Raw Japan

Japan’s ‘shadow shogun’

Often said to prefer to rule from the shadows, ruling party Secretary-General Ichiro Ozawa dominated the front pages of most of Japan’s major newspapers on Thursday, after giving Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama what reports said was a dressing down over government spending the previous day. 

Ozawa and other party officials had presented Hatoyama and several cabinet ministers with a list of suggestions that included scaling back a key election promise to provide universal child allowances and abandoning a pledge to abolish an unpopular levy on gasoline.

When the mild-mannered Hatoyama took over the Democratic Party leadership in May, critics said he would amount to nothing more than a puppet of his brusque predecessor, Ozawa, seen by many as the architect of the party’s sweeping August election victory.

A poll in the conservative Sankei newspaper last month showed nearly 42 percent of respondents saw Ozawa as the most powerful man in the government, compared with just over 18 percent who picked Hatoyama. Ozawa also grabbed the spotlight when he led a recent delegation of more than 140 Democratic Party lawmakers on a trip to China to help improve ties.

Speculation about the role of the ‘shadow shogun’, though a favourite topic of Japan’s mass media, has so far done little to damage support for Hatoyama’s government, which has slipped from initial highs but still hovers around 56 percent in the latest survey, although some experts forecast it could add to doubts about his ability to steer the world’s second-biggest economy.

Despite the charges that Ozawa is trying to run the show, some media speculated his tough words for Hatoyama were really a rescue mission in disguise.

Are Japan’s rookie lawmakers being treated like kids?

Name tags on their chairs so their “teachers” can take attendance; instructions on how to greet their elders politely; orders to turn up on time.

Rookie lawmakers in Japan’s ruling Democratic Party are, critics say, being treated like first-grade students instead of a talent pool the government can draw on to tackle tough policy problems from a bulging debt to strained ties with Washington.

Political mastermind Ichiro Ozawa’s strict control of the 141 new lawmakers swept into office by the Democratic Party of Japan’s (DPJ) huge August election victory that ousted their long-dominant rival has cast a spotlight on the paradoxical power of the man many credit with engineering the historic win.

Fears that Ozawa, who bolted the long-dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in 1993 and spent the following years plotting its overthrow, would pull the strings in Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s government have simmered since he took over as the Democrats’ No. 2 after their stunning win at the polls.

His grip on the party grabbed fresh attention recently when he scuppered a plan to draft 14 first-term lawmakers for a new task force set up to identify wasteful projects that can be cut from the national budget, an urgent chore now that Japan’s public debt looks set to exceed 200 percent of its GDP this year.

“Why is Ozawa doing this? Because for him, political power means numbers and numbers mean elections, so the Democrats need to keep the seats they won and to get ready for the next election now,” said political commentator Hirotaka Futatsuki.

“But taken to an extreme, the result would be that all the new lawmakers have to do is raise their hands to pass laws.”

Opposition sees “Hitler Youth” in ruling party

When Japan’s new opposition leader compared ruling party lawmakers cheering the prime minister’s policy speech to “Hitler Youth”, the comment grabbed headlines, though it was perhaps just a sign of the depth of opposition frustration.

“I got  the impression that the atmosphere in parliament was similar to the Hitler Youth agreeing to Hitler’s speech,” Liberal Democratic Party leader Sadakazu Tanigaki told reporters after Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s first policy speech since his Democratic Party ousted the LDP in a historic August election.

Hatoyama’s Democrats trounced the LDP in the lower house election, taking 308 seats in the 480-member chamber, while the conservative party that had ruled Japan for most of the past half-century lost its grip on power after its presence was slashed to a mere 119.

The LDP defeat was particularly stunning given that in the previous general election in 2005, popular LDP leader Junichiro Koizumi had led his party to a massive victory with talk of bold reforms, only to see the tables turned four years later.

Despite some rough patches in his first month in office, Hatoyama is riding high in opinion polls, which also show Tanigaki has failed to excite voter enthusiasm.

Hatoyama, the wealthy grandson of a prime minister, promoted his core philopsophy of “yuai”, a fuzzy concept of  “fraternity”, in his speech and pledged to protect the weak from harsh economic competition while reallocating spending to improve individuals’ lives.

“It is obvious that leaving everything to the market and pursuing market efficiency to the point where you sacrifice people’s livelihoods and only the strong survive will not work,” Hatoyama said, although he also gave a nod to the benefits of market economics.

Shaking hands with the prime minister, sort of

On the last day of Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso’s campaign for last week’s lower house election, I went to cover Aso’s speech in Kamakura to get pictures out as early as possible.

A large crowd of people waited for him to speak, but only a handful of cameraman were at the scene, perhaps reflecting the view that the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was on its way to defeat.

During the election, it was common for politicians to go into crowds of voters to shake hands and as soon as Aso began finishing up his speech, I rushed towards the front row of the crowd with my wide 16mm lens.

Within moments, voters were reaching out their hands and I was practically nose to nose with Aso while angry bodyguards tried to shove me away. I don’t give up easily if there is a chance of a good picture, though.

The next thing I knew, Aso himself suddenly grasped my hands and camera and told me: “You shouldn’t be shooting here. You’ve got to obey the rules. Do you understand?”

It was quite a shock to have Japan’s Prime Minister talking to me like this in front of a large number of people.

Political paparazzi

It’s been a scramble for journalists to follow Yukio Hatoyama’s every move after his Democratic Party won the election by a landslide, making him the next prime minister. 

From his opulent home to gatherings with political and government figures, reporters chase him all around Tokyo, with pit-stops at the Democrats’ headquarters in Nagatacho, the heart of the capital’s political district.

The Democrats’ modest HQ makes the chase harder. Several dozen reporters, including TV crew and photographers, tussle to catch Hatoyama in just the few metres he has to get from his car to the elevator of the building. Another few dozen reporters are standing by in the very narrow hallway on the eighth floor in front of the offices of party executives, including Hatoyama’s.

“He entered the building,” a reporter shouts after getting a call from a colleague downstairs.

All the cameramen rush to get ready to film 15 seconds of Hatoyama walking into his office.

Historic win in Japan. Now what?

Historic is usually a word that makes my skin crawl when I see it in the news. Journalists are prone to overuse it, so when I saw it in our election stories I had to stop myself deleting it — because this election truly is historic.

The Liberal Democratic Party had never lost an election since its founding in 1955. Even when it lost power for a few months in 1993/94, it was because of LDP lawmakers defecting rather than an election loss.

So the Democratic Party, under prime minister-elect Yukio Hatoyama, has a huge mandate. What will he do with it?

It’s clear that the last two elections were votes for a change to the old system where the ruling LDP, big business and bureaucrats ruled the place. Remember the 2005 LDP landslide was led by Junichiro Koizumi running on the destruction of his own party’s pork-barrel history.

The question is whether voters also rejected deregulation in the wake of the financial crisis and slumping exports that put large numbers of unprotected contract workers out of work.

The Yomiuri newspaper, Japan’s biggest seller, certainly subscribed to that view in its editorial on Monday. Along with the undisputed argument that voters were disgusted with the LDP’s failures, it said the defeat “was brought about by the collapse of its structural reforms that went too far”.

Watching the giants fall

Some elections count more than others, and never more than when a longstanding dominant party is sent packing. I’ve been lucky enough to witness turning points in four countries on two continents.

France, India, Italy, now Japan — all have rejected one-party dominance for the rough and tumble of alternating majorities. In each case, I was fortunate to behold history.

Japan’s election on Sunday marked the end of an era that started not long after World War Two and saw Japan rise from the ashes of defeat to a global economic power. Japan’s revival took root in an iron triangle locking the Liberal Democratic Party, bureaucrats and Japanese industry.

Now the LDP is tasting the same bitter fruit as paramount parties in other countries whose voters decided a few decades in power for one party were enough. The circumstances in each country were different, but the democratic impulse was similar and the result much the same.

In 1981 Francois Mitterand became the first leftist president of France since the Fifth Republic was created in 1957. I watched as ecstatic French voters poured into the streets after Mitterrand’s victory. France then trembled as this imperious socialist did the impossible by sharing power with his Gaullist rivals.

The Indian National Congress spearheaded that nation’s independence movement and then became the dominant political party led by the Nehru-Gandhi family. Eventually corruption allegations caught up with Congress and it had to yield power first to Hindu nationalists, then to a coalition of upstart leftists and regional parties.

I remember the sight of chastened ex-Congress leader P.V. Narasimha Rao standing in the dock in a Delhi court accused of corruption charges, for which he was later acquitted.

A storm brewing

I watched Japan’s election returns from the rocky Pacific, with the satellite TV reception suprisingly crisp on a ferry heading south.

A typhoon is headed towards mainland Japan and travel and other ways of life have been caught up in its headwinds, while the impact of the apparently changing political climate has only just begun.

Northern Hokkaido, once a stronghold of the Liberal Democratic Party with never-ending highway, tunnel and bridge projects as testament, deserted the long-ruling party with all but three seats going to the Democratic Party, including prime minister-elect Yukio Hatoyama.

LDP losers in Hokkaido included former foreign minister Nobutaka Machimura, head of the party’s largest faction, Tsutomu Takebe, a Koizumi Cabinet loyalist, and former finance Shoichi Nakagawa, whose family had represented the middle of the vast prefecture for almost half a century and whose struggles were chronicled last week in this blog.

In Tohoku, the northern part of Japan’s biggest island, Honshu, and the home of Democrat founder and former leader Ichiro Ozawa, the beating was also fierce, if not quite as emphatic, as the LDP took 9 seats and the Democrats 26.

“Tohoku is generally conservative, with farmers supporting the LDP’s policies. But before the election their attitude had changed,” said Masaki Hara, a retired Sendai resident, who joined me watching results, along with many other captive ferry passengers, some of whom had lost interest in the Yomiuri Giants game on a competing TV screen.

Elections, obstructions and duct tape

When you pack scores of journalists into a room and they’re all trying to listen to, photograph, and film one person – like the head of a political party – it’s easy to get blocked by the people and things in front of you.

For a photographer, this is the kiss of death. It means not getting a picture. Next, your phone rings with an angry editor on the other end - a brief conversation is followed by a lengthy period of woe and despair. For this and other reasons, photographers go to great lengths to get a good photo position.

For Sunday’s Democratic Party of Japan election event, the first photographers arrived at 2 a.m. for an event that wasn’t expected to start until almost 8 p.m. – 16 hours later. Well before any big event photographers make a land grab vying for the best possible real-estate.

At popular events, once you’re in position it can be difficult to get out again with all the other photographers around. Waiting is just part of the job. Photographers also usually come armed with rolls of duct tape to mark out territory, stickers to place on chairs and tables, and ladders to see over those pesky tall people.

On the other hand, sometimes a little bit of obstruction can make a very interesting picture. Flags, people, and video cameras can be useful objects to “frame” a picture in order to concentrate the viewer’s eye on the subject.

Japan voters debate change

Japanese voters debated change as they participated in an election on Sunday that looks set to give the opposition Democratic Party of Japan a historic victory over the Liberal Democratic Party that has ruled for most of the past 50 years.

Reuters reporters fanned out across Tokyo to talk to voters, and here’s what some of those at polling stations had to say:

“I would like to see a change from the long years of the Liberal Democratic Party. I hope it will change,” said 48-year-old Juri Sasao, who with her husband said they voted for the Democratic Party.

“It seemed like it was time for a political change. Until now the LDP has been in power but things have not gotten better under their rule. So now it seems like time for a party change and for Japan to undertake a new challenge,” said Hideki Kawano, a 59-year-old factory worker who voted for the Democrats.

“It seems like the Democrats are just saying what the people want to hear, but I’m not sure they can follow through on these promises. I think we need to give the LDP four more years to see their policies take effect before making a change,” said Taku Yamada, a 30-year-old health care industry worker who voted for the LDP.

“It’s taken a long time for this to happen. I voted for the Democrats because of the payouts for children. And I think the government should change this time,” said 39-year-old Atsushi Misu from Yokohama, south of Tokyo, who was at a polling station with his wife and two young boys.