Global News Journal

Japan PM under fire — from his wife

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan faces plenty of grilling from the opposition camp but his toughest critic might be the one he calls “the opposition party within his own household” – his wife.

“Since I know him very well, I wonder — is it okay that this person is prime minister?” Nobuko Kan, Naoto’s wife of 40 years, writes in her new book titled “What on earth will change in Japan now you are prime minister?”

The 64-year-old Nobuko — who calls herself “Japan’s most nagging voter” — also reveals in the book that her husband is a terrible cook and has given up on studying English, and she pooh-poohs his fashion sense, describing how he once got caught walking around in public with a price tag sticking out of his sleeve.

Ouch.

“I am too scared to read it,” the prime minister, a 63-year-old former grassroots activist, admitted to reporters when asked about his wife’s book about their life together.

The book may not be the best way to cheer up her husband, whose support rate has been sliding since his ruling Democratic Party got clobbered in this month’s upper house election.  Kan faces a tough balancing act trying to rein in Japan’s huge debt while getting the wobbly economy back on track.

Japan voters seek change, may get chaos

Five years ago, Japanese voters seeking change from stale politics and a stagnant economy backed maverick leader Junichiro Koizumi’s calls for reform, handing his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) a huge win in an election for parliament’s powerful lower house.

Two years, several scandals and one incompetent prime minister later, they dealt the same LDP a stinging setback in a 2007  upper house election, creating a “Twisted Parliament” where the upper chamber could stall bills and delay policies.

The gridlock toppled the LDP’s Shinzo Abe and his successor,  each after about a year in office, and finally last summer the same electorate — still longing for something new and better — swept the novice Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) to power, ending more than half a century of almost non-stop LDP rule and ejecting  Taro Aso from the PM’s seat. The DPJ, voters hoped, would make good on promises to change how Japan was governed, ending bureaucratic control of policies, and somehow ensuring that Japan emerged from two decades of the doldrums.

Now, after less than a year  of chaotic policymaking,  indecisive leadership and more scandals under DPJ premier  Yukio Hatoyama, followed by sudden talk of a sales tax hike from former grassroots activist Naoto Kan, who took over when Hatoyama suddenly quit,  frustrated voters did it again.

On Sunday, they delivered a harsh rebuke to the DPJ and a tiny ally, depriving them of an upper house majority and setting the stage for another bout of deadlock as Japan struggles to engineer growth in a fast-ageing society and curb a gigantic public debt.

“Voters were not trying to create political confusion, but that is the result,” said independent political analyst Hirotaka Futatsuki, adding that calls for a snap lower house election that might not solve anything would grow. No lower house poll need be held until 2013.

Scenarios abound for possible ways out of the political bind.

Japan’s not-so-hot election

Candidates on the campaign trail in Japan are sweating through the summer heat but voters have been cool towards this Sunday’s upper house election.

Sure, the government won’t change because the ruling Democratic Party will still control the more powerful lower house.

But the election matters because failure for the Democrats to win a majority would split parliament and stall policymaking, blocking Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s pledge to cut Tokyo’s huge public debt, create jobs and fix the creaking social security system.

So why aren’t voters fired up? For one, the campaign has been pretty dull.

Rules require media to give equal coverage to all the political parties — not great for viewership when there are more than 10 of them. TV debates have had no fewer than seven party leaders arguing over issues ranging from the economy to diplomacy.

The debates are squeezed into shows lasting an hour or less, and include brief intervals showing pre-recorded comments from other party heads. Even Yasuo Tanaka, leader of New Party Nippon with just one seat in parliament, gets air time.

Japan prime ministers haunted by ever-present media

Japan’s Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama at a news conference on April 28, 2010. (REUTERS/Toru Hanai)

It’s not unusual for a politician whose popularity has slumped to want to avoid the media. But for Japan’s premiers it’s not just a question of keeping critical newspaper editorials out of sight.

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, just like his five predecessors, faces questioning from a posse of reporters morning and evening at least five days a week. And just like his predecessors, he seemed to find these brief  “doorstep news conferences” exhilarating while voter support for his government soared around the 70 percent level after a landslide election victory last year.

Now that only about 20 percent of Japanese say they support him in the run-up to a key upper house election, Hatoyama has visibly lost enthusiasm for commenting twice a day on camera. At first known for lengthy explanations, he has become increasingly curt. He even admitted recently that he’d prefer to skip the doorsteps in favour of holding more frequent sit-down news conferences, inviting a broader range of reporters from magazines and internet outlets.  ”But this is the custom,” he said forlornly.

Life was not necessarily easier for Japanese prime ministers before the doorstep idea was introduced by the popular Junichiro Koizumi, who served as premier from 2001-2006. Before his time, young reporters from Japan’s generously staffed big media companies were sent to camp out by the door of the prime minister’s office, taking note of whoever visited him and following him every time he left the room. Some leaders made it clear they found this constant attention irritating.

A move from the quaint 1920s building to a modernist new prime ministerial office in 2002 cut off reporters’ access to the premier’s office door and Koizumi sought to quell media protests by promising to speak to reporters twice a day. No matter how far their support falls, none of his successors has dared abandon the system for fear of sparking a media backlash. 

But some have sought to look beyond the cub reporters sent to quiz them and speak directly to the electorate. Shinzo Abe, premier from 2006-2007, became known for staring straight into the camera lens while speaking to reporters, in an effort to give the impression he was speaking directly to television viewers.

MP’s nosedive mirrors Japan leader’s sinking ratings

With voter popularity for Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama sinking to new lows, there was little sympathy even when a lawmaker from his Democratic Party fell flat on her face in parliament last week. Internet chatrooms and blogs have accused Yukiko Miyake of  faking her fall, which the Democrats blamed on a shove by a stocky opposition party lawmaker.  Footage of the scene in slow motion has flooded YouTube. One comment: “Miyake needs acting lessons”.

Just  9 months ago, the government’s support ratings stood above 70 percent after the Democrats won a landslide election, ending a half-century of nearly non-stop conservative rule. Miyake was one of many first-time lawmakers on whom voters pinned their hopes  for change – reviving the economy, cutting wasteful spending and fixing the pensions system. But polls now show the Democrats may struggle to win an election for parliament’s less powerful upper house, expected in July. Failure to win a majority risks policy deadlock at a time when Japan needs the political mandate to push through reforms and cut huge public debt.

What’s gone wrong for Hatoyama? Plenty. His credibility is in tatters, so much so that a fashion critic recently poked fun at a multi-coloured, checkered shirt the leader wore to a barbecue gathering back in April. Voters are frustrated with his handling of a row with the United States over where to relocate a Marine base on the southern island of Okinawa. He has promised a solution by the end of May, but the chances for one are looking slim. Hatoyama and Democratic Party kingpin Ichiro Ozawa are also under fire for political funding scandals. Both have refused to resign despite polls showing the scandals are hurting support.

Hatoyama has called for patience. Government spending on the economy takes time to trickle down to households.  Plus, not only are the Democrats in power for the first time, they are trying to revolutionise policymaking by reducing bureaucratic control and centralising power to the cabinet. But voters worry that Hatoyama, known more for his consensual style, lacks the strong decision-making skills needed to make the new initiative work.

The Sankei newspaper last month went so far as to report a rumour in the Democratic Party that the Hatoyama had been optimistic about resolving the U.S. base row because of a prophecy his wife heard from a fortune teller in India.  ”The fact that these rumours are going around, means we’re over,” the paper quoted a party staff member as saying.

The media bashing is reminiscent of the final days of other Japanese administations under the Democrats’ rival, the long-dominant Liberal Democratic Party. Hatoyama’s predecessor Taro Aso was repeatedly lampooned for verbal gaffes as his own and his party’s ratings slid ahead of last year’s resounding defeat at the polls.

The “Japan High School Party”

If ever proof were needed that personal ties can trump policy in Japanese political alliances , a new party being set up by a band of ageing opposition MPs should do the trick.

Former Finance Minister Kaoru Yosano, 71, favours raising taxes to pay for burgeoning social welfare costs in Japan’s greying society and helped push to privatise Japan’s huge postal system back in 2005.

His partner, ex-trade minister Takei Hiranuma, 70, is an ultraconservative who touts “traditional Japanese values” and left the then-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in 2005 because he staunchly opposed taking Japan Post private.

“Mr Yosano is not opposed to my ideas,” Hiranuma told reporters this week as the two plotted to start their new “Stand Up, Japan” party amid criticism that their policies hardly matched. “We were in the same class at Azabu High School and our seats were next to each other.”

Drafted as a fifth member needed to meet a legal requirement for setting up a new party was upper house lawmaker Yoshio Nakagawa, whose main qualification appears to be that his lawmaker brother, now deceased, was once an aide to Hiranuma.

Hiranuma himself would seem to be a better ideological fit with banking minister Shizuka Kamei, who also left the LDP in 2005 and started the People’s New Party to battle postal privatisation. But cynics say the small party couldn’t accommodate two big egos, and Kamei now belongs to Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s coalition, which took power last September after Hatoyama’s Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) trounced the long-dominant Liberal Democrats.

Confused? Not surprising.

Japan “opens up” to freelancers

Japan, breaking with tradition, has started to open up government news conferences to reporters outside the country’s established media. But have they become genuinely “open”?

After six months on the job, Prime Minister  Yukio Hatoyama  held his first news conference last month accessible to magazine, freelance and online journalists, drawing a packed crowd at the premier’s Kantei office . Other ministers, including those for foreign affairs, banking and environment, have also started news conferences for journalists excluded from so-called ”press clubs”, which are reserved for a small number of mainstream news agencies, newspapers and broadcasters. The elite press clubs have long enjoyed exclusive access to government news conferences, off-the-record briefings and other events. Opening up the news conferences to non-club members has been a big deal, and only came about after Hatoyama’s Democratic Party took power last year with promises for change and more transparent policies.

But for all the hype over equal access and “openness”, freelance and magazine reporters were corralled to one side of the room for the prime minister’s recent news conference, while press  club members took front row seats. Some joked they were being treated like “dangerous people”. At the environment minister’s first “open” news conference, reporters were instructed:  “As professional journalists, please ask dignified questions”. (No plea for dignity at news conferences for press club members.) Reporters were also warned not to spend too much time venting their own opinions.

The press club system will probably continue for now, despite the recent changes and criticism that the clubs have led to reporters getting too cosy with government officials and too cosy amongst themselves.  Many ministers still limit access to press club members and even those who’ve opened up their news conferences hold separate ones exclusively for press clubs. Hatoyama has said that he would talk to his cabinet on the need for more transparency. For Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada , the change has helped not only freelancers but himself.  ”I’ve learned things from the many different views presented here and I’m enjoying these news conferences,” he said last month.

Japan’s “political deflation”

“Political deflation” – that’s how one quipster described the woes besetting Japan’s political sphere as support for both the new ruling party and its main conservative rival slips on concerns that neither side is capable of steering an economy plagued by falling prices, decades of lacklustre growth and a fast-ageing, shrinking population.

Six months after the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) swept to power  for the first time in a landslide election win that ended more than 50 years of almost unbroken rule by the conservative Liberal Democrats, support for Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s government is only about half the exuberant 70 percent level enjoyed when he took office.

Pundits are predicting the DPJ will have trouble winning an outright majority in an election, expected to be held in July, for parliament’s less powerful upper house. The Democrats need a majority to break loose of a tiny coalition partner — outspoken banking minister Shizuka Kamei’s People’s New Party  – as well as another small partner, the Social Democrats, so they can avoid policy squabbles and pass bills smoothly. An outright ruling bloc loss threatens parliamentary deadlock.

A survey published in the Nikkei business daily on Monday showed support for Hatoyama’s cabinet has slid seven points to 36 percent and support for the DPJ  is down eight points at 33 percent.

Providing some comfort — albeit cold — for the struggling Democrats is the fact that the ousted Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is faring even worse. Even before last year’s election, former financial services minister Yoshimi Watanabe had bolted the party to form the small pro-reform Your Party, and since that defeat several other lawmakers have defected while some still in the LDP are publicly criticising their uncharismatic leader, Sadakazu Tanigaki, and mulling creating rival forces.

The LDP internal strife isn’t playing well with voters, who may be disappointed with the Democrats but appear to have little appetite for a comeback by the Liberal Democrats. Support for the LDP in the Nikkei poll dipped one point to 23 percent, while that for Your Party, by contrast, doubled  to 8 percent.

from Raw Japan:

Japan two-party system — long in arriving

Observers of Japanese politics who have long thought the country was ripe for a real two-party system are watching Sunday's election with a dual sense of incredulity -- surprise that it has taken so long to oust the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), and surprise that it finally looks like happening.

Media surveys show the decade-old opposition Democratic Party is set to win the poll for parliament's powerful lower house -- and probably by a landslide, ushering in party leader Yukio Hatoyama at the head of a government pledged to spend more on consumers and workers than the companies that benefited most from LDP policies.

That would be only the second time the LDP has lost its grip on government since it was founded in 1955.

"Every one I talk to has that feeling -- they aren't sure it's really going to happen because they thought it would happen before," said Steven Reed, a political scientist at Chuo University who has been analysing Japanese politics for decades. "A lot of people predicted based on hope, and that's not a particularly good variable for predictions."

Those with long memories can't help but recall the only other time the LDP lost power, when heavyweight Ichiro Ozawa and dozens of other lawmakers bolted the party in 1993 and voted in favour of a no-confidence motion against then-premier Kiichi Miyazawa, triggering a political quake that led to the formation of a multiparty, anti-LDP coalition under the telegenic Morihiro Hosokawa.

Hosokawa entranced a public more accustomed to staid, dark-suited and often inarticulate leaders with his media-savvy ways -- striding before cameras at an international leaders' summit with a white scarf around his neck, using a teleprompter at news conferences -- and promising to cut the bureaucratic red-tape that critics said was strangling the world's second-biggest economy.