Can Japan's fifth prime minister in four years succeed where others failed?

Meet the boss
Can Japan's fifth prime minister in four years succeed where others failed?
Jun 4th 2010 | TOKYO | From The Economist online


WHEN Japan's outgoing prime minister announced his resignation this week, Tokyo's financial markets barely budged, underscoring the depressing regularity with which the country's leaders have come and gone in recent years. However the election by Japan's Diet (parliament) of Naoto Kan as prime minister on June 4th may represent a change. The past four prime ministers hailed from wealthy political dynasties, among which the premiership was almost a filial rite of passage. Mr Kan is a self-made man, ascending into politics after years toiling in citizen movements.

Yet his job is made all the harder after the botched performance of his predecessor's nine months in office. Yukio Hatoyama, the outgoing prime minister, had led the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) to a crushing victory over the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) last August, thus ending more than 50 years of nearly uninterrupted rule by the LDP. But he was always the accidental prime minister, having been named as head of the DPJ only a few months before the election, when the party’s boss, Ichiro Ozawa, resigned the post following a fundraising scandal.

Mr Hatoyama was to become embroiled in a fundraising scandal of his own. But he resigned after failing to adhere to a campaign pledge to revise a plan to relocate an enormous and enormously unpopular American marine base in Okinawa. His mishandling of the issue was emblematic of a broader, amateurish approach to governing in other matters. Public support for his administration plummeted, from over 75% after his election to less than 20% by the time he bowed out.

Mr Kan, a 63-year-old former finance minister, presents a very different personality than Mr Hatoyama, who was nicknamed "the alien" for his unconventional ideas, sometimes bizarre sense of fashion and utopian ideals (such as his avowed yearning for the day when China, Japan and Korea become one). Mr Kan has a reputation as a quick learner and a pragmatic politician—with sharp elbows and an aversion to any criticism. In the 1990s as the minister of health, he exposed ministry-level incompetence that had allowed HIV-tainted blood to be used for transfusions. It made him a hero to the country, for taking on its powerful and protected elites. Yet as finance minister he earned plaudits for listening to sharp minds in the bureaucracy rather than disdaining them.

The country that Mr Kan now leads is facing dire long-term problems that beg for strong leadership, including a staggering level of public debt, a stagnant economy, and an ageing population. In accepting his new job, Kan pledged to fix the fiscal situation and restore growth; he plans to unveil those policies later in June. There are also three short-term political challenges that Mr Kan must surmount, lest he become yet another short-term tenant in his new office: an election, disunity within the DPJ and the Japan-American security alliance.

First, Mr Kan has a few weeks to fix the impression left by nine months of incompetent DPJ governance. If he fails, the party will be routed in July elections for the Diet’s upper house. Half of its seats are up for grabs, and a poor showing will make it harder for the DPJ to pass legislation. It will need to form coalitions with smaller parties—the very thing that created problems over the past nine months when the DPJ took positions to appease its junior coalition partners, such as reversing the privatisation of Japan Post.

To bring any discipline to the fiscal situation, Mr Kan will need first to bring discipline to his own party. The DPJ was formed as an umbrella for various groups that shared only one common goal: defeat the LDP and obtain power. Having done so, the party is left with almost no ideology. One faction, representing slightly more than a third of the DPJ’s members, is loyal to Mr Ozawa, who personifies the worst of old-style money politics of the LDP, whence he came. Though Mr Ozawa has relinquished his role as the DPJ head, few expect him to give up his role as the power behind the throne. Mr Kan has retained strong ties with Mr Ozawa. But if he is to prosper as a reformer, he will have to break Mr Ozawa’s grip on the party.

Finally, Mr Kan will have to find a way to place the Japanese-American security alliance on a new footing—without pushing aside the Americans, further angering the Okinawans, or losing his job. This may be the most pressing of all his worries. The assumptions that underpinned the alliance, formed 50 years ago this month, will not serve as its basis in future. In the past, America's interests in keeping bases in Japan were to contain the Soviet Union and to prevent Japan’s re-militarisation. Neither are serious threats anymore—but China's assertiveness and North Korea's unpredictability are no less troubling. Renewing the security alliance is a must. But no Japanese politician wants to risk his job on it.