year, has been the hardest hit of all industrialized countries by the global recession.

Even before the downturn, Japan was growing at a snail's pace compared with its neighbors in Asia. In the coming year, Japan is all but certain to lose to China its longtime ranking as the world's second-largest economy.

Yet there are few specifics in the Democratic Party's manifesto about increasing growth, enhancing productivity or privatizing inefficient government services.

Most voters, according to polls, doubt that the party can raise the money needed to pay for its promised programs, which add up to about $178 billion in new spending. The party says it will find the funds by ending wasteful spending, tapping "buried treasure" in obscure bureaucratic accounts and abolishing some tax deductions.

What voters do believe will happen after the election -- and what the Democratic Party seems capable of delivering -- is a substantial change in the way the government is run.

For decades, an elite bureaucracy has quietly controlled much of government policy, often aligning it with the interests of the country's largest corporations.

"The bureaucrats, confident that they were safe, created heaven for themselves," Hatoyama said in his speech.

His party is promising to blow up this system, replacing it with a "politician-led government in which the ruling party holds full responsibility." It plans to place more than 100 members of parliament in charge of the various bureaucracies and require them to take marching orders from the prime minister's office.

In addition, the party says it will ban corporate political donations, restrict the ability of retired bureaucrats to find lucrative jobs in industries they regulated and ban hereditary seats in parliament. About a third of LDP members in the lower house have inherited their electoral districts from relatives.

During the more than five decades of LDP rule, the main pillar of its foreign policy has been a close and cooperative relationship with the United States, which guarantees Japan's safety and keeps about 50,000 military personnel here.

The somewhat left-leaning Democratic Party has been less enamored of this special relationship. Its leaders want to give foreign policy a more Asian tilt, eventually creating an East Asian community with China, South Korea and other countries. The party has also said that it would examine ending the Japanese navy's role in refueling U.S. and allied warships in the Indian Ocean, as well as revising rules for the presence of American forces in Japan.

As the party's victory has become a near certainty, its leaders have played down significant policy differences with the United States.

"Continuity is key," said Tetsuro Fukuyama, who helped write the party's manifesto.

The U.S.-Japan relationship will be the "centerpiece" of foreign policy, he said, remaining "as important as it ever was."

Special correspondent Akiko Yamamoto contributed to this report.