The DPJ's unheralded realism

In the latest stop in his regional tour, Foreign Minister Okada Katsuya visited Australia for talks with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Foreign Minister Stephen Smith.

Most of the headlines have focused on the exchange of words over whaling — the polite phrasing seems to be that Okada and Rudd had a "frank discussion", and Rudd has threatened to sue Japan if it does not halt whaling by November — but more important in the long term may be the agreement reached between the two governments to sign an Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA) in March, which would enable mutual logistical support on peacekeeping and disaster relief missions. The ACSA will be another small step in building an Australia-Japan security relationship following the joint security declaration signed in 2007 back when Abe Shinzo was prime minister.

Writing at The Interpreter (and from the Australian perspective), Graeme Dobell writes of Australia's hedging by building up its relationship with Japan over the span of a decade, noting that "It is not grand enough to be called a strategy. It does not yet have the status or coherence of a policy. Yet it is much more than an inclination or intention. Call it low-level hedging." One could very well say the same of Japan.

Despite the impression in some circles that the Hatoyama government is naive (due perhaps in part to Hatoyama's talk of an East Asian community) — and the irritating habit that some analysts have of dichotomizing Japan's foreign policy choice as being either alliance with the US or partnership with China — the Hatoyama government is deliberately working to improve Japan's bilateral ties throughout the region. In the span of weeks, Prime Minister Hatoyama has visited India to, among others, agree to regular bilateral security talks and Okada has visited South Korea and Australia to discuss how to bolster Japan's relationships with both countries. What was notable about both Okada trips is that he did not hesitate to acknowledge the obstacles to closer bilateral ties even as he expressed his beliefs that the obstacles can be overcome. Before he had his discussion about whaling in Australia, on his visit to South Korea Okada acknowledged in strong terms Japan's wrongdoing when it colonized Korea 1910-1945. In both cases, Okada is clearly trying to address the obstacles forthrightly while remaining focused on the goals of closer bilateral cooperation.

In bilateral relations with India, South Korea, and Australia (not to mention China), the Hatoyama government is building on the work of its LDP predecessors. What's different, however, is that the Hatoyama government is for the most part building its new grand strategy on the sly. Unlike say the Abe government, which used grandiloquent rhetoric about democracy and shared values to announce its bilateral initiatives with Australia and India (and was none too subtle about the links between among these three democracies and the US), the Hatoyama government has been workmanlike in its efforts to improve Japan's bilateral ties. There are few hints that it wants to link its bilateral ties with countries like Australia to its alliance with the US, which would in turn prompt talk of a grand alliance aimed at containing China. Instead, the Hatoyama government may be focusing on new bilateral relations as a hedge against the US. In the event that the US were to turn inward and weaken its commitment to Asia, Japan could use other friends in the region. Even with the US committed to the region, Japan's interests are served by better bilateral ties, which have been underdeveloped for too long.

That there are significant obstacles — Australia's threat of a lawsuit, for one — to overcome in nearly all of Japan's bilateral relationships in the region should not detract from appreciation of the Hatoyama government's efforts to overcome those obstacles. Its foreign policy initiatives may be quiet, but they will have implications for Japan's position in the region for years to come.

Okada acknowledges past wrongs in Seoul

The Hatoyama government's campaign to revitalize Japan's bilateral relationships in Asia continues, with Foreign Okada Katsuya's visiting South Korea for the first time as foreign minister for meetings with President Lee and other senior officials.

While Americans are focused on celebrating what is being called the fiftieth anniversary of the US-Japan alliance this year, a more significant anniversary this year may be the 100th anniversary of Japan's annexation of Korea. The South Korean government has expressed its desire for a joint statement that will include a proper statement of remorse by Japan for its actions in Korea from 1910 until 1945.

In a meeting Thursday with Yu Myung-hwan, minster of foreign affairs and trade, Okada unambivalently expressed his understanding for the pain caused to the Korean people by Japan's usurpation of their country, and expressed his desire that the two countries can settle their disputes and build a forward-looking relationship.

Of course, Japan has apologized to South Korea before, and many — not only conservatives — will wonder why Japan has to apologize again. Okada's remarks provide some hint as to why Japan still has work to do on historical reconciliation. Rarely has a Japanese statesman shown that he is apologizing because he has looked at his country's behavior through the eyes of its victims and come to appreciate just how destructive Japan's actions were.

Diametrically opposed to Okada's attitude is that of Japan's revisionist right, which not only thinks Japan did nothing it has to apologize for in Korea or China, but actually denies that the Koreans and Chinese have legitimate grievances against Japan. Consider the arguments made by Tamogami Toshio, the now-retired Air Self-Defense Forces general who has become a prominent conservative spokesman since being driven from the service for his essay denying that Japan was an aggressor. In that essay, not only does Tamogami claim that Japan "advanced into" Korea with the "understanding" of its government (so understanding, in fact, that Korea's ruling dynasty willingly signed a treaty ending its own reign, willingly if one ignores the Korean government's pleas to the Western powers at The Hague to save it from Japan), he claims that under Japanese rule Korea was "prosperous and safe." After all, he writes, Korea's population nearly doubled! The Japanese were in Korea as liberators! ("The people in these areas were released from the oppression they had been subjected to up until then, and their standard of living markedly improved.") Japan built universities in its colonies! It permitted Koreans to fight for Japan!

No mention, of course, of what the Korean people wanted. Did they ask for Japan to develop their country for them? Or to replace the Korean language with Japanese, Korean names with Japanese names? For that matter, did they ask for the privilege of fighting and dying on behalf of the Japanese emperor?

It is for this reason that Okada's almost matter-of-fact statement is significant. It should be simply a matter of fact when a Japanese official acknowledges the tremendous pain caused by his country to its neighbors — and that a not insignificant portion of elite opinion can see little or nothing wrong with Japan's behavior means that there is a great need for more matter-of-fact statements like Okada's, and yes, a joint statement that unambiguously acknowledges Japan's wrongdoing in specific terms (not just the general statements of remorse) while looking to build a new relationship for the future.

As a final note on this matter, I think it is important to take issue with Tamogami's comparison of Japan's behavior in Korea with the behavior of the Western powers in their Asian colonies (the British in India is a favorite example). While the comparison has some merits, it is by no means the best comparison. The best comparison that comes to mind when I think of Japanese rule in Korea is not the British in India but the British in Ireland. After all, how can British rule in India — which was in many ways indirect, even after 1857 — be compared to the brutal domination of an immediate neighbor? Indeed, British rule in Ireland was far more brutal than even Japanese rule in Korea, lasting longer and having ever-more devastating consequences. The Great Potato Famine, for which Tony Blair apologized early in his premiership, was only one of the more monstrous moments in the bloody history of British rule in Ireland. The Irish still curse Oliver Cromwell, nearly four centuries after his invasion of Ireland cemented British rule.

The point of looking to British rule in Ireland is that nations have long memories — even longer memories when the harm done to them was by a close neighbor, nations with shared destinies thanks to geography. On top of the weight of history is the natural resentment felt by small countries at being dominated by their larger neighbors. Why should Japanese expect that Koreans will simply "get over" Japanese rule, which began only a century ago and was brutal in its own right, if not nearly as prolonged or as total as British rule in Ireland? More importantly, what right do Japanese have to tell Koreans (or Chinese) what the appropriate level of remorse is? Japanese leaders need to stop thinking of the rectification of history has simply being a matter of the number of apologies rendered and recognize, as Okada does (and, I think, Prime Minister Hatoyama does), that less important than the number of apologies is seeing history through Korean or Chinese eyes and acknowledging that the humiliation experienced by colonized peoples is not something that can be balanced out by a list of universities established or a tabulation of miles of train tracks built, and, moreover, cannot be expressed in terms of the numbers of victims, as meaningful as those numbers are. As the Irish experience suggests, in some way these wounds never heal completely.

But at least the Hatoyama government is determined to take a big step forward. Building a constructive relationship with South Korea is too important to allow Japan to continue to be held back by the unwillingness of Japanese nationalists to accept any people's love of country but their own as legitimate.

A new alliance in the making

Foreign Minister Okada Katsuya has arrived in Hawaii for a Tuesday morning meeting with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Following weeks of bilateral acrimony, the two will discuss negotiations to strengthen bilateral cooperation on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the US-Japan mutual security treaty, signed fifty years ago this month.

For the moment it appears that the US will — not without displeasure — set Futenma aside while a defense ministry team considers possible alternatives for building a replacement facility at Henoko bay. In advance of her meeting with Okada, Clinton said, echoing a recent New York Times op-ed by Joseph Nye (more on this in a moment), that the alliance is more important than Futenma, and she and Okada will discuss ways to improve cooperation instead of dwelling on the contentious base issue.

It is about time that the Obama administration stepped back from the brink. The administration ought to have known better. It is one thing to state that the US government understands the Hatoyama government's political constraints; it is another to act on the basis of this recognition and play it cool, recognizing that perhaps there is something unseemly about the US government's leaning heavily on the first Japanese government headed by a party other than the (longtime US client) LDP to abandon a campaign promise within weeks of taking power.

Nye's counsel of patience is well-timed and appropriate — as is his admonition that "a victory on Futenma could prove Pyrrhic" if it comes about through a heavy-handed approach to the Hatoyama government. Also appropriate is his reminder that the bilateral relationship is about China, as it was when Nye was at the Pentagon spearheading the review of the alliance in 1995. "Integrate, but hedge," writes Nye.

The problem, however, is that 2010 is not 1995. Japanese leaders and the Japanese public remain concerned about China's rise, but Japan's economy is far more dependent on China's than it was in 1996 when the US and Japan reaffirmed their security relationship. If anything, the idea of a threatening rise seemed clearer in 1996, when China was menacing Taiwan, than today, with China, its economy growing even as the developed economies struggle to recover from the global financial crisis, continuing to modernize its armed forces. Today China is an indispensable participant in global meetings but also, perhaps, a hegemon in waiting in East Asia. At the same time, the value of the US-Japan alliance as a security relationship may be less valuable today than in 1995. It would only be sensible for Japanese officials to wonder about the value of the US deterrent after what Stephen Cohen and Brad DeLong call "the end of influence." As they write in their new book by that title: "As money alters power relations, the United States is not simply becoming dependent — but it is no longer independent, either. That is a major change. And China is no longer helpless and cowed in face of the superpower hegemon; it has got a grip on it. Indeed, while the world peeks in, the two countries are realizing that they have thrown themselves into an intimate economic embrace with, to say the least, very mixed feelings."

The alliance is by no means valueless, but the terms certainly have changed. Japan can no longer afford to be wholly dependent on the alliance as its hedge against a violent turn in China's rise, because the US commitment may be less than ironclad. Even politically, Japan has plenty of reasons to desire good relations not just with China — as it watches the US develop the bilateral relationship described by its current secretary of state as the world's most important — but with other countries in the region that eye China warily even as they profit from its rise. The Futenma feud has, to a certain extent, drawn attention away from the Hatoyama government's other initiatives: the prime minister's multilateral diplomacy, but, more importantly, his visit to India, his government's first negotiations with Russia over the Northern territories (of particular importance to Hatoyama as the grandson of Ichiro, who restored Japan's relations with the Soviet Union in 1956), and the possibility of a rejuvenated partnership with South Korea. Analysts who see Japan's foreign policy decision as a dichotomous choice — the US or China — are missing the reality that Japan prefers to be dependent on neither, or rather prefers good relations with both (a "dual hedge") and moreover close relations with other countries in the region as a hedge against US-China competition and cooperation. It will take time for these diplomatic initiatives to bear fruit, but the Hatoyama government is moving forward with a clear vision. It recognizes the need to enhance Japan's influence in the region, and by signaling a renewed willingness to make amends for Japan's wartime past and a desire to deepen Japan's economic ties within the region (an important theme of the government's new growth strategy), the Hatoyama government is developing an Asia-centered foreign policy.

The question for the US and Japan going forward is what role the alliance can play in this more fluid regional environment. The hope that the US and Japan, along with other democracies, could present a united front tasked with integrating China peacefully has proven unrealistic. Instead the most salient division in the region may be that separating the US and China from the region's middle and small powers. Accordingly, the security relationship will be scaled back (as discussed here), making the dispute over Futenma that much more of a distraction. The future of the US-Japan relationship may be a hard security core linked to the defense of Japan and some form of US forward presence in Japan (in the same way that Singapore has facilitated the US forward presence in the region), looser political and economic cooperation in the region, and closer cooperation on global issues like climate change, nuclear non-proliferation, and the like.

What remains to be answered is how long the US will be willing and able to maintain forces in the region — and how much of the cost of basing them in Japan Tokyo will be willing to bear. The answer to these questions remains to be seen, but in time Ozawa Ichiro's offhand remarks last year about the US forward presence one day being reduced to the Seventh Fleet (and air force elements, as he later added) could prove accurate.

These changes will take years to unfold, and they are not foreordained: exogenous shocks of one form or another could take the region and its major players in different directions than that outlined here.

But the dream of 1996 has passed. The US-Japan relationship will be looser and less security-centered than alliance managers had hoped following the 1996 security declaration, the 1997 guidelines, and the Koizumi government's support for the Bush administration in Western and Central Asia.

Middle-power diplomacy in New York

It may be too early to declare that the Obama administration and the Hatoyama cabinet have successfully managed the transition from LDP to DPJ, but this week was clearly a step in the right direction.

At the start of the week, Foreign Minister Okada Katsuya and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met in New York City, which, at least according to this Asahi report, entailed a frank and open discussion of the two most pressing issues for the alliance, Japan's refueling mission in support of coalition activities in Afghanistan and the Futenma question. Okada described Clinton as "not obstinate" when it came to hearing the DPJ government's concerns. Okada also told reporters Thursday that the government would begin its own review of plans for replacing Futenma with a facility within Okinawa.

The bigger meeting — bigger in terms of symbolism if not substance — was between Hatoyama Yukio and Barack Obama Wednesday. Obama singled out Hatoyama for praise for "running an extraordinary campaign and his party leading dramatic change in Japan." He also exhibited his ability to empathize, linking his own experiences in office to the DPJ, saying, "I know how it feels to have just been elected and form a government and suddenly you have to appear at a range of international summits; I went through this nine months ago. But I'm very confident that not only will the Prime Minister succeed in his efforts and his campaign commitments, but that this will give us an opportunity to strengthen and renew a U.S.-Japan alliance that will be as strong in the 21st century as it was in the latter half of the 20th century." In contrast to some commentators in Washington, Obama delivered an unambiguous message to the DPJ: he recognizes the DPJ's victory as significant and historic, and will not react with panic just because they have some concerns about the alliance. Not the days of George and Junichiro or Ron and Yasu, but so much the better for the relationship — a much more businesslike partnership. As I've argued about Obama in the past, his administration's focus is on solving problems, whether the problems are within the bilateral relationship or whether it is a matter of what role Japan can play in solving global problems. His administration will listen, it may well yield, but it seems unlikely that the US government will accept the use of the traditional mantras to paper over problems in the relationship.

Sankei suggests that the Obama-Hatoyama meeting was precisely that, papering over problems: the joint statement made no mention, after all, of the problems discussed by Clinton and Okada. This is a silly complaint. When have two leaders at a summit actually used the joint press conference to discuss an unresolved issue that the two governments are in the process of hammering out? And as far as the Japanese government is concerned, the heavy lifting will be done by Okada. No, the summit seems to have went as well as a photo-op summit could go.

But what I find more interesting than the Hatoyama government's efforts to get the new US-Japan relationship off to a good start is what the Hatoyama government sought to achieve in its Asia policy in New York.

Revealingly, it was not Obama and Hatoyama who referred to each other by their first names but Hatoyama and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. The two met for forty minutes, and apparently Hatoyama was deeply impressed with Rudd's knowledge of "regime change" in Japan. While conservatives railed against Hatoyama's discussions with Chinese President Hu Jintao of an East Asian community, the real story is not the distant dream of an East Asia integrated like the EU but the prospects for partnership between Hatoyama and the leaders of East Asia's other middle powers, symbolized by the exchange between Hatoyama and Rudd. In the past I noted the affinities between Rudd's vision for Asia and former Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo's. I have also noted the affinities between Fukuda and Hatoyama when it comes to Asia. The point is that greater links among the governments of Japan, Australia, South Korea, and the ASEAN member states are to be expected. These are not the links envisioned by Abe, Bush, and Howard administrations back in 2007, the defunct quadrilateral that included India but not South Korea and that emphasized shared values, democracy, and security cooperation. It is too early to say what precisely will come of greater cooperation among these countries, but given their shared concerns, the relationships will continue to deepen.

Accordingly, there seems to be a tendency among some in Japan to assume that when DPJ officials refer to an "Asia-centered" foreign policy, Asia is a code word for China. But while the Hatoyama government wants a constructive relationship with China — much like its predecessors did — there is clearly more to Asia than China, and more to cooperation in Asia than cooperation with China. Despite Komori Yoshihisa's alarmism about how an East Asian community will mean the dissolution of Japan, the reality is that an East Asian community that includes all the countries that participate in the East Asian Summit would be a means of "enmeshing" China, much as the ASEAN countries have found ways to cooperate with China while quietly increasing security ties with the US. (See this monograph by Evelyn Goh for more on how Southeast Asian states have maneuvered between the US and China.)

Okada diplomacy

Not even a week into the Hatoyama government, it is clear that Foreign Minister Okada Katsuya will be a force to be reckoned with in the new cabinet.

Even before the government formed, Okada raised the alarm that the new national strategy bureau would encroach on his turf in foreign policy making — prompting Hatoyama Yukio to stress that the bureau's primary task will be budgeting (i.e., it will not follow Okada's lead on foreign policy, if it plays any foreign policy role at all).

In the days since the government formed, Okada has become the sole voice on the DPJ-led government's approach to the world, which for the moment means the U.S.-Japan relationship.

The point is not that the policy content of Okada's diplomacy is markedly different from the party as a whole. Rather, Okada has made clear in his public remarks that he will be the voice of the government on foreign policy, not a bad thing seeing that he is perhaps the most articulate member of the government when it comes to explaining why the DPJ wants a more equal partnership with the US, what that will mean in practice, and why Asia should be at the center of Japan's foreign policy — and why that is a good thing for the US. (See his interview in the FT here.) And he has shown on multiple occasions that he has a knack for showing why efforts to paint the DPJ's foreign policy beliefs as anti-American are mistaken.

Meanwhile, it seems clear from Okada's remarks that the DPJ will try to get everything it wants on the alliance. I thought it possible that if the Obama administration continued to say no to any discussion of Futenma, that the Hatoyama government — having softened its language on negotiations — might sound a retreat so as not to have a dispute with the US harming its position in advance of the 2010 upper house election. But Okada has said that the government wants to come to a decision with the US on Futenma within the year, or "100 days," as he told the FT.

Okada said that the reason for the rush is to ensure necessary outlays are included in next year's budget, but it also looks that from a political standpoint, scoring a quick and substantial diplomatic victory — and showing that under a DPJ government Japan can be allied with the US while still disagreeing over the details of bilateral cooperation — could neutralize foreign policy as an issue in the 2010 upper house election. It is not that voters are all that concerned about whether there needs to be a new realignment agreement, but that voters may be looking for reasons to question the DPJ's capabilities and cast a protest vote for the LDP next year. Recall that the LDP polled substantially better than the DPJ when it came to which party respondents felt more confident in on foreign and security policy. But if the DPJ's push for renegotiation results in another round of protracted, working-level discussions, its gambit could fail or at least do little to win the government recognition for boldness in foreign policy.

For its part, the Obama administration appears more pliant than it did last week, when talk was of Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell's encouraging Japan to continue the refueling mission, not long after Morrell's State Department counterpart completely ruled out renegotiating the agreement on realignment. While in Tokyo, Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell stressed that while the administration wants to stick with the current agreement, "We can’t dictate. We have to listen, and clearly the new government has committed to some reviews in terms of certain aspect of our alliance." Hardly a guarantee of renegotiation, but a marked change of tone from earlier remarks from spokesmen. Elsewhere, Derek Mitchell, deputy assistant secretary of defense for Asian-Pacific affairs, said that the administration is not alarmed over DPJ questions over how Japanese government contributions will be spent in Guam.

At the same time, the Obama administration may also not be particularly eager to rush to forge a new agreement before the end of the year. I expect that Okada may press for a new agreement to be ready when President Barack Obama visits Japan in November, but that strikes me a wildly optimistic.

At least Okada is aware that, in advance of his and Hatoyama's trip to the US this week, Japan cannot only say no and expect the US to be cooperative. Okada did rule out sending the JSDF to Afghanistan in an appearance on TV Asahi Sunday, but that comes as no surprise. But Prime Minister Hatoyama hopes to secure approval in New York for Japan's broadening its support for stabilizing the Afghan economy and society.

While Hatoyama will be the one speaking in New York, Okada has already made clear that he will be the man to listen to on the Hatoyama government's foreign policy. Okada, no less committed to the DPJ's foreign policy agenda, is clearly more realistic when it comes to his understanding of the give-and-take of the alliance relationship.

The first day of the new era in Japanese politics

The DPJ wasted no time following the election of Hatoyama Yukio as prime minister Wednesday.

His cabinet lineup established, the DPJ-led government immediately set to work establishing a new relationship between the cabinet, DPJ backbenchers, and the bureaucracy.

Regarding the DPJ, its internal organizations, and its numerous backbenchers, the new government announced several measures to strip the DPJ of any policymaking role. On Wednesday morning Fujii Hirohisa, the new finance minister, reiterated an earlier pledge to abolish the party's tax commission and bolster the government's tax commission, reversing the situation that prevailed under the LDP. More significantly, the DPJ dissolved its policy research council completely. Contrary to earlier plans, Kan Naoto won't even carry the title of chair of the policy research council, because Ozawa Ichiro does not want cabinet members serving simultaneously in party posts. This single measure is a radical departure from LDP rule, under which the policy research council served as a shadow government, complete with committees and subcommittees mirroring the bureaus and offices of the bureaucracy. If bureaucrats wish to consult with politicians on policy, they'll have to go through cabinet ministers and the national strategy bureau.

The new government immediately established new regulations governing contact between bureaucrats and politicians not holding cabinet or sub-cabinet appointments. The regulations will require to bureaucrats to make the contents of all requests from Diet members known to their ministers — and bans, in principle, efforts by bureaucrats to influence Diet members. Abolishing the policy research council will close off an important avenue of influence under LDP governments. The government has also mandated that bureaucrats save records related to requests for subsidies, licenses, contracts, and the like from backbenchers and their secretaries.

Regarding the bureaucracy, the DPJ has made clear that it intends to constrain bureaucrats' activities. In particular, the DPJ plans to restrict media access to the bureaucracy, based on the idea that the cabinet is making policy and setting priorities and so its members should be responsible for explaining policies to the press, not the bureaucrats whose job is to execute the cabinet's policies. Discussing this proposal last week, Okada Katsuya naturally cited the British example: permanent secretaries in Whitehall do not give press conferences. Instead the government issued a new policy Wednesday. Political appointees in ministries will be responsible for communicating ministry policy to the media, and regular administrative vice ministerial press conferences are abolished. (To centralize explanations of the government's policies, the Hatoyama government ought to create a press secretary's office.) Naturally journalists have complained about this change.

The DPJ will also abolish the administrative vice ministers' council, which for 123 years has enabled bureaucrats to manage the work of the cabinet, as conservative newspapers did not fail to note in their reporting on its final meeting Monday. Bureaucrats will still meet amongst themselves, of course, but dissolving the council will strip them of a customary and powerful role in the policymaking process, hammering out disagreements across ministries before cabinet meetings.

The thinking underlying this framework can be found in a document released by the cabinet Wednesday. The document stresses that changing the balance of power between politicians and bureaucrats in favor of political leadership is essential to realizing "true democracy." This document is not a declaration of war on the bureaucracy as an institution. It is a constitutional document that aspires to restore constitutional government by ending the delegation of substantial powers from the cabinet to the bureaucracy. The second and third parts of the document contain most of the aforementioned regulations, but the first part explains the proper relationship between political leaders and bureaucrats, and the relationship of both with the public.

The role of politicians sent into ministries, the cabinet declared, is to command and supervise the work of officials on behalf of the public. Bureaucrats, meanwhile, are public servants — not a word regularly used to describe Japanese officialdom — and they are to implement the policies established by the public's representatives in government. They are to provide data to political leaders, present options for policies, and assist political leaders in the execution of their duties. The document stresses a division of labor between political leaders and officials: each should respect the other's responsibilities.

Ultimately these new regulations provide only a framework. It will take time for these principles to reshape the relationship in reality, time for bureaucrats to accept the leadership of politicians they may view as inferior, perhaps time even for politicians to accept that they are in fact the masters of the bureaucracy. Like any revolution, the DPJ's revolution in governance will entail a revolution in the mindsets of both politicians and bureaucrats.

But the Hatoyama government did not just outline a new framework for the relationship between politicians and bureaucrats on its first day in office. Its cabinet ministers hastened to set goals for the first weeks and months in office.

• Regarding the 2010 budget, Fujii stated that the government would decide upon a plan for the 2010 budgeting process by the beginning of October. The government will abandon the ceiling for budgetary requests established by the Aso government and start from scratch and hasten to find ways to save money in order to budget for programs promised by the DPJ during the campaign, such as monthly child allowances. In order to free up funds for next year's budget, the government plans to halt the Aso government's stimulus programs. The finance ministry informed the DPJ last week that it may be possible to recover nearly 6 trillion yen in funds that have yet to be distributed. Indeed, it turns out that more than half the budgeted funds have yet to be distributed. Tango Yasutake, the administrative vice minister of finance, indicated the ministry's support for cutting stimulus funds earlier this week, suggesting that as the Hatoyama government begins work it is already building a working relationship with the finance ministry.

• A critical player in drafting the new budget will be the national strategy bureau, the creation of which (or, its predecessor, the national strategy office, pending revision of the cabinet law) was one of the new government's first acts on Wednesday. Still no word, however, on who will be working under bureau chief Kan Naoto. Continuing on his theme of choice, Kan stressed that a cabinet budget committee will be created soon.

• Okada Katsuya, the new foreign minister, also made several key policy statements Wednesday. First, he instructed the ministry to investigate the circumstances surrounding the "secret" US-Japan agreement on the introduction of US nuclear weapons into Japan, with a goal of having the report ready by the end of November. He also stressed that he will take a flexible approach to the resolution of the Futenma issue.

• Relatedly, Kitazawa Toshimi, the new defense minister, said Wednesday that Japan will not be continuing its refueling mission in the Indian Ocean beyond the expiration of the enabling law in January.
  

Interestingly, as the Hatoyama government set to work, the LDP's Nakagawa Hidenao, who during the campaign said that preventing the DPJ from taking power was necessary to save Japan, wrote at his blog that the LDP ought to cooperate with the government as the new government works to shift power from the bureaucracy to the cabinet. He said that the LDP should in particular cooperate with the government to pass the legislation establishing the national strategy bureau. It seems that Nakagawa finally realizes that the DPJ is no less serious than Nakagawa and other LDP reformists about changing Japanese governance — indeed, arguably the DPJ's leaders are even more serious and have more comprehensive plans than anything LDP governments have offered in the way of administrative reform.

A new era in Japanese politics has truly begun.

Transition troubles

The work of picking a cabinet is done, said Hatoyama Yukio Sunday. He is scheduled to meet with Ozawa Ichiro Monday to finalize the lineup.

It seems that Ozawa and Hatoyama are in disagreement over the appointment of Fujii Hirohisa as finance minister, perhaps because Fujii — despite having been close with Ozawa throughout the 1990s, following Ozawa out of the LDP and participating in his various parties before joining the DPJ with Ozawa — was one of a handful of prominent DPJ leaders who suggested that Ozawa ought to step down in response to the Nishimatsu scandal. (Although not a single story about Ozawa's disapproving of Fujii bothered to list a reason, leaving people like me to speculate.)

If that is in fact the reasoning behind Ozawa's opposition, then we're already seeing the potential downside of Ozawa's becoming the single greatest veto player within the DPJ, the "hyphen" between cabinet and ruling party. Ozawa's grudges should not be the basis for making cabinet appointments, especially one as important as the finance ministry — and a potential minister as capable as Fujii. Indeed, we can add another qualification to Fujii's already lengthy list: a willingness to stand up to Ozawa. This is precisely the quality that Hatoyama will need in a senior member of his cabinet.

In the process, the appointment of Fujii is the first test of whether Hatoyama can control Ozawa and force the incoming secretary-general to adhere to the will of the incoming prime minister.

Fujii is certainly speaking like a finance minister, with recent remarks about the DPJ's plans to roll back the Aso government's stimulus spending (see Ikeda Nobuo on the implications of these ideas in light of Keynesian economics). Perhaps Fujii's appearances discussing economic policy are a sign of Hatoyama's resolve to have Fujii in his cabinet.

Sankei, meanwhile, suggests that there is also tension between Hatoyama and Okada Katsuya, his likely foreign minister, with Okada essentially criticizing for the same reason that I criticized Hatoyama and Kan before the election: saying too much too soon regarding foreign policy. (Okada also warned against the national strategy bureau becoming too powerful and usurping the work of appointed cabinet ministers, namely his own duties as foreign minister.)

For now, these grumblings are not reason to write off the Hatoyama government, but they are developments to watch. The Hatoyama cabinet will certainly not be a cabinet of Hatoyama's friends, which may be better for the government, but it will take careful management by the prime minister and senior cabinet ministers. Hatoyama is going to have to discipline his own cabinet: if he cannot get them to relinquish their vetoes over every policy decision, his government will fail. If Hatoyama actually wants to include cabinet committees — there will, after all, be at least one, the committee for coalition consultations within the cabinet — then he and Kan Naoto (perhaps the leading advocate of cabinet committees) ought to provide more details for how they'll work, how many there will be, etc.

Hatoyama will also have to address questions about what exactly he intends the national strategy bureau — Okada won't be the only cabinet minister wondering about how to relate to the office. With Kan in charge of the staff, I anticipate it will play more of a supporting role for cabinet committees than an entrepreneurial role in cabinet proceedings. But with only two days until Hatoyama is scheduled to be elected as prime minister, there are many outstanding questions about how the Hatoyama government will actually function.

Building the inner cabinet

In the transition plan released by the DPJ's committee to prepare for government in September 2003, the party stressed that in the first five days after winning a general election, the victorious DPJ would convene a transition team that would quickly put into place the rudiments of a new system for governing.

Critical to this new system would be the speedy appointment of senior cabinet ministers, which would mark the beginning of an "inner cabinet," a group close to the prime minister that would usher in top-down leadership in place of the consensual system that has given each cabinet member a veto over cabinet decisions.

After initially announcing that he would wait until after taking office to announce his cabinet, Hatoyama Yukio appears to have reverted to the party's transition plan, having indicated his choices for chief cabinet secretary and three senior cabinet posts in recent days. (None of these decisions is final, however; Hatoyama chided the press Friday for being hasty in reporting Hirano Hirofumi's appointment as final when the DPJ still needs to consult with its coalition partners. Hatoyama did say Saturday that final decisions will be made Monday.)

Nevertheless, it appears as if the idea of an inner cabinet will be important for understanding the workings of the incoming DPJ-led government. As I suggested yesterday, Hatoyama will not be a presidential prime minister; the executive power will ultimately rest in the hands of a small group that will include Hatoyama but also Okada Katsuya as foreign minister, Fujii Hirohisa as finance minister, and Kan Naoto as head of the national strategy office, serving concurrently as deputy prime minister and head of the DPJ's policy research council. Perhaps this inner cabinet will also include the cabinet members from the PNP and SDPJ.

Hatoyama will, in short, have plenty of help in running the cabinet. I think that this system will be an improvement over top-down leadership model in which decision-making ultimately depends on the prime minister. As both Kan and Okada are both respected among DPJ backbenchers, their involvement should also help guarantee support from the party's legislators.

Of course, the more critical factor in linking the cabinet executive with the legislators who will be expected to vote for the cabinet's legislation will be Ozawa Ichiro. Ozawa and Hatoyama met Saturday and concluded that as secretary-general not only will Ozawa be responsible for election strategy, but he will also be responsible for the DPJ's Diet strategy, Diet strategy being the link between executive and legislative functions. Ozawa will be assigning committee positions and appointing the party's Diet strategy chair. Ozawa appears determined to unify functions in his office that in the LDP have been divided among several officials, consolidating the LDP's many vetoes into one big veto.

As I've previously argued, the question is what Ozawa does with his veto. The media seems to have concluded that personal rule by Ozawa is inevitable, but I think it is an open question. Having Ozawa concentrate the party's various functions (including, critically, financing functions) in the office of the secretary-general could result in a much weaker party relative to the cabinet if Ozawa respects the will of the cabinet and uses his position to keep individual party members down. Acknowledging these concerns, Ozawa made clear that he will respect the will of the prime minister, but it is too early to say: we'll have to see how Ozawa acts once the DPJ takes power. And if Ozawa decides to question the government publicly, an inner cabinet that includes two DPJ heavyweights plus Hatoyama could be better placed to resist Ozawa, even with Fujii, an Ozawa confidante included in the inner cabinet.

If this policymaking system actually emerges once the DPJ takes power after 16 September, the result will be a much more streamlined system than LDP rule, with its numerous veto points and bottlenecks. With Ozawa in control of the party machinery, he should be in position to punish backbenchers for inappropriate contact with bureaucrats and other behavior that undermines the executive. With power concentrated in the hands of a small group of ministers, the cabinet should be able to carry on even if a minister or two gets captured by their ministries.

A report on Shin Hodo 2001 this morning warned that the DPJ's efforts to streamline and centralize the policymaking process — copying the British system of government — could result in what some have called Britain's "elected dictatorship." To bring the point home, the accompanying image was of Iraq in flames, the consequences of the "dictatorial" powers that enabled Tony Blair to join hands with George W. Bush and commit Britain to war in Iraq despite public opposition. Checks on power are important, but given that LDP government has been characterized by a surfeit of informal checks and balances resulting in policy paralysis, an elected dictatorship might not be such a bad thing for the moment.

Will Hatoyama be first among equals?

After appointing Ozawa Ichiro as the DPJ's secretary-general and Hirano Hirofumi as chief cabinet secretary, Hatoyama Yukio has announced his intended choices for other senior posts, none of which comes as a surprise.

Okada Katsuya, a former party leader and runner-up to Hatoyama in the May party leadership election, is the incoming prime minister's pick for the foreign ministry — although the pick has not been completely finalized. Kan Naoto, another DPJ founder and along with Ozawa and Hatoyama a member of the troika that ran the party under Ozawa, is Hatoyama's choice to head the national strategy office. Fujii Hirohisa, a former finance minister who I pegged as the likeliest and best choice to return to the finance ministry, is being finalized as the appointee.

It is hard to disagree with these assignments. Okada, whose foreign policy views are more or less consistent with the DPJ's foreign policy consensus, is nevertheless a good pick, in that Okada should be able to speak to Washington in ways that ease whatever concerns the US has about a DPJ government's approach to the alliance. Earlier this year Okada articulated a vision for an alliance less centered on security policy, a message consistent with the party's manifesto and Hatoyama's own desires — the difference being that I think Okada has been able to articulate that message better than other DPJ politicians. Okada is a reassuring pick for the foreign ministry. He should be acceptable to the party's right wing, in that Okada is more likely to give their ideas a hearing, but he should be acceptable to the rest of the party as well, in that his foreign policy vision is markedly less hawkish than the right wing (and that he is independent from Ozawa).

Meanwhile, appointing Kan to head up the new national strategy office could be inspired decision, not only because Kan, a former health minister who became famous for taking the ministry's bureaucrats over a tainted blood scandal, has increasingly emerged as the party's most eloquent spokesman regarding administrative reform (see this post) but because Kan could keep the NSO's power in check. Hatoyama said that in order to raise the stature of the NSO he wanted to make its head an important cabinet member — appointing Kan certainly qualifies, but Kan has expressed a belief in the importance of cabinet government, government by appointed ministers, not by a cell of sub-ministerial officials like the NSO. Under Kan's leadership the NSO could become less a superministry responsible for coordinating the activities of ministers and more an advisory body to assist cabinet ministers as they attempt to wrest power from ministry officials. The difference is important: the former model would introduce a new, less accountable veto player into the cabinet, while the latter would support the goal of strengthening the cabinet's collective leadership of the government, while serving the goals articulated by sitting ministers. The point is that the NSO, still a wholly unknown quantity, will be strongly influenced by its first head, and given Kan's well-stated views on cabinet government, his appointment is an encouraging sign that the office will not become a new, unaccountable power center within the government.

Finally, there is little to add to what I have previously written about the value of Fujii as finance minister. Fujii is pragmatic but in complete agreement with the party's administrative reform goals; he is a former finance ministry official who also served as finance minister in the first non-LDP government since 1955; he is close to Ozawa, but given his age and experience would not be Ozawa's puppet at the finance ministry. He will no doubt be at the center of the Hatoyama government, as various party leaders have suggested in recent weeks.

In light of these pending appointments, Hatoyama's appointment of Hirano as chief cabinet secretary makes a certain amount of sense. MTC is disappointed in the Hirano pick, but given that Hatoyama's cabinet will clearly be packed with officials independent of Hatoyama, Hirano will be the one Hatoyama confidante in senior cabinet position, one with a reputation as a troubleshooter and a political crisis manager. Hirano will undoubtedly be overshadowed by Okada, Kan, and Fujii, who have standing of their own in the DPJ and considerable policy expertise, meaning that he will undoubtedly play a smaller policy role — but that his role as, in MTC's words, "traffic cop for the Cabinet" he will be a key adviser for the incoming prime minister as he tries to command a cabinet full of heavyweights.

That is the picture that emerges from these appointments. Hatoyama will be the prime minister, the face of the government, the man who attends the summits, but in practice the Hatoyama government may be characterized by collective leadership, with cabinet ministers being relatively strong and policy decisions resulting more from deliberation among the cabinet's ministers than from decisions handed down by the prime minister. As prime minister Hatoyama may have the final say, but it seems unlikely that he will exercise presidential-style leadership — rather he will be first among equals in a powerful cabinet.

Hatoyama, changing his mind, will appoint senior officials quickly

After suggesting at the start of the week that he would hold off on announcing appointments, Hatoyama Yukio, a day after announcing that Ozawa Ichiro would serve as secretary-general of the DPJ, has announced his chief cabinet secretary, Hirano Hirofumi, a five-term representative from Osaka.

Hirano is one of Hatoyama's three closest lieutenants, along with Ozawa Sakihito and Matsuno Yorihisa. It is only natural that Hatoyama would name a close confidante as chief cabinet secretary. Hirano has no previous government experience, but has held several party leadership positions, serving as a deputy secretary-general when Hatoyama was secretary-general under Ozawa and most recently head of the party's executive staff office. Important considering that he will address the press frequently, he recognizes the importance of being able to communicate effectively in various media.

So there is little to say about Hatoyama's appointment of Hirano. But it seems that Hatoyama will start appointing senior officials in advance of 16 September after all. Asahi reports that the process will be accelerated, to avoid chaos within the party as members jockey for government positions. And with Hirano as CCS, the question is what position Kan Naoto will fill, seeing as he had been the previous front runner. Will Kan end up running the national strategy office? Asahi's report suggests that Hirano will likely be joined by Okada Katsuya as foreign minister and Fujii Hirohisa as finance minister.

Is anyone else seeing a pattern emerge? Hatoyama makes a decision, only to change his mind days later. Why didn't Hatoyama just stick to the plan of appointing senior leaders within days of the election in the first place?

Clearly he is going to need all the help he can get.

The budget is the key to regime change

In their final appeals to Japanese voters, Kan Naoto and other DPJ leaders laid particular stress on the budget.

Speaking in Tokyo on Saturday, Kan said, "True regime change is politicians who have received the trust of the people restoring the right to formulate budgets to the people." Okada Katsuya, the DPJ's secretary-general, delivered the same message in Gifu Saturday. "We will completely review and remake the budget," he said. "We will review from a zero base that severs existing obligations."

Perhaps it seems strange that on the eve of the general election that may deliver the DPJ into power for the first time, its leaders are speaking of the "right of formulating budgets" and "zero-based budgeting."

It shouldn't. After all, the power to determine how a nation's wealth is spent and distributed — inherent in the national budget — has been at the center of political conflicts for centuries since the rise of the modern state. Appropriately considering that Kan and other DPJ politicians are looking to create a proper Westminster system on Japan's shores, the battle over the budget was particularly central to Britain's political development, from the struggles of the seventeenth century, Britain's "century of revolution," to the battle over the "People's Budget" roughly a century ago, when the Asquith government fought over the House of Lords over a budget that included redistributory measures, especially pensions, and would be financed by tax increases on the wealthy.

When Kan speaks of the right to formulate budgets, he is speaking of something fundamental to democracy: that the people's representatives should have the power to decide how the public's money is spent and that their decisions should be transparent so that the people can decide whether they approve of how their representatives are using the public's wealth. The problem is not that politicians have been uninvolved in budgeting under LDP rule, but that their involvement was the product of collusion between elected representatives and bureaucrats who saw cooperation with certain politicians — the LDP's zoku giin (policy tribesmen) — making deals behind closed doors to benefit particular groups and constituents at the expense of the whole. The opacity of the budgeting process was compounded by the existence of special accounts in addition to the general budget, funds that were used with little or no public oversight. It was for this reason that when I spoke with one of the DPJ's rising stars, a retired finance ministry official, in January he stressed that the DPJ cannot be sure of how it will pay for all of its promises because it cannot be sure of how much money is sitting in special accounts the contents of which have not been made available to the DPJ, let alone the public at large.

Accordingly, while some doubt that anything will change with a DPJ victory, if the DPJ succeeds at making the budgeting process even more top-down and subject to political control than it became as a result of the Hashimoto reforms of the late 1990s (the extent to which these reforms transformed the budgeting process are open for debate), it will have truly changed Japan. Restoring the cabinet's constitutional prerogative to formulate the budget is, after all, the goal of the party's plans for a national strategy office. Administrative reform has arguably been one of the DPJ's core principles since the first DPJ was created in 1996 — the above statements and others reveal that for the DPJ administrative reform that does not include reform of the budgeting process is incomplete.

Changing the budgeting process, often construed as entailing a fight with the ministry of finance, may in fact entail more significant battles with the ministries responsible for spending the money rather than the ministry allocating it. Under LDP rule, spending ministries like the agriculture ministry, the former construction ministry, and the health, labor, and welfare ministry have been the primary administrative beneficiaries of opaque budgeting — it was not accidental that the most powerful policy tribes were connected to these policy areas. All of these ministries have suffered from budget cuts over the past decade, which will presumably make them even more resistant to changes proposed by the DPJ: it is their budgets that the DPJ would like to redirect in order to pay for programs directed at the public's main concerns.

Cutting these budgets will take a certain ruthlessness on the part of a DPJ government. Naturally the LDP will find ways to put a human face on budget cuts. Presumably manga artist Satonaka Machiko's appeal on behalf of the 11.7 billion yen "national media arts center" lampooned as Aso Taro's "Manga cafe" by the DPJ will not be the last such appeal if the DPJ wins Sunday. Masuzoe Yoichi, Aso's minister of health, labor, and welfare and potentially Aso's successor as LDP leader, warned that the DPJ's policy of rearranging the budget could jeopardize important programs in his ministry to combat swine flu and unemployment, which strikes me as fearmongering on Masuzoe's part, but it does suggest that after an electoral defeat the LDP will still find ways to challenge the DPJ on this question of remaking the budget.

But ultimately giving politicians in the cabinet more power over the budget is but a first step to moving Japan in a new direction. Having claimed budgetary authority, the government will then have to find a way to balance among the DPJ's three goals of fixing Japan's finances, building a proper social safety net, and finding a way to get Japanese households and companies channeling their cash holdings into profitable investment and consumption.

In most areas the DPJ may not signal a radical departure from the LDP — most areas except for the question of who should make Japan's budgets. And it is that difference which makes all the difference. If the DPJ implements its plans for a strengthened cabinet, it will make a radical departure from LDP rule, and clear the way for further policy changes.

A DPJ government takes shape?

Apropos my comments on the probability of Fujii Hirohisa's being named finance minister in a Hatoyama government, Sankei has a long article speculating that to the three important posts of finance minister, foreign minister, and chief cabinet secretary, Hatoyama Yukio will appoint Fujii, Okada Katsuya, and Kan Naoto respectively. Okada, mentioned as a possible finance minister, would reportedly be unacceptable to the party due to his unwillingness to rule out the possibility of a consumption tax increase. I like the idea of Kan as chief cabinet secretary, as he has gradually become the party's chief spokesman on administrative reform, the task that will be central to the job of the chief cabinet secretary in a DPJ government. The report also mentions the possibility of Nagatsuma Akira's entering the cabinet.

Not surprisingly, it also suggests that Ozawa Ichiro will be named DPJ secretary-general. I am still a bit skeptical about the advisability of not including Ozawa in the cabinet, although I am increasingly less worried about the danger of Ozawa's using DPJ members loyal to him to pressure the cabinet. I do not doubt that there are DPJ candidates who are particularly indebted to Ozawa for helping them get their starts in politics, but it is questionable whether Ozawa will force them to choose between loyalty to Ozawa and loyalty to the party. It is not impossible that Ozawa could be a force for stability in the party, serving in effect as chief whip while helping the party position itself for forthcoming elections. Ozawa obviously has a questionable past when it comes to being loyal to parties, even to parties he created — Ito Atsuo, in his account of Ozawa in the current Bungei Shunju, digs up a quote from Ozawa about parties as being nothing more than tools — but on the other hand, Ozawa has also not been in a position to lead a party that had just unseated the LDP and received close to a two-thirds majority of seats in the Diet (as seems possible).

In the case of Ozawa, will history simply repeat itself? There is reason to think not.

Japan's next finance minister?

As the DPJ was finalizing its proportional representation lists for the 30 August general election, one name was inserted at the last moment onto the party list in the South Kanto block: seventy-seven-year-old Fujii Hirohisa. Fujii had previously announced his retirement after a long career that included service in the finance ministry that ended at the level of budget examiner; two terms as an LDP member of the upper house; and six terms as a member of the lower house for the Japan Renewal, New Frontier, Liberal, and Democratic parties. Most importantly, he was the finance minister in Hosokawa government. But it seems that at the urging of Hatoyama Yukio he agreed to run one more time.

The reason for Hatoyama's wanting Fujii to run again is obvious. The DPJ desperately needs experienced hands if and when it forms a government. On Thursday Okada Katsuya, the DPJ secretary-general, alluded to Fujii's being at the center of a Hatoyama government. But Hatoyama has also quite rightly said that the most important posts in the government should go to Diet members. So naturally Fujii finds himself running once more. It also does not hurt that Fujii is close to Ozawa Ichiro, as the list of parties to which Fujii belongs suggests.

I have previously written of Fujii's position on how to change the budgeting process to give politicians a bigger role: his pragmatism may be the perfect approach to get the DPJ at least through to the 2010 upper house election, and probably longer. As important as any task facing the DPJ in its first months and years in office is convincing the public (and investors) that the DPJ has a competent and steady hand on the tiller at the finance ministry. It might also be received as a gesture of good faith by the finance ministry itself, making it easier to get the ministry to sign on to the party's plans.

I still think that the DPJ might push for more radical changes after a transition period, but Fujii could at least help ensure that the DPJ will last longer than a year or two. The DPJ, having few members with any cabinet experience whatsoever, needs all the help it can get. Some might question is age, but, after all, in 1998 Miyazawa Kiichi returned to the finance ministry just shy of his seventy-ninth birthday and served in the job for more than two years, the longest a finance minister had served since the Nakasone cabinet.

Given Hatoyama's questionable leadership abilities, picking good cabinet members is that much more indispensable for a Hatoyama government to succeed. Fujii would be a good start — and by requesting that Fujii run once more, Hatoyama has at least demonstrated that he knows he will need qualified people around him in government.

Now to solve the Ozawa problem...

An LDP upset in the making?

The LDP continues to set the tone in the non-campaign campaign. Speaking in Hiroshima on the occasion of the sixty-fourth anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb, Prime Minister Aso Taro stressed the existence of "a country with nuclear weapons that could attack as our neighbor," and reiterated the importance of the US nuclear umbrella. That Aso stressed the US nuclear umbrella ought to deflate the impact of the first statement somewhat: if the US nuclear umbrella is adequate to meet the North Korean nuclear arsenal, then the prime minister is suggesting that North Korea can be dealt with in the same way that Japan has dealt with the Russian and Chinese nuclear arsenals. But, of course, Aso's purpose was to call attention to North Korea as a country THAT COULD ATTACK Japan rather than his suggestion that the North Korea could be managed via the same arrangement by which the much larger and sophisticated Russian and Chinese arsenals have been contained.

In other words, another day of the LDP's playing on the public's fears to make its case for a new mandate.

Aso was delivering the same message on a different front in Shimane and Okayama Wednesday, when he attacked the DPJ for its position on a US-Japan FTA. Exhibiting the LDP's full-out reversion to agricultural protectionism — discussed here by Aurelia George Mulgan — Aso stressed, "Agriculture is the foundation of the nation." It is difficult to know whether the LDP's attack on this front is having the desired effect, but I have to figure that the LDP has at least convinced the newly born rural floating voters to think a bit longer about whether to cast their votes for the DPJ. And after a few more weeks? The LDP may have found a winning formula: "The DPJ: it will leave Japan vulnerable to attack and destroy your livelihood." The message seems to be, national defense and some talk of economic growth (and the "once-in-a-century-economic-crisis-originating-from-America") for voters in urban and surburban areas, out-and-out protectionism in rural areas. To a certain extent the LDP is conceding seats to the LDP in urban areas — how much energy is Aso really exerting on behalf of first-termer Koizumi children? — in the hope that an all-out campaign in the countryside can deprive the DPJ of the seats in places where it needs to gain the most ground from past elections. It is trying to neutralize the DPJ's Ozawa-engineered shift to a national strategy complete with a message for rural areas.

And now in the face of the first assault by the LDP the DPJ has stumbled. As Ikeda Nobuo argues, the DPJ has diluted what was a coherent and "strategic" policy designed to destroy what he calls the LDP's "Matsuoka" legacy of particularistic support for inefficient part-time farmers. Okada Katsuya tried to answer the LDP's attack in a press conference in Mie prefecture Wednesday, in which he stated that this matter is simply the LDP's norin zoku stirring up trouble. Not good enough, Mr. Okada. Complaining about the source of the criticism does nothing to blunt the criticism in the eyes of voters. The DPJ has to meet the criticism directly and explain, over and over again, why it's wrong, how the DPJ intends to both support mostly older small farmers and promote the transformation of Japanese agriculture through trade liberalization.

[As an aside, it bears mentioning what the LDP is doing here. The LDP is basically saying that the DPJ will destroy the livelihood of farmers by opening the domestic market to the country responsible for defending them from attack. It bears mentioning that the DPJ's proposal is aimed precisely at the fundamental principle of the US-LDP alliance, that security comes first and that economics should be isolated from the alliance or not discussed at all. The LDP's friends in Washington have been all to happy to push this line, especially after the revisionist excesses of the early 1990s. But presumably there is some happy medium between paying scant attention to the economic dimension of the relationship and a virtual trade war.]

Time will tell whether the LDP's political strategy will bear fruit. But politically speaking, sowing doubt and exploiting fear is perhaps the only way the LDP can with this general election. It certainly cannot win on the basis of its policy achievements since 2005.

The DPJ bets on Hatoyama

As became clear in the days before the DPJ's Diet members met Saturday to elect a party leader to replace Ozawa Ichiro, Hatoyama Yukio, one of the founders of the Democratic Party of Japan, has once again been selected to serve as party president. He received 124 votes to Okada Katsuya's 95 votes, with, as Jun Okumura notes, Hatoyama doing particularly well among upper house members.

He returns to the leadership at a critical moment, as the DPJ looks to reverse the decline in its popular standing over the past two months and put the buoyant Aso government and the LDP on the defensive again.

Hatoyama has quickly moved to consolidate his leadership. Perhaps not surprisingly, he suggested that he might name Okada to his old post of secretary-general. Perhaps more surprisingly, he said that he would give Ozawa a position in the party executive. I obviously expected that Ozawa would play an important role, but I wondered whether it pays to give him a formal role in the party leadership. But Hatoyama, in his initial press conference, indicated that he may retain the troika structure that characterized the DPJ leadership under Ozawa — with Okada's inclusion making it a quad. The party will probably be best off letting Ozawa do what he would be doing anyway, traversing the country on behalf of DPJ candidates in districts in which the party has struggled in the past.

Beyond personnel questions, Hatoyama will not introduce radical change to the DPJ's preparations for the next general election. The party will continue to stress administrative reform — when asked for a slogan for the campaign, Hatoyama offered up "a cabinet to make clean sweep of wasteful spending" (might need a little work) — and drastic economizing of the nation's finances. He is committed to the Ozawa balancing act on security policy, and would work to reach compromises with the Social Democrats if the SDPJ joins a DPJ-led coalition. What the last several days have revealed is that the DPJ is, as I argued in the April issue of the Far Eastern Economic Review, not nearly as divided as the conventional wisdom suggests. It is revealing that the DPJ's "neo-conservatives" were not able to field a candidate of their own and were reduced to backing Okada because he was the candidate most distant from Ozawa — not because he was the candidate closest to their views. The DPJ has largely united around the Ozawa program: a focus on economic wellbeing and administrative reform, support for farmers, fishermen, and small- and medium-sized businesses, and a small Japan-ish nationalist foreign policy that stresses distance from the US, regional cooperation, and modest global contributions through multilateral organizations. The debate between Hatoyama and Okada before the election was exceptionally cordial, more of a discussion over how best to implement this program than a clash of conflicting visions. Removing Ozawa was simply a matter of political convenience — Ozawa forged this consensus, and it will survive at least through the general election.

But, nevertheless, I think the DPJ may come to regret electing Hatoyama as Ozawa's replacement, for reasons having less to do with Hatoyama's relationship with Ozawa than with who Hatoyama is as a politician.

When the Hatoyama brothers, Yukio and Kunio, split from Sakigake and the New Frontier Party respectively to form the first DPJ in 1996, the new party was derided as the "brothers' private party" — an impression reinforced by the role played by their mother in leading them to form the new party. As Mayumi Itoh writes in her biography of the Hatoyama dynasty: "In press interviews, Yukio and Kunio often referred to their mother by saying, 'my mother said so and so' and 'my mother is opposed to this and that,' although they were in their late forties at that time. A relative of the family said that the brothers were under their mother's thumb and that it was she who convinced Yukio to create a new party with Kunio. Yukio admitted that he was motivated by his mother's encouragement." Yukio showed a particularly clumsy hand when creating the new party, rushing to announce the party's creation prematurely and alienating Takemura Masayoshi, Sakigake president, in the process. The fledgling party turned to the popular Kan Naoto — then at the height of his popularity as the crusading health minister — largely as a means to repair the new party's image. (Shiota Ushio, Minshutō no Kenkyū, pp. 91-92.)

This episode may seem like ancient history, but it reveals several characteristics about Hatoyama Yukio that lead me to wonder whether Hatoyama is up to the job of leading the DPJ in the general election, and, if the party is successful, leading the first government led by a majority party other than the LDP in a half century.

Throughout his political career, Hatoyama has shown a certain frailty as a leader, a need for the support and approval of others that stands in sharp contrast with his predecessor as DPJ leader. Perhaps this quality made him uniquely suited to serve as Ozawa's lieutenant, repairing the damage when Ozawa committed some indiscretion or another, but it makes him less suitable as a party leader or prime minister. The arc of his career also suggests that Hatoyama lacks a certain toughness — not a problem that Ozawa has — which will be indispensable if Hatoyama is to become prime minister and will have to be responsible for keeping the DPJ united, coaxing coalition partners, and overriding a recalcitrant bureaucracy. These tasks would be hard enough for Ozawa. Will Hatoyama be any more adroit?


More significantly, Hatoyama is truly a political prince. As one reporter observed at Hatoyama's press conference Saturday, this year's election will be a rematch of the conflict that created the LDP in the first place. Aso Taro, Yoshida Shigeru's grandson, will square off against the grandson of Yoshida's archrival Hatoyama Ichiro. I admit there is a certain degree of dramatic symmetry — the grandsons will battle over the shape of the post-1955 system, just as their grandfathers battled to create the foundation for enduring conservative rule in the first place. But I would argue that the DPJ loses more than the LDP by choosing a political princeling as its leader. The LDP enjoys a certain degree of "political seigniorage," in that by virtue of having been dominant for more than a half century, the LDP is able to get away with malfeasance or inepitude by virtue of low expectations. Like the US government in the international monetary system, the LDP has political credit not available to a newer party like the DPJ because the public has been conditioned to expect less of the LDP — the party has to do something truly outrageous to exhaust its line of credit. However, the DPJ, in trying to be a force for change, actually has to live by its words to gain an advantage on the LDP. The DPJ will be penalized more for its hypocrisy than the LDP.

The process by which Hatoyama wound up as party leader smacks of hypocrisy. Not only was the election rushed, but the party twisted its leadership election rules to Hatoyama's advantage. Article 12, section 7 of the party rules does allow for a vote of the party's Diet members should the leadership post be vacated during the president's term — but it does not command such an election. Ordinary DPJ election rules provide for the participation of the party's members and supporters, who vote in the 300 local chapters that correspond with the 300 single-member lower house district. Each chapter has one electoral vote. The party's local government representatives receive 100 electoral votes, which are distributed proportionally. And the party's Diet members get one vote (which counts twice). This system makes perfect sense for an opposition party trying to build a national organization and having far fewer Diet members than the LDP, especially after the 2005 election. As MTC noted, opting for the emergency election process slanted the election in Hatoyama's (and Ozawa's) favor. It is not surprising that Hatoyama did well among upper house members, many of whom owe their jobs to Ozawa's leadership. But how will this play in the provinces? Will local chapters campaign with the same ardor for Hatoyama that they would have for Okada or Ozawa? Will some voters stay home?

DPJ members will probably not complain openly about the process by which Hatoyama was elected — the bump the party is sure to experience will soften criticism — but the media will likely not let voters forget how Hatoyama profited from Ozawa's manipulation. And the media will constantly remind voters (as if they needed any reminding) of Hatoyama's heritage.

Hatoyama may be fine on the whole, but what matters is the impact on the margins. A few votes here, a few votes there and suddenly the DPJ could find itself short of a majority or a plurality. When faced with a choice between the scions of two political dynasties, one of whom has made a career of sticking out and has done a passable job as prime minister, the other of whom has struggled not to be overshadowed by other politicians, which prince will the voters choose?

The party's face and prospective prime minister matters, in part because the LDP has since 2007 learned that it cannot indulge in ideological fantasies and expect to win elections. It has struggled to look like a party that cares about combating economic hardship. Aso has made a show of repudiating the Koizumi legacy, most recently on Friday, when he said that it is necessary "to dispense painkillers and have blood transfusions" to deal with the pain caused by the Koizumi reforms. Consider that after listing constitution revision as the party's number one priority in its 2007 manifesto, the LDP is actually debating whether to include constitution revision altogether in this year's manifesto. I think it is unlikely that the LDP would drop it — Aso, like Abe, stressed that revision has been a party goal since the LDP was founded — but revision is unlikely to take pride of place as in 2007.

In other words, it will not be enough for the DPJ to criticize the LDP for its inattentiveness. It will have to tap into the "it" factor that propelled Koizumi Junichiro into office and buoyed his government. Of course, neither Hatoyama nor Okada has it. Ozawa was probably the DPJ's best chance to win on intangibles.

And so it becomes clear how the LDP could pull off yet another unlikely victory: three economic stimulus packages, some fear mongering, disarray and poor leadership in the opposition camp, and a bit of luck. I am not calling the election for the LDP yet; I think it is wide open and a lot can happen in the three months or so until the election will most likely be held. There are still plenty of reasons to think that the DPJ will have its best ever performance in a lower house election. But under Hatoyama's watch the party looks that much less impressive, that much less formidable an opponent for a desperate LDP, and that much more vulnerable to the persistent claim of the LDP and its allies in the media that the DPJ is unfit to govern.

The short race to pick Ozawa's replacement

The campaign to replace Ozawa Ichiro as DPJ president quickly turned into a race between Okada Katsuya and Hatoyama Yukio, who have until Sunday to convince the DPJ's upper and lower house members of their merits to serve as the face of the party in the forthcoming general election.

Uesugi Takashi, writing in Shukan Daiyamondo, argues that the DPJ has missed an opportunity to reverse the political momentum by scheduling its election for Sunday. A longer campaign would have commanded media attention and given the candidates to present the DPJ's message undiluted to the public. (I would add that a longer campaign would have given the party to have the party's local chapters vote too, as would have happened in a normal election, thus ensuring that the inner party and the outer party are in sync going into the campaign.)

But on the other hand, the DPJ will enjoy a bump simply by having cast off Ozawa and elected someone new. It may be best that the party will choose a new leader quickly and set back to work.

Who has the upper hand? Jun Okamura argues that the race is wide open. Like in recent LDP presidential elections, it is not sufficient to assume that if a DPJ faction head supports a candidate, the faction's members will follow the leader. Press coverage suggests that the race is "pro-Ozawa versus anti-Ozawa," with the party's anti-mainstream flocking to Okada. But if that is the case, Okada will lose. The dedicated anti-Ozawa groups — most notably the Maehara and Noda groups — are a minority of the party. There is a reason why they are not putting up their own candidate (and why, despite talk of challenging Ozawa last year, no one stood against him).

It is not clear to me how or why the DPJ should distance itself from Ozawa. Obviously the DPJ wants to wash away the taint of Ozawa's scandal — but electing a new leader will largely take care of that problem. Would the public really hold Hatoyama accountable for corruption in Ozawa's political organization?

But what of Ozawa's impact on the DPJ's policies and party governance? Should the DPJ scrap his changes? Despite his reputation as uncooperative and dictatorial, Ozawa was able to draw upon support from across his party. He inspired loathing from some, but he also included rivals in the DPJ's Next Cabinet and in other party leadership positions. The final word may have rested with Ozawa, but considering the frequent complaint that Japan does not have enough top-down leadership, why should that be a negative? On policy terms, Yamaguchi Jiro praises Ozawa for promulgating the "Seikatsu dai-ichi" line that was the party's slogan in 2007, which he believes distinguished the DPJ from the LDP's neo-liberals. Indeed, evidence of the success of this approach can be found in the LDP's about-face since the 2007 election: both Fukuda Yasuo and Aso Taro have stressed the importance of listening to the voice of the people and providing for public welfare. Should the DPJ scrap this approach? Should the DPJ scrap Ozawa's efforts to make the DPJ a party capable of challenging the LDP in rural districts? Ozawa's legacy as DPJ president should not be reduced to Nishimatsu.

I doubt either candidate will break with the Ozawa system. This campaign is wholly about image: personality, youth, support of the party rank-and-file, and the ability to reach out to independents. It will not be about policy.

For my part, I do wish a third candidate, preferably one who has not already led the DPJ into a general election, would enter the race. I would prefer someone like Nagatsuma Akira, who at forty-eight is younger than both candidates and as a result of his role in exposing the pensions scandal in 2007 has made a name for himself as a crusader against official malfeasance. He is only a third-term member, but on the other hand, maybe the DPJ would be better off with a leader who is comparatively new to Nagata-cho. Unfortunately the short DPJ race rules out the possibility of a dark horse challenger to Hatoyama and Okada.

But for all the shortcomings of the two contenders, I think that after weeks of talking about Ozawa, the discussion will turn once again to Aso, the LDP, and the state of the Japanese economy.

How severe is the fallout from Ozawa's fall?

Despite widespread expectations that he would not survive to lead the DPJ into this year's general election, Ozawa Ichiro's resignation is reverberating around the Japanese political system.

Aso Taro, commenting on the Ozawa's resignation, claimed that he could not understand why Ozawa would resign now, two days before the debate scheduled between the party leaders. It does not seem that hard to understand to me. Why would Ozawa stand up and speak on behalf of a party that had been sending overt signals that it wanted an amicable divorce from its embattled leader? Why would the DPJ want him to speak for the party? Did Ozawa reach this conclusion himself, or did someone senior within the party have to lean on him?

Regardless of why Ozawa finally decided it was time to go, he's gone. Not surprisingly he said very little in his press conference Monday, other than that he was stepping down for the sake of party unity and the goal of regime change.

The political consequences of his resignation are actually not particularly interesting, at least compared to his last resignation, when the DPJ was not quite ready to part with its helmsman. I anticipate a smooth return to the leadership for Okada Katsuya. He's probably the one candidate acceptable to the party's various factions and sects — he inspires neither love nor loathing (unlike Ozawa), but he is acceptable. At this point acceptable to all is good enough. If it is Okada, he won't be a significant departure in policy terms from the outspoken Mr. Ozawa.

On foreign policy, he accepts Japan's alliance-centered foreign policy but has recently suggested that the US-Japan relationship should not be overdependent on the bilateral military relationship (a view reciprocated by some in the Obama administration). Like others in his party, he wants Japan to cooperate more with its Asian neighbors.

On domestic policy, he has the inescapable air of a technocrat, not surprising considering his background as a MITI official, and as a result he does not ooze pathos when talking about the nation's problems as some other politicians do. But he has a solid grasp of the issues, he has reformist credentials, and he has worked hard to travel the country and connect with voters like Ozawa has done. Given his background, he might even be better at coaxing the bureaucracy to accept the DPJ's administrative reform plans. Although I'm not certain about this: lasting administrative reform may require a dramatic battle of the sort that would have likely occurred under an Ozawa premiership. Sankei cites an anonymous source at METI headquarters who wonders whether an Okada premiership would be better for the bureaucracy than an Ozawa premiership. If there is a different, it is not a matter of an agenda. The DPJ's adminstrative reform plans predate Ozawa's leadership of the party. What is at issue is the enthusiasm with which the new leader goes about the task.

Either way, Okada is more than adequate. If the LDP isn't worried — and there were signs earlier in the Ozawa scandal that the government feared that Okada would replace Ozawa — it should be, if only because, as MTC notes, with Ozawa gone, so goes one of the last obstacles keeping voters from embracing the DPJ.

Would the same apply if Hatoyama Yukio, the outgoing secretary-general who has virtually served as Ozawa's footman, is elected DPJ president? He may have adequate support from the left of the party, but I think Hatoyama would be more compromised as party leader than Okada. Hatoyama, like the prime minister, is a scion of a political family who in his time in leadership posts in the DPJ has shown himself to be better suited to supporting roles than to leadership. Hatoyama, I think, would be the poorer of the two choices in a race with Okada. And I wonder whether his time as Ozawa's designated apologizer will tar his image.

Regardless of who winds up as party leader, the tasks facing the new leader are simple: don't forget the countryside, remind voters how disastrous LDP rule has been just since the last election, add some details to the party's economic plans, and prevent LDP politicians from running against the LDP. Don't let LDP reformists get away with their bait-and-switch again.