My most recent story for Asia Times Online: Japan on the brink of a new era

Japan on the brink of a new era

Japan's election this weekend pits Prime Minister Taro Aso against Yukio Hatoyama, a battle of blue-bloods replicating a struggle between their grandfathers. Hatoyama's anticipated thumping victory will end the one-party domination of the Liberal Democratic Party. Hatoyama, described as "stubborn, decisive and bold", will need these traits and more to deliver on his promises of change through his mantra of fraternity. - Kosuke Takahashi (Aug 28, '09)

Japan on the brink of a new era
By Kosuke Takahashi

TOKYO - History sometimes throws up wonderful ironies: in Japan, a rising grandson is about to destroy his grandfather's legacy.

With opinion polls suggesting a massive victory for his opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in Sunday's general election, Yukio Hatoyama is poised to become the next prime minister, replacing Taro Aso. This would mark a fundamental change of power in the country, ending the Liberal Democratic Party's (LDP's) near-perpetual one-party dominance since Hatoyama's grandfather Ichiro created the LDP in 1955.

The number 320 is the key for this election. Should the DPJ secure a more than two-thirds majority, or 320 seats out of the 480 up for election, it would enable the DPJ to enact any legislation rejected by the Upper House, where the party still lacks a single-party majority. This Sunday, a total of 1,374 candidates will vie for the 480 Lower House seats - 300 for single-seat districts and 180 for proportional-representation constituencies.

In the final stage of the campaign, the Asahi Shimbun on Thursday reported that the DPJ was likely to win more than 320 seats, up from the 115 seats the party had before the Lower House was dissolved on July 21. The ruling LDP, meanwhile, is likely to suffer a crushing defeat by only securing about 100 seats, far from its pre-election strength of 300, the newspaper said, based on its most recent survey.

Figures published on Friday worsened the LDP's bleak outlook. The unemployment rate rose to an all-time post-war high of 5.7% in July, according to the government, while deflation intensified and families cut spending.

"The DPJ is highly likely to gain more than 320 seats," Minoru Morita, a noted political analyst in Tokyo, told Asia Times Online. "But I do not think the DPJ will railroad legislation through the Lower House forcibly, by using their two-third majority [to override Upper House decisions]."

Blue-blood politician
The 177-centimeter-tall Hatoyama, 62, conjures up an image of silk stockings and silver spoons among the Japanese public. He is a scion of the country's wealthiest and most politically influential family, which has been nicknamed "Japan's Kennedys" by local media.

Hatoyama is a fourth-generation politician. His paternal great-grandfather Kazuo was speaker of the House of Representatives of Japan's Diet (parliament) from 1896 to 1897 in the Meiji era. Subsequently, Kazuo also served as vice minister of foreign affairs and as president of Waseda University, one of Japan's top universities.

Yukio's paternal grandfather Ichiro was three times prime minister between 1954 and 1956, and a founder and the first president of the ruling LDP. In 1951, he restored diplomatic ties with the Soviet Union and enabled Japan to become a United Nations member, his earnest political ambition before retirement.

His father Iichiro is a former vice minister of finance and a former foreign minister. His younger brother Kunio is a LDP Lower House member and served as an internal affairs and communications minister under the current Taro Aso administration until June 2009.

Moreover, Hatoyama's maternal grandfather was the late Shojiro Ishibashi, founder of Bridgestone Corp, the world's largest tiremaker, headquartered in Tokyo. Bridgestone was named after Ishibashi; In Japanese, ishi means a "stone", and bashi(/hashi), a "bridge".

Hatoyama's mother Yasuko, 86, is called "Godmother" in Japan's political circles, as she has provided significant sums of money inherited from her father Shojiro Ishibashi to help her two sons pursue their political ambitions, especially when they created the DPJ in 1996 by donating several billions of yen. Younger brother Kunio subsequently returned to the LDP as he felt the Democrats had moved too far left from its centrist roots, while Yukio remained a major figure in the DPJ.

"Traditionally, the Hatoyama family introduces much permissiveness into children's upbringing," Morita said. "That's why Yukio and Kunio have totally different characters."

The Hatoyama family is related to three former prime ministers: Ichiro Hatoyama, Hayato Ikeda, who advocated the "income-doubling plan" in the 1960s, and Kiichi Miyazawa, who served as premier from 1991 to 1993. Yukio Hatoyama owns about 8.6 billion yen (US$91.9 million) as personal assets, according to the monthly literary magazine Bungei Shunju published on August 10. He has 3.5 million shares of Bridgestone, which amounts to about 6 billion yen, according to the October 2008 financial disclosure regarding Diet members' salaries set forth by law.

Battle of the grandsons
This strong political advantage provided by the famous Hatoyama family pedigree is equivalent to that of Aso, who is related to seven former prime ministers, including his grandfather Shigeru Yoshida, Japan's first post-World War II prime minister.

Many political observers point out that the crucial battle taking place between Aso's LDP and Hatoyama's DJP in this weekend's poll replicates that of their grandfathers Shigeru Yoshida and Ichiro Hatoyama, who led the two strong conservative groups during the immediate post-war years of Japan. That is, their descendants' battle from different sides of the party political system: Aso for the conservative LDP that has dominated Japanese politics for more than half a century, and Hatoyama for the reformist DPJ.

Right after the end of World War II, Yoshida was able to hold a firm political foundation for a stable government because the US-led General Headquarters of the Allied Forces (GHQ) in 1946 purged then-powerful political leader Ichiro Hatoyama, who formed the Liberal Party in August of 1945. Five years later, Hatoyama was welcomed back by the GHQ, and in 1954 he regained control of the government by ousting prime minister Yoshida.

Yoshida gained the favor of powerful bureaucrats, while Ichiro strived to make policy-making based on leadership by politicians. This is the same pattern as today. Yukio Hatoyama promises to abolish the institution of the so-called amakudari (descent from heaven), which has provided a means for government regulators to move down from their ministries into top positions in the industries that they formerly regulated. Aso has appeared unwilling to do so.

Political rise
Yukio Hatoyama graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1969 and received a PhD in engineering from Stanford University in the United States in 1976. He was first elected to the Lower House in 1986 as a LDP member after being an assistant professor of the department of business administration at Senshu University. He left the LDP following the 1993 general elections, which saw the party lose its overall majority for the first time since 1955. This prompted various members to break away from the LDP and form new political parties, such as the New Party Sakigake, in which Hatoyama became one of the founding members.

He served as vice chief cabinet secretary in the cabinet of Morihiro Hosokawa (1993-94), whose coalition government, including the New Party Sakigake, toppled the LDP from nearly four decades of power. In the DPJ, Hatoyama won the party's presidency in September 1999, but resigned in December 2002 amid confusion over a forthcoming merger with the Liberal Party, led by Ichiro Ozawa.

The merger in 2003 temporarily sidelined Hatoyama, but in September 2004, after eight months as shadow minister for internal affairs, he became shadow minister of foreign affairs and secretary general of the party once again. In the May 2009 elections to the leadership, Hatoyama initially appeared an unlikely victor, with his only rival, 55-year-old vice president Katsuya Okada, providing a more youthful image, and less tainted by association with Ozawa. However, Hatoyama was elected president just months before a crucial general election.

Hatoyama can be very stubborn, decisive and bold, author Eiji Oshita wrote in a book about the Hatoyama family published in 2000, The ambition of splendid Hatoyama family.

"He has had the disastrous experience of serving in key party posts such as secretary general," Tetsuro Fukuyama, an Upper House member of the DPJ and the current deputy policy chief told Asia Times Online. "He became very tough."

It's well known that Hatoyama has a happy married life - he is wed to Miyuki, 65. He met her while studying at Stanford University. It was a stolen love. He once told a women's magazine, "In my case, I happened to fall in love with someone else's wife and ended up marrying her." Miyuki is a former star actress of a popular all-woman dance troupe in Japan. He said in the interview that the circumstances in which he met and married Miyuki made him renounce his old way of life and decide to become a politician. Hatoyama has one son, Kiichiro, 33, a visiting researcher at Moscow State University.

Man of the people
Despite his wealth and privilege, Hatoyama is trying to position himself politically as a man of the people ahead of the election, for example, by often talking about weakening the culture of hereditary politicians in Japan, which is in his party's election manifesto. Yet when Hatoyama speaks Japanese, he invokes particular honorifics that most people seldom use in their daily lives, highlighting his prestigious upbringing.

Hatoyama says he aims to implement the political philosophy of European integrationist Count Coudenhove-Kalergi. In an essay in the September edition of the monthly magazine Voice published August 10, Hatoyama said the philosophy of yuai or "fraternity", translated by his grandfather Ichiro, from Coudenhove-Kalergi's writings, is his policy platform, which is geared towards weakening Japan's bureaucracy and rejecting the US-led global capitalism that brought about the economic crisis.

With the motto of yuai, Hatoyama says he hopes to leave behind parochial nationalism and jingoism and instead further develop the East Asian Community to the extent that it resembles an Asian version of the European Union. He also advocates a common Asian currency as a natural extension of the rapid economic growth in the region.

Kosuke Takahashi is a Tokyo-based journalist.

(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

(The New York Times) A New Path for Japan By Yukio Hatoyama

August 27, 2009
Op-Ed Contributor
A New Path for Japan
By YUKIO HATOYAMA

TOKYO — In the post-Cold War period, Japan has been continually buffeted by the winds of market fundamentalism in a U.S.-led movement that is more usually called globalization. In the fundamentalist pursuit of capitalism people are treated not as an end but as a means. Consequently, human dignity is lost.

How can we put an end to unrestrained market fundamentalism and financial capitalism, that are void of morals or moderation, in order to protect the finances and livelihoods of our citizens? That is the issue we are now facing.

In these times, we must return to the idea of fraternity — as in the French slogan “liberté, égalité, fraternité” — as a force for moderating the danger inherent within freedom.

Fraternity as I mean it can be described as a principle that aims to adjust to the excesses of the current globalized brand of capitalism and accommodate the local economic practices that have been fostered through our traditions.

The recent economic crisis resulted from a way of thinking based on the idea that American-style free-market economics represents a universal and ideal economic order, and that all countries should modify the traditions and regulations governing their economies in line with global (or rather American) standards.

In Japan, opinion was divided on how far the trend toward globalization should go. Some advocated the active embrace of globalism and leaving everything up to the dictates of the market. Others favored a more reticent approach, believing that efforts should be made to expand the social safety net and protect our traditional economic activities. Since the administration of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi (2001-2006), the Liberal Democratic Party has stressed the former, while we in the Democratic Party of Japan have tended toward the latter position.

The economic order in any country is built up over long years and reflects the influence of traditions, habits and national lifestyles. But globalism has progressed without any regard for non-economic values, or for environmental issues or problems of resource restriction.

If we look back on the changes in Japanese society since the end of the Cold War, I believe it is no exaggeration to say that the global economy has damaged traditional economic activities and destroyed local communities.

In terms of market theory, people are simply personnel expenses. But in the real world people support the fabric of the local community and are the physical embodiment of its lifestyle, traditions and culture. An individual gains respect as a person by acquiring a job and a role within the local community and being able to maintain his family’s livelihood.

Under the principle of fraternity, we would not implement policies that leave areas relating to human lives and safety — such as agriculture, the environment and medicine — to the mercy of globalism.

Our responsibility as politicians is to refocus our attention on those non-economic values that have been thrown aside by the march of globalism. We must work on policies that regenerate the ties that bring people together, that take greater account of nature and the environment, that rebuild welfare and medical systems, that provide better education and child-rearing support, and that address wealth disparities.

Another national goal that emerges from the concept of fraternity is the creation of an East Asian community. Of course, the Japan-U.S. security pact will continue to be the cornerstone of Japanese diplomatic policy.

But at the same time, we must not forget our identity as a nation located in Asia. I believe that the East Asian region, which is showing increasing vitality, must be recognized as Japan’s basic sphere of being. So we must continue to build frameworks for stable economic cooperation and security across the region.

The financial crisis has suggested to many that the era of U.S. unilateralism may come to an end. It has also raised doubts about the permanence of the dollar as the key global currency.

I also feel that as a result of the failure of the Iraq war and the financial crisis, the era of U.S.-led globalism is coming to an end and that we are moving toward an era of multipolarity. But at present no one country is ready to replace the United States as the dominant country. Nor is there a currency ready to replace the dollar as the world’s key currency. Although the influence of the U.S. is declining, it will remain the world’s leading military and economic power for the next two to three decades.

Current developments show clearly that China will become one of the world’s leading economic nations while also continuing to expand its military power. The size of China’s economy will surpass that of Japan in the not-too-distant future.

How should Japan maintain its political and economic independence and protect its national interest when caught between the United States, which is fighting to retain its position as the world’s dominant power, and China, which is seeking ways to become dominant?

This is a question of concern not only to Japan but also to the small and medium-sized nations in Asia. They want the military power of the U.S. to function effectively for the stability of the region but want to restrain U.S. political and economic excesses. They also want to reduce the military threat posed by our neighbor China while ensuring that China’s expanding economy develops in an orderly fashion. These are major factors accelerating regional integration.

Today, as the supranational political and economic philosophies of Marxism and globalism have, for better or for worse, stagnated, nationalism is once again starting to have a major influence in various countries.

As we seek to build new structures for international cooperation, we must overcome excessive nationalism and go down a path toward rule-based economic cooperation and security.

Unlike Europe, the countries of this region differ in size, development stage and political system, so economic integration cannot be achieved over the short term. However, we should nonetheless aspire to move toward regional currency integration as a natural extension of the rapid economic growth begun by Japan, followed by South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, and then achieved by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and China. We must spare no effort to build the permanent security frameworks essential to underpinning currency integration.

Establishing a common Asian currency will likely take more than 10 years. For such a single currency to bring about political integration will surely take longer still.

ASEAN, Japan, China (including Hong Kong), South Korea and Taiwan now account for one quarter of the world’s gross domestic product. The economic power of the East Asian region and the interdependent relationships within the region have grown wider and deeper. So the structures required for the formation of a regional economic bloc are already in place.

On the other hand, due to historical and cultural conflicts as well as conflicting national security interests, we must recognize that there are numerous difficult political issues. The problems of increased militarization and territorial disputes cannot be resolved by bilateral negotiations between, for example, Japan and South Korea, or Japan and China. The more these problems are discussed bilaterally, the greater the risk that emotions become inflamed and nationalism intensified.

Therefore, I would suggest, somewhat paradoxically, that the issues that stand in the way of regional integration can only be truly resolved by moving toward greater integration. The experience of the E.U. shows us how regional integration can defuse territorial disputes.

I believe that regional integration and collective security is the path we should follow toward realizing the principles of pacifism and multilateral cooperation advocated by the Japanese Constitution. It is also the appropriate path for protecting Japan’s political and economic independence and pursuing our interests in our position between the United States and China.

Let me conclude by quoting the words of Count Coudenhove-Kalergi, founder of the first popular movement for a united Europe, written 85 years ago in “Pan-Europa” (my grandfather, Ichiro Hatoyama, translated his book, “The Totalitarian State Against Man,” into Japanese): “All great historical ideas started as a utopian dream and ended with reality. Whether a particular idea remains as a utopian dream or becomes a reality depends on the number of people who believe in the ideal and their ability to act upon it.”

Yukio Hatoyama heads the Democratic Party of Japan, and would become prime minister should the party win in Sunday’s elections. A longer version of this article appears in the September issue of the monthly Japanese journal Voice.

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