Will Japan’s New Prime Minister Last?

Will Japan’s New Prime Minister Last?

C.D. Alexander Evans: Will Japan’s New Prime Minister Last?

In 2009 Japan experienced an unprecedented political event: the ruling center-right Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lost its fifty-three-year-long grip on power to the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), a center-left coalition. The election came as a shock, but the LDP had been struggling. Since the five-year term of conservative Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, the LDP had gone through three prime ministers (Shinzō Abe, Yasuo Fukuda, and Taro Aso) in just three years.

The election of the DPJ was widely and rightly celebrated as the birth of a competitive two-party electoral system in Japan. But questions immediately swirled about whether the DPJ could control the chaotic forces that had unseated the LDP. The resignation of the first DPJ prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, after just one year in office suggested that a trend of weak executive leadership would persist. Yet his successor, Prime Minister Naoto Kan, began his administration on firm footing and with unusually sharp rhetoric, giving observers abroad hope that he might stick around.

But Kan was almost immediately confronted by a leadership challenge from Ichirō Ozawa, a crucial power broker in the DPJ. Kan survived with a strong majority, but his position weakened after a poor response to the Great East Japan Earthquake. It wasn?t long before Kan was fending off calls to resign, which he finally did in August. He has been replaced by former Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda, who has a reputation for quiet competence. Reputations aside, he is the fifth prime minister in as many years. The Japanese people must be wondering how long Noda-san will captain the ship.

It didn?t have to be this way. Although the Great Earthquake caused unprecedented devastation, the crisis had a powerful unifying effect throughout the country. Japanese officials at home and abroad responded immediately to the disaster, assisted by friends from around the world. But the resilience of the Japanese people turned into frustration, with the government widely perceived as too slow to react to crisis conditions. News of withheld information about nuclear contamination spread quickly, terrifying ordinary people and scaring away tourism.

Much of the criticism of the response to the earthquake was unfair. There was almost no sign of corruption or widespread discrimination?a better record than that of the U.S. government in the aftermath of Katrina. Many of the logistical difficulties of rescue and recovery went underreported; for example, virtually no American journalists reported that the dialect in the Tohōku region was hard to understand even for some native Japanese speakers, hindering rescue efforts. Some criticized the government for raising far less foreign relief money than Haiti managed in the wake of the January 2010 earthquake, but much of this was because donors knew that Japan was a wealthy country.

But fair or unfair, the public?s anger has resulted in a revolving door of prime ministers, posing serious risks to the constitutional integrity of Japan, a parliamentary democracy where power is shared between elected representatives and career bureaucrats. If prime ministers are unable to hold executive office for more than a year, they cannot construct the network of political allies necessary for wielding power. The lack of a stable multi-year partner also makes international relations more difficult to sustain. Responsibility is increasingly ceded to unelected bureaucrats at the top of an entrenched power structure.

Bureaucrats in Japan are very well qualified and work extraordinarily hard?they must go to the best schools and get the top scores on their exams to enter prestigious government branches like the Ministry of Finance or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. But the Japanese constitution and its civil society still call out for a democratic state, not an unelected technocratic meritocracy. The weakened executive office, and the corresponding weakness of the entire representative system, destabilizes the delicate electoral balance established by the postwar constitution.

The parliamentary system faces another challenge in the unpopularity of the DPJ. The party has struggled with voters since the 2009 elections and now has troubling poll numbers, suggesting a likely rightward swing in the next general election. But the LDP is polling just slightly above the approval ratings that led to its defeat in 2009, suggesting that Japanese voters don?t really like either party, or feel that the parties are altogether too similar. (Evidence of this can be seen in the surprising popularity of more radical movements like the right-wing Your Party during the last election cycle.)

What is perhaps the most disappointing of all is the sense that a golden opportunity for political unity has been lost. Gerald Curtis, perhaps the foremost American scholar on Japanese politics, called the political window right after the Great Earthquake a ?once-in-a-generation? chance to build a strong executive office. Perhaps, he mused, Japan could even forge a unity government that could stay intact for at least the next three or four years. This dream has faded away.

These problems aren?t the end of the world. Aid continues to flow for recovery and reconstruction is firmly underway. The Japanese people have shown a face to the world of which they can always be proud, but their government has not. If Prime Minister Noda faces a leadership challenge or calls for resignation before the year is out, people around the world will be left scratching their heads.