Looking for Leadership: The Dilemma of Political Leadership in Japan 4889071423, 9784889071429

Table of contents :
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright Information
Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction
Looking for Leadership
Domestic Governance and Political Leadership in Japan
The Evolution of Japan's "Leadership Deficit"
The Frequent Turnover of Japanese Prime Ministers: Still a Long Way to a Westminster Model
Party Politics and Leadership Change in Japan: The Prime Ministerial Relay
What Went Wrong under the DPJ?
Political Leadership and Foreign Policy
The DPJ Government's Failed Foreign Policy: A Case of Politician-Led Government Gone Wrong
Political Leadership in Japan and Japanese Foreign Policy: Lessons from the DPJ Governments
Conclusion
Japan's Way Forward: The Prospects of Political Leadership and the International Implications
Appendix
About the Contributors
Back Cover

Citation preview

Looking for Leadership The Dilemma of Political Leadership in Japan

Edited by

Ryo Sahashi James Gannon

Japan Center for International Exchange Tokyo • New York

Copyright © 2015 Japan Center for International Exchange All rights reserved. Copyediting by Kimberly Gould Ashizawa, Susan Hubbard, and Serina Bellamy. Cover design by Etsuko Iseki. Typesetting by Patrick Ishiyama. Cover photo includes a derivative of “National Diet Building,” by Dick Thomas Johnson, licensed by JCIE under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/). Printed in the United States. ISBN 9784889071429 Japan Center for International Exchange 4-9-17 Minami Azabu, Minato-ku Tokyo 106-0047 Japan www.jcie.or.jp Japan Center for International Exchange (JCIE/USA) 135 West 29th Street, Suite 303 New York, NY 10001 USA www.jcie.org

Contents

Preface 5

Introduction 1. Looking for Leadership

11

James Gannon and Ryo Sahashi

Domestic governance and political leadership in Japan 2. The Evolution of Japan’s “Leadership Deficit”

31

Yuichi Hosoya 

3. The Frequent Turnover of Japanese Prime Ministers: Still a Long Way to a Westminster Model

46

Harukata Takenaka

4. Party Politics and Leadership Change in Japan: The Prime Ministerial Relay

83

Takao Ochi

5. What Went Wrong under the DPJ? Yuka Uchida Ando

108

4

Contents

Political leadership and foreign policy 6. The DPJ Government’s Failed Foreign Policy: A Case of Politician-Led Government Gone Wrong

131

Ryo Sahashi

7. Political Leadership in Japan and Japanese Foreign Policy: Lessons from the DPJ Governments

159

Satoru Mori

Conclusion 8. Japan’s Way Forward: The Prospects for Political Leadership and the International Implications

181

James Gannon and Ryo Sahashi

Appendix Prime Ministers of Japan

199

About the Contributors

201

Preface

In February 2012, when the Japan Center for International Exchange (JCIE) first convened the study team that authored this volume, Japanese politics looked very different from how it does today. As we sat there in Tokyo, contemplating the approach we would take in our chapters, Japan had cycled through five prime ministers in five years and it was clear that a sixth one, Yoshihiko Noda, would not much last longer either. The costs of weak political leadership were becoming increasingly tangible for the proverbial man on the street as delays and missteps in the recovery from the massive 2011 earthquake were blamed on powerless or inept politicians, in some instances unfairly and in other cases with good cause. Furthermore, with both major political parties having let down the voters, it seemed that there were no prospective leaders on the horizon likely to bring an end to the annual pattern of rotating premiers, nor any who could reassert confident and far-sighted Japanese leadership in Asia, a region that was increasingly beset by tensions surrounding the historic shift underway in the balance of power. Overseas, policy thinkers who followed Japan had growing concerns about whether domestic politics were bound to make Asia’s richest and most powerful advanced democracy increasingly irrelevant in international affairs. Japan’s friends and allies had begun to despair about how to move forward in their bilateral relations and the degree to which they could depend on the word of Japan’s top leaders, who seemed destined to be ousted from office almost as soon as they had settled into their post. As a result, this study was designed to explore what was behind Japan’s so-called “vacuum of leadership” and how Japan’s friends and neighbors could maintain productive relations with a government that was seemingly adrift. But a strange thing happened once the study got underway. A disgraced former prime minister surprised observers with his unprecedented return to power and succeeded in dominating Japan’s political

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Looking for Leadership

landscape, cowing the intraparty rivals that had so often undercut previous leaders, repeatedly outmaneuvering the opposition, and bringing a renewed sense of confidence and momentum to his country. In fact, a little more than three years after the study had commenced, as this book was going to print, Japan appeared to be one of the only advanced democracies that actually had strong and stable leadership. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had just been re-anointed as head of his party, was about to complete his third full year in office, and was already certain to be remembered as one of the longest-lasting and most consequential prime ministers of the past half-century. However, as the analysis in this volume makes clear, the challenges that inspired this study have not gone away. The country’s political institutions make it likely that, after Prime Minister Abe departs the stage, Japanese premiers will continue to struggle to exercise strong leadership, and this is likely to impact Japan’s foreign relations. Therefore, we hope that this book sheds light on the root causes of the dilemma of political leadership in Japan, provokes thinking about how the country’s leaders and voters might bring about change, and gives insights into what the rest of the world can do in the meantime to maintain strong relations with Japan. There are many people to thank for making this book possible, starting with the authors who sacrificed so much time for the project, joining almost a dozen roundtables, numerous interviews with outside experts, and two overseas study trips—namely, Yuka Uchida Ando, who also played a key role in the planning of the study; Yuichi Hosoya; Satoru Mori; Takao Ochi; and Harukata Takenaka. They were recruited not just because they are part of a rising generation of deep thinkers but also because each straddled two worlds, academia and government, bringing both scholarly discipline and hands-on experience with politics and policy to their analysis. Their firsthand involvement in policymaking and politics proved to be a great boon for the study, but the fact that several team members were called to serve in a public capacity during the course of writing the book made their continued commitment to this project even more commendable. In particular, we want to express our gratitude to Takao Ochi, who returned to the Japanese Diet during the course of the project, and then was appointed to the cabinet as parliamentary vice-minister, yet heroically found time late at night and on weekends to draft his chapter. Special thanks also goes to Gerald L. Curtis and Hitoshi Tanaka for serving as special advisors for the study, sharing their insights and

Preface

7

wisdom with the group, and giving invaluable feedback on the analysis. It is difficult to find two figures involved with Japan who have thought more deeply about the challenges of leadership. We also are grateful to Sheila Smith of the Council on Foreign Relations, who organized seminars for the study team to gain feedback—not once but twice—prodding the authors to reexamine their assumptions more deeply in her incisive yet gentle way. And our appreciation also extends to the many other political leaders and experts who shared their observations about and personal experiences in exercising leadership at the highest levels of government, some of them on the record and others anonymously. The funding that made this study possible was provided by the Smith Richardson Foundation, and we owe a particular debt of gratitude to Allan Song and his colleagues. It was Al who first urged us to take on this challenge. But it was his encouragement throughout, as well as his patience with us when carrying out the study proved more daunting than expected, that has left the strongest impression upon us. At JCIE, we have many colleagues to thank, starting with Akio Okawara and Hideko Katsumata, who have done so much to make this study possible. Kim Gould Ashizawa and Susan Hubbard did an extraordinary job of editing the publication, even while facing numerous other pressures, and we are grateful to Patrick Ishiyama for the layout and design of the contents and Serina Bellamy for her fact-checking. Also, we are grateful to Maya Wedemeyer, Lilian Haney, and Haruko Yuasa for adeptly managing the project and organizing its various events. Finally, we would like to dedicate this book to the memory of the late founder and president of JCIE, Tadashi Yamamoto, who was the original project director. This was the last study he was involved in launching, but he was hospitalized before the first official project meeting and subsequently passed away. The issue of leadership was dear to his heart. He spent much of his life striving to encourage promising young politicians in Japan to gain the experience in international affairs that would allow them to become world leaders, just as he also worked to nurture leadership in the nonprofit sector and in other areas. He taught us what a leader with a compelling vision and a commitment to doing good could accomplish, and we hope that his spirit will live on in the world of politics and international affairs. Ryo Sahashi and James Gannon November 2015

introduction

1

Looking for Leadership

James Gannon and R yo Sahashi

I

n recent years, democratic leaders around the world have found it increasingly difficult to project strong leadership. However, there is no major country where this has proven to be as challenging of a task as Japan. The difficulty that Japan’s top leadership—the cabinet and, in particular, the prime minister—has encountered over the past several decades in effectively wielding power, and even in staying in office, has had devastating consequences. It has made it even harder to carry out long-needed economic restructuring, adapt to the needs of the world’s most rapidly aging population, and respond to deadly crises like the massive March 2011 earthquake. At the same time, it has hamstrung Japan’s foreign policy, eroding Japan’s international presence at a point when the regional balance is undergoing a historic and potentially perilous shift and when astute leadership is especially crucial in global affairs. The election of Shinzo Abe in 2012 offered a respite for Japanese voters who had grown weary of rapid prime ministerial turnover. At the time of writing, he had served almost three years in office, longer than fourfifths of the prime ministers who have governed Japan in the postwar James Gannon is the executive director of the Japan Center for International Exchange (JCIE/USA), and Ryo Sahashi is an associate professor at Kanagawa University.

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era, and he is showing indications of becoming one of the most consequential prime ministers in recent history. However, the fact remains that, even though long-serving prime ministers like Yasuhiro Nakasone (1982–1987), Junichiro Koizumi (2001–2006), and now Shinzo Abe have occasionally emerged, the trends of the past several decades are rightly cause for concern both for Japan and for its friends. An international perspective on Japan’s political instability is particularly bracing. Excluding Switzerland, which operates with a unique political system, Japan has seen its head of government change more in recent years than any other country in the 34-member Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). In the quarter century between 1990 and 2014, a total of 16 prime ministers rotated through the office. The only other OECD countries that came even close to this level of turnover were Poland with 15 prime ministers (most during its transition to democracy in the initial decade after the end of the Cold War) and Italy, which had 14 prime ministers and is widely cited as being the poster child for dysfunctional politics.1 The contrast is even more jarring when Japan is compared with the other G7 countries. While Japan had 16 prime ministers, the remaining G7 members each averaged fewer than 6 heads of government in the 1990–2014 period. The United Kingdom and Canada had 5 prime ministers each; France and the United States had 4 presidents; and Germany had just 3 chancellors. During this period, the average term in office of these leaders was more than 4 times longer than that of Japan’s prime ministers—7 years for the other six members of the G7 versus 1.6 years for the average Japanese prime minister. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that in recent years a growing number of political analysts in Japan and abroad have lamented Japan’s “vacuum of political leadership” and its “leadership deficit.”2 Of course, this is not a new phenomenon; despite a few notable exceptions—namely Prime Ministers Nakasone and Koizumi—the dearth of strong prime ministerial leadership has been a subject of concern since at least the 1970s. Nonetheless, as the Japanese society and economy have undergone fundamental shifts, the domestic ramifications of failed leadership have become increasingly dire. And as the global order has shifted and Japan’s neighborhood has become more dangerous, the impact on Japan’s foreign relations has become more consequential as well. In other words, the stakes are higher than ever when it comes to the problem of Japanese political leadership. Therefore, this volume examines why it has been so difficult for Japan’s top leaders to stay in

Looking for Leadership Table 1. Japanese prime ministers and their counterparts, 1990–2014 Prime minister

Years

Japanese prime ministers

1. Toshiki Kaifu (1989–1991)

2.2

2. Kiichi Miyazawa (1991–1993)

1.8

3. Morihiro Hosokawa (1993–1994)

0.7

4. Tsutomu Hata (1994)

0.2

5. Tomiichi Murayama (1994–1996)

1.5

6. Ryutaro Hashimoto (1996–1998)

2.6

7. Keizo Obuchi (1998–2000)

1.7

8. Yoshiro Mori (2000–2001)

1.1

9. Junichiro Koizumi (2001–2006)

5.4

10. Shinzo Abe (2006–2007)

1.0

11. Yasuo Fukuda (2007–2008)

1.0

12. Taro Aso (2008–2009)

1.0

13. Yukio Hatoyama (2009–2010)

0.7

14. Naoto Kan (2010–2011)

1.2

15. Yoshihiko Noda (2011–2012)

1.3

16. Shinzo Abe (2012– )

–

United Kingdom prime ministers

1. Margaret Thatcher (1979–1990)

11.6

2. John Major (1990–1997)

6.6

3. Tony Blair (1997–2007)

10.2

4. Gordon Brown (2007–2010)

2.9

5. David Cameron (2010– )

– US presidents

1. George H. W. Bush (1989–1993)

4.0

2. Bill Clinton (1993–2001)

8.0

3. George W. Bush (2001–2009)

8.0

4. Barack Obama (2009–)

–

13

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Looking for Leadership

office and exercise strong leadership, whether this is likely to change, and what it means for Japan’s foreign relations.

Political Leadership under the 1955 System The roots of Japan’s leadership dilemma extend back to the 1955 system, the set of political arrangements that persisted from 1955 to 1993, through which the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) dominated Japanese politics. The backdrop to the 1955 system was the ideological divide between the ruling LDP and the main opposition party, the Japan Socialist Party. This reflected the Cold War atmosphere of the times: the LDP supported the US-Japan alliance while the Socialists opposed closer ties to the United States. LDP dominance did not mean that there was no political competition. One of the major characteristics of the 1955 system was the emergence of factions within the LDP that engaged in pitched intraparty struggles over resources, political posts, and policymaking. In some ways, this replaced genuine electoral competition between the ruling and opposition parties,3 and informal systems developed through which cabinet posts and other political spoils were allocated among factions depending on their relative power. The 1955 system also featured a powerful bureaucracy that controlled many aspects of day-to-day policymaking. It was rare for politicians or their aides to actually write any of the legislation submitted to the Diet, and it became common practice for bureaucrats to draft both the questions and answers for Diet interpellations of cabinet ministers and senior ministry officials representing the bureaucracy. When the political leadership sought to promote policies that diverged from those backed by the bureaucracy, bureaucrats would even undermine—and frequently defeat—their political masters.4 Big business also played a crucial role in the 1955 system. Large corporations provided many of the financial resources that LDP politicians used to retain their electoral dominance, and business leaders had an influential voice in government deliberations. In fact, the powerful combination of the LDP, the bureaucracy, and big business came to be widely referred to as the “iron triangle” of Japanese politics, and it was commonly assumed that politicians were not really the ones steering the ship of state.

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Nevertheless, the emergence of this iron triangle did not prevent individual politicians from exercising strong leadership, at least during the first two decades of the 1955 system. The name of Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida (1946–1947, 1948–1954), who helped lay the foundation of the 1955 system, has become nearly synonymous with the word “leadership” in Japanese political circles. Later, Japan’s rise to economic prominence was led by such prime ministers as Hayato Ikeda (1960–1964) and Eisaku Sato (1964–1972), who clearly articulated national goals, exercised strong leadership, and consequently held power for substantial terms. By the mid-1970s, however, signs began to emerge that the 1955 system was bogged down and it had become increasingly difficult for prime ministers to exercise effective leadership. Since 1947, members of Japan’s Lower House (the House of Representatives) had been elected from multi-member districts via a single nontransferable vote (SNTV) system that allowed multiple candidates from the same party to run against one another to fill the three to five seats that were typically assigned to each district. In many cases, two or three LDP members held seats in the same district, regularly squaring off against one another at election time. Since the party could not readily give preferential treatment to one member campaigning against another, the system created fertile ground for the growth of intraparty factions that could help individual members get elected.5 These factions had always held considerable sway within the LDP, but that increased as they took over the party’s role in recruiting candidates, training young Diet members, and providing them with political funds. As LDP Diet members’ loyalty to faction heads outpaced their loyalty to the prime minister (who always served concurrently as the LDP’s president), the prime minister ended up highly dependent on the support of several other factions. This trend progressed to the point where it became the norm for the prime minister to allocate cabinet seats on a factional basis, and from the mid-1970s through the mid-1980s, he even lost the ability to appoint the LDP secretary-general, who would run the day-to-day operations of the party.6 As time went by, the prime minister’s power was also diluted by the LDP’s Policy Affairs Research Council (PARC), an official party organ with committees comprised of LDP Diet members that mirrored the Diet’s committee structure and that approved legislation for submission to the parliament. This gave individual politicians a powerful tool to steer public funding to domestic constituencies, a task that became even more important after Kakuei Tanaka, who became known as the LDP’s “shadow shogun,” built up an extraordinary power base by expanding

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public works funding and controlling its distribution. In cooperation with allies in the bureaucracy, members of specialized PARC subcommittees could defy the prime minister’s wishes and direct resources toward the vested interests that would support them come election time. Maintaining factions is a costly business, and it gave rise to an intense form of money politics that was amplified by the ability of faction leaders to steer public money toward their supporters. By the late 1980s, more than ¥88 billion—almost Us$700 million at the exchange rate of the day—was flowing annually to the factions in official contributions, in addition to untold billions of yen in illicit donations.7 Faction leaders would receive contributions from corporations and other vested interests—some on the books and others in secret—then distribute funds to followers and supporters. The degree to which this became accepted practice is clear—in 1974, for instance, Tanaka reportedly gave not just his faction members but every Diet member and many other government officials from ¥3 million to ¥5 million (roughly Us$10,000–Us$17,000) each as a traditional summertime ochugen present.8

Reforming the System Following a series of scandals that were shocking for their audacity, public disgust with money politics drove a number of reform efforts, the most consequential of which was an overhaul of the electoral system. The aim was to undercut the power of the factions and help shift Japan toward a two-party system in which parties offer voters clear policy choices. Many expected that this would strengthen the hands of party leaders and, by extension, the prime minister.9 Proposals for a new electoral system began circulating at the end of the 1980s, and electoral reform gained true traction when the LDP was toppled from power in 1993 by a coalition uniting longtime opposition figures and a range of LDP defectors. Morihiro Hosokawa, the first non-LDP prime minister in four decades, took up the banner of electoral reform and managed to push a bill through the Diet that replaced the Lower House multimember districts with a system of 300 winner-take-all single-member districts and 200 large proportional representation districts. However, Hosokawa only lasted nine months in office. Shortly thereafter, the LDP returned to power, first by luring the Socialist Party into an unlikely coalition in which a Socialist, Tomiichi Murayama (1994–1996), was given the premiership, although the LDP later took back the post

Looking for Leadership

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for itself. But under the surface, the electoral reforms started to shift the incentives of politicians, helping to push Japanese politics toward more of a two-party system. Six years later, a new reform-minded party, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), had grown to the point where it was able to obtain 26 percent of the seats in the 2000 Lower House elections—second to the LDP’s 49 percent and more than four times the representation of the next closest competitor. This pattern of the LDP and DPJ obtaining the vast majority of seats was to continue for years to come. While the electoral reforms did not undermine the factions as quickly as some expected,10 this change—along with other trends such as shifts in the nature of media coverage and stricter political finance regulations—contributed to a nationalization of elections that made the image, agenda, and campaigning skills of parties and party leaders more crucial. In the end, the electoral reforms created an opportunity for prime ministers to wield greater power vis-à-vis the LDP’s faction leaders. However, some analysts argue that it also complicated the prime minister’s job by making it more likely that there would be a “twisted Diet” in which the ruling party controls the Lower House while the opposition has a majority in the Upper House, giving it the ability to obstruct the prime minister’s agenda. This is because, while the 1994 electoral reforms made the Lower House more representative of urban voters, a strong bias toward rural voters—who are typically older, more conservative, and more likely to vote—has persisted in the Upper House.11 As the average number of constituents in rural districts has declined relative to those in urban districts, the bias has widened so much that in the 2013 Upper House election, the vote of a single constituent in sparsely populated Tottori Prefecture carried the same weight as 4.77 voters in Hokkaido, which the Supreme Court ruled to be in a state of unconstitutionality. In practice, this disparity in voting, as well as the fact that the Upper House and Lower House elections are typically held at different times and thus in different political climates, has increased the likelihood of a twisted Diet in which the prime minister struggles to move his agenda. In the late 1990s, soon after the electoral reform was enacted, Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto (1996–1998) also initiated a set of administrative reforms that helped to shift the locus of policymaking from the bureaucracy toward the political leadership, and especially into the prime minister’s hands. This governmental reorganization gained steam at a time when public regard for Japan’s once-vaunted bureaucracy was being eroded by a series of scandals, a trend toward “bureaucrat-bashing”

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by politicians, and the failure of the government to shift from a singleminded focus on growth toward policies more appropriate for a mature economy and a growing diversity of societal interests. Hashimoto’s reform plan shrank the number of ministries from 23 to 12, but the most consequential step in terms of the power balance between the prime minister and the ministries was the establishment of the Cabinet Office (Naikakufu), an agency under the prime minister’s direct supervision that could be used in conjunction with the Cabinet Secretariat to control policymaking and coordinate its implementation. Previously, the prime minister had operated with a handful of staff seconded from the ministries, utilizing cabinet ministers and senior ministry officials to channel requests to the bureaucracy and gather information. This approach had its limitations: the cabinet ministers were often political rivals of the prime minister with their own personal and factional interests; moreover, since they were surrounded by bureaucrats and dependent on them for all of their information, they tended to be “captured” by their ministry and convinced to defend its interests rather than those of the broader government. The new Cabinet Office absorbed the former Prime Minister’s Office (Sorifu) as well as several other agencies, including the Economic Planning Agency, and was distinguished primarily by its enhanced staff and resources, the establishment of independent bodies to coordinate fiscal and monetary policy across the government, and the creation of a handful of cabinet and subcabinet-level posts for senior political appointees who could directly support the prime minister. These administrative reforms went into effect in January 2001 and their impact quickly became evident when Junichiro Koizumi, who came to power four months later, deftly used them to advance a number of groundbreaking initiatives, including economic liberalization schemes and structural reforms that took on vested interests that were highly influential in the LDP. He also made successful use of the electoral reforms, most memorably by attacking the power base of old-school faction leaders in his own party in the famous 2005 “assassins” election.12 Koizumi was rewarded with stable public support that enabled him to serve the longest term in office of any prime minister since Sato, and his premiership turned out to be the most consequential in at least two decades. However, when he left office in 2006, he was succeeded by a string of six prime ministers, each of whom lasted on average only a single year in office. Each of them failed to come close to matching Koizumi’s

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success despite having a number of factors in their favor: The first one, Shinzo Abe, was Koizumi’s handpicked successor, and all six came into office with approval ratings that would be considered strong in historical terms. In addition, three of the prime ministers hailed from the DPJ, which spearheaded a long-awaited change in political power in 2009 and came into office with a blank slate. Their failure to advance their agendas and maintain public support intensified perceptions at home and abroad that there was a vacuum of political leadership. It also highlighted the point that, while the reforms of the past two decades had helped push Japan ­toward a two-party system and changed the dynamics of policymaking, they still had not strengthened the hand of the prime minister enough to consistently produce the kind of leadership that the Japanese public felt was needed. In fact, the political system that emerged after the reforms of the 1990s has been characterized by more frequent twisted Diets, growing public disinterest in politics, and increasing difficulties in managing politics—all of which has contributed to the frequent turnover of prime ministers.

The Domestic Price of Weak Political Leadership There is a great deal of truth to the argument that different historical contexts and political cultures call for different leadership styles, as well as that leaders who are perceived as being strong are not necessarily the most effective. British political scientist Archie Brown makes the case that throughout history, strong, individualistic leaders who dominate policymaking, such as Margaret Thatcher, often gain a reputation for efficacy, but in many cases their actual accomplishments are less impressive than those of people who are not labeled as strong leaders because they operate in a more collegial and consensus-based manner.13 However, debate over the respective virtues of individualistic versus consensus-based leadership styles should not confuse what we mean by strong leadership. In Japan, political culture and institutional constraints require politicians to operate in a more collective manner than in most other advanced democracies, or at least to give the impression that they are doing so. But ultimately, political leadership involves the capacity to articulate a vision that resonates with the public, to lay out clear priorities in keeping with that vision, to overcome competing interests to steer government policy in a direction that matches those priorities,

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and to maintain sufficient public support to stay in office long enough to advance this policy direction in a consistent and effective manner. Basically, political leadership in Japan, as elsewhere, boils down to the ability to get things done. With a few prominent exceptions, Japanese prime ministers have failed to display this type of strong leadership over the past four decades, and its absence has had very real consequences. At its most basic, the price has been a certain level of drift in domestic policy that has deepened the country’s long-term economic and demographic challenges. One area where the lack of strong prime ministerial leadership has manifested itself is in the policy formulation process. Taking economic policy as one example, since the burst of Japan’s financial bubble in the early 1990s, political leaders have been slow to adopt essential structural reforms for fear they might hurt vested interests, and this has clearly contributed to the economic stagnation that has plagued the country for the past two decades. Prime ministers have traditionally had a limited capacity to formulate policies on their own, and so when they have been successful, it has typically been by picking and choosing among plans devised by the bureaucracy. This makes it especially important to set clear priorities, but prime ministers have too often avoided the hard choices that would be involved with undertaking a limited number of bold initiatives that move the country in a single direction and instead have tried to make everybody happy by allowing the continued implementation of numerous initiatives that are not closely aligned with one another. This problem persists today. For instance, even as Prime Minister Abe was being praised for the boldness of his “Abenomics” package, he allowed its expansionary impact to be undercut by an April 2014 consumption tax hike that was championed by the powerful Ministry of Finance. Furthermore, the frequent turnover of prime ministers—which is both a symptom and a cause of the leadership deficit—has made it difficult for the Japanese government to advance a comprehensive agenda in a consistent manner. National leaders need to sequence their policy agendas, first focusing on a few key initiatives, then pivoting to others. However, when prime ministers rotate through office once a year, there is no time for them to get beyond the first several agenda items. In some cases, several governments in a row end up revisiting initiatives that their predecessors failed to advance to completion, wasting time and energy by repeating the work already done. Or, in other instances, issues of long-term importance continue to linger for years on the back burner. Plus, there is a natural temptation for prime ministers to make a

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name for themselves by championing one or two signature issues while neglecting the pet issues of their immediate predecessor. This injects a degree of instability into the policy process that would be less disruptive if their terms were longer. The leadership merry-go-round also prevents policies from being implemented in a consistent and coordinated manner. The politicians appointed as cabinet and subcabinet ministers are responsible for ensuring that their cabinet’s priorities are being followed in each ministry, but they rotate even more frequently than the prime minister and tend to lose a great deal of time just learning how things work in their new post. Since they have tended to change roughly once a year, this typically leaves a portion of each year during which the government has no political appointee experienced enough to effectively bridge the cabinet and the ministry. One other byproduct of the frequent turnover of leaders is the role it plays in feeding perceptions by bureaucrats and others that they can drag their feet in implementing policies they oppose in the hope of re-litigating them when a new government comes to office. In 2012, Motohisa Furukawa, who was then minister for national strategy in the Noda cabinet, recalled that even Koizumi was not considered a strong leader during his first two years in office—a point that many people have since forgotten. Instead, he argued, Koizumi only really gained power when bureaucrats realized that he would be in office for a long time and thus there would likely be a price to pay over the long term for defying his wishes.14 The same held true for rival power brokers in the cabinet or party posts who might have been tempted to undermine the prime minister’s directives if they felt he would not be around long enough to punish them in any meaningful way.

The Foreign Policy Cost The lack of strong leadership has also cost Japan dearly in its international affairs, leading to a diminution of its international presence at a time when the regional and global order is going through an important transition. When Japan’s economy was still the envy of the world, its leaders could evade the hard political choices involved in playing an active role in international affairs by throwing money at diplomatic problems. However, its long-term economic slump has robbed Japan of the ability to resort to “checkbook diplomacy” at precisely the same time

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that the rise of China as a rival power and a more complex international environment have put a premium on deft and proactive diplomacy. While Japanese prime ministers of the 1950s and 1960s had a number of major foreign policy successes, the same political dynamics that made checkbook diplomacy so appealing have also encouraged recent leaders to punt difficult foreign policy decisions down the road. The longdelayed relocation of US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, which was officially decided upon by the Japanese and US governments in 1996, is one case in point. At least until recently, prime ministers who have had to worry about their own job security have hesitated to push for the implementation of the move against entrenched local opposition, and none have put much political capital into exploring viable alternatives—with the notable exception of Yukio Hatoyama (2009–2010), who saw his government fall due in part to his rash approach to the issue. As a result, the base question has dragged on as an irritant in US-Japan relations for nearly two decades. Everybody knows that the status quo is unsustainable, but any final resolution is still years away. Another problem Japan faces is the fact that the frequent turnover in prime ministers and their cabinets has injected a sense of unpredictability into Japanese foreign policy. Although Japan’s foreign policy approaches have been relatively consistent on most top-tier issues, when prime ministers have taken office they have tended to utilize new rhetoric and strive to put their own stamp on foreign policy, often with disorienting results. For instance, when Shinzo Abe began his initial term in September 2006, he spoke of instituting a more muscular policy that focused on expanding Japan’s military capacity, rallied world opinion against North Korea because of its abduction of Japanese citizens, and advanced the idea of an “arc of freedom and prosperity” that some observers interpreted as a China-directed containment policy. A year later, when Yasuo Fukuda (2007–2008) succeeded him, the tone of Japanese foreign policy toward its neighbors suddenly became much more conciliatory and the emphasis on North Korea evaporated. After Fukuda stepped aside in September 2008 and Taro Aso (2008–2009) took over as premier, many expected a return to the “values diplomacy” that Aso had pioneered as foreign minister in the Abe administration. However, while Aso continued to give lip service to the idea of establishing an “arc of freedom and prosperity,” he never seemed able to articulate a clear foreign policy and instead he left much to the diplomats. That all changed dramatically a year later, when the DPJ toppled the LDP from power and Yukio

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Hatoyama came into office declaring that he wished to find some middle ground between China and the United States and questioning other basic tenets of Japanese foreign and domestic policymaking. The natural tendency for new leaders to want to distinguish themselves by advancing one or two signature issues—typically ones of second-tier priority in the case of Japan—has also added to a sense of inconsistency in foreign policy when prime ministers rotate so frequently. For example, in September 2010, Prime Minister Naoko Kan announced a global health initiative he called the “Kan Commitment” in a speech to the UN General Assembly. Among other things, he pledged a record Us$800 million contribution to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria for a period that international health leaders implicitly understood as three years.15 A year later, however, he ceded the premiership to Yoshihiko Noda (2011–2012), the former finance minister. As a result, the Ministry of Finance’s budget hawks gained the upper hand in their quest to trim Japan’s pledges to international institutions and worked successfully to stretch the commitment out over a longer period of time, effectively reducing the level of annual contributions. Then, after Shinzo Abe came into office in December 2012, he identified a new priority in global health as his pet issue, namely the promotion of universal health coverage, which some initially felt would compete with efforts to tackle individual diseases.16 While his administration later ended up endorsing a new and generous round of support for the Global Fund, nobody had any illusions that he did so because he felt beholden to a commitment named after a prime minister from a rival party. Rather it reflected yet another reassessment of what was needed as part of Japan’s diplomatic approaches. The foreign policy impact also extends beyond the issue of consistency to that of credibility. The track record of weak political leadership and the frequent turnover of prime ministers has given rise to a degree of cynicism among Japan’s neighbors and partners about whether the Japanese government will really follow through on the pronouncements of top leaders. This can be dangerous in some cases. For instance, in September 2012, the Noda administration nationalized the Senkaku Islands, which China also claims as its own territory, in order to head off a provocative bid by the nationalistic governor of Tokyo to purchase the islands, an act that surely would have destabilized China-Japan relations. Noda felt that this move was the only way to keep China-Japan relations on an even keel, and he and his aides were dismayed when China responded with unexpected vehemence and escalated the situation by increasing the

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dispatch of ships and aircraft to challenge Japan’s administrative control over the area. It is probably no coincidence that the Chinese government felt they had a free hand to take a confrontational approach with Noda since his support ratings were hovering around the 20 percent mark and it was common knowledge that he and the DPJ could only cling to power for a few more months. China’s intransigence eventually softened when Shinzo Abe came back into office and was expected to hold onto power for an extended period, even though Abe had a reputation for being less conciliatory toward China. By then, however, considerable damage had been done to the bilateral relationship, and public opinion in both countries had hardened to a point that made it difficult for the two countries to heal their rift even if they wanted to. Japan’s political turmoil has created one more diplomatic challenge. In international affairs, trust and personal relations can make a big difference, but the frequent rotation of prime ministers has made it difficult for Japanese leaders to build strong working relations with their counter­ parts. It is telling that the two most famous and productive personal relationships between prime ministers and US presidents involved the two prime ministers who were in office for the longest periods in the past four decades—the “Ron-Yasu” relationship between Yasuhiro Nakasone and Ronald Reagan and the bond formed by Junichiro Koizumi and George W. Bush. In contrast, during his first six years in office, President Barack Obama had to interact with five different Japanese prime ministers. It should come as no surprise then that he has not developed a strong relationship with any of them. The difficulty in establishing the types of working relationships that grease the wheels of international diplomacy is even more pronounced when one goes beyond the prime minister to the broader cabinet. In her four years as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton dealt with six different Japanese foreign ministers—Hirofumi Nakasone, Katsuya Okada, Seiji Maehara, Takeaki Matsumoto, Koichiro Gemba, and Fumio Kishida. (By way of comparison, China, Russia, South Korea, and the United Kingdom combined had only six foreign ministers between them during the same period.) On top of that, during those four years, six Japanese defense ministers and seven trade negotiators also rotated through those posts. In the short time they overlapped in their respective posts, it would be too much to expect Clinton and her Japanese counterparts to develop the type of personal rapport that could convince them to overlook the occasional misunderstandings and frustrations that arise in the normal course of bilateral relations.

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Examining the Causes and Impact of Weak Political Leadership There is considerable debate over whether the paucity of strong political leadership can be blamed on the personal attributes of the politicians who rise up through the Japanese system, the political culture in which they operate, or the institutions that circumscribe how they can act. The Japanese media naturally focus a great deal on the personalities of individual leaders, and many analysts also fall back on explanations about the weight that Japanese political culture places on “reaching consensus,” “saving face,” and the duty of leaders to “take responsibility” for collective failures. Yet, while acknowledging that charisma and political culture are important, the authors contributing to this volume come down strongly on the side of the institutional factors, generally arguing that while the past two decades of reforms have created the conditions in which skillful prime ministers can more easily exercise strong leadership, there are still important institutional constraints that make it an uphill battle for Japanese leaders to stay in office long enough to be effective. The volume focuses first on the key areas relevant to political leadership in Japan and then on its impact on foreign relations. The authors were chosen because they are part of a unique breed of younger Japanese experts in that each of them has both a strong scholarly grounding and real-world experience in policy and politics. In the second chapter, Yuichi Hosoya lays the groundwork for the arguments to follow by sketching out the evolution of political leadership in postwar Japan. Next, another scholar, Harukata Takenaka, delves deeper into the institutional obstacles that limit the cabinet’s influence in the legislative process, particularly the independence of the Upper House and the way that it can be used to derail the prime minister’s legislative agenda. In addition to government institutions, party politics plays a critical role, so Representative Takao Ochi weighs the considerations that trigger prime ministers’ early resignation, looking at the influence of party leadership elections and the fact that it is most often party rivals who force out prime ministers after public support drops to a level that makes them vulnerable. Japan has moved into an era in which parties are more likely to alternate in power and thus it is important to have a smooth governmental transition. For this reason, Yuka Uchida Ando, who staffed the DPJ’s International Department for much of the party’s

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early years and who then went on to work as an aide to Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara, reflects upon the difficulties that the DPJ faced in its historic transition of power and how these made it harder to exercise effective leadership. Moving on to the impact that Japan’s leadership problems have had in international affairs, Ryo Sahashi documents the impact of insufficient—and sometimes misdirected—political leadership by examining the diplomatic track record of the DPJ administration during its three years in power, focusing on a set of issues including the mishandled Futenma base relocation, the stillborn Hatoyama proposal for an East Asian Community, and the failure of crisis management when tensions with China flared over the Senkaku Islands. Finally, Satoru Mori outlines what prime ministers need to prioritize in the current political climate in order to reach a balance that allows them to successfully maintain political capital while crafting effective foreign policy. Together, these authors build a strong case that Japan’s leadership problem continues to be institutional in nature. While there is now a greater chance that skillful prime ministers can overcome the obstacles to the effective exercise of power—as Abe has shown in his first several years back in power—prime ministers are still liable to find that their power remains constrained, frequent turnover in office is likely to continue in the absence of further institutional changes, and the issue of strong political leadership seems certain to vex Japan for years to come. This makes it even more crucial for Japanese leaders, and those outside of Japan who work with them, to understand why strong political leadership remains so elusive, what this means for Japan’s foreign relations, and how the situation can be improved.

notes 1. Authors’ calculations. 2. In Japan, the popular term for this is seiji kuhaku, or political leadership vacuum. This became such a commonly discussed issue that one opposition party, the Komeito, based its 2012 campaign slogan on it, entreating voters, “Seiji kuhaka kara no dakkyaku—Nihon saiken he” (Leave behind the political leadership vacuum—move to rebuild Japan). 3. See, for example, Bradley Richardson’s explanation of how intense factional competition meant that the LDP “functioned much like a multi-party system.”

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Richardson, Japanese Democracy: Power, Coordination, and Performance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 64–65. 4. Gerald Curtis relates one telling anecdote about how, in the mid-1990s, Ministry of Finance officials worked aggressively behind the scenes to sabotage the policy line of their boss, Finance Minister Masayoshi Takemura, going so far as to prepare a secret briefing for a TV talk-show host on how to attack him on the air. See Gerald L. Curtis, “Politicians and Bureaucrats: What’s Wrong and What’s to Be Done,” in Policymaking in Japan: Defining the Role of Politicians, ed. Gerald L. Curtis (Tokyo: Japan Center for International Exchange, 2002). 5. Ellis Krauss, Robert Pekkanen, and others write about how a confluence of factors in addition to the multi-member districts contributed to the development of factions—most prominently the need for leaders to build a support base on which to run for LDP presidency, which at the time also made them prime minister. See Ellis S. Krauss and Robert J. Pekkanen, The Rise and Fall of Japan’s LDP: Political Party Organizations as Historical Institutions (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 2010). 6. Krauss and Pekkanen, The Rise and Fall of Japan’s LDP, 212–13. 7. Tomohito Shinoda, Contemporary Japanese Politics: Institutional Changes and Powers Shifts (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 43. 8. As noted in Chalmers Johnson, Japan: Who Governs? The Rise of the Developmental State (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1995), 193. 9. For more on how political leaders of the time felt that electoral reform would help push Japanese politics toward a two-party system, see Ichiro Ozawa (one of the architects of Japan’s electoral legislation), Blueprint for a New Japan: The Rethinking of a Nation (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1994), 62–75; and Gerald L. Curtis, The Logic of Japanese Politics: Leaders, Institutions, and the Limits of Change (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 137–70. 10. See Krauss and Pekkanen, The Rise and Fall of Japan’s LDP, 128–29. 11. Jun Saito writes about this in a presentation prepared for the study team that produced this volume, as well as in “The Ghost of the Second Republic? The Structural Weakness of Parliamentary Bicameralism in Japan,” in Japan in Crisis: What Will It Take for Japan to Rise Again?, ed. Bong Youngshik and T. J. Pempel (Seoul: Asan Institute for Policy Studies, 2012). 12. This election took place in September 2005 after rival LDP leaders maneuvered to defeat Koizumi’s proposed privatization of the postal system, and especially its banking arm, which channeled massive amounts of customer deposits into a fund that supported public works projects, often in LDP strongholds. Koizumi called a snap election for the House of Representatives, denied the party’s endorsement to 37 LDP members who had refused to vote for postal reform, and recruited fresh faces—primarily high-profile women and other well-known figures who were quickly labeled “assassins” by the media—to run against his own party’s “postal rebels.” The LDP ended up winning in a landslide, and only 17 of the 37 postal rebels managed to hold on to their seats. After the new Diet convened, postal reform was quickly passed. 13. See Archie Brown, The Myth of the Strong Leader: Political Leadership in the Modern Age (London: Basic Books, 2014). 14. Authors’ interview with Motohisa Furukawa, August 29, 2012.

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15. Naoto Kan, “Promise to a New Generation” (address by the Prime Minister of Japan at the High-Level Plenary Meeting of the Sixty-Fifth Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations, September 22, 2010), http://japan.kantei.go.jp/ kan/statement/201009/22speech_e.html. 16. Shinzo Abe, “Japan’s Strategy for Global Health Diplomacy: Why It Matters,” Lancet 382, no. 9896 (September 2013): 915–6, http://thelancet.com/journals/ lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(13)61639-6/abstract.

domestic governance and political leadership in japan

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The Evolution of Japan’s “Leadership Deficit”

Yuichi Hosoya

I

n June 2010, following the resignation of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, the influential British magazine the Economist published an article that focused on Japan’s leadership crisis.1 The title of the article spoke volumes: “Leaderless Japan.” It highlighted the fact that every year since 2006, a new prime minister had come and gone from office. It was not until Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was elected for a second (nonconsecutive) term in December 2012 that the pattern of premiers barely lasting a year would come to an end. But by then, the perception had taken hold that Japanese foreign policy is paralyzed by a vacuum of political leadership.2 Indeed, there can be no doubt that frequent changes in the premiership have been harmful to the continuity of foreign policy as well as to Japan’s international presence. Furthermore, due to the short length of their terms in office, it has been difficult for recent Japanese prime ministers to forge personal friendships or mutual trust with other world leaders. Analysts consequently have argued that Japanese prime ministers are weak and reactive.3 Aurelia George Mulgan has called the problem Japan’s “leadership deficit,” pointing out that a variety of institutional factors restrict the power of the prime minister and the cabinet.4 Dr. Yuichi Hosoya is a professor at Keio University in Tokyo.

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In fact, this state of affairs was not only recognized by political analysts; the Japanese public had grown frustrated and was clearly longing for a strong political leader who could enhance both the stability of domestic politics and Japan’s presence on the international stage. This “leadership deficit” raises two key questions. First, why was it that from the departure of Junichiro Koizumi in 2006 up until Abe’s election in 2012, every prime minister was forced to step down within roughly one year? What political factors drove that ongoing shuffle despite the fact that those frequent changes in leadership were clearly contributing to a downgrading of Japan’s presence on the international stage? Second, how has this “leadership deficit” affected the trajectory of recent Japanese foreign policy? Since a large portion of the Japanese public desires a strong political leader, this chapter gives a broad overview of the causes and implications of the vacuum of political leadership in Japan. It briefly touches on the political leadership of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has shown signs of joining Yasuhiro Nakasone and Junichiro Koizumi as an exception to the trend of weak political leadership, and concludes with a discussion on the importance of institutional reforms that can enhance the prime minister’s power.

Strong Prime Ministers in Postwar Japan It is common to assume that the weakness of Japan’s prime ministers is a characteristic of Japanese political culture. However, if we look at postwar Japanese political history, it is not difficult to find a number of strong political leaders. In fact, it has been those strong political leaders, not foreign ministry bureaucrats, who have been responsible for the most important successes in postwar Japan’s international relations. Take, for example, Shigeru Yoshida, who served as prime minister between 1946 and 1947 and also between 1948 and 1954. In contrast to the criticism directed against recent prime ministers, Yoshida was often disparaged by his contemporaries as being overly powerful and occasionally dictatorial. Prime Minister Yoshida signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty in September 1951 despite intense opposition from both inside and outside of the Japanese Diet. At that time, both the Socialist Party and the Communist Party were extremely powerful, and a large number of Japanese intellectuals tended to prefer neutrality rather than

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alignment with the United States. But Yoshida was able to hold off the opposition from the Left, pushing ahead to conclude not only the peace treaty but also a security treaty with the United States on the same day. This strong political leadership on the part of Yoshida made it possible to closely tie Japan to the West, eventually paving the way for Japan to become a strong ally of the United States. Prime Minister Ichiro Hatoyama’s effort to normalize diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union is another good example of how political leadership was able to solve a diplomatic deadlock. Hatoyama succeeded Yoshida in December 1954 and remained in the post until 1956. He in fact led an anti-Yoshida faction, and was responsible for establishing the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in 1955 by merging two conservative parties. Hatoyama was an outspoken critic of Yoshida’s overly pro-American and economy-first policies, and he instead focused on making overtures to the Soviet Union, visiting Moscow in October 1956 to sign a joint declaration that formally ended the war between the two countries and reestablished diplomatic relations. That enabled the Hatoyama government to successfully bring Japan into the United Nations. Several years later, the push by Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, the grandfather of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, to revise the US-Japan security treaty was no less important of a diplomatic success. Kishi was prime minister between 1957 and 1960, and he faced fierce criticism over his efforts to alter the treaty. Although he was confident that revisions were a precondition for an equal partnership between Japan and the United States, the anti-American and also “anti-Kishi” movements gained momentum, creating political chaos. However, largely due to Kishi’s political leadership, the framework for the US-Japan alliance was firmly established in 1960. Since important pillars of the LDP’s political system were also consolidated in 1960, noted political scientist Shinichi Kitaoka regards that year as a turning point in postwar political history.5 From that time on, Japan became an integral part of the Western alliance. Kishi’s younger brother, Prime Minister Eisaku Sato, who served as prime minister for eight years (1964–1972), provides a similar example of strong leadership. His greatest political ambition was to persuade the US government to relinquish its control over the territory of Okinawa and allow it to revert back to Japan. Foreign ministry officials were generally skeptical about the feasibility of the Okinawa reversion as the prefecture was the site of military bases that were indispensable for

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the US forces. But Sato managed to reach an agreement through secret negotiations with the US government. Without Sato’s decisive initiative, it would not have been possible to convince President Richard Nixon of the desirability of the Okinawa reversion. Similarly, the efforts of Sato’s successor, Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, to normalize Japan’s diplomatic relations with Communist China met with deep skepticism and resistance. In September 1972, just two months after taking office, Tanaka visited Beijing to meet with Chinese leaders, becoming the first Japanese prime minister to visit the People’s Republic of China. There, he issued a historic joint communiqué that reestablished ties between the two countries. Bureaucrats in the foreign ministry could certainly never have implemented such a sudden change of course in Japan’s China policy on their own. These examples show that strong political leadership was indispensable to the greatest successes in postwar diplomacy. These prime ministers made difficult decisions while facing obstinate resistance from many quarters. Their foreign policy goals were often seen by bureaucrats as too ambitious, if not impossible. As a result, in many cases these prime ministers went outside of the normal institutional channels by utilizing private advisors, as Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone and Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto would also do in later years.6 More importantly, these examples demonstrate that a lack of strong political leadership is not indigenous to Japanese political culture. This raises the question, then, of why such strong political leadership had seemingly disappeared in recent years.

Institutional Factors behind the Poverty of Prime Ministerial Power A number of factors contributed to the diminishment of prime ministerial power in recent decades, among which were problems related to the party institutions, the electoral system, the relative power of the legislature, the lack of resources available to the prime minister, and the short tenure of cabinet ministers.7 These institutional problems began to emerge in the 1970s, and had become increasingly conspicuous by the beginning of the 1990s.

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The Evolution of LDP Party Institutions The “1955 system”—the system under which the LDP dominated Japanese politics from 1955 to 1993—was surprisingly resilient, enabling the LDP to become perhaps the most electorally successful political party in any modern democracy. Ellis S. Krauss and Robert J. Pekkanen point out four key reasons why the LDP performed so well over those four decades: (1) the candidate-support organizations, or koenkai, that each politician maintains in his or her electoral district; (2) the functions carried out by the LDP’s factions; (3) the success it had with its Policy Affairs Research Council (PARC; or in Japanese, Seimu Chosakai or Seichokai); and (4) the role of the party leadership.8 These four factors provided the party and the LDP’s prime ministers with a strong political base on which they could rely. This solid foundation played a key role in the success of the LDP.9 However, some ingredients in the LDP’s recipe for success eventually contributed to the party’s downfall. The party’s factions grew strong enough that they had to be appeased, and the growing ability of rank and file members to rely on their koenkai and faction leaders gave them a degree of independence from the titular head of the party. This eroded the prime ministers’ power base and forced them to increasingly rely on “consensus-based policymaking.”10 Steven Reed and Kay Shimizu write, “Avoiding divisive policy initiatives further increased the dominance of bureaucrats in policymaking, and frequent cabinet reshuffles—necessary to give as many people as possible the chance to become a cabinet minister—became unavoidable.”11 In this way, the LDP sacrificed strong political leadership in order to consolidate its single party–dominant system from the 1970s onward. The choice of Zenko Suzuki as the new LDP prime minister in July 1980 was a typical example of prioritizing “consensus-based policymaking” over strong political leadership, while avoiding intraparty conflict. Indeed, Suzuki’s clear lack of strong leadership was one of the main reasons that he was preferred by many key figures within the LDP. Consequently, Reed and Shimizu note, “LDP governments enacted only the lowest-common-denominator policies that could gain a consensus from all concerned, excluding only the Communists and the left wing of the Socialists.”12 Yasuhiro Nakasone was perhaps the only exception, as he skillfully consolidated his political power base by initiating administrative reforms that strengthened prime ministerial power. Nakasone exercised “presidential” leadership, unlike many other LDP

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leaders. However, his successors could not follow the same path and had to face the decline of prime ministerial power. Another reason why strong political leadership disappeared was the regular rotation of leaders in the successive LDP governments. Reed astutely argues that “the party . . . changed leaders often and, whenever the new leader proved effective and popular, the party won elections.” The regular rotation of leaders became a key element of the LDP’s electoral strategy from the 1970s on. As a result, as Reed notes in his study of the party, “The LDP [had] yet to learn to win elections by pursuing popular policy under strong leadership.”13 The power of prime ministers was thus weakened, and it became more difficult to establish political leadership within the LDP in the late 1980s and the early 1990s.

The Electoral System By the early 1990s, it was widely believed that the electoral system was the main source of the problems facing Japanese politics. Therefore, electoral reform became the highest item on the political agenda of Toshiki Kaifu and Kiichi Miyazawa’s cabinets from 1989 onward. The LDP’s inability to implement those reforms, however, became a source of frustration for the public and the media, further heightening the pressure that eventually led to 1993’s historic electoral reform. From 1947 to 1993, Japanese candidates for the House of Representa­ tives faced election in multi-member districts with a single nontransferable vote, and this system is generally believed to have created severe electoral competition within parties. It was called a single nontransferable vote because voters could only cast one ballot, although typically between three and five candidates were elected from each district depending on the individual district’s size. To be a majority power, the LDP had to win more than two seats in each electoral district, and LDP candidates were often pitted against one another.14 This meant that each LDP candidate had to have a powerful personal support organization, a koenkai, and had to distinguish himself or herself from other LDP candidates. Ko Maeda argues, “LDP candidates focus[ed] more on advertising their personal beliefs and achievements than on promoting the party’s policies.”15 This single nontransferable vote system was heavily criticized by both analysts and the media since it was regarded as the major cause of pork-barrel politics and corruption. Moreover, as it promoted intraparty competition and encouraged the growth of

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factions, this system was assumed to be a barrier to strong political leadership within the LDP. Finally, in 1993, a non-LDP government came to power for the first time in nearly four decades, and it successfully passed an electoral reform bill in 1994 that abolished the single nontransferable vote system, introducing in its place a new system that combined 300 first-past-thepost, single-member district seats with 200 proportional-representation seats elected from 11 regional districts.16 It was widely believed that a new electoral system would create the conditions for stronger political leadership on the part of the prime minister and would encourage an evolution toward a two-party political system. Unfortunately, the truth is that the electoral system was not the only barrier to strong political leadership. Other factors have contributed to the “leadership deficit” as well.

The Excessive Power of the Upper House Another important reason for the “leadership deficit” has been the fact that, constitutionally, the Upper House has excessive control, allowing it to limit prime ministerial power. This sets Japan apart from many other parliamentary democracies, where upper houses have only limited legislative power. Japan’s Upper House, the House of Councillors, does not play a role in the formation of the cabinet in the way that the Lower House does, and when the opinions of the two houses collide, a prime minister does not have the ability to dismiss the Upper House in the way that he can dissolve the Lower House. The prime minister can control only the Lower House, while the Upper House virtually has veto power over his legislative priorities. Moreover, since the power of the Upper House is nearly equal to that of the Lower House, Japanese prime ministers have had to devote an enormous amount of political resources to persuading the Diet members in both houses to support their policies. This did not pose a serious problem under the LDP’s one-party system because the LDP was either the majority party in both houses or the dominant party in coalition governments. However, from the time that the LDP lost the majority in the Upper House election in 1989 up until the time when the DPJ won the 2009 election, no single party held a majority in both houses. During this time, it became clear that an Upper House controlled by the opposition parties could consistently

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obstruct the decision-making process of the ruling party. This has been an undeniable source of deadlock in the policymaking process in contemporary Japanese politics.17

The Weakness of the Prime Minister’s Office Strong personality and charisma alone do not suffice to make a prime minister a strong political leader in Japan. There were only two prime ministers who successfully and effectively led the government in the last three decades, namely Yasuhiro Nakasone and Junichiro Koizumi. They brilliantly exploited the opportunities of the expansion of prime ministerial power through administrative reforms in the 1980s and the beginning of the 2000s. They also increased the number of staff in the Prime Minister’s Office (Kantei). Until Hashimoto’s administrative reform of 2001, Japanese prime ministers had very limited power to implement their own policies. Under the Japanese Cabinet Law, the ministries were able to monopolize the policymaking process, and the prime minister’s role in that process was quite limited. Japanese prime ministers usually do not have a sufficient number of their own staff, nor is it the custom for a prime minister to utilize a loyal chief of staff. Instead, that role is essentially played by the chief cabinet secretary, who is typically a prominent politician with political aspirations of his own. Private secretaries to the prime minister are usually seconded from each ministry, and as a result, interministerial rivalries frequently paralyze the prime minister’s leadership. Without having sufficient numbers of his own private staff, as British prime ministers now have, the Japanese prime minister cannot initiate important policies. This is exacerbated by the fact that Japanese political parties usually do not have powerful staff who can help draft legislation, nor are there effective policy think tanks outside the government that can play that role. Therefore, prime ministers tend to rely on the ministries when they legislate.

Frequent Cabinet Reshuffles Under the LDP governments, it was customary for every member of the Diet, in both the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors, to be appointed to a cabinet post once they had won more than five or

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six elections.18 But providing a post to every single Diet member who won successive elections required the frequent reshuffling of the cabinet. This was the only way that the LDP could placate every veteran Diet member, but the frequent reshuffling of cabinets naturally diminishes the power of the prime minister’s cabinet. Since returning to the prime minister’s office in December 2012, Shinzo Abe has shown signs of becoming another strong prime minister. He has managed to augment the foreign policy clout of the cabinet by establishing the National Security Council, which depends on the work of a new National Security Secretariat with roughly 70 staff members. Abe also waited to reshuffle his first cabinet for more than 20 months— the longest period of time between cabinet reshuffles in Japan’s postwar political history. These decisions, as well as his success in extending his grip on power by winning a snap election in December 2014, suggest that he may go down in the history books as another strong prime minister. It is often argued that Nakasone and Koizumi were “presidential” prime ministers who had exceptionally strong political power, and it is possible that Abe may similarly be seen by historians as another “presidential” prime minister.

The “Presidentialization” of Japan’s Prime Minister Some political scientists have argued that in the 1990s and in the 2000s, a number of Western democracies experienced a “presidentialization” of their respective prime ministers.19 Ellis Krauss and Benjamin Nyblade, in an article published in 2005, described a similar trend in Japanese politics.20 Having been criticized for the lack of strong political leadership, successive cabinets in the 1990s tried to initiate a series of reforms. As noted above, in 1994, a new electoral system was introduced under the coalition government led by Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa. As Krauss and Nyblade explain, this electoral reform was expected to increase the importance of the party label in voting. Getting rid of intraparty electoral competition was in fact one of the explicit goals of the reform and it was intended to enhance prime ministerial power.21 Additional reforms were initiated by Prime Minister Hashimoto in 1997 and went into force in 2001. These so-called “administrative reforms” marked an important turning point in the enhancement of prime ministerial power in that they gave the prime minister more power and

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resources to direct the cabinet.22 For example, the Cabinet Secretariat (Naikaku Kanbo) was given more staff to assist the prime minister in drafting legislation. These changes created a new policymaking mechanism that places greater responsibility on the prime minister than ever before. But this enhanced responsibility was conversely an important reason why six of the prime ministers who followed Koizumi—Abe (in his first term), Fukuda, Aso, Hatoyama, Kan, and Noda—could not govern successfully. They were unable to fulfill their new responsibilities, while Koizumi skillfully exploited the new political powers in a way that exemplifies the so-called “presidentialization” of the post. To fully understand this point, it is illustrative to look at examples of a few recent premierships, starting with Koizumi. Based on a stronger power base, he was able both to initiate a radical reform of the country’s postal system and to offer unequivocal support for the American war on terror after 9/11.

Koizumi’s Leadership Prime Minister Koizumi fully exploited the new opportunities created by Hashimoto’s administrative reforms, particularly when he tried to implement his most important political agenda, namely the reform of the postal system.23 Without these electoral and administrative reforms, his political leadership would undoubtedly have been more constrained. Following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Koizumi directed his foreign policy toward upgrading Japan’s alliance with the United States. As part of that shift, the Cabinet Secretariat under Koizumi successfully enacted antiterrorism legislation, enabled in large part by the administrative reforms of 2001. Only 45 minutes after hearing of the attacks, Koizumi managed to establish a liaison office at the Office of Crisis Management, which later the same day was converted to an emergency response office and on October 8 was upgraded to the Emergency Anti-terrorism Headquarters.24 Indeed, the combination of the administrative reforms and Koizumi’s skillful leadership made his political power unrivalled within the LDP, and his premiership lasted for more than five years. His tenure was the second longest after Eisaku Sato. Although Koizumi had never been keen on foreign affairs prior to assuming the post of prime minister, he was perceived as having a strong international presence during his

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tenure, thanks largely to the length of his rule. He participated in the G8 summit meetings six times and helped drive the creation of the East Asia Summit in December 2005. Koizumi refrained from reshuffling his cabinet frequently and did not replace his appointees in several key ministerial posts—such as chief cabinet secretary or the director-general of the Defense Agency—for years, unlike most of his predecessors. This continuity made it possible for Koizumi to maintain a strong and coherent cabinet.

Hatoyama’s Leadership The term of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama presents a contrasting example of a failure to effectively wield the tools of power. In the general election of August 2009, the DPJ won a landslide victory. Hatoyama formed his cabinet in September of that year, and this became the first alternation of power due to a general election since the beginning of the “1955 system.” The DPJ aimed to create a Westminster-style cabinet government led by politicians rather than by bureaucrats.25­­­­­ Refusing to listen to the advice of expert bureaucrats, Prime Minister Hatoyama personally promised to relocate US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma outside of Okinawan soil. Hatoyama faced a fatal deadlock in his attempt to reach an agreement with the US government, and his decision desperately confused Japanese politics from the autumn of 2009 to the spring of 2010, seriously damaging the popularity of the DPJ.26 Hatoyama decided to step down from his post in June 2010, due largely to his mishandling of this difficult issue. By then, the DPJ had hopelessly lost the support of the public. Prime Ministers Naoto Kan and Yoshihiko Noda succeeded in regaining the trust of the US government by coming back to the original bilateral agreement. However, serious diplomatic crises arose in 2010 and 2012 in the East China Sea related to the dispute with the Chinese government over the Senkaku Islands. Due to a lack of sufficient preparedness, the DPJ administration’s handling of those crises was amateurish. This was caused in part by the fact that, unlike Prime Minister Koizumi, the DPJ prime ministers repeatedly reshuffled their cabinet ministers within a short period of time, and this resulted in many inexperienced ministers. Furthermore, intraparty rivalries seriously damaged and constrained prime ministerial leadership. Even

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when the Kantei tried to initiate a new policy, the ruling party would not support it. In short, Hatoyama and the DPJ were unable to effectively lead the government.

Abe’s Leadership After a landslide victory in the general election of December 2012, Shinzo Abe, the leader of the LDP, returned to the Prime Minister’s Office. (He had resigned from his first term as prime minister in September 2007 because of illness.) As he took up his post, one of the most important priorities for Abe was to have a stable and durable cabinet. In the early months of his tenure, his political prospects looked promising thanks to an unusually high degree of public support. In July 2013, Abe’s party was victorious in the Upper House elections, regaining the majority, and after he again had a big win in the December 2014 Lower House elections, LDP rule seemed more secure than ever. Prime Minister Abe appears to have learned how to govern successfully after the problems of his first term. The Prime Minister’s Office under Abe now looks much more capable than it did six years ago. In particular, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga has played an extremely important role in governing the Prime Minister’s Office and Cabinet Secretariat. These institutions, which sit at the core of the executive branch, have become considerably larger than they were at the time of the “1955 system,” so the chief cabinet secretary now has to deftly exercise his or her political power to guide the executive branch. Without the leadership of the chief cabinet secretary, individual ministries are not willing to fully coordinate their own interests with other related ministries, and Suga has proven himself to be adept at this role to date. On the foreign policy front, Abe was aided early in his term by some skillful foreign policy experts and veterans of the foreign ministry, such as Shotaro Yachi and Tomohiko Taniguchi. They advised the prime minister to adopt a rational, balanced strategy, avoiding a right-wing political agenda. The second Abe administration has thus exhibited an effective and smooth policymaking process to date both in domestic politics and in foreign policy.

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Conclusion The success that prime ministers had in projecting leadership in the 1950s and 1960s, coupled with the ways in which Nakasone and Koizumi managed to buck historical trends and enjoy strong premierships, shows that weak political leadership is not necessarily a characteristic of Japanese political culture. Rather, it has arisen from a number of institutional factors. Today, with all of the changes that have unfolded in Japanese society and politics, the power of the prime minister, as a person and also as the core executive organ, is much more important than ever before. Therefore, a strong political leader is the last piece required to complete the puzzle of contemporary Japanese policymaking. The administrative reforms of 2001 created a new policymaking mechanism that gives the prime minister greater responsibility than before. But as we have seen with the six prime ministers who followed Koizumi, not everyone is capable of utilizing this greater prime ministerial power effectively to fulfill their responsibilities. We now need to appropriately evaluate whether a prime minister is strong enough, and also whether the Prime Minister’s Office is effective enough, to rule the government. As described above, a prime minister needs to have a powerful chief cabinet secretary and an effective leadership structure in both the Prime Minister’s Office and the Cabinet Secretariat if he or she wants to become a strong prime minister in Japan. Charismatic individual leadership is just a part of the answer to the “leadership deficit.” To a large extent, the strength of the political leadership of both Nakasone and Koizumi relied on the efficiency and unity of their Prime Minister’s Office and Cabinet Secretariat. Only those who fully understand the importance of both political institutions and political culture can become strong political leaders in Japan.

Notes 1. Economist, “Leaderless Japan,” June 3, 2010. 2. Tomohito Shinoda, “Prime Ministerial Leadership,” in Routledge Handbook of Japanese Politics, ed. Alisa Gaunder (London: Routledge, 2011), 48. 3. See Alisa Gaunder, “The Institutional Landscape of Japanese Politics,” in Routledge Handbook, 4; and Kensuke Takayasu, Shusho no kenryoku: Nichiei

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hikaku kara miru seikento to no dainamizumu [The power of prime ministers in Japan and Britain: Dynamics of their relationships with the governing party] (Tokyo: Sobunsha, 2009), 5–6. 4. Aurelia George Mulgan, “Japan’s Political Leadership Deficit,” Australian Journal of Political Science 35, no. 2 (2000): 183–202. 5. Shinichi Kitaoka, Nihon seijishi: gaiko to kenryoku [A political history of modern Japan: Foreign relations and domestic politics] (Tokyo: Yuhikaku, 2011), 228–30. Steven Reed also wrote that “the foundations of LDP dominance were laid in 1960.” See Steven R. Reed, “The Liberal Democratic Party: An Explanation of Its Success and Failures,” in Routledge Handbook, 21. The importance of the year 1960 is often underestimated in major analyses of postwar Japanese political history. 6. Shinoda, “Prime Ministerial Leadership,” 59. 7. There are several important Japanese studies that focus on the relationship between political leadership, or “seiji shudo,” and the policymaking process. See Muneyuki Shindo, Seiji shudo: kanryosei wo toinaosu [Politician-led policymaking: Rethinking the bureaucratic system] (Tokyo: Chikuma-shobo, 2012); Tomohito Shinoda, Seiji shudo vs kanryo shihai: Jimin seiken, Minshu seiken, seikan 20-nen toso no uchimaku [Politician-led policymaking vs. bureaucratic control: The inside scoop on the LDP administrations, DPJ administrations, and the 20-year battle between the politicians and the bureaucrats] (Tokyo: Asahi Shimbun Publications, 2013); and Izuru Makihara, Kenryoku ikou: nani ga seiji wo antei saseru no ka [Power shift: What keeps the political system stable?] (Tokyo: NHK Shuppan, 2013). 8. Ellis S. Krauss and Robert J. Pekkanen, The Rise and Fall of Japan’s LDP: Political Party Organizations as Historical Institutions (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011), 14–21. 9. Reed, “The Liberal Democratic Party,” 14. 10. Steven R. Reed and Kay Shimizu, “An Overview of Postwar Japanese Politics,” in Political Change in Japan: Electoral Behavior, Party Realignment, and the Koizumi Reforms, ed. Steven R. Reed, Kenneth Mori McElwain, and Kay Shimizu (Stanford: Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, 2009), 7. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 13. Reed, “The Liberal Democratic Party,” 21. 14. Gaunder, “The Institutional Landscape,” 5. 15. Ko Maeda, “Has the Electoral-System Reform Made Japanese Elections PartyCentered?” in Political Change in Japan, 47. 16. The number of seats elected through proportional representation was later reduced from 200 to 180, and the number of single-member districts was reduced from 300 to 295. 17. Satoshi Machidori, Shusho seiji no seido bunseki: gendai Nihon seiji no kenryoku kiban keisei [A systemic analysis of prime ministerial politics: Building the power base for today’s Japanese politics] (Tokyo: Chikura-Shobo, 2012), 174–7. 18. Shinichi Kitaoka, Jiminto: seikento no 38 nen [The Liberal Democratic Party: 38 years in power] (Tokyo: Chuokoron-Shinsha, 2008), 298. 19. Thomas Poguntke and Paul Webb, “The Presidentialization of Politics in Democratic Societies: A Framework of Analysis,” in The Presidentialization of

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Politics: A Comparative Study of Modern Democracies, ed. Thomas Poguntke and Paul Webb (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 1–25. 20. Ellis S. Krauss and Benjamin Nyblade, “‘Presidentialization’ in Japan,” British Journal of Political Science, no. 35 (2005): 357–68. 21. Ibid., 360. 22. Gregory W. Noble, “The Evolution of the Japanese Policymaking System,” in Routledge Handbook, 255. 23. The prime ministerial power of Junichiro Koizumi is examined in several studies, such as Harukata Takenaka, Shusho shihai: Nihon seiji no henbo [The prime minister’s rule: Changes in Japanese politics] (Tokyo: Chuokoron-Shinsha, 2006); and Tomohito Shinoda, Kantei gaiko: seiji riidaashippu no yukue [Koizumi Diplomacy: Japan’s Kantei Approach to Foreign and Defense Affairs] (Tokyo: Asahi Shimbun Publishing, 2004). 24. Christopher W. Hughes, Japan’s Re-emergence as a ‘Normal’ Military Power (London: Routledge, 2006), 63–4. 25. Noble, “The Evolution of the Japanese Policymaking System,” 257. 26. Nihon Saiken Inishiatibu, Minshuto seiken shippai no kensho: Nihon seiji wa nani wo ikasu ka [An examination of the DPJ government’s failures: What can Japanese politics learn?] (Tokyo: Chuokoron-Shinsha, 2013), 135.

3

The Frequent Turnover of Japanese Prime Ministers: Still a Long Way to a Westminster Model Harukata Takenaka

T

he determinants of prime ministerial leadership in Japan have been the focus of substantial scholarly research in the field of Japanese politics in recent years. Some argue that the capacity for leadership by the Japanese prime minister has been strengthened as the result of a series of institutional reforms since the 1990s.1 Others, however, claim that it is ultimately a function of personal attributes.2 The two camps differ most significantly in their evaluation of Junichiro Koizumi, who served as Japanese prime minister from April 2001 to September 2006. He was able to formulate and implement policies that were unprecedented in the history of Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) rule. For example, he privatized the four public corporations managing the Japanese highways and implemented reforms that controlled the costs of healthcare. Above all, he succeeded in privatizing the Japanese postal service. The first camp, which attaches importance to the role of institutions, argues that Koizumi was able to exercise strong leadership and carry out this series of reforms because he was able to make full use of the newly strengthened powers of the premiership. The second camp, meanwhile,

Harukata Takenaka is a professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS).

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claims that Koizumi was able to exercise strong leadership because of his own personal style. The political developments that transpired after the tenure of Prime Minister Koizumi, however, pose challenges for both schools of thought. Between 2006 and 2012, the person holding the post of prime minister changed every year. The shortest tenure was Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s 9 months. Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda had the longest record during that span, yet even that was just 15 months. Institutionalists have a hard time explaining the frequent turnover of prime ministers because if the Japanese premiership now has strong powers, then these various prime ministers should have been able to enjoy longer tenures. Is the “personal expertise” camp the winner of this controversy then? Not necessarily. While it may be possible to ascribe the frequent changes to a lack of leadership on the part of each individual prime minister, when the same political event—i.e., the short tenancy of the prime minister—repeats six times consecutively, it is reasonable to suspect that there are some structural factors to blame as well. This chapter provides an institutionalist explanation of the factors behind the short tenures of Japanese prime ministers in recent years despite the expansion of the office’s powers. In short, the brief tenures of prime ministers are a product of the strength and independence of the Diet from the cabinet, especially the second chamber, the House of Councillors. There have been two causes. One is the emergence of a so-called “twisted Diet”—a Diet in which the majority parties in the House of Representatives cannot command a majority in the House of Councillors—after the 2007 and 2010 House of Councillors elections. The other, though less significant, is the powers of the Diet in determining parliamentary business. To understand why the past six Japanese prime ministers had such short tenures, it is necessary to understand the changes in the nature of the Japanese parliamentary system that were prompted by the series of political reforms that were instituted from the 1990s onward. As is described in the following section, it is possible, in keeping with the argument expounded by Arend Lijphart, to classify democracy into two models, a Westminster model and a consensus model.3 This classification can also be used to characterize parliamentary systems. The Japanese parliamentary system under the so-called “1955 system” that defined Japan’s political landscape for most of the postwar era was similar to a consensus model. As a result of political reforms, and particularly the significant increase in the power of the prime minister, it has become closer to a Westminster model.

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The political reforms, however, have left the structure of the Diet, as well as its relationship with the cabinet, untouched. Compared with the national assembly assumed under the Westminster model, the Japanese Diet is more autonomous and independent. Above all, the nature of the House of Councillors is different. The House of Councillors is more powerful and has greater independence from the cabinet than is customary in many parliaments. This became a more pronounced aspect of the political process after the electoral reforms gave rise to a two-party system in Japan. The legislative gridlock that the House of Councillors can now create has impeded the cabinet’s ability to implement policies, contributing to the downfall of a number of cabinets. By examining the unique nature of the Japanese parliamentary system—particularly the nature of the House of Councillors—and the way in which the recent political reforms have altered that system, we can better understand the causes of the short-term prime ministers and the implications for the future of Japan’s parliamentary system. So far I have presented the objective of this chapter. The next two sections describe the details of the Japanese parliamentary system, giving particular attention to the nature of the second chamber, the House of Councillors. Then, I show how a series of political reforms changed the nature of the Japanese parliamentary system. The following sections review the short tenures of the series of six prime ministers from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and explain the reasons for their brief tenancies. Finally, the concluding section makes a brief comparison between the short-tenured prime ministers and Prime Minister Koizumi to highlight the causes of the short-term prime ministers, and then it examines the implications of the arguments made by this chapter for the Japanese parliamentary system.

The Nature of the Japanese Parliamentary System Two Types of Parliamentary Systems Arend Lijphart’s study of democratic governance offers a useful framework to examine the characteristics of the Japanese parliamentary system from a comparative perspective.4 Although Lijphart chose to make the scope of his framework broad enough to cover presidential

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systems, it is nonetheless useful for examining parliamentary systems as well. As noted above, he classifies democracies into two categories: the Westminster model and the consensus model. The Westminster model attaches importance to rule by “the majority of the people.”5 It is characterized by a concentration of executive power, cabinet dominance, a two-party system, a majoritarian and disproportional system of elections, unitary and centralized government, a concentration of legislative power in a unicameral legislature, and so on.6 In contrast, the consensus model accommodates “as many people as possible” in agreements on policies.7 Its key features include executive power sharing in broad coalition cabinets, executive-legislative balance of power, a multi-party system, proportional representation, federal and decentralized government, and strong bicameralism.8 These two categories are particularly useful when we focus on the leadership of the prime minister. In the Westminster model, the prime minister can exercise strong leadership, as he or she can implement policies if he or she succeeds in obtaining support from a simple majority. In the consensus model, however, leadership becomes constrained, as the prime minister has to build up a wider support base.

The 1955 System How do these differences relate to the changes that have occurred in the Japanese parliamentary system in recent years? For most of the postwar era, Japan’s parliamentary system, known as the “1955 system,” was consistent with the consensus model. Between 1955 and 1993, the LDP dominated the Diet and thus formed a one-party government. The LDP government, however, was closer to a coalition government in practice because of the strong influence held by the factions within the party. The factions in the LDP were cohesive as well as autonomous. Power was not concentrated in the individual prime minister; he had to share power with the factions. One major reason why the factions emerged and persisted was the Japanese electoral system. Between 1947 and 1993, Japan used a single nontransferable vote (SNTV) system for elections to the House of Representatives—a system in which several candidates, sometimes from the same party, were elected from each district—and this system operated much more like a proportional representation system, which is more conducive to a multi-party system.

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Furthermore, the Diet enjoyed strong independence from the cabinet as a result of the distribution of powers between the cabinet and the Diet under Japanese law. Combined with the strong autonomy of the factions, the position of the cabinet vis-à-vis the Diet was not terribly strong. In other words, power was balanced between the cabinet and the Diet. The SNTV system not only made room for the rise and the persistence of the factions but also allowed small and medium-sized political parties to compete. As a result, Japan had a multi-party system in which the LDP held a dominant position.

Political Reform Since the 1990s The character of the Japanese parliamentary system started to change with the political reform of 1994. That initiative transformed the Japanese electoral system from the SNTV system to one that combined a firstpast-the-post system and a proportional representation system. It also imposed stricter regulations on political funding than in the past, making it more difficult for politicians to accept funds from firms, while also introducing a public financing system for political parties. Currently, the government provides about ¥30 billion in total to the political parties every year. Another important development was the administrative reforms that were formulated between 1996 and 1997 under the leadership of Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto. This reform, which was implemented in 2001, increased the powers of the prime minister in a number of ways. Not only did it increase the legal powers held by the prime minister, but it also enhanced the powers held by the Cabinet Secretariat (Naikaku Kanbo) and created a new office, the Cabinet Office (Naikakufu), to expand the prime minister’s capacity to formulate policies and draft legislation. The prime minister also gained the formal power to propose policies in the cabinet, as well as to draft bills under his direct supervision. These two reforms changed the character of the Japanese parliamentary system and shifted it closer to a Westminster model than it had been in the past. The new electoral system is more majoritarian than the previous system. The SNTV system was closer to a proportional representation system as it was easy for small and medium-sized political parties to run their candidates. The current system, which

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combines a first-past-the-post system and a proportional representation system, gives more weight to the former, allocating 295 seats to the first-past-the-post system and 180 seats to the proportional representation system. In addition, the introduction of the new electoral system created incentives that moved the Japanese party system closer to a two-party system. After the reform, the opposition parties began to merge. At the end of 1994, the New Frontier Party emerged as a rival to the LDP by combining the forces of such medium-sized parties as the Japan Renewal Party, the Japan New Party, Komeito, and the Democratic Socialist Party. When the New Frontier Party dissolved in 1997, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), which had formed in September 1996, assumed the role of being the primary challenger to the LDP. In the November 2003 general election, the LDP and the DPJ obtained a combined 86 percent of the seats. Although the DPJ lost in the general election in September 2005, it was victorious in the general election of August 2009 and came to power. As a result of these changes, the executive powers came to be more concentrated in the hands of the prime minister. The electoral reform made it more difficult to be re-elected as an independent candidate, which in turn gave more political importance to the party’s endorsement. Given that the party leaders make the final decision regarding party endorsements, the power of the party leaders—and thus of the prime minister, as the leader of the ruling party—over the backbenchers was significantly enhanced. The political reforms, and in particular the introduction of the new electoral system, changed the dynamics within the LDP. The factions can no longer wield significant political power for two reasons. First, whereas before the reform the factions were able to run candidates relatively freely, after the reform this was no longer possible and they were forced to ask the party leadership to endorse their candidates. Second, with the revision of the regulations on political funds, the factions can no longer receive contributions from companies. Thus, the amount of funds that the factions can collect has significantly diminished. In the meantime, with the introduction of the public finance system, political funds have come to be more concentrated in the hands of the party leadership. Further, the administrative reform augmented the powers of the prime minister and his resources to initiate policies. The prime minister has thus gained more formal powers to formulate policies.

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Still a Long Way from a Westminster Model As a result of these two institutional reforms, the Japanese parliamentary system has become more similar to a Westminster model. Yet, the Japanese system still deviates significantly from that model because of the nature of the national assembly, the Japanese Diet. More specifically, the Diet differs from the parliament assumed under the Westminster model in two dimensions, namely, the relationship between the executive and the legislative branches of government, and the role of the second chamber of parliament.

The Cabinet’s Limited Power over Parliamentary Affairs In the Japanese system, the powers of the cabinet over parliamentary business and legislation, as well as over the organizations of the legislature, are much more limited than in the Westminster model. To highlight how the powers of the Japanese cabinet are constrained, let us compare the British parliamentary system, the system from which the Westminster model derives, with the Japanese parliamentary system. First, with regard to the powers to set legislative agendas and schedules, the British cabinet has the power to determine the priorities among the bills it proposes to Parliament. In addition, it has an enormous influence over the timetable of the legislation to be taken up by Parliament. The cabinet can submit a “programme motion” after the second reading of a bill, which stipulates the timetable for deliberations of that bill. Given that the cabinet normally commands the majority within the Parliament, it can expect those motions to pass. The whip system also facilitates the smooth passage of governmentsponsored bills in Britain. The whips are members of the government who monitor and persuade the members of parliament who belong to the majority party to support the government’s bills. They also have the power to appoint members of the public bill committees in the House of Commons, which deliberate on and can amend the government bills. Therefore, the government does not have to worry about the possibility that a member of the ruling party with a negative view on a government bill will sit on a relevant committee. These government prerogatives and the organization of Parliament make it very unlikely that deliberations on a bill will become stalled at the committee stage.

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On the contrary, under the Japanese parliamentary system, the cabinet has no power over parliamentary business and legislative affairs. The speakers of each house, the steering committees, and the standing committees exercise those powers. The speakers can determine the dates as well as the agendas of the plenary sessions. However, since they make those decisions based upon advice from the steering committees, it is those committees that essentially exercise the power. The steering committees are responsible for responding to requests from Diet members to receive explanations from the cabinet ministers on specific bills in a plenary session. In recent years, it has become routine for opposition parties to make such requests for all government bills. A government bill cannot be sent to a standing committee of either house until the steering committee has reached a decision regarding the need for a ministerial explanation. Thus, the steering committees have the de facto power to determine when the deliberation of a government bill will begin in a standing committee. Once a bill has been referred to a standing committee, that standing committee is autonomous in setting the agenda and schedule for the deliberation on the bill. Another point that differs from the British system is that under the Japanese system, the standing committees are set up in such a way that they are paired with ministries. Thus, the bills submitted by a ministry are usually assigned to its corresponding committee. One committee normally deliberates on several bills during a Diet session. In each committee, the chairperson and the directors discuss and determine the order and timetable of the bills. The cabinet does not have any command over these issues, nor does it have the power to appoint members to those committees. In practice, informal negotiations between the ruling and opposition parties play a large part in determining the parliamentary business, particularly in the case of important government bills. The chair of the ruling party’s Diet Affairs Committee and his counterparts among the opposition parties negotiate the order in which important bills are taken up and the time allocated to each. Thus, the ability of the Diet to control its own business and to legislate virtually independently of the cabinet is one of the key characteristics of the Japanese political system. It gives the backbenchers significant power to affect legislative agendas and schedules. Most importantly, it gives the backbenchers the potential power to delay legislation and even prevent the cabinet from getting its bills passed.

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The House of Councillors The other major difference between the Japanese political system and a Westminster model can be found in the nature of the second chamber, the House of Councillors. Within Japan’s bicameral system, while the cabinet can maintain power only by sustaining the confidence of the first chamber, the House of Representatives, the cabinet also holds the power to dissolve that house and call elections. In contrast, the House of Councillors yields to the House of Representatives in the nomination of the prime minister. It also does not have the power to submit a vote of no confidence in the cabinet. But conversely, it cannot be dissolved by the cabinet. Thus, institutionally there is no guarantee that the cabinet will enjoy the support of the House of Councillors. Nor can the cabinet hold the threat of an election over the House of Councillors as leverage. This relationship between the cabinet and the second chamber is similar to that in the British parliamentary system. Yet, the House of Lords cannot seriously impede policy formulation by the cabinet. This is because the House of Commons has vastly greater power than the House of Lords. The House of Lords, for example, does not have the power to veto the passage of “money bills”—i.e., bills related to taxation and government spending. With regard to other legislation, it can delay the passage of a bill that has been approved by the House of Commons only for a year by voting against it. In the Japanese political system, on the other hand, the dominance of the House of Representatives over the House of Councillors is marginal as the two houses have almost equal power in terms of legislation. The House of Representatives only automatically prevails over the House of Councillors on votes related to the budget and treaty ratification. In these two cases, when the votes in the two chambers differ, the vote of the House of Representatives becomes the final vote of the Diet. The Lower House, however, cannot always dominate votes on bills. The House of Representatives would seem to have an advantage given that, according to the Japanese Constitution, when the two chambers come to different decisions on a bill, the House of Representatives can override the vote of the House of Councillors. To do so, it must pass the same bill a second time with support from more than twothirds of its members. But in practice, it is difficult for the ruling party to obtain more than two-thirds of the seats in the House of Representatives. Thus, when the Japanese Diet becomes “twisted,”

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or in other words, when the opposition obtains a majority of the seats in the House of Councillors, it becomes very difficult for the administration to pass its bills.

The 60 Day Rule Even when the ruling party (or parties) is able to command more than two-thirds of the seats in the House of Representatives, a twisted Diet will still present it with two problems. First, the cabinet will have a hard time passing government bills under a twisted Diet because of the socalled “60 day rule.” The House of Representatives usually examines a government bill first and then sends it to the House of Councillors for further deliberation. Under the Japanese Constitution, if the House of Councillors does not vote on the bill for 60 days, the House of Representatives has to wait until the 61st day to pass a resolution to treat the bill as having been rejected by the House of Councillors, which clears the way for them to pass the bill with a two-thirds majority. The “60 day rule” at times interferes with the government’s ability to respond to policy challenges in a timely manner. The second problem arises when the cabinet tries to make appointments to certain positions in the government or in public institutions such as the commissioners for the National Personnel Authority or the governor of the Bank of Japan. The cabinet must have these appointments approved by both chambers of the Diet. In this case, there is no superiority of the House of Representatives over the House of Councillors. Under the twisted Diet, the government has no way to push through its appointments if the opposition parties try to block them. Thus, the House of Councillors has come to project a great deal of influence over policy formulation in recent years.

“Get Revenge in Nagasaki Instead of in Edo” There is an old proverb in Japan that says the wise warrior will wait to attack an enemy who harmed them in Edo (the ancient name for Tokyo) until the enemy is away in Nagasaki, implying that they take revenge indirectly on other fronts. Opposition politicians have become increasingly able to use the twisted Diet to this end. This is due to the shift toward what is almost a two-party system in Japan

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following the enactment of the electoral reform. As noted above, through a series of mergers of different parties, the DPJ emerged as the primary rival to the LDP in 2003, giving rise to a system dominated by two major parties. Before that shift occurred, the opposition parties were divided. No single opposition party had a realistic hope of coming to power in the next general election. As a result, instead of creating legislative gridlock, they chose to make the administration accommodate some of their policy demands. After the shift, when the opposition dominates the House of Councillors, there is a strong impetus for the leading opposition party—regardless of whether it is the LDP or the DPJ—to use this to its advantage as much as possible in order to win the next general election for the House of Representatives and come to power. In other words, the leading opposition party has an incentive to block the cabinet’s policy agenda as much as possible with the expectation being that a failure to implement policies will undermine the reputation of the cabinet as well as the ruling party. By damaging the public’s trust in the majority party, the opposition expects to gain an advantage in the subsequent general election. In short, the temptation to grab the reins of power in the next election has made it exceptionally difficult for any administration to implement policy under a twisted Diet. To understand how this has played out in reality, and what other factors have influenced the rise and fall of Japan’s recent administrations, let us examine each of the six administrations that came to power after Prime Minister Koizumi stepped down.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s First Term (2006–2007) Shinzo Abe, who served as chief cabinet secretary under Koizumi, won the LDP presidential election held on September 20, 2006, to become the successor to Koizumi, forming his cabinet on September 26. The first Abe administration, however, lasted only for a year. In mid-September 2007, Prime Minister Abe announced his resignation. In this case, rather than political factors, it was Abe’s health condition that was the ultimate cause of his resignation. The explanation offered at the time was that he had decided to resign because “in the current situation, it will be quite difficult to forcefully pursue policies based on the people’s

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support and trust.”9 That was not, however, the real cause. He decided to step down because he was suffering from ulcerative colitis and his condition had deteriorated to a point where it was interfering with his ability to carry out his job.10 Although his health was the direct cause of his resignation, Abe’s administration had already reached a political impasse and his cabinet had come very close to collapsing. The LDP lost the House of Councillors election in July 2007, leaving Abe facing a twisted Diet, and at the end of August the cabinet approval rating was 33 percent while the disapproval rating was 53 percent.11 As a result, Abe was likely to have a hard time getting his administration’s bills passed. There were three factors that had caused the LDP to lose control of the House of Councillors, pushing the first Abe cabinet to the verge of collapse. The first was the so-called “rejoining the LDP” problem. The second was a series of ministerial scandals. And the final factor was the “lost pension record” problem.

The “Rejoining the LDP” Problem The “rejoining the LDP” problem derived from Prime Minister Koizumi’s reform of the postal savings system and the 2005 general election. The second Koizumi cabinet submitted a series of bills to privatize the country’s postal savings system during the Diet session starting in January 2005. When the House of Representatives voted on the bills, however, many LDP politicians rebelled and voted against them, although they ultimately did pass. But when the bills reached the House of Councillors, they were rejected because of the defection of a number of LDP politicians. Having had his most important bills killed by the Diet, Koizumi in return dissolved the House of Representatives, explaining that he wanted to “ask the Japanese people whether they are for or against my reform policy.”12 In the snap election that followed, the LDP withheld its endorsement from those LDP politicians who had voted against the postal reform bills. Among the 13 LDP politicians who succeeded in getting reelected as independents, 1 was expelled from the party while the other 12 left the party, following the recommendation from the party after the general election. Shortly after the formation of the first Abe cabinet, the status of these 12 politicians became a matter of controversy within the LDP. Some

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supported readmitting them to the party, believing their role would be indispensible in winning the upcoming House of Councillors election in the summer of 2007. Others opposed their readmission, pointing to the fact that they had competed against LDP-endorsed candidates.13 After a long dispute within the party, the LDP in the end allowed 11 of the 12 politicians to come back in December 2006. This decision invited severe criticism. The motto of the LDP in the previous general election was “Don’t Stop Reform.” In the eyes of the public, readmitting politicians who had opposed the postal savings reform was inconsistent with that message. For example, one newspaper condemned the LDP, proclaiming, “The return to the LDP of the rebels who competed in the last election, committing themselves to opposing the postal savings reform, would invalidate the significance of the last election.”14 The cabinet approval rating plunged from 63 percent in October to 47 percent in December.15

Ministerial Scandals and the Pension Record Problem Shortly after the readmission of the rebels, a series of scandals hit the Abe cabinet. First, three cabinet ministers were suspected of financial improprieties. One was forced to resign in December 2006.16 Another minister, who was also criticized for receiving political donations from public institutions and firms that were involved in bid rigging, committed suicide in May 2007. In addition, around the same time, two cabinet members—namely, the health minister and the defense minister—made politically inappropriate statements that exacerbated the public criticism of the cabinet. The final issue that undermined the Abe cabinet was a problem with the pension records. It was discovered that the Social Insurance Agency had erred in its handling of pension premium payment records. As the agency had failed to preserve records properly, some people were not able to receive their pensions despite the fact that had paid their premiums. It was reported that the agency might have lost track of as many as 50 million records. The DPJ first raised this issue in February 2007, and the issue began to draw a great deal of public attention in May. This incident gave rise to widespread doubts about the competency of the Abe cabinet. Of course, 50 million records did not mean that 50 million people were affected. Yet, the sheer magnitude of the number made

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many concerned that their pension records might not have been properly kept. Because of these scandals, the cabinet approval rating plunged to 30 percent in June 2007. This was the political environment facing the LDP as it campaigned for the House of Councillors election. Unsurprisingly, it lost the election, winning only 37 seats out of the 121 seats that were up for grabs that year. In fact, the LDP and its partner, Komeito, were only able to secure a combined total of 103 seats in the House of Councillors, falling short of the majority in the 242-seat chamber and thereby setting up a twisted Diet. Although in the past, two prime ministers—Sosuke Uno and Ryutaro Hashimoto—had decided to step down following similarly dismal defeats in House of Councillors elections, Abe initially decided to stay in his position. His resolve, however, was short-lived and he decided to resign in September when his ulcerative colitis worsened. Although the direct cause of his resignation was his illness, there can be little doubt that he would have had significant difficulty in implementing policies in light of the twisted Diet.

Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda (2007–2008) After Prime Minister Abe stepped down, Yasuo Fukuda, who had also served as the cabinet secretary in the Koizumi cabinet, won the LDP presidential election and became the next prime minister on September 26, 2007. His tenure was also short, lasting only about a year, until September 24, 2008. The largest impediment to Fukuda’s ability to implement policy was the twisted Diet. This was particularly evident when it came to Fukuda’s three priorities in his policy agenda. The first was to enact a counterterrorism bill known as the Replenishment Support Special Measures Law. The second was to appoint a new governor for the Bank of Japan (BOJ). And the third was to pass the bills necessary to extend the temporary tax rates on gasoline and diesel as well as to continue earmarking the revenue from gasoline and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) taxes for road construction. Each of these priorities ran into trouble in the Diet, undermining public support for the Fukuda cabinet.

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Extending the Counterterrorism Operations of Japan’s Maritime Self-Defense Force Soon after becoming prime minister, Fukuda had to deal with a battle over the passage of the Replenishment Support Special Measures Law (referred to hereafter as the new counterterrorism bill). The objective of the bill was to send the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) to the Indian Ocean to provide supplies to the foreign naval vessels supporting the operations in Afghanistan. The Fukuda cabinet prepared this bill to replace the Anti-Terrorism Special Measures Law (hereafter referred to as the former counterterrorism law). It was the Koizumi administration that had enacted the former counterterrorism law in October 2001. The objective of that law was also to send the MSDF to the Indian Ocean to provision foreign vessels and to transport supplies for refugees. The initial law was to expire after two years, but the Koizumi administration extended it for another two years in October 2003. In October 2005, it renewed the law for a second time, but this time just for one year. The Abe administration approved a third extension in October 2006, which extended it through November 1, 2007. In the late summer of 2007, the Abe administration gave up on the idea of trying to introduce a bill to extend this law because it was unlikely that it would be able to get that bill passed before the current extension period ended. To understand this decision, it is necessary to take into account the distribution of seats at the time and the “60 day rule.” The LDP and Komeito held more than two-thirds of the seats in the House of Representatives. Therefore, even if the House of Councillors had voted against a bill passed by the House of Representatives, the LDP and Komeito would have been able to override their decision and pass the bill. Yet, when it came to extending the former counterterrorism law, the 60 day rule presented a problem. There was no way that the Abe cabinet would be able to get the one-year extension passed in the House of Representatives by early September. The opposition parties, which now had the majority in the House of Councillors and controlled the legislative agenda, were likely to delay deliberation on the bill in the House of Councillors beyond November 1. Thus the law was likely to expire on November 1, making it impossible to extend the existing law. Faced with this situation, the Abe cabinet decided instead to draft a new counterterrorism bill, but Abe resigned before the bill was

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submitted to the Diet. The Fukuda administration took up that agenda item. It submitted a new bill at the beginning of October that would limit the operations of the MSDF to the provision of supplies such as fuel and water to the foreign vessels fighting the war on terror in Afghanistan. The DPJ and other opposition parties opposed the bill, making it likely that the deliberation process would be prolonged. Between the end of October and the beginning of November, Prime Minister Fukuda made an attempt to avoid the legislative gridlock. He tried to form a grand coalition with the DPJ. The DPJ leader, Ichiro Ozawa, in fact responded positively to the idea of forming a coalition since he believed that it would give the DPJ a good opportunity to gain experience in managing the government. Fukuda and Ozawa met twice, first on October 30 and then on November 2. At the second meeting, they reached an agreement to form a grand coalition. At the same time, they also agreed to enact a permanent law that would stipulate the general conditions under which the SDF would be permitted to participate in operations abroad rather than passing new special laws each time. Fukuda’s attempt failed, however, because Ozawa could not persuade the other members of the DPJ to join a coalition with the LDP. The House of Representatives passed the new counterterrorism bill on November 13. The DPJ and other opposition parties, however, delayed deliberations on the bill in the House of Councillors, finally rejecting the bill on the 59th day (January 11, 2008), just two days before it would have become possible for the House of Representatives to pass a resolution that would regard the bill as having been rejected by the House of Councillors. Fukuda was able to get the bill passed later that same day with a House of Representatives override vote. Because of the delay in the legislation, however, the MSDF had to suspend its operations in the Indian Ocean from November 2007 to January 2008.

Appointment of a New Governor of the Bank of Japan Prime Minister Fukuda’s difficulties did not end with the passage of the counterterrorism law. His next challenge was the appointment of a new governor of the BOJ. The term of the incumbent governor, Toshihiko Fukui, was set to expire on March 19, 2008, so a new governor had to be appointed by that date. Fukuda wished to appoint Toshiro Muto, then deputy governor of the BOJ, as the next governor, but under the Bank of Japan Law, it is

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necessary to obtain the approval of the two chambers of the Diet in order to appoint a governor. This meant that Muto had to be approved by the House of Councillors, which was dominated by the opposition. The key was again the DPJ. Initially, Ozawa was willing to accept Muto as the next governor.17 However, there was strong resistance within the DPJ because Muto was a former vice minister of the Ministry of Finance (MOF). The DPJ was adamant about the independence of the BOJ from the government. Some DPJ politicians believed the appointment of a former MOF official to the position of governor would jeopardize that independence.18 In the meantime, the relationship between the Fukuda administration and the DPJ was deteriorating as the LDP had pushed the budget for the 2008 fiscal year (FY) through the House of Representatives at the end of February in the absence of the opposition parties, who boycotted the vote. Ozawa gave up trying to persuade his fellow DPJ politicians to approve Muto, as they were strongly opposed to the appointment. The process thus became entangled and drawn out. The Fukuda cabinet officially proposed Muto as the next governor on March 7. The DPJ decided to oppose the appointment on March 11, and the following day, the House of Councillors rejected the proposal. The Fukuda cabinet then proposed Koji Tanami, then the governor of the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, who was also a former MOF vice minister. The DPJ opposed his appointment as well, and it was rejected in the House of Councillors on March 19. As a result, the BOJ governorship stood vacant. The position was only filled when the Fukuda administration proposed Masaaki Shirakawa, who was a former director of the BOJ and had been newly appointed as the deputy governor in March. His official appointment as the next BOJ governor came at the beginning of April.

Earmarking Revenues from Gasoline Taxes for Road Construction and Maintaining Provisional Tax Rates The last issue that troubled Prime Minister Fukuda was the extension of the provisional tax rates on gasoline and diesel, as well as the continued earmarking of revenues from fuel taxes (gasoline and LPG) for road construction. In 1953, Japan introduced the Law on Temporary Measures Concerning Funding Sources for Road Development and Improvement Expenditures in order to earmark revenues from the tax on gasoline

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for road construction. This was replaced by the Road Construction Emergency Measures Law in 1958, and a tax on LPG was introduced in 1966, providing an additional source of funds for road construction.19 The Road Construction Emergency Measures Law was revised as the Special Law on the Source of Revenue for Road Construction in 2003. There were two issues. The first was that under the 2003 legislation, the earmarking of revenues was only authorized for five years through the end of March 2008.20 Thus, in order to extend the earmarks beyond FY2008, it was necessary for the government to pass a new bill before the end of March 2008. The second was the problem of the provisional tax rates that had been imposed on certain items. Most importantly for this chapter were the provisional tax rates on gasoline and diesel fuel, which were set by the Special Measures Concerning Taxation Law and the Local Tax Law and which created a temporary surcharge over and above the basic fuel tax.21 For such taxes as those on gasoline and diesel, the provisional rates were to be lifted at the end of March 2008 as well, so to extend them required an amendment to the Special Measures Concerning Taxation Law and the Local Tax Law before the end of March 2008. The DPJ was against earmarking fuel taxes as a source of revenue for road construction. It felt that Japan had already constructed sufficient roads and that the earmarking of those revenues enabled the government to fund pork-barrel projects and continue building unnecessary roads. Likewise, it was opposed to the continued imposition of provisional taxes. It argued that now that enough roads had been constructed, there was no need to impose higher tax rates on the Japanese taxpayers. In January 2008, the Fukuda administration submitted a bill to revise the Special Law on the Source of Revenue for Road Construction to allow continued earmarking of the revenue from gasoline and LPG taxes for another 10 years. It also proposed bills that would revise the Special Measures Concerning Taxation Law and the Local Tax Law to maintain the provisional tax rates, including those on gasoline and diesel, for 10 more years. The bills passed the House of Representatives between the end of February and the middle of March. As the DPJ was against them, however, these bills were stalled in the House of Councillors. To break the gridlock and persuade the DPJ, on March 27, Prime Minister Fukuda made a new proposal. He proposed to terminate the earmarking of revenues from the aforementioned taxes for road construction by the end of FY2008 and he asked the DPJ to begin

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negotiations with the LDP on those taxes. The DPJ, however, rejected the proposal because Fukuda intended to maintain the provisional tax rates. As a result, the Fukuda administration was unable to pass its bill to revise the Special Law on the Source of Revenue for Roads Construction or the bills to maintain the gasoline and diesel taxes by March 31. Thus, it became temporarily impossible for the Fukuda cabinet to earmark revenues from taxes on gasoline or LPG for road construction. Furthermore, from April 1 it lost the legal grounds for imposing the provisional tax rates on gasoline and diesel. As a result, in late April and early May, the Fukuda cabinet resorted to a House of Representatives override to get the necessary bills passed to revise the laws and keep the provisional rates. The confused political process was abundantly clear to the public, symbolized by a sudden reduction in the price of gas and diesel at the beginning of April when the surcharge could no longer be imposed, followed by a sudden hike again at the end of April when the bills finally passed and the surcharge was reinstated.

The Twisted Diet Takes its Toll The legislation described above all fell prey to the twisted Diet, and the resulting political paralysis undermined public support for the Fukuda cabinet. The cabinet approval rating, which was 53 percent shortly after its formation in September 2007,22 fell to 31 percent in December 2007 and then to 25 percent in May 2008.23 Fukuda reshuffled his cabinet at the beginning of August 2008, but that did not help much in winning back the public’s support.24 On September 1, 2008, Prime Minister Fukuda suddenly announced that he would resign. He hinted that difficulties in the legislative process and his administration’s loss of popularity were behind the decision, saying, “It would certainly be good if the Diet deliberations advanced smoothly under my prime ministership. That, however, would be quite difficult to achieve because the opposition parties would try to block the way, although they may do so under the new administration as well. A number of situations would work against smooth Diet deliberations, including the cabinet’s low public approval rating, which is a significant factor in my case.”25

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Prime Minister Taro Aso (2008–2009) Taro Aso, then the secretary general of the LDP, became the successor to Prime Minister Fukuda on September 24, 2008. Like his predecessors, Aso succeeded in holding on to his position for about a year, lasting until September 16, 2009. In the case of the Aso administration, there were additional factors, other than those on which I focus in this chapter, that contributed to the prime minister’s short term in office. Certainly the issue of legitimacy weakened the Aso administration, as it was the third LDP cabinet formed without receiving support from the public in a general election. In addition, the cabinet’s popularity suffered due to the deterioration of economic conditions following the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. Yet, the twisted Diet was also an important factor, undermining Aso because it prevented him from implementing important policies. The most important policy that the administration failed to implement in a timely fashion was the second supplementary budget for the 2008 fiscal year.

Supplementary Budget In order to deal with the recession that followed the financial crisis that erupted in September 2008, Prime Minister Aso began preparing a second supplementary budget. On October 30, he announced an economic stimulus package to respond to the crisis, one major pillar of which was to be the distribution of “supplementary income payments” to the Japanese people. The total amount of the allowances, which were to be included in the supplementary budget, was ¥2 trillion. Aso, however, decided not to submit the supplementary budget during the extraordinary session of the Diet, which had begun at the end of September. This was due to the twisted Diet. In order to distribute supplementary income payments, it was necessary to enact a new bill. Yet, because of the 60 day rule, Aso could not be confident that the bill would pass by the end of the extraordinary session. According to the Diet Law, the regular session of the Diet has to commence within the month of January. Thus, the extraordinary session could potentially have been extended up until January 30, 2009, at the latest. The Aso administration anticipated that it would be able to finish compiling

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the supplementary budget by November 20 at the earliest.26 In order to have the bill passed by both chambers by the end of January 2009, the bill would have to clear the House of Representatives by the end of November. It was uncertain whether the Aso administration could get that done.27 Accordingly, on November 25, 2008, Aso announced that he would not submit the supplementary budget to the extraordinary session of the Diet. The major reason for this decision was the poor prospects for the passage of a bill authorizing supplementary income payments.28 His determination to postpone the vote, however, had repercussions. The media severely criticized him for this decision.29 The Mainichi Shimbun, for example, condemned Aso in an editorial, saying, Prime Minister Aso, as well as the LDP and Komeito executives, decided not to submit the second supplementary budget to this Diet session. It was the prime minister who had repeatedly emphasized that “economic measures are an urgent priority.” To postpone submission until next year’s Diet session is totally inconsistent.30

Likewise, it appeared to the public that Aso’s decision was very inconsistent with what he had been claiming since the formation of his cabinet. He had repeatedly emphasized that dealing with the financial crisis was the most important item on his administration’s agenda. Public support declined for the Aso cabinet, dropping precipitously from 37 percent at the beginning of November to 22 percent at the beginning of December.31 Aso’s concerns about the prospects for passing the legislation, however, were legitimate. The second supplementary budget was finally submitted to the Diet in early January 2009 and was approved by the end of January. Yet the Aso administration still could not distribute the supplementary income payments because deliberations on the relevant bill were stalled in the House of Councillors because of opposition from the DPJ. The bill finally passed with an override vote at the beginning of March. The political process that unfolded between November 2008 and March 2009 clearly demonstrates that the economic stimulus had to be delayed because of the twisted Diet, which undermined the Aso administration.

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Sending the MSDF to Somalia Furthermore, Aso was forced to engage in a protracted fight to pass legislation that would allow his administration to send the MSDF to the coast of Somalia to protect private vessels from attacks by Somali pirates. In 2008, pirate attacks in that region had intensified. NATO began to send warships to guard private ships in October 2008.32 Aso decided to send MSDF vessels to assist in those efforts. When the Aso administration initially sent Japanese MSDF vessels in March, the existing law only allowed those vessels to protect Japanese ships or ships that had Japanese citizens or Japanese cargo on board. Thus, the cabinet prepared a new bill so that MSDF ships could also guard foreign ships from the pirates. It submitted that new bill to the Diet in March. The bill passed the House of Representatives on April 23, 2008, but the DPJ was opposed, and so the bill was once again stranded in the House of Councillors. Aso finally had the Diet pass the bill with an override toward the end of June. The Aso cabinet approval rating remained at a low level, going down to 14 percent in early February.33 After temporarily recovering to 26 percent in April, it declined again to 19 percent in June.34 Aso dissolved the House of Representatives in July, and the LDP lost heavily in the subsequent general election held on August 30, 2009. They managed to win only 119 seats in the election, while the DPJ won 308 seats in the 480-seat chamber.

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama (2009–2010) With the DPJ’s landslide victory in the general election, Yukio Hatoyama, the DPJ leader, became the prime minister in September 2009. Despite the party’s overwhelming victory, the Hatoyama cabinet did not even last a year. Hatoyama was forced to resign at the beginning of June 2010. As is widely known, there were two major reasons behind his short tenure. One was a scandal related to political funds. The other was the issue of relocating US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma. While these issues had a decisive impact on the fate of the Hatoyama administration, the lack of a system to cope with the strong powers held by the Diet also contributed to its downfall.

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Political Funds Scandal The Hatoyama administration was hit first by the campaign finance scandal. This issue surfaced when a newspaper reported that the names of five people who had already passed away had been listed as private financial contributors in Hatoyama’s political funds report in mid-June 2009, before that year’s general election.35 At the end of June, Hatoyama, then the leader of the DPJ, revealed that a number of people who had not actually made contributions were listed and that the contributions recorded in their names actually came from his own money.36 The false listing of contributors became the subject of an investigation by prosecutors. It was eventually discovered that the misrepresentation of contributors was to cover up the fact that political funds really came from Hatoyama himself and his mother.37 Between 2004 and 2008, a Hatoyama aide surreptitiously transferred ¥300 million from Hatoyama’s personal assets into his campaign accounts while another ¥900 million was “lent” by his mother to finance Hatoyama’s political activities.38 On December 24, 2009, the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office pressed charges against two of Hatoyama’s former secretaries for violating the Political Funds Control Law.39 Hatoyama himself denied involvement and was not convicted.40 However, he admitted that since 2002, he had in fact received ¥1.26 billion from his mother as a gift and eventually paid gift taxes of ¥600 million.41 This scandal invited severe criticisms against Prime Minister Hatoyama. For example, one newspaper stated, “This incident has increased doubts about the prime minister’s quality.”42 Not surprisingly, the Hatoyama cabinet’s approval rating declined. According to a public opinion poll carried out at the end of 2009, right after the Hatoyama aides were arrested, the cabinet approval rating, which had been 68 percent in November, had dropped to 50 percent.43

The Relocation of the Futenma Air Base The other infamous issue that led to the short tenure of Prime Minister Hatoyama was the relocation of US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma. Shortly before the official campaign for the 2009 general election began, Hatoyama visited Okinawa and declared that he would like to transfer the air base “at least” outside of Okinawa.44 During the official campaign,

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he repeated that pledge.45 Yet, once in office, Hatoyama could not keep his commitment. The United States agreed to set up a high-level working group to have talks on the implementation of the 2006 United States–Japan Roadmap for Realignment Implementation, in which the two countries had agreed to relocate the Futenma air base to the Henoko area.46 In the meetings of the working group, the United States insisted that Japan uphold the roadmap agreement.47 Prime Minister Hatoyama could not make a decision by the end of 2009 and so he announced at the end of December that he would determine the new relocation site by May 2010.48 The Hatoyama cabinet, however, could not find an appropriate alternative to Henoko. On May 28, 2010, the US-Japan Security Consultative Committee issued a joint statement reaffirming that the Futenma air base would be relocated to the Camp Schwab/Henoko-saki area. On the same day, the Hatoyama cabinet decided that the relocation facility would be built in the Henoko-saki and adjacent water areas. Hatoyama’s inability to keep his commitment to relocate the base outside of Okinawa, coupled with the politically confused process that played out before the public for many months, led to a loss of public support. By May 2010, the cabinet approval rating had declined to a critically low level—just 17 percent according to one public opinion poll.49 Finding himself at a political impasse, on June 2, 2010, Hatoyama announced that he would resign.50

Lack of a System to Cope with the Strong Powers of the Diet Hatoyama’s campaign finance scandal and his wavering on the Futenma relocation issue were certainly two major causes of his early downfall. In addition, however, there was one other factor that undermined the Hatoyama administration: the strong powers held by the Diet also constrained his leadership. The Hatoyama administration was not able to get a number of bills passed. The ratio of bills submitted to those passed by the Diet during his tenure was 55 percent—a very low figure. One cause of this poor record was the sudden resignation of Hatoyama toward the end of the Diet session. The election of a new DPJ leader and the nomination of Hatoyama’s successor deprived the DPJ of the time necessary to focus on legislation. Yet, this was not the only reason. Another key factor ultimately resided in the powers held by the Diet. In a number of cases,

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DPJ politicians who chaired the relevant committees did not cooperate with the administration in getting important bills passed. One example was the case of the bill to revise the Special Law on the Source of Revenue for Road Construction. The Hatoyama cabinet submitted a bill to introduce a new arrangement to finance new highway construction. Yet, the chair of the Committee on Land and Transport opposed the bill and did not allow deliberations, never allowing it to come to a vote. Thus, the bill was tabled for further consideration in the next session of the Diet. Another example was the so-called “political leadership bill.” The Hatoyama cabinet designed this bill to establish the National Strategy Bureau. The introduction of this new bureau was one of the commitments the DPJ had made during the general election of 2009 to strengthen political leadership. During the campaign, the DPJ also committed to raising the number of politicians who get appointed to government positions. In order to expand the positions for politicians in the government, Hatoyama decided to increase the number of junior ministers. A number of junior ministerial posts had been originally created in 1999 by the Law to Vitalize the Function of the Diet (Kokkai Shingi Kaseika Ho), which was a member-sponsored bill. Thus, instead of designing a government bill, the Hatoyama cabinet decided to have DPJ politicians submit a member-sponsored bill to revise that law. However, DPJ Secretary-General Ichiro Ozawa demanded that the two bills be discussed at the same time in the Diet. This made it difficult to pass the two bills since the bill to strengthen political leadership, which was cabinet-sponsored legislation, was under the jurisdiction of the Cabinet Committee while, as a member-sponsored bill, the measure to revise the Law to Vitalize the Function of the Diet was to be taken up by the Steering Committee (Unei Iinkai). The Lower House Steering Committee, however, has another important mandate in addition to discussing bills. It is in charge of determining the business of the house, which is not normally determined by vote but by consensus. The largest opposition party, the LDP, was strongly opposed to both bills. Thus, if the DPJ had begun deliberations on the revisions to the Law to Vitalize the Function of the Diet, it would have paralyzed the Lower House Steering Committee. Such a paralysis was likely to have affected the entire functioning of the house. One member of the government who played a leading role in drafting the bill to establish political leadership did in fact ask the chair of the Lower House Steering Committee to begin discussing the bill.51 Yet, the

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chair, being concerned with a possible standoff with the LDP that would bring house business to a standstill, declined that request. As a result, after the bill was read on the floor of the House of Representatives, the Cabinet Committee did not begin deliberations on the bill. Ultimately, the sudden resignation of Hatoyama made it difficult to push these bills through in the final stage of the Diet session and the two bills had to be tabled.

Lack of a Pre-legislation Examination System Of course, the LDP cabinets had faced the same problem with the powers held by the Diet in the past. They, however, managed to pass important legislation. They were able to do so because they had developed a set of informal rules called the pre-legislation examination system (jizen shinsa sei). Under these rules, before submitting bills to the Diet, the LDP governments first submitted them to the LDP’s Policy Affairs Research Council (Seimu Chosakai or Seichokai) as well as its General Affairs Committee (Somukai) to make sure that they could obtain support from LDP politicians. During the pre-examination process, the bills were adjusted as necessary to incorporate diverse opinions from within the LDP. Thus, if an LDP government succeeded in receiving approval in the pre-examination process, it could expect to receive support from the LDP politicians during the Diet deliberations on that bill. After the DPJ came to power, it initially did not adopt this informal process, criticizing the lack of transparency it entailed. This meant that the Hatoyama administration did not have a system to ensure that DPJ backbenchers would support the bills submitted by the cabinet. As a result, Hatoyama could not secure sufficient support from DPJ politicians for some important legislative initiatives. This undermined the prime minister’s ability to have bills passed smoothly, contributing to the short duration of his term.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan (2010–2011) After Hatoyama’s resignation, Naoto Kan was elected as the next DPJ leader and became prime minister on June 8, 2010. Kan was able to hold on to his position longer than his four predecessors, staying in office until September 2, 2011. Yet, that was still a scant year and three months.

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In the case of Prime Minister Kan, such factors as the political strife within the DPJ and the public criticism of his administration’s response to the Great East Japan Earthquake and the Fukushima nuclear accident contributed to his downfall. Along with these factors, however, there is no question that the twisted Diet was also a major cause of his short tenure. Soon after he had become prime minister, the DPJ lost the election in the House of Councillors. As a result, the Diet once again became twisted. The DPJ managed to win only 44 seats out of the 121 seats that were up for reelection. Accordingly, the total number of seats held by the ruling parties—the DPJ and the People’s New Party (Kokumin Shinto)—dropped to 109, which fell short of the number needed for a majority in the House of Councillors. The problem for Kan was that the DPJ and the People’s New Party did not have a two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives either, which was necessary to override votes by the House of Councillors. Thus, the Kan administration had a particularly hard time in passing important bills if the opposition parties were against them. The resulting legislative gridlock paralyzed policy formulation, undermining the prime minister’s authority within the DPJ while depriving the cabinet of public support. There were three important bills in particular that illustrate the struggle Kan faced: a child allowance bill, the supplementary budget to respond to the Great East Japan Earthquake, and a deficit-financing bill. The processes of trying to pass these three bills were interrelated. And as we will see, threats by the opposition to kill the administration’s legislation on the issuance of a deficit bond proved to be the final blow for Kan.

Withdrawal of the Child Allowance Bill In the DPJ manifesto for the 2009 general election, the party made a commitment to create a “child allowance” and provide monthly payments in the amount of ¥13,000 to the guardians of children under the age of 15 in FY2010 and ¥26,000 from FY2011. The Hatoyama administration succeeded in passing the bill necessary to provide the allowance for FY2010. Thus, the Hatoyama and Kan administrations were able to distribute the allowance as promised during FY2010. To distribute the allowance in FY2011, however, Kan had to introduce a new bill. But his administration could not find the financial resources

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in the budget to raise the allowance to ¥26,000. Instead, they decided to raise the allowance for children up to the age of three to ¥20,000 while keeping the allowance for children four and older at the same level as in FY2010. The cabinet submitted a bill along these lines to the Diet at the end of January 2010. The budget containing the expenditures necessary to provide the allowance passed through the Diet on March 29, 2010. The opposition parties, however, were against the allowance bill itself. As a result, the Kan administration had no hope of getting it passed. It decided instead to introduce an interim bill that would provide the allowance for the first half of FY2011 at the same level as FY2010—a measure for which Kan was able to draw support from some small parties in the opposition. In return for allowing deliberation on the interim bill, the LDP and Komeito demanded that the Kan administration withdraw its bill to raise the amount of allowance for children three and under. Kan acquiesced to this demand and withdrew the bill.

The Revision of the 2009 DPJ Manifesto The Kan administration was also unable to pass a bill to issue deficitfinancing bonds by the time the budget for FY2011 had been approved. This was because the opposition parties were objecting to the proposed budget and thus did not cooperate with Kan in enacting a deficit-financing bill. In particular, the LDP opposed the inclusion in the budget of some of the major commitments from the DPJ 2009 manifesto, such as the child allowance and the elimination of tuition fees at public high schools.52 In the meantime, the Great East Japan Earthquake struck Japan on March 11, 2011. In order to respond to the damage inflicted by the disaster, the Kan administration prepared a supplementary budget of ¥4 trillion and submitted it to the Diet on April 28. It also submitted a special bill to finance part of that supplementary budget. As a condition for supporting the financing bill, the LDP requested that the Kan administration revise major commitments made in the 2009 manifesto.53 Kan agreed to their request, and at the end of April, the DPJ, the LDP, and Komeito agreed on the terms for passing the financing bill for the supplementary budget. The main pillars of the agreement were that the three parties would examine the revision of the child allowance as well as the budget (including the DPJ’s promise

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to eliminate highway tolls), and that based on those examinations, the three parties would further discuss the bill to issue deficit-financing bonds. In other words, an agreement on the revision of the child allowance was virtually a precondition for passing the bond issuance bill. The three parties began negotiations on June 17, 2011. These negotiations became more intense after Kan announced the conditions for his resignation on June 27. Kan referred to the passage of the deficitfinancing bill as one of these conditions. Earlier, on June 2, Kan had strongly suggested that he would resign soon by stating in a meeting with DPJ representatives, “I will pass on my responsibilities to the younger generation once the post-earthquake reconstruction efforts are settled.”54 This was in response to the submission of a vote of no confidence by the opposition parties on June 1. Kan had to hint that his resignation was imminent in order to prevent the anti-Kan faction within his own party from supporting the vote of no confidence. Since the formation of the Kan cabinet, tensions had grown within the DPJ. The group led by Ozawa had grown increasingly hostile to the cabinet. Struggles between the Ozawa group and the group supporting the Kan administration deepened. When the opposition parties submitted the no-confidence vote, the leaders of the anti-Kan group initially declared that they would support it, and the expectation was that many in the DPJ would go along.55 In addition to the revision of the child allowance, the DPJ, the LDP, and Komeito discussed the terms for the passage of the deficitfinancing bill. They reached an agreement on the revision of the child allowance on August 4, 2011. The DPJ acquiesced to the demands by the LDP and Komeito and agreed to abolish the child allowance. In exchange, the childcare allowance, which had existed prior to the introduction of the child allowance, was to be reinstated. They agreed to distribute ¥15,000 as a childcare allowance for children under the age of three, ¥10,000 for children between the age of three and the start of middle school, and ¥15,000 for those children between the age of 3 and 12 who were born after the second child in their family. They also agreed to introduce an income ceiling for the allowance. Those households with incomes above a certain threshold cannot receive the childcare allowance. The reader might wonder if there is any significant difference between the child allowance and the childcare allowance. There are in fact two major differences. First, the amount of the monthly stipend is smaller in the case of a childcare allowance than in the case of the

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child allowance. Second, as noted above, an income ceiling was adopted for the childcare allowance, whereas there was no income ceiling for the child allowance. During the negotiations over the terms of the legislation for the deficit-financing bond issuance, the LDP persistently demanded that the DPJ, in addition to withdrawing the child allowance, also retract its proposals to eliminate highway tolls, public high school tuition, and individual income support for agricultural households. On August 9, 2011, the three parties finally reached an agreement on the terms for issuing the deficit bond. The three parties agreed that the expenditures for free highway tolls would not be included in the budget for FY2012. They also agreed to further examine the necessary revisions for public high school tuition and individual income support for agriculture. This agreement, combined with the conclusion of the revision of the child allowance, in essence demonstrated that the DPJ had given up on some of its major commitments from the 2009 manifesto. The bill to issue the deficit bond passed the Diet on August 26, 2011, and on the same day, Kan announced that he would resign.

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda (2011–2012) Yoshihiko Noda, who had served as minister of finance in the Kan cabinet, was selected as Kan’s successor. On September 2, 2011, he became the third DPJ prime minister and served until December 26, 2012, recording the longest tenure among the six prime ministers examined in this chapter. Once again, the twisted Diet played a major role in shortening the prime minister’s term in office. In Prime Minister Noda’s case, the twisted Diet not only created gridlock but also placed the fate of his cabinet at the mercy of the opposition parties, and in particular, the LDP. Noda’s most important bills, namely those to implement comprehensive social security and tax reform, were held hostage in the House of Councillors by the opposition parties. As a result, he was forced to sacrifice the prime minister’s seat, agreeing to set a date for the general election by dissolving the House of Representatives in exchange for getting those bills passed by the House of Councillors.

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Comprehensive Social Security and Tax Reforms The highest priority for the Noda administration was to pass legislation on comprehensive social security and tax reforms. These reforms had actually begun with the formation of the previous cabinet, under Prime Minister Kan. When Kan announced the commitments of the DPJ for the House of Councillors election in June 2010, he revealed that he would announce a plan to reform the consumption tax within FY2010. He implied that he might raise the rate of the consumption tax to 10 percent, saying that he would use the LDP’s own proposal to raise the rate to 10 percent as a reference. After the House of Councillors election, Kan set up the Headquarters of the Government and Ruling Parties for Social Security Reform and started discussions on the comprehensive reform of the social security and taxation systems. At the end of June 2011, the headquarters put forward the “Definite Plan for the Comprehensive Reform of Social Security and Tax,” which recommended raising the consumption tax rate to 10 percent in phases through the mid-2010s. When Noda took office in September, he took up the reform mantle from Kan. In January 2012, the Headquarters of the Government and Ruling Parties for Social Security Reform put out a proposal, the “Vision Sought by Comprehensive Reform of Social Security and Tax,” which set out a plan for raising the rate of the consumption tax first to 8 percent in April 2014 and then to 10 percent in October 2015. The Noda cabinet drafted the bills taking into account the recommendations made in the “Vision” proposal, and submitted them to the Diet. The LDP, which had set a number of obstacles in the path of the previous DPJ cabinets when they attempted to design new policies, had themselves already committed to raising the consumption tax rate to 10 percent during the 2010 House of Councillors election. Thus, the bills basically corresponded to the LDP policies. The House of Representatives began deliberation on the bills in May 2012. The DPJ, the LDP, and Komeito started discussions on revisions to the bills and reached an agreement in June. For example, they agreed to introduce cash payouts instead of refundable income tax credits as a measure to cushion the burden of the tax hike on people with low incomes. At the same time, they also decided to introduce a new bill that would set up a committee to discuss the reform of the social security system. In keeping with that agreement, the DPJ, LDP, and Komeito amended the bills and those revised bills passed through the House of Representatives at the end of June.

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Bills Taken Hostage in the House of Councillors The LDP originally intended to cooperate with the Noda administration to push the bills through the House of Councillors. Yet, the DPJ did not try to accelerate the deliberation on the bills. This was because the DPJ was concerned about a possible split in the party. There was strong opposition within the DPJ to the comprehensive reforms, and in particular to the tax hike. More than 70 DPJ politicians had already rebelled in the vote on the bills in the House of Representatives, either by voting against them or abstaining. Some 50 DPJ politicians left the party at the beginning of July, with 48 of them joining a new party, People’s Life First, led by Ozawa. Thus, the DPJ was anxious to delay the vote in the House of Councillors. In the meantime, forces within the LDP requesting the dissolution of the House of Representatives were gaining strength. As a result, the LDP came to demand that Noda commit to dissolving the House of Representatives as a condition for supporting the bills in the House of Councillors. Noda acquiesced to the demand. On August 8, he held a summit meeting with Sadakazu Tanigaki, the LDP president, and Natsuo Yamaguchi, the leader of Komeito. During the meeting, Noda promised that he would dissolve the House of Representatives “soon” after the passage of the bills. With that promise, the LDP and Komeito decided to cooperate and the bills were passed in the House of Councillors on August 10, 2012. With comprehensive reform legislation having been successfully enacted, the LDP vehemently called for an early election. The extraordinary session of the Diet began at the end of October 2012, at which time Noda set out his conditions for calling a general election, namely the passage of his legislation to issue deficit-financing bonds and to implement electoral reform. On November 16, those bills having been passed, Noda dissolved the House of Representatives. In the general election held on December 16, the DPJ lost heavily, securing only 57 seats while the LDP won 294 seats out of the total 480. Shinzo Abe, who had won his party’s election in September 2012 to become the LDP president once again, was voted in as prime minister on December 26, the same day that Noda resigned.

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Conclusion Comparison with Prime Minister Koizumi This chapter has examined the factors that caused short tenures of the six successive prime ministers—from Shinzo Abe to Yoshihiko Noda. The strength of the Diet, and particularly of the second chamber, the House of Councillors, was a critical factor contributing to the short terms of all of these prime ministers except for Abe. More specifically, twisted Diets had a decisive impact in the cases of four prime ministers, namely Fukuda, Aso, Kan, and Noda. The limited power of the cabinet to control parliamentary affairs helped seal the fate of Hatoyama. At the time of the Hatoyama administration, the DPJ had not yet developed a system to cope with the cabinet’s limited power over parliamentary affairs and the lack of such a system contributed to Hatoyama’s early downfall. The importance of these two factors becomes more conspicuous when we compare Prime Minister Koizumi’s tenure with the terms of several of the prime ministers who succeeded him. First, the twisted Diet never got in the way of policy formulation under Koizumi as it did in the cases of Fukuda, Aso, Kan, and Noda. Throughout Koizumi’s tenure, the LDP and Komeito had a majority in the House of Councillors. Therefore, Koizumi was not faced with the same type of legislative gridlock. Second, when we compare Koizumi and Hatoyama, the difference lies in the former’s making good use of the “pre-examination” system. Hatoyama did not utilize such a system, and that ultimately was a major reason why he was unsuccessful in getting the Diet to pass important bills submitted by his cabinet, despite the fact that the DPJ-led coalition held a majority in both houses. On the contrary, when he formulated policies, Prime Minister Koizumi essentially relied on the LDP’s “preexamination system,” which gave the Policy Affairs Research Committee and its General Affairs Committee the role of reviewing prospective bills, thus ensuring that there was intra-party consensus behind his legislation. The real bargaining on legislation tended to take place during the process of the pre-examination. In the end, the pre-examination system prevented conflict between the LDP politicians outside the cabinet and those within the cabinet from arising after the submission of government bills. As noted above, Koizumi relied on the expanded power of the prime minister to design several drastic reforms, such as the privatization of the four highway public corporations and the reduction of payments for

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medical services. Certainly, when implementing reforms related to the postal services—the reforms in which Koizumi was most interested—it is well known that he did not utilize the pre-examination system. In April 2002, when the Koizumi administration drafted legislation to establish Japan Post as a public corporation and to partly liberalize the postal services, it submitted the bills without receiving prior approval on their substance from the LDP. In April 2005, Koizumi once again bypassed the pre-examination system when he had his cabinet prepare bills to privatize the postal service. Yet these bills were the exceptions. Generally speaking, Koizumi respected the pre-examination system and utilized it to build consensus on other bills intended to implement reforms. To reiterate, Koizumi made the best possible use of the fruits of the two institutional changes to design a series of unprecedented reforms. However, the increased power of the prime minister does not mean it is infinite. In carrying out reforms other than those related to the postal service, he was able to rely on the pre-examination system to see how far he could push the LDP backbenchers. Because he was able to avoid confusion and delay in deliberations on the bills by making use of the pre-examination system, it is hard to find instances in which the deliberations became protracted because of resistance from politicians within the LDP besides the bills related to the reforms of the postal services. This comparison also clarifies the institutional conditions under which Koizumi was able to exercise strong leadership. The institutionalists have often referred to the effects of the two reforms, the electoral reform of 1993 and the reorganization of the government of 2001, as factors that supported Koizumi’s leadership. Furthermore, the majority held by the LDP and Komeito in both chambers, as well as the respect Koizumi showed for the pre-examination system, were two additional factors behind his leadership.

Implications What, then, are the implications of the arguments made in this chapter for the nature of the Japanese parliamentary system? Japan has experienced a series of political reforms since the 1990s. The British parliamentary system was a reference point in designing these reforms. Yet, the arguments in this chapter reveal that although the nature of the Japanese parliamentary system has certainly changed since the 1990s, it still differs from a Westminster model.

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The reforms proved to be successful to a significant extent. The power of the prime minister expanded and the party system moved closer to a two-party system. Yet, the balance of power between the cabinet and the Diet and the relationship between the two legislative chambers still curtail the power of the prime minister. In particular, this chapter has emphasized the importance of the House of Councillors in constraining the power of the prime minister when the Diet becomes twisted. The twisted Diet poses a serious impediment to the prime minister’s ability to formulate policies and has caused the frequent turnover of prime ministers in recent years. Also, the discussions demonstrate that the Japanese cabinet has limited power in influencing legislative business and affairs. This in turn provides individual Diet members—in particular, those from the ruling parties—with influence in the policy formulation process, making it desirable for the cabinet to seek endorsement from party members on bills before submitting them to the Diet. It is not surprising that Japan still deviates from the Westminster model, given that the recent reforms were aimed primarily at the electoral system and organization of the executive. The power and structure of the legislature has remained untouched. In order to bring Japan’s parliamentary democracy closer to the Westminster model, it will be necessary to carry out further institutional reforms of the Diet in general and of the bicameral system in particular. For example, at the very least, it would require reducing the time that the House of Representatives needs to wait to call for an override vote to less than the current 60 days when the House of Councillors fails to act on a bill sent from the Lower House. It would also be necessary to give decisions by the House of Representatives preeminence over those of the House of Councillors regarding the confirmation of the administration’s appointments to government organizations and public institutions. And finally, thought should be given to whether or not more power should be assigned to the cabinet in determining the legislative agenda and timetable if we would like to see a further increase in the power of the prime minister. These possible reforms, however, would all lead to a reduction of the power held by individual Diet members and are therefore hard to achieve. A series of reforms since the 1990s has brought the Japanese political system closer to a Westminster model. Yet, because of strong powers held by the Diet, in particular, by the House of Councilors, there remains a long way to go toward a Westminister model.

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notes 1. For arguments by those who attach importance to the series of institutional reforms since the 1990s, see Satoshi Machidori, “Koizumi choki seiken wo sasaeru seiji kaikaku no kekka” [The results of the political reforms supporting the long tenure of the Koizumi administration], Chuo Koron (April 2005): 176–84; Frances McCall Rosenbluth and Mike F. Thies, Japan Transformed (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010); Tomohiko Shinoda, Contemporary Japanese Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013); and Harukata Takenaka, Shusho shihai—Nihon seiji no henbo [Prime ministerial control—the transformation of Japanese politics] (Tokyo: Chuko Shinsho, 2006). 2. For arguments by those who attach importance to the personal expertise of the prime minister, see for example, Alisa Gaunder, Political Reform in Japan (New York: Routledge, 2007); Takashi Mikuriya, Nihirizumu no saisho Koizumi Jun’ichiro ron [The theory of the nihilistic prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi] (Kyoto: PHP Kenkyujo, 2006); and Hideo Otake, Koizumi Jun’ichiro popyurizumu no kenkyu—sono senryaku to shuho [A study on Junichiro Koizumi’s populism—His strategy and methods] (Tokyo: Toyo Keizai Shinposha, 2006). 3. Arend Lijphart, Patterns of Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999). 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Norimitsu Onishi, “Prime Minister of Japan to Step Down,” New York Times, September 12, 2007. 10. Nihon Keizai Shimbun, December 12, 2012. 11. Asahi Shimbun, August 29, 2007. 12. Nihon Keizai Shimbun, August 9, 2005. 13. Asahi Shimbun, November 18, 2006. 14. Nihon Keizai Shimbun, November 28, 2006. 15. Asahi Shimbun, October 11, 2006, and December 12, 2006. 16. Nihon Keizai Shimbun, December 28, 2006. 17. Nihon Keizai Shimbun, November 14, 2007, and March 20, 2008; Sankei Shimbun, April 1, 2008. 18. Nihon Keizai Shimbun, February 6, 2008, and March 20, 2008. 19. Further, the local road tax, the diesel tax, and so on were created by other laws as financial sources for road construction. 20. There was also the issue of extending termination dates for some local taxes, which were earmarked for the construction of local roads by the Law on Local Tax. This chapter just discusses the issue of extending termination dates for the taxes specified by the Special Law on the Source of Revenue for Road Construction. 21. While there were other taxes for which provisional rates were imposed, this chapter focuses on taxes on gasoline and diesel. 22. Asahi Shimbun, September 27, 2007.

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23. Asahi Shimbun, March 4, and April 21, 2007. 24. Asahi Shimbun, August 3, 2008. 25. “Press Conference by Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda,” September 1, 2008, Cabinet Public Relations Office, http://japan.kantei.go.jp/hukudaspeech/ 2008/09/01kaiken_e.html. 26. Mainichi Shimbun, October 30, 2008. 27. Ibid. 28. Nihon Keizai Shimbun, November 26, 2008; and Yomiuri Shimbun, December 26, 2008. 29. Ibid. See also, Asahi Shimbun, November 26, 2008; and Mainichi Shimbun, November 26, 2008. 30. Mainichi Shimbun, November 26, 2008. 31. Asahi Shimbun, December 8, 2008. 32. Nihon Keizai Shimbun, October 25, 2008. 33. Asahi Shimbun, February 10, 2009. 34. Asahi Shimbun, April 21, 2009, and June 16, 2009. 35. Asahi Shimbun, June 16, 2009. 36. Nihon Keizai Shimbun, July 1, 2009. 37. Asahi Shimbun, November 29, 2009. 38. Ibid. 39. Nihon Keizai Shimbun, December 25, 2009. 40. Asahi Shimbun, December 25, 2009. 41. Ibid. 42. Nihon Keizai Shimbun, December 25, 2009. 43. Nihon Keizai Shimbun, December 28, 2009. 44. Kyodo News, July 19, 2009. 45. Mainichi Shimbun, August 18, 2009. 46. New York Times, November 14, 2009. 47. Nihon Keizai Shimbun, November 18, 2009; and Asahi Shimbun, December 5, 2009. 48. Asahi Shimbun, December 26, 2009. 49. Asahi Shimbun, May 31, 2010. 50. Nihon Keizai Shimbun, June 2, 2010. 51. Koji Matsui, “Seiken kotai ni okeru hirenzoku to renzoku no baransu wo do toru ka” [How to interpret the balance between discontinuity and continuity in changes of administration], Sekai Bessatsu no. 841 (March 2013): 39. 52. Nihon Keizai Shimbun, January 22, 2011. 53. Asahi Shimbun, April 28, 2011. 54. Nihon Keizai Shimbun, June 2, 2011. 55. Ibid.

4

Party Politics and Leadership Change in Japan: The Prime Ministerial Relay

Takao Ochi

I

n recent years, the short tenures of Japanese prime ministers have come to be seen as emblematic of Japanese politics. When Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took office in 2012, he became the 74th Japanese prime minister in office since the country’s parliamentary system was introduced in 1890 and the National Diet was first convened.1 Over the previous 122 years of parliamentary rule from 1890 to 2012, each prime minister served an average of less than 1.7 years before a new prime minister was installed. During that same timeframe, there were 22 American presidents, each serving for an average of 5.5 years. Of course, the political systems are different, but the fact of the matter is that Japan’s prime ministers serve for very short terms that on average are less than one-third that of a US president. Even if one compares Japan with the United Kingdom, which has a similar parliamentary cabinet system, over the same period of time the average British prime minister lasted more than four years, well more than double the average for Japanese premiers. Of course, Japan’s constitution and political system after World War II differed from those in place prior to the war. Under the Meiji

Representative Takao Ochi is a third-term member of Japan’s House of Representatives.

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Constitution—from 1890 to 1947—42 prime ministers served in office in 57 years, averaging 1.4 years per premiership. (In the early decades of the Meiji Era, a number of them returned for second or third terms after spending some time out of office.) Following the war, under the current constitution, 31 prime ministers came to power over the 65 years from 1947 until Shinzo Abe returned to office in 2012, each averaging 2.1 years in office. If one looks only at the numbers, it appears that the average tenure of prime ministers grew slightly longer with the shift from the Meiji Constitution to the postwar constitution. Yet even then, this two-year average is remarkably short when compared with other advanced industrial countries. For most of the 65-year period from 1947, Japan’s government was in the hands of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). During the party’s 51 years in power, from 1955 to 1993 and then from 1996 to 2009, there were 22 prime ministers, each for an average of 2.3 years. Incidentally, during the six years in which the LDP was not in sole control of the government—from 1993 to 1996 and from 2009 to 2012—there were six prime ministers, and the average tenure was barely one year (see table 1). Table 1. Length of prime ministerial tenure since Japan adopted a ­parliamentary system Regime

Period

Years

Prime ­ministers entering office

Average tenure

Meiji Constitution

1890–1947*

57

42

1.4 years

Postwar Constitution

1947–2012*

65

31

2.1 years

TOTAL

1890–2012*

122

73

1.7 years

LDP governments

1955–1993; 1996–2009;

51

22

2.3 years

Recent non-LDP ­ governments

1993–1996; 2009–2012;

6

6

1.0 years

*Figures indicate number of prime ministers before Shinzo Abe took office in December 2012.

Regardless of political party, however, if one looks in detail at the length of the prime ministers’ terms in office under the current constitution, one sees that the average has been gradually getting shorter. For the purposes of this chapter, the period from 1955 to 1972 is called the “Postwar Growth Era”—at this time more than a decade had passed since the end of World War II, and Japan was experiencing strong economic growth. During this time, there were five prime ministers over the

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16.5-year span from Ichiro Hatoyama to Eisaku Sato, and their average time in office was 3.3 years. The next period of time, from 1972 to 1993, can be called the “Era of Intraparty Rivalry,” as it featured the development of fierce competition among the rival factions (habatsu) within the LDP over the prime minister’s seat. In the more than 21 years spanning from Kakuei Tanaka to Kiichi Miyazawa’s rule, Japan had 10 prime ministers who each served an average of 2.1 years. Meanwhile, the period from 1996 to 2009—from Ryutaro Hashimoto to Taro Aso—can best be categorized as the “Era of Regime Change” since it spans a period when Japan shifted toward a two-party system. If one looks at this period, one finds that there were 7 prime ministers over 13.7 years, each serving roughly 2 years on average. Looking at the larger trends, 1972 appears to be a key turning point. The average prime ministerial term shrank from roughly three years during the “Postwar Growth Era,” which ended in 1972, to about two years afterwards—during the “Era of Interparty Rivalry” and the “Era of Regime Change.” While the term of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi was particularly long, the final three LDP governments were headed by three people in three years, starting with the first Shinzo Abe administration in 2006, meaning that the prime ministers were in power just one year each by the end of the “Era of Regime Change.” If one adds in the “Democratic Party Era” immediately thereafter, from 2009 to 2012, there were six prime ministers in 6.3 years, making the average just over 1 year per person, meaning that the 2006–2012 period was the one in which the average term of each prime minister was the shortest. These years in which prime ministers changed annually came to symbolize the lack of leadership in Japanese politics (see table 2). Table 2. Length of prime ministerial tenure since the “1955 system” began Era

Party

Years

Prime ministers

Average tenure

1955–1972 Postwar Growth

LDP

16.6

5

3.3 years

1972–1993 Intraparty Rivalry

LDP

21.1

10

2.1 years

Years

Various

2.4

3

0.8 years

1996–2009 Regime Change

1993–1996 Coalition Government

LDP

13.7

7

2.0 years

2009–2012 Democratic Party

DPJ

3.3

3

1.1 years

LDP & DPJ

6.3

6

1.0 years

2006–2012 Regime Change (2nd half ) + Democratic Party

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It is important to remember that the Japanese political system does not necessarily preclude long administrations. In all of the eras described above, there were indeed prime ministers who served for more extended periods of time. During the Postwar Growth Era, Prime Ministers Nobusuke Kishi, Hayato Ikeda, and Eisaku Sato served consecutively for more than 3 years each, holding power for a total of 15 years between the three of them. Sato served for 7.7 years—the longest of all the LDP administrations. Later, during the Intraparty Rivalry Era, Yasuhiro Nakasone served for 4.9 years, while in the Regime Change Era, Junichiro Koizumi held office for 5.4 years (see table 3). Table 3. Length of tenure for LDP prime ministers, 1955–2009 Number of prime ministers by years in office < 1 year

1~2

2~3

3~4

4~5

5~6

6~7

7~8

TOTAL

Postwar Growth Era

1

1

0

1

1

0

0

1

5

Intraparty Rivalry Era

1

4

4

0

1

0

0

0

10

Regime Change Era

2

3

1

0

0

1

0

0

7

Total

4

8

5

1

2

1

0

1

22

However, between 1955 and 2012, there were only 5 prime ministers out of a total of 28 who managed to remain in office for three years or more. Generally speaking, during the entire postwar era, the prime minister changed frequently, with most leaving office in less than three years. It would appear that changes of administration have become habitual in Japanese politics. But why is there such a rapid turnover of prime ministers in Japan? That is the fundamental issue to be explored in this chapter. In order to answer this question, one must look at the timing of the changes in administration. The Japanese prime minister does not change based on elections that are held at regular intervals. Rather, in Japan the prime minister changes at seemingly random and often confounding times. So when does a prime minister step down? Why would the person who holds the highest post in the government abdicate their seat of power, or why are they driven out? Answering these questions will help shed light on the internal workings of Japanese politics and the steps that must be considered to promote greater stability in Japan.

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Changing Leaders without Elections Under Japan’s parliamentary cabinet system, the selection of the prime minister is decided by a Diet vote, and while Japan has a bicameral legislature with an Upper House (House of Councillors) and a Lower House (House of Representatives), Article 67 of the Constitution stipulates that if the opinions of the two houses differ, the decision of the Lower House takes precedence. As a result, the prime minister is essentially determined according to the composition of the Lower House. An election to select the prime minister is held whenever a Lower House election is called or the cabinet has collectively resigned. And Lower House elections are held when members have served their full four-year terms or if the prime minister dissolves the Lower House beforehand. When the vote is held for the prime minister, Diet members essentially vote for the head of their party. Therefore, when the LDP holds the majority, the president of the LDP is nominated, wins the majority of votes in the Diet, and thus becomes prime minister. The same basically holds true for other parties, so the president of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) was the nominee when the DPJ was in power. Given that the LDP was in power for an extended period of time, the party’s presidential elections became not only a vote for the next head of the party but also for the next prime minister as well. According to the LDP’s party rules, regular elections are held when the president’s term comes to an end, and extraordinary elections have to be held if the president resigns during the course of his or her term. These rules prevent any party member who has not been selected as president in an LDP party election from being a candidate for prime minister in the Diet vote. Furthermore, if a sitting LDP prime minister loses the party’s presidential election, he or she is expected to step down not only from the post of LDP president but also as prime minister. Then the cabinet must immediately resign and the new party president will be put forward as the ruling party’s candidate for a Diet vote to take over as the new prime minister. What is important here is that the timing of the regularly scheduled LDP presidential election has no correlation to the Lower House term, and according to party rules, it must be carried out whether or not the party president happens to be prime minister at the time. In order for an LDP prime minister to stay in power, then, in addition to the prime ministerial election that follows a Lower House election, he or she must continue to win the regularly held party presidential elections.

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The basic pattern has been that Lower House elections and the subsequent prime ministerial vote in the Diet have not led to changes in the prime minister. Naturally, if the party that controls the Diet changes, then there will be a change in the prime minister as well. But since the LDP’s single-party dominance continued for so long, there were only three occasions in the postwar era when a Lower House election resulted in a change in the party in power and therefore a change in prime minister: 1993, 2009, and 2012. There were also two cases in which the LDP appointed a new prime minister following a Lower House election. One was in 1976, when the LDP lost its majority of seats in the Lower House election for the first time and Prime Minister Takeo Miki resigned to take responsibility for the defeat, while the other was in 1980, when Prime Minister Masayoshi Ohira died while in office, during that year’s Lower House campaign. Therefore, the incumbent prime minister was summarily reelected after almost all of the Lower House elections in the postwar era, so Lower House elections cannot be considered a major factor that explains the turnover of prime ministers (see table 4). On the other hand, prime ministerial elections held after a cabinet has resigned generally do lead to a change of prime minister. In fact in 23 out of 24 such cases, the incumbent prime minister was not reappointed.2 These include three occasions when prime ministers came into office as a result of a reshuffle of a coalition government, namely Tsutomu Hata Table 4. Results of Diet elections for the prime minister (1955–2012) Prime minister reelected

New prime minister Subtotal

TOTAL

2 0 2

4 18 22

18 19 37

0 2 2

1 3 4

1 5 6

1 5 6

All governments (1955–2012) After Lower House election 14 After cabinet dissolution 1

2 20

3 3

5 23

19 24

15

22

6

28

43

Same party

LDP government After Lower House election After cabinet dissolution Subtotal

14 1 15

2 18 20

Non-LDP government After Lower House election After cabinet dissolution Subtotal

0 0 0

Total

Different party

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in 1994, Tomiichi Murayama that same year, and Ryutaro Hashimoto in 1996. However, the vast majority of times when the cabinet resigned and the prime minister changed—a total of 20 out of 23 cases—the premiership was transferred to a politician within the same party. Why have Japan’s prime ministers changed at such short intervals? What is clear from the analysis offered above is that changes in government (i.e., the party in power) have not been the primary cause of the changes in prime minister. Only 3 of the 28 changes in the premiership since 1955 were brought about when a Lower House election shifted majority control to a different party, thereby necessitating a new prime minister. Rather, more than 70 percent of the changes in this period, that is 20 out of 28 times, involved transfers of power from one member of a given party to another following the dissolution of a cabinet. The next logical question, then, is whether the change in prime ministers following cabinet dissolutions is the result of the prime minister losing the LDP presidential election. This is not the case either (see table 5). In fact, there was only one person who resigned his post as prime minister after having been defeated in the presidential election—Takeo Fukuda. Since the formation of the LDP in 1955, the LDP has held 40 presidential elections, 25 of which resulted in the appointment of a new president. Two LDP presidents served when the party was briefly out of power, and another two—Yasuhiro Nakasone and Junichiro Koizumi—managed to serve as party president for the full length of time allowed by the party rules of the day. In addition, in the years before the LDP president’s term was set at a fixed length, three men voluntarily resigned—Ichiro Hatoyama, Nobusuke Kishi, and Eisaku Sato. Leaving aside the prime minister at the time of this book’s writing—Shinzo Abe in his second term in office—that means that the remaining 17 presidents each decided to leave their posts and dissolve their cabinets before their terms had ended. However, with the exception of Takeo Fukuda, these prime ministers were not defeated in a presidential election but rather forced to quit for other reasons. In other words, the primary reason that prime ministers have changed in Japan has not been defeat by the opposition in a Lower House election or a defeat in party elections. To repeat, since the establishment of the LDP in 1955 there have only been three examples of changes in the premiership following a general election and only one case where the prime minister changed as a result of a loss in the LDP’s presidential election. Rather, most prime ministers have dissolved their cabinets and left the seat of power for reasons that are totally unrelated to elections,

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whether Lower House or party elections. This behavior may be difficult to comprehend at first glance if one looks at this from the commonsense political science perspective that says the rational choice of a political leader is to work to prolong his or her political life. So why do prime ministers decide to step down and have their cabinets resign? Thinking this point through is the most important key to understanding the frequent turnover of Japan’s prime ministers. Table 5. Timing and results of LDP party presidential elections (1955–2012) Timing of election During LDP president’s term

Result

When LDP in power

End of term

After serving maximum # of terms

Total

LDP president reelected

-

14

-

14

LDP president change triggered by elections

1

2

2

5

Party election triggered by Lower House change of power

1

1

-

2

Regularly scheduled party election

-

1

2

3

16

2

0

18

3

-

-

3

LDP president change triggered by other factors Voluntary resignation Pressure to step aside, etc.

13

2

-

15

17

18

2

37

LDP president reelected

0

1

0

1

LDP president change triggered by elections

0

2

0

2

LDP president change triggered by other factors

0

0

0

0

0

3

0

3

-

15

-

15

Subtotal

When LDP out of power

Subtotal

All LDP presidential elections LDP president reelected LDP president changed

17

6

2

25

LDP president change triggered by elections

1

4

2

7

LDP president change triggered by other factors

16

2

0

18

17

21

2

40

Total

Party Politics and Leadership Change in Japan

Party Leadership Term Limits: Evolution and Impact Since they play such an important role in driving the frequent turnover of prime ministers, it helps to briefly review the rules governing LDP presidential elections, and particularly how the length of the presidential term and term limits have evolved over time (see table 6). Ever since the party was formed in 1955, the presidential election rules have undergone repeated revisions. Term limits for the party president were introduced for the first time in 1972 in order to ensure that leaders would change after a fixed period of time. The new rule prohibited LDP presidents from running for a third term, and at the same time, each term was extended from two to three years. In 1976, the term was shortened from three years back to two, but the term limits were done away with. In 1980, the prohibition on third terms was reinstated while keeping the term at two years, allowing party presidents to serve up to two terms, for a total of four years. To understand this evolution, it is important to recall that the Era of Intraparty Rivalry (1972­­­­–1993) was a time when the LDP was comprised of numerous factions that were jockeying for power, and the prime ministerial hopefuls within each of those groups were devoting all of their energy to winning the next presidential election. Therefore, the adoption and strengthening of term limits was undertaken to ensure that the president changed within a fixed period of time in consideration of the need to maintain some sort of balance among the factions and to limit the intensity of infighting among them. Accordingly, one trigger for the introduction of term limits in 1972 was discomfort among party leaders with the length of the administration of Prime Minister Sato, who remained in office for nearly eight years. Meanwhile, the subsequent shortening of the presidential term in 1976 was justified by the argument that times were changing so quickly that a person who was appropriate at one point might no longer be suitable three years later. And the term limits reintroduced in 1980 reflected the idea that if the LDP president’s term in office were to be extended indefinitely, there would be few opportunities for other prime ministerial candidates to stand for the position. The rule governing terms and term limits continued to evolve thereafter, often for pragmatic reasons. For instance, in 1986, the rule was revised to add a year to the presidential term, making it two two-year terms plus one year, or a maximum of five years. This one-year extension was instituted after Prime Minister Nakasone led his party to a stunning victory in simultaneous “unified elections” for the Lower and Upper Houses, and party leaders wished to have him continue in office. Then, in 2003, the term was extended from two years to three. This revised rule, which allows a maximum of two three-year terms for a total of six years, still stands today.

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Table 6. Rules governing LDP presidential elections Year introduced

Term

1956

2 years

None

2 years at a time; no restriction on reelection

None

1972

3 years

3rd term not permitted

2 x 3-year term

6 years

1976

2 years

None

2 years at a time; no restriction on reelection

None

1980

"

3rd term not permitted

2 x 2-year term

4 years

1986

"

2 x 2-year term + 1 year

5 years

2003

3 years

2 x 3-year term

6 years

Term limits

3rd term not permitted

Terms permitted in office

Maximum time in office

Why Do Prime Ministers Resign? Looking back over the postwar era, one can say that the resignations of Japanese prime ministers, at least LDP prime ministers, have been triggered by elections, falling approval ratings, or poor health. As noted previously, there have only been three cases in which an LDP prime minister was forced from office as the direct result of a national election or party presidential election, so that has not been a primary factor driving the change of leadership.3 However, there have been seven instances in which the prime minister resigned to take responsibility for poor showings in Lower or Upper House elections, or in which a prime minister chose not run in the presidential election as a result of a twisted Diet (i.e., a situation in which opposition control of one chamber of the parliament frustrates policymaking). Adding those in brings the total number of cases in which a prime minister’s resignation was connected to election results to 10. To elaborate on these 10 election-related cases, there were three LDP prime ministers who were forced out of office after defeats in a Lower House election. In two cases, those of Kiichi Miyazawa in 1993 and Taro Aso in 2009, after the LDP lost its majority in the Lower House, they lost the Diet vote to become prime minister and thus were forced to step down. The third case was that of Takeo Miki, who resigned to take responsibility for the LDP’s first-ever failure to win a majority of

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Lower House seats in the 1976 election, although the LDP managed to hold onto power by forming a coalition with smaller parties. As is also pointed out above, only one prime minister resigned after losing the party’s presidential election, Takeo Fukuda. However, two others, Zenko Suzuki and Toshiki Kaifu, decided not to run for the party presidency when their first terms came to an end, thereby necessitating a change of prime minister. In addition, three prime ministers resigned following losses in Upper House elections: Sosuke Uno in 1989, Ryutaro Hashimoto in 1996, and Shinzo Abe in 2007. Another case that is similar in spirit is that of Yasuo Fukuda, who resigned in 2008, explaining that it was due to the difficulties he faced in managing the twisted Diet that he inherited after the party’s 2007 Upper House election loss. Meanwhile, low levels of public support accounted for another three resignations. When a cabinet’s approval rating drops below 20 percent, it is said to be entering dangerous territory, and if it falls to around 10 percent, the prime minister typically feels obligated to resign. Accordingly, three prime ministers stepped down when their cabinet approval ratings hit extreme lows for several months in a row—Kakuei Tanaka’s approval rate in 1972 slipped to 10.6 percent, Noboru Takeshita’s rate was 4.4 percent in 1989, and Yoshiro Mori’s rate fell to 9.6 percent in 2001.4 Four prime ministers have also resigned solely due to failing health. In 1957, just one month after being named prime minister, Tanzan Ishibashi suffered a stroke and was forced to resign; in 1964, Hayato Ikeda stepped down due to cancer of the larynx; Masayoshi Ohira fell ill and passed away during the Lower House elections in 1980; and Keizo Obuchi left office after suffering a stroke that ultimately took his life. As seen in table 7, the reasons why LDP prime ministers have resigned have varied slightly over time. During the Era of Postwar Growth, from 1955 to 1972, prime ministers only left of their own accord or for health reasons. In some cases, the prime minister essentially cashed in all of his political capital to achieve a major policy objective and then stepped down. Ichiro Hatoyama ended his career after achieving Japan’s admission to the United Nations, Kishi’s departure was marked by the revision of the US-Japan Security Treaty, while Sato stepped down after overseeing the reversion of Okinawa to Japanese control. Meanwhile, Ishibashi and Ikeda left office for health reasons. This was a period of economic growth as well as one in which Japan had a number of foreign policy successes, and since there were as of yet no term limits for LDP presidents, as long as prime ministers remained healthy, they were able to remain in power for long periods of time.

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Table 7. Reasons behind the resignation of LDP prime ministers

Prime minister

Start date

Election Poor Poor Own accord Years in Lower Upper Party polling health Step Term down limits office House House election

1. Ichiro Hatoyama 2. Tanzan Ishibashi 3. Nobusuke Kishi 4. Hayato Ikeda 5. Eisaku Sato

Dec. 1954 Dec. 1956 Feb. 1957 Jul. 1960 Nov. 1964

2.0 0.2 3.4 4.3 7.7

6. Kakuei Tanaka 7. Takeo Miki 8. Takeo Fukuda 9. Masayoshi Ohira 10. Zenko Suzuki 11. Yasuhiro Nakasone 12. Noboru Takeshita 13. Sosuke Uno 14. Toshiki Kaifu 15. Kiichi Miyazawa

Jul. 1972 Dec. 1974 Dec. 1976 Dec. 1978 Jul. 1980 Nov. 1982 Nov. 1987 Jun. 1989 Aug. 1989 Nov. 1991

2.4 2.0 2.0 1.5 2.4 4.9 1.6 0.2 2.2 1.8

Morihiro Hosokawa Aug. 1993 Tsutomu Hata Apr. 1994 Tomiichi Murayama Jun. 1994

0.7 0.2 1.5

16. Ryutaro Hashimoto 17. Keizo Obuchi 18. Yoshiro Mori 19. Junichiro Koizumi 20. Shinzo Abe 21. Yasuo Fukuda 22. Taro Aso

Jan. 1996 Jul. 1998 Apr. 2000 Apr. 2001 Sep. 2006 Sep. 2007 Sep. 2008

2.6 1.7 1.1 5.4 1.0 1.0 1.0

23. Shinzo Abe

Dec. 2012

–

Yukio Hatoyama Naoto Kan Yoshihiko Noda

Sep. 2009 Jun. 2010 Sep. 2011

0.7 1.2 1.3

Note: Shading indicates non-LDP prime ministers.

However, prime ministers resigned for varied reasons during the Era of Intraparty Rivalry. Three stepped down as a result of the LDP presidential elections (two incumbents chose not to run, and another lost). Another two resigned after LDP losses in the Lower House elections, one as a result of losses in the Upper House, two because of low approval ratings, and one for health reasons. During this period, the battle between the factions within the LDP became increasingly intense, so there was greater pressure on the prime ministers from within their party and the factions took advantage of various opportunities to force their rivals to resign. Furthermore, from 1972 onward, term limits were

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introduced in order to ensure a regular turnover of the party president, which in practice meant there would be frequent turnover of the prime minister as well. After a short succession of non-LDP prime ministers, the launch of the Hashimoto administration in 1996 brought the LDP firmly back into power and, through the subsequent Era of Regime Change from 1996 until the DPJ took power in 2009, half of the resignations were related to losses in Upper House elections. One major factor in this was the 1994 reform of the Lower House electoral system, which introduced a single-seat constituency system that was designed to create a two-party system. This diminished the influence of party factions and helped drive a nationalization of elections, triggering a shift toward more of a twoparty system not only in the Lower House but also in the Upper House. This helped to introduce more volatility into both the Lower and Upper House elections, making it more likely for power to shift from party to party. Of course, it is also important to remember that the Lower and Upper House elections are normally held at different times, and thus their results reflect different public moods, making it more likely that the ruling party’s performance in Upper House elections can differ markedly from their showing in the most recent Lower House vote. This has increased the likelihood that the opposition party will win the Upper House elections and has meant that these elections now have an excessively large impact on the administration’s ability to rule. In looking at the rotation of prime ministers since the 1970s, it becomes clear that most were not pushed out of office directly by the voters in elections, but rather by “indirect” reasons, such as losses in Upper House elections, a decision not to run for reelection as party president, or declining approval ratings. But why were these men who had risen to the apex of their field to become prime minister and LDP president forced to resign for these types of indirect reasons? Why were the most powerful men in the country forced to release their hold on power? To answer that question, we must examine their decisions in the context of intraparty rivalry within the LDP.

Intraparty Rivalry as a Trigger for Prime Ministerial Turnover The ferocity of the battles within the LDP is exemplified by the intraparty strife of the 1970s and 1980s that political commentators jokingly

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alluded to as “Sankaku Daifuku,” a play on the names of the four rival faction heads who went on to become prime minister: Miki, Tanaka, Ohira, and Fukuda.5 When Koizumi was in power and in the immediate post-Koizumi period as well, haggling over policy issues within the party was fierce under normal circumstances, and any drop in approval ratings or misstep in handling the Diet could suddenly prove fatal to an administration. There has been a great deal written already on these types of episodes, and so this section will just focus on the example of the LDP presidential election to illustrate how intraparty competition plays out within the LDP. In the LDP presidential elections, even in cases where the incumbent LDP president is also serving as prime minister, other candidates will often compete for the post. During the period when the LDP held the premiership, there were 15 presidential elections that took place when there already was an incumbent, and in 10 of those cases candidates stepped up to challenge him. The remaining 5 times the LDP president was summarily reelected without any challenge, but of these, 4 were special cases in which the presidential election was called less than a year after the incumbent had won a previous presidential election, making it unseemly for any rivals to throw their hats into the ring. (The reluctance to challenge a party president who won an election in the past year can be considered an LDP custom.) Generally, though, when an LDP prime minister stands for reelection as party president, other candidates run against him. From 1955 to 1972, during the Postwar Growth Era, there were 12 presidential elections, 7 of which involved an incumbent. In all of those cases, rival candidates attempted to unseat a sitting prime minister. The result was that although the incumbent presidents were victorious over their opponents each time and retained their post as prime minister, they were constantly being challenged. Also, if we look at those who have been elected LDP president and prime minister, quite a few had run against an incumbent prime minister/president in past elections. For example, Eisaku Sato, who was the winner of the presidential election in December 1964, had run against Prime Minister Ikeda in 1962 and in July 1964, and had come in second both times, before becoming LDP president later in 1964 when Ikeda’s health forced him to resign. Miki, who became party president in 1974, had run previously in 1968, 1970, and 1972. The winner of the 1976 election was Fukuda, who had run in 1972, as did Ohira, who went on to win in 1978. And the winner in 1982 was Nakasone, who had run unsuccessfully in 1978. Similarly,

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Koizumi, who won in 2001, had run unsuccessfully in 1995 and 1998, while Aso, who won in 2008, had been a candidate in 2001, 2006, and 2007. Of the 25 LDP members who have served as party president, 7 had mounted unsuccessful campaigns before they eventually won the post. In fact, challenging the incumbent in an LDP presidential election became one way for those hoping to become party president to position themselves for future success. During the Era of Intraparty Rivalry, from 1972 to 1993, a total of 14 presidential elections were held. This was a period of fierce intraparty rivalries, but the competition played out in forms other than presidential elections, particularly up until the 1980s. Compared with the Postwar Growth Era, the prime ministers’ terms in office became shorter, and most of the party presidential elections were extraordinary votes that were called when the incumbent prime minister/LDP president was forced to resign under duress before completing his term. In fact, only four elections were held when there was an incumbent president/prime minister running for reelection. And of those, there was only one election in which the incumbent was forced to campaign against a challenger; the rest of the times the incumbent ran unopposed. Incidentally, the period from 1982 to 1987, when Nakasone held the posts of prime minister and party president, was a complete exception to the rule. When he ran for reelection in 1984, it was the only time since the founding of the LDP that a president was re-elected without competition, with the exception of presidential elections held within less than a year of the previous election. When he reached the end of his second term in 1986, it was extended by a year after deliberations in the Joint Plenary Meeting of Party Members of Both Houses of the Diet—the only time that has occurred since the founding of the LDP as well. In addition, when he left his posts as LDP president and prime minister in 1987, Nakasone named his successor. Thanks to the strong political power that Nakasone wielded within the party, this was a period in which the patterns of prime ministerial turnover did not apply. Eleven presidential elections were held during the Era of Regime Change, from 1996 to 2009. However, there were only four instances in which the incumbent prime minister—Hashimoto, Obuchi, and Koizumi (twice)—faced a party election to determine whether he could stay in office. In two of those elections, the incumbent faced challengers. The other two elections did not go to a vote, but in both cases these took place less than a year after the previous elections, and so no other candidates

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stepped forward. Six of the remaining seven elections were triggered because a president/prime minister left office before completing his term, in most cases being forced to step down. What is clear is that LDP prime ministers have constantly been challenged from within their own party. In the regularly held presidential elections, they face a test that determines their political survival. The fact that there have been so many prime ministerial hopefuls in the LDP can be seen as evidence of the deep pool of talent within the party, but at the same time it has been one important factor that has encouraged the frequent turnover of prime ministers. Of course, as noted above, there has only been one case—that of Takeo Fukuda in 1978—in which a prime minister has been unseated thanks to losing the party’s presidential election. And there have been two examples of prime ministers—Suzuki and Kaifu—who served out their full terms as party president but declined to run for re-election in the face of fierce competition, thus resigning from the post of prime minister as well. However, the intraparty competition that is seen in the LDP presidential elections has also meant that there were many prime ministers who could not survive long enough to serve their full terms and stand in the next presidential election.

Putting Party before Prime Minister The LDP has been extremely tenacious in maintaining its grip on power. It is important to recognize that the party also has had incentives to perpetuate the frequent rotation of prime ministers and has actually benefitted from this phenomenon. To put it another way, the LDP placed priority on sustaining party rule rather than the rule of individual prime ministers and its strategy for remaining in power was premised on regularly changing prime ministers. In order to ensure that the LDP would always have a majority in the Lower House following elections, party leaders engaged in a series of tactics that allowed them to add enough seats to hold a majority in the chamber (see table 8). They used a number of maneuvers following the 1976 Lower House election, including the practice of tsuika konin, namely recruiting defectors from other parties and signing up victorious candidates who campaigned without party affiliation as LDP party members once the election ended. Perhaps the most significant tactic they have regularly employed to maintain their majority has been the creation of coalitions. The LDP forged a coalition with the New Liberal

May 1958 Nov. 1960 Nov. 1963 Jan. 1967 Dec. 1969 Dec. 1972 Dec. 1976 Oct. 1979 Jun. 1980 Dec. 1983 Jul. 1986 Feb. 1990 Jul. 1993 Oct. 1996 Jun. 2000 Nov. 2003 Sep. 2005 Aug. 2009 Dec. 2012

467 467 467 486 486 491 511 511 511 511 512 512 511 500 480 480 480 480 480

287 296 283 277 288 271 249 248 284 250 300 275 223 239 233 237 296 119 294

            +11 +10   +9       +32          

61.5% 63.4% 60.6% 57.0% 59.3% 55.2% 48.7% 48.5% 55.6% 48.9% 58.6% 53.7% 43.6% 47.8% 48.5% 49.4% 61.7% 24.8% 61.3%             260 258   259       271          

LDP total

            50.9% 50.5%   50.7%       54.2%          

% of total

                  +8         +38 +38 +31   +31

Add’l seats

                  267         271 275 327   325

Coalition total

% of total

                  52.3%         56.5% 57.3% 68.1%   67.7%

LDP seats after coalition building Tactics give LDP majority

Note: Vote proportion figures in bold are the final LDP share of total Diet seats after the election and post-election maneuvering. Shaded portions denote elections in which party control switched.

Nobusuke Kishi Hayato Ikeda Hayato Ikeda Eisaku Sato Eisaku Sato Kakue Tanaka Takeo Miki Masayoshi Ohira Masayoshi Ohira Yasuhiro Nakasone Yasuhiro Nakasone Toshiki Kaifu Kiichi Miyazawa Ryutaro Hashimoto Yoshiro Mori Junichiro Koizumi Junichiro Koizumi Taro Aso Yoshihiko Noda

Add’l seats

LDP seats after recruiting non-affiliated & defectors

Portion of total

Seats won

Total seats

Prime minister when election was held

Election date

LDP seats after election

 

Table 8. Tactics to maintain LDP majorities after Lower House elections

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Club in 1983, and administrations from 2000 on were premised on a coalition with Komeito. Coalition building, particularly with Komeito, has proven to be extremely effective as an electoral strategy as well. In addition to the tactics described above, the frequent rotation of prime ministers was itself used as a means of sustaining LDP control of the Diet. When an LDP prime minister had strong approval ratings, the LDP always seemed to find ways to extend his term to let him retain his position as prime minister, even if the end of his term as party president was approaching. The Nakasone administration is perhaps the best example. Incidentally, as the end of the presidential term neared for Prime Minister Koizumi, who had strong poll numbers, discussions started within the party about extending his term, but it is said that Koizumi himself did not want to stay on in office. And by 2015, when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had successfully maintained his approval ratings at around 50 percent for a period of two years, talk about extending his term quickly began within the party as well. On the other hand, party leaders have regularly forced prime ministers with low approval ratings to step aside. Installing a new prime minister often leads to a bump in cabinet approval ratings, and so the LDP considered the replacement of prime ministers as one method of keeping the public support for LDP-controlled governments above a certain level. In order to smoothly carry out these frequent handoffs of power—what could be deemed a “prime ministerial relay”—there was a kingmaker within the party who oversaw the transfer of power and was in charge of intraparty coordination. If the party president/ prime minister is the external face of the LDP, then the kingmaker is the boss within the party. That person is not a constant presence; rather, when a prime minister survives only a short time in office and there is a need to determine his successor, one of the veteran politicians assumes that role. Recently, former Prime Minister Mori has played that role. In October 2005, when Prime Minister Koizumi’s long term was nearing its end and he had one year left as LDP president, Mori proposed a number of postKoizumi candidates: Taro Aso, Sadakazu Tanigaki, Yasuo Fukuda, and Shinzo Abe. By coordinating the candidates for the presidential elections from September 2006 on, Mori helped to assure that all four of these men served in turn as president of the LDP—Abe in 2006, Fukuda in 2007, and Aso in 2008 were elected as both party president and prime minister, while Tanigaki assumed the post of president in 2009, when the LDP was out of power.

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Table 9. Cabinet approval ratings since the start of the “1955 system” Approval rating during prime minister’s tenure Prime minister

Start date

Start

High

Low

End

Average

Ratings bump

Ichiro Hatoyama

Dec. 1954

–

–

–

–

–

–

Tanzan Ishibashi

Dec. 1956

–

–

–

–

–

–

Nobusuke Kishi

Feb. 1957

–

–

–

16.8%

–

–

Hayato Ikeda

Jul. 1960

33.8%

54.4%

31.1%

43.4%

41.0%

+17.0

Eisaku Sato

Nov. 1964

46.5%

46.5%

17.3%

17.3%

35.0%

+3.1

Kakuei Tanaka

Jul. 1972

56.0%

61.0%

10.6%

10.6%

28.6%

+38.7

Takeo Miki

Dec. 1974

41.9%

41.9%

19.4%

19.4%

30.6%

+31.3

Takeo Fukuda

Dec. 1976

29.6%

34.3%

22.7%

34.3%

27.4%

+10.2

Masayoshi Ohira

Dec. 1978

35.0%

35.0%

20.9%

27.3%

30.1%

+0.7

Zenko Suzuki

Jul. 1980

41.6%

41.6%

15.8%

15.8%

31.2%

+14.3

Yasuhiro Nakasone

Nov. 1982

34.5%

51.8%

24.7%

40.6%

40.7%

+18.7

Noboru Takeshita

Nov. 1987

37.5%

41.5%

4.4%

4.4%

30.3%

-3.1

Sosuke Uno

Jun. 1989

19.5%

19.5%

10.1%

10.1%

14.8%

+15.1

Toshiki Kaifu

Aug. 1989

27.5%

54.2%

27.5%

44.2%

43.1%

+17.4

Kiichi Miyazawa

Nov. 1991

47.6%

47.6%

10.3%

10.3%

25.6%

+3.4

Morihiro Hosokawa Aug. 1993

62.9%

67.4%

46.2%

46.2%

59.0%

+52.6

Tsutomu Hata

Apr. 1994

40.9%

40.9%

40.7%

40.7%

40.8%

-5.3

Tomiichi Murayama Jun. 1994

29.7%

41.9%

28.1%

28.9%

34.9%

-11.0

Ryutaro Hashimoto

Jan. 1996

46.8%

46.8%

23.4%

23.4%

38.1%

+17.9

Keizo Obuchi

Jul. 1998

24.8%

47.6%

19.4%

32.4%

33.2%

+1.4

Yoshiro Mori

Apr. 2000

33.3%

33.3%

9.6%

10.8%

19.8%

+0.9

Junichiro Koizumi

Apr. 2001

72.8%

78.4%

34.0%

43.2%

47.2%

+62.0

Shinzo Abe

Sep. 2006

51.3%

51.4%

22.6%

25.5%

36.5%

+8.1

Yasuo Fukuda

Sep. 2007

44.1%

44.1%

15.6%

15.6%

29.2%

+18.6

Taro Aso

Sep. 2008

38.6%

38.8%

13.4%

13.4%

22.3%

+23.0

Yukio Hatoyama

Sep. 2009

60.6%

60.6%

19.1%

19.1%

39.8%

+47.2

Naoto Kan

Jun. 2010

41.2%

45.6%

12.5%

13.3%

26.0%

+22.1

Yoshihiko Noda

Sep. 2011

50.1%

50.1%

17.3%

18.2%

27.1%

+36.8

Shinzo Abe

Dec. 2012

54.0%

–

–

–

–

+35.8

Source: Polling data from Jiji Tsushinsha public opinion database. Note: Ratings bump refers to the change in cabinet approval ratings from the final poll taken during the previous prime minister’s tenure and the initial poll taken under a new prime minister.

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The prime ministerial relay makes sense in three ways. First, replacing a prime minister weighed down by low approval ratings with a fresh face helped to raise the LDP-controlled government’s approval ratings. This method was emulated by the DPJ as well during its three years in power. In some cases, simply removing the prime minister brought about a substantial jump in the polls. Even when the selection of a prime minister has not been carried out through a presidential election process, the public has generally accepted the new prime minister and, at least initially, has had higher expectations for him than for his predecessor, whom they had grown tired of seeing. Second, the resignation of the prime minister gave other party leaders a chance to serve in that post and thus offered an opportunity to adjust the intraparty balance of power and maintain party unity. As indicated previously, term limits for the LDP presidency were adopted in order to give consideration to each faction during the Era of Intraparty Rivalry in the 1970s. The resignation of prime ministers thus also helped to unite the party. Third, abdicating the prime minister’s seat certainly did no decisive damage to the political careers of individual prime ministers. Rather, former prime ministers are often expected to play a political role as senior party leaders even after they step down. For example, among the recent LDP prime ministers whose administrations ended rapidly, Mori supported the Koizumi administration after he had left office and he later played the role of LDP kingmaker. Shinzo Abe has made a comeback as prime minister, while Yasuo Fukuda has played an important role in Sino-Japanese diplomacy. Aso also returned to government, serving as the deputy prime minister and minister of finance in the Abe cabinet. For these reasons, prime ministerial turnover has, for the most part, consisted not of changes in the political party in power, but rather of changes in the leadership within the party that is already in power. Changing the prime minister became a means to maintain political stability and perpetuate the status quo for the political party in power. This pattern, which was pioneered by the LDP, continued under the DPJ, showing that it has become the norm in Japanese party politics. The frequent turnover of prime ministers, which is rooted in the belief that keeping one’s party in power trumps all else, is not a new phenomenon. In the past, it posed few major issues either domestically or internationally, but in recent years it has come in for criticism as evidence of Japan’s lack of political leadership. This shift was precipitated

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by such factors as the twisted Diet, which prevented the national government from functioning properly, thereby shortening the lifecycle of the successive prime ministers, and the growing popularity of summit diplomacy, which gives heads of government a greater role to play in international affairs. Moreover, there are a number of critical limitations to the strategy of discarding prime ministers. First, the prime minister’s power will naturally vary depending on the way in which he or she is chosen. Essentially, the prime minister of Japan is determined through a vote in the Diet, which in turn has been selected through a general election in which the citizens participate. However, there have been frequent party presidential elections in which party leaders and, more recently, rankand-file members cast ballots but which are not connected in any way to general elections. In other words, there have been repeated changes of prime minister without the involvement of the general public. There are always limits to the power of any leader who is selected solely by his party when compared with a leader directly chosen by the public. For that reason, his or her time in office is bound to be short. A second issue involves the speed of fluctuations in approval ratings. For example, on average, the approval ratings when prime ministers from Ikeda on through to Miyazawa took power were 38 percent, and that rating fell 4 percentage points over a period of six months and 7 points in the first year. On the other hand, if we calculate the numbers from the Hosokawa administration in 1993 to the second Abe administration from 2012, those cabinets came in with higher approval ratings of 47 percent on average, but they fell 9 points in six months and 17 points in a year. This growing tendency for new administrations to receive a warmer welcome has been accompanied by a tendency for the electorate to easily tire of its leaders. Public support has also become more volatile. If we look at the initial year of each administration and calculate the number of months during which the cabinet approval rating shifted five percentage points or more, there were twice as many such months on average after Koizumi stepped down in 2006 as there had been during the previous four decades. Furthermore, in almost all cases, shifts in the approval ratings were downward rather than upward. Presumably, the growing fluidity in public support is being driven, in part, by a diversification of societal interests, technological change such as the emergence of the Internet and social media, and advances in how politicians utilize the media. Moreover, the public and media have become accustomed to

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frequent changes in leadership, and so it has become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Based on the discussion thus far, the secret to retaining one’s position as prime minister and president of the LDP for a long time appears to be (a) maintaining public support and winning not only Lower House but also Upper House elections; (b) maintaining harmony within the party, while also winning the LDP presidential election should challengers step forward; and (c) staying healthy. In order to secure the public’s support, a politician must understand the expectations of the people, convey an easy-to-understand message, and formulate and implement policies in a timely manner. Meanwhile, in order to maintain intraparty harmony, in addition to assigning the right people to the right jobs, due consideration must be given to maintaining personal relations by doing such things as showing sufficient respect for the hierarchy of seniority and maintaining a balance between factions while also avoiding splits over policy differences—essentially taking care to avoid creating permanent enemies within the party. It is certainly no easy task to successfully maintain public support while keeping the peace within the party, but those prime ministers who have successfully been able to walk that tightrope have been able to remain in power for a long time. One more thing is clear. While the frequent reliance on swapping out the prime minister as a political tool may have been effective in sustaining the party’s control of the government, prime ministerial–relay politics has taken a heavy toll on Japanese politics as a whole. That implies that we must find a new path toward stable governance—a stability that is not offered by the relay approach.

Conclusion In far too many cases in the postwar era, Japan’s top leader, the prime minister, has changed not because of elections, but rather for reasons related to internal party politics. The frequent rotation of prime ministers has developed as a way to transfer power within political parties, whether to momentarily raise the poll ratings of the party in power or to maintain a balance of power within the party. In other words, prime ministers in Japan are primarily changed not at the behest of voters, but for the political benefit of the party in power. The rotation of prime ministers has accelerated in recent years as several trends have converged. The 1994 electoral reforms, which

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introduced winner-take-all single-seat constituencies for most of the Lower House seats, have encouraged an evolution toward a two-party system, helped nationalize elections, and contributed to greater swings between parties in elections. At the same time, as Harukata Takenaka points out in his chapter, the balance of power in the Upper House has also become more fluid, and as a result, losses in Upper House elections and the difficulties of governing with a twisted Diet have become a major trigger for prime ministerial turnover. Meanwhile, fundamental changes in Japanese society and the nature of the media have led to greater volatility in politicians’ support ratings, and this has led to the early departure of many prime ministers. However, the inability of prime ministers to stay in power cannot simply be accepted as being an inherent pathology of Japanese politics. While the prime ministerial relay was a rational adaptation in an era of one-party dominance and it may have worked in the domestic and international contexts of the time, it is now essential for Japan’s wellbeing that the political system regularly produce stable, long-lasting administrations. Without the stable political base that a long-lasting administration provides, prime ministers cannot take far-sighted approaches in crafting policy. When the assumption is that the administration will only be in power briefly before the next major challenge to its rule, prime ministers inevitably fall into the trap of designing policies with an eye toward shoring up their party’s support in the short term. Moreover, at a time when summit diplomacy has become an increasingly important component of international relations, longer terms in office are also critical for Japanese prime ministers in order to build up relationships of trust with other world leaders. During the period when Japan’s prime ministers were changing each year, the joke at annual G8 summits reportedly was, “Meeting the Japanese prime minister is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” Clearly this is not conducive to building diplomatic ties. Shinzo Abe has succeeded in holding onto the premiership for more than nearly years at the time of this writing and has led a stable administration. He returned to office this time having had experience as the LDP secretary-general, as chief cabinet secretary, and even as prime minister, and is thus the rare politician who has made a thorough study of how to be an effective statesman. The failures of the previous DPJ government also gave him a strong hand, and he has thus been able to maintain impressive levels of public support. His administration provides an example of what can be done when expectations grow that

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a prime minister will stay in power for a lengthy period of time. For instance, with its political base secure, his administration quickly began discussing measures to address the demographic challenges of population decline with an eye toward what this will mean in several decades rather than in the immediate future, something that was difficult for the previous series of short-term leaders. However, just because Abe has succeeded in joining the ranks of long-lasting prime ministers does not mean that the internal workings of Japanese politics have changed. It is still possible that we will face a vacuum of political leadership again. Assuming that the frequent turnover of prime ministers is detrimental for Japan, what can be done to ensure that administrations have greater staying power? First, we must create an environment in which the resignation of the prime minister is not viewed as the ready answer to political challenges. Therefore, expectations that prime ministers’ administrations will last longer must be cultivated among government officials, the media, industry, the markets, and above all, the voters. Also, voters increasingly seem to have a desire to directly select prime ministers, so it will be important in the post-Abe era to focus on the long-term development of party heads who will serve as the face of the party in elections. For that reason, it may be useful for parties to cultivate future leaders by emulating the British model of “parachuting” promising young politicians into safe districts that enable them to stay in office long enough to develop as national leaders. In the end, however, institutional change is also needed. If Japan is going to make a two-party system work, then we must have further institutional change, both to the government and to parties, that will bring stability to national politics. We must inevitably engage in a debate on the introduction of the direct public election of the prime minister (or something close to it), shifting from a bicameral parliament to a unicameral system, linking party president elections to general elections, holding simultaneous “unified elections” for the Upper and Lower Houses, and so on. These reforms each have benefits and costs. For example, in order to avoid a twisted Diet, it may be a good option to hold elections for both chambers at the same time. However, this will require institutional innovations since the prime minister and party leaders have generally avoided unified elections because they can heighten the possibility of a change in the party in power. If these types of major changes are not palatable, then Japan needs to consider abandoning the goal of creating a two-party system and

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returning to a multi-seat constituency system. By doing so, it may be possible to restore some of the stability that has been lost as a result of the single-seat constituency system and to bring back some of the diversity among politicians that was once commonplace. These debates go beyond the scope of this chapter, but one thing is clear. A fundamental reform of the Japanese political system is essential in order to ensure that Japan can have the political leadership it needs and deserves in the future.

notes 1. When the Meiji Constitution went into effect in November 1890, Aritomo Yamagata was already serving as prime minister, so he is counted as the first prime minister in office since the introduction of parliamentary democracy in Japan. For the purposes of this chapter, an uninterrupted spell in office for a prime minister is considered a single term in office, and the instances when a prime minister returned to office after being out of power are counted as additional terms. For instance, Shinzo Abe, who served in office from 2006 to 2007 and again from 2012, is counted as both the 68th and 74th prime minister. 2. In the one remaining case, which took place in 1955, Ichiro Hatoyama’s second cabinet was dissolved but the prime minister retained his post. However, this was an exceptional situation since the dissolution took place because of the merger that Hatoyama helped engineer to form the LDP. 3. In December 2012, a DPJ prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, also left office after his party lost in Lower House elections. 4. All public opinion polling numbers in this chapter come from the Jiji Tsushinsha polling database. 5. The term Sankaku Daifuku refers to the politicians’ names—Takeo Miki (“san” is another reading for the character “mi”), Kakue Tanaka (“kaku”), Masayoshi Ohira (“dai” is another reading for “o”), and Takeo Fukuda (“fuku”). Sankaku Daifuku also brought to mind the traditional daifuku cakes that were cut into triangles (i.e., sankaku) for sale and which looked different from one another, much like the four factional rivals did, but tasted the same on the inside.

5

What Went Wrong under the DPJ?

Yuka Uchida Ando

T

he commonly held view in Japan is that, after succeeding in toppling the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in 2009 and precipitating a historic change of government, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) proved to be a failure while in office. But before jumping to such a facile conclusion, a closer evaluation is needed of the DPJ’s three years and three months in power. In February 2013, the DPJ issued its own self-reflection on its governance and what went wrong.1 Although the report did not discuss the issue at great length, the DPJ governments in fact had a number of substantial accomplishments during this time, many of which have been overlooked. But in the end, even though the DPJ intended to “change” Japan, too often its leadership was perceived as inconsistent, confused, or in disarray, giving rise to the image that the DPJ administration was not performing well. In order to put the DPJ’s governance in perspective, this chapter outlines the ways in which the DPJ was ill prepared to assume power. It focuses primarily on the state of the party on the eve of its 2009 general election victory and the conduct of the Hatoyama

Yuka Uchida Ando served for a decade in the Democratic Party of Japan secretariat and in 2010–2011 was political secretary to the foreign minister of Japan.

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administration immediately thereafter—a period that proved decisive in determining the fate of this historic change of government. In short, the chapter argues that it was missteps in the immediate aftermath of its victory and, even before that, the lack of sufficient preparation prior to the election that led to the downfall of the DPJ’s political leadership.

Assessing the DPJ’s Leadership Before pointing out the negatives, it is instructive to briefly note the positive aspects of the DPJ’s time in power. First, the change of government made it possible for the public to review long-established policies—at least to a certain extent—for the first time in decades. Mind you, this proved to be a double-edged sword, as was seen with the debate over the relocation of US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma. However, putting aside foreign and defense policies, there is some merit in undertaking regular reviews of the policies introduced by previous governments. During the time of the LDP—and it had been the LDP’s time for the past 50-odd years—policies were difficult to reverse once they had been announced. Second, the DPJ created a greater awareness of accountability within the government. Admittedly, though, this did not result in a positive relationship between DPJ Diet members and bureaucrats, and that in turn contributed to the difficulties of governance. When it took office, the DPJ administration initiated a review of classified records to confirm whether there was a valid reason to keep the documents out of the public realm. In the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for example, the newly appointed foreign minister, Katsuya Okada, assumed his post feeling that the declassification of documents on foreign affairs had been too limited and too slow, and he therefore ordered officials to declassify most of the decades-old classified foreign documents after they had been reviewed by a special team. This declassification of old documents had obvious merits, especially to researchers in the field of international relations, but the way in which Foreign Minister Okada pushed this project, which seemed heavy-handed to some observers, caused uneasiness from the outset. Third, government subsidies and government projects were reviewed without any sense of being captive to earlier political commitments, which had not been easy to do under the LDP. The Hatoyama

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regime set up a board, the Government Revitalization Unit (Gyosei Sasshin Kaigi), that was to tackle sorting out necessary and unnecessary government projects. Those deemed unnecessary were either abolished or reduced to a size more suitable to the needs and goals of the projects. This undertaking, known as “jigyo shiwake,” initially drew wide applause from the public and the media as many governmentrelated organizations and government projects that were totally inactive or useless were placed on the chopping block. However, this popular undertaking also gradually came under criticism as the board sometimes went too far in eliminating or reducing projects that still seemed necessary (at least to some). Fourth, a broader conception of the public interest, as characterized by the idea of the so-called “new public commons” (atarashii kokyo) was introduced. The DPJ, having promoted the active participation of citizens in politics since its establishment, encouraged them to take a leading role in public activities that used to be left to government and local authorities. To foster the concept of and the debate on “new public commons management,” in early 2010 the Hatoyama administration set up an advisory council within the Cabinet Office that was called the New Public Commons Roundtable (Atarashii Kokyo Entaku Kaigi), which was chaired by the prime minister himself. This was accompanied by bills aimed at, among other things, creating better conditions for nonprofit organizations, a move that was intended to create more space for civil society to thrive. Fifth, significant advances were made in terms of defense policy. The DPJ originally opposed moves that could lead to the overseas dispatch of the Self-Defense Forces, except for certain activities involving peacekeeping operations that it considered necessary. Once it took power and had to deal with the realities of today’s changing global security environment, however, it began to reconsider a number of issues that had previously been considered security taboos, and there was no other major party to prevent it from opening debate on these topics. As a result, concepts such as a “dynamic defense force” were newly introduced into the National Defense Program Guidelines under the DPJ government. However, after assuming power—and inheriting a troubled economy and massive national debt—the DPJ government took numerous questionable steps that sparked a public backlash. First, as the party admitted in its self-reflection, Prime Minister Hatoyama’s handling of the Futenma base relocation confused not only alliance managers in both

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Japan and the United States but also the general public in Okinawa and throughout Japan. This contributed to the perception—one that was greatly exaggerated—that the bilateral relationship was on shaky ground. Fears about the state of US-Japan relations became more alarming when China started to make more aggressive moves in the East China Sea and South China Sea in 2010. Second, the policy promises outlined in the DPJ’s 2009 general election platform, its so-called “Manifesto,” were either poorly executed or left unexecuted with no clear roadmap for implementation. The party’s 2013 report on its failings also devoted a great deal of space to reviewing the manifesto, but did not say much about its execution. Third, the DPJ struggled to adequately respond to the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, a disaster so massive it simply became known as “3/11” in Japan. Here, many acknowledge that the LDP could have faced even greater difficulties in handling this unprecedented natural disaster for a number of reasons, including the strong embedded relationship that had developed between the LDP and TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company), the much-maligned operator of the Fukushima nuclear reactor. That relationship fostered a culture of inertia among TEPCO management that many blame for its failure to react effectively to the nuclear crisis. Of all the shortcomings that can be identified in the DPJ’s rule, however, perhaps the most damaging was the fact that it was not sufficiently prepared for a government transition. Of course, this would have been a daunting task for any party coming to power since Japan had not experienced a wholesale change in government in more than five decades. However, the DPJ still bears responsibility for underestimating what was needed to prepare to take the reins of power. The DPJ worked hard on presenting an appealing manifesto for its electoral campaign, but it never made solid plans to follow through on its policy promises once in office. There were no clear priorities in terms of what it should tackle first, and the decisions on matters relevant to a given policy promise were eventually left to the small handful of political appointees called seimu-sanyaku—usually five or six people per ministry, consisting of the cabinet minister, state ministers, and parliamentary vice ministers—who were chosen from the ranks of the Diet members and appointed to each ministry. The party’s February 2013 report points out this failing, but much closer examination is required to understand what went wrong and to prepare for the next transition, if that opportunity ever arises again.

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Too Short of a Transition Article 54 of the Japanese Constitution requires the Diet to hold a special session to nominate a new prime minister within 30 days of a general election. The DPJ won a landslide victory in the general election held on August 30, 2009, and its leader, Yukio Hatoyama, was elected prime minister 17 days later at a special Diet session that was convened on September 16. It is fair to say that such a transition period is far too short for any party, but especially for a party that had never had any experience heading a government.2 The United Kingdom, which has a parliamentary system similar to Japan’s, also has a relatively short transition period after general elections, but both major parties, the Conservative and Labour Parties, have experience in running the government. More importantly, the United Kingdom has established a system of incorporating the loyal opposition into state affairs, for example by providing the opposition with intelligence briefings and access to some sensitive information. In contrast, upon taking over the government, Hatoyama’s cabinet ministers were exposed for the first time to a wide range of new intelligence data and issues, much of which related to important and pressing policy decisions. The DPJ tried to prepare for the change as early as 1999, when it introduced a policy body called the “Next Cabinet,” modeled on Britain’s “shadow cabinet.” However, when it came time for Hatoyama to form his actual cabinet, only 3 out of the 21 new cabinet ministers were assigned to the posts they had held as “Next Cabinet ministers” prior to the general election. The party’s February 2013 assessment notes that ministerial posts ended up being doled out on the basis of contributions during the party leadership election, not the candidate’s merits, so the experience of the “Next Cabinet ministers” was not utilized. It also points to the short tenure of ministerial posts. The three years and three months of the DPJ regime saw three prime ministers—too many for such a short span—and there were four foreign ministers during that same period, which was roughly the average for all other cabinet posts as well under the DPJ administration.

Coordinating with the Bureaucracy The DPJ had long insisted it was necessary to replace the practice of bureaucrats controlling Japan’s policy process with seiji shudo, or

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“politician-led policymaking.” Together with the slogans of “reform,” “civil society,” “transparency,” and “the devolution of authority to local governments,” politician-led policymaking was one of the tenets of DPJ policy. However, dating back to when the DPJ was still in the opposition, this slogan made bureaucrats wary, if not alarmed. There were an unfortunate number of incidents in which DPJ politicians went overboard in criticizing bureaucrats, especially in front of TV cameras, in order to demonstrate that they would bring the bureaucrats under their control. Sometimes the demands of the DPJ Diet members were unreasonable, but there were also cases in which bureaucrats played political games with them by withholding basic information and data that had been requested as part of the basic oversight process, which further aggravated their relationship with DPJ politicians. This did not make for a constructive atmosphere in which to start working as a team. Making matters worse, DPJ leaders did not pay much attention to the need to rectify the deep mistrust between the DPJ and bureaucrats before coming to power, thinking that they could handle bureaucrats by exerting their authority once in office. Upon assuming power, the DPJ quickly abolished the vice ministers’ weekly meeting that had convened the top bureaucrats of each ministry. The DPJ had often criticized these as preempting cabinet meetings, serving as the actual decision-making mechanism and consigning cabinet meetings to the role of rubber-stamping matters that were already decided by bureaucrats at the vice ministers’ meeting. While there may have been some merit in the DPJ criticism of these meetings, the Hatoyama administration failed to come up with an effective mechanism to replace the important policy coordination role that those meetings had played. As a result, coordination among ministries became more disjointed under the DPJ. Meanwhile, confusion arose within ministries about how the policy directives of individual cabinet ministers should be carried out. The Hatoyama administration had hoped that regular meetings among each ministry’s political appointees at the level of seimu-sanyaku, namely the minister, state ministers, and parliamentary vice ministers, could serve to implement the Hatoyama cabinet’s policy directives, but in many cases the directives issued by the cabinet were not sufficiently thorough and were issued without any effective means to relay them to the bureaucrats, thus leading to frequent confusion within the ministries. The media’s initial reporting on the abolishment of the vice ministers’ weekly meetings was quite favorable, citing it as an example of political

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leadership, but it did not take long for the media to start criticizing initiatives touted as “politician-led policymaking” that were merely symbolic. The absence of the vice ministers’ meetings was deeply felt, especially at times of national crisis like 3/11. In the aftermath of that disaster, the weekly meetings were resumed on a temporary basis, and they were regularized again under the administration of Yoshihiko Noda. To be sure, the problem was not that the DPJ failed to consider the necessity of introducing alternatives when it embarked on the process of changing how the LDP had run the country. The DPJ had prepared bills to promote politician-led policymaking. For instance, one bill they introduced tried to enhance the functions of the Prime Minister’s Office (Kantei) by setting up a National Strategy Bureau (Kokka Senryaku Kyoku) that would be led by a deputy chief secretary, and another increased the number of senior advisors to the prime minister who held the rank of cabinet minister from three to five. A National Strategy Office (Kokka Senryaku Shitsu) was established within the Prime Minister’s Office soon after the inception of the Hatoyama administration, but it had limited capability since it was conceived of as a precursor to the creation of a full-fledged National Strategy Bureau. But the bill to upgrade the National Strategy Office to a National Strategy Bureau was never passed; it only came to the floor of the Diet in February 2010, five months after the start of the administration, and then never advanced. Rather than prioritizing efforts to put in place mechanisms that would allow politicians to take leadership in the policymaking process, thus making it easier to pursue the policies put forward in the DPJ Manifesto, Prime Minister Hatoyama and his cabinet instead focused on individual policy issues, such as the Futenma relocation plan, the cancellation of the massive Yanba Dam public works project, the disclosure of documents on secret US-Japan treaties from the Cold War era, and the implementation of drastic budget cuts, seemingly taking up these individual issues without any coordinated approach or overall strategy.

Managing Intraparty Relations It was obvious that bureaucrats would not be helpful in pushing for bills proposed by the new DPJ administration, which they viewed as running counter to their interests by advancing politician-led policymaking. But the more crucial reason for the failure of these bills lay inside the DPJ. The Hatoyama administration, as well as the successive Kan and Noda

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administrations, all suffered from a lack of party discipline and weak support from their fellow party members. Moreover, from the start of the Hatoyama administration, the DPJ was burdened by a dual leadership structure. Ichiro Ozawa had led the DPJ from 2006 through 2009, and despite his well-publicized faults, most DPJ members considered him to be a political mastermind who played a vital role in making the DPJ into a party that could seriously challenge the LDP. In fact, many Ozawa followers felt that Hatoyama was only able to become prime minister because Ozawa was forced to resign as party leader in mid-2009 because of his indictment in a political funding scandal. The day before Hatoyama became prime minister, he reappointed Ozawa to serve as the party’s secretary-general, essentially giving him control of all party matters. As a result, during the course of the Hatoyama administration, there were constant power struggles between the Prime Minister’s Office and the party headquarters. Hatoyama seldom personally confronted Ozawa because when he did, he was often the one who ended up having to concede. But the members of the Hatoyama cabinet often found themselves on the opposing side from Ozawa and his handpicked party executives. One notable incident occurred when the Hatoyama administration tried to recruit young Diet members to assist with its jigyo shiwake initiative to cut the budgets of government projects, as mentioned above, which entailed a heavy workload since it required in-depth scrutiny of a wide range of records. Ozawa intervened by flatly rejecting the request to dispatch young party members for this, saying they had party-related work that would occupy their time, while also objecting to the fact that the Hatoyama administration had failed to consult him, as the party secretary-general, on its plans. Interestingly, it was Ozawa who had long criticized the dual power structure of the LDP during its time in power, insisting that the government and the ruling party needed to speak with one voice, especially on policy decisions. That was the main reason why, upon assuming power, the DPJ abolished its Policy Research Committee, the body that crafted policy positions and whose chair concurrently presided over the “Next Cabinet” as its “chief cabinet secretary.” Ozawa argued that, in a nation that functions as a parliamentary democracy, policies and issues need to be discussed in a transparent manner in the Diet, both at the committee level and in the full chamber, and should not be virtually decided by the ruling party before they come to the Diet. Over the previous decades, when the LDP had held the majority, each bill and issue was discussed and decided within the party and then submitted to the Diet essentially

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as a fait accompli. Therefore, Diet committee proceedings had become a mere formality—bills were expected to pass without any amendments. At the same time, the LDP sometimes managed to distance itself from unpopular policies by saying that they were not the LDP’s policies but the government’s policies. The need to revitalize the debate in the Diet committees and on the floor was a valid point. But even though the Diet was supposed to take on more power as a legislative body and the Diet committees were to become more active forums for discussion under the DPJ government, it turned out that legislation on important issues such as the national budget ended up being formulated prior to the discussion in the Diet in consultation with the party executives—or more specifically, with Ozawa. Thus, instead of having to shape important legislation through cumbersome party policymaking mechanisms, the DPJ government needed only to gain the approval of the party secretary-general. But this, in the end, turned out to be more cumbersome than the previous process, becoming a major obstacle to effective administration. It also became apparent that the efforts to make the Diet a lively forum for the debate of issues and legislation were more a means to gain popular support and to enable Ozawa or the party executive to obtain more power by abolishing the Policy Research Committee; in a way, the policymaking process became more opaque than before. In this milieu, deep disagreements between the Hatoyama cabinet and Ozawa’s party executives over the content and timing of the bills designed to promote politician-led policymaking prevented them from being submitted to the Diet in a timely manner and from ever being seriously discussed on the floor. It became increasingly apparent that the administration and the ruling party were not functioning well. Relations between DPJ Diet members who held cabinet posts and those who did not deteriorated, especially as rank and file members without government and party posts found they had no place to assert their opinions or make contributions as ruling party members. This was particularly true in the absence of a Policy Research Committee where they could exert some influence. They became increasingly frustrated and the deepening division between the administration and the party culminated in the resignation of Prime Minister Hatoyama over his mishandling of the Futenma relocation plan. While running to succeed Hatoyama as the party leader, Deputy Prime Minister Naoto Kan announced that he would reinstate the Policy Research Committee. However, even the reinstatement of the committee proved to be insufficient to create a

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viable working mechanism that would neither neglect the input of party members nor short-circuit Diet discussions.3 In sum, the DPJ never found the right balance for managing the relationship between the government and the ruling party.

Staffing for Politician-Led Policymaking When the Policy Research Committee was abolished at the start of the Hatoyama administration, the party aides who had staffed the committee and the “Next Cabinet” were assigned to work with the ministry that they had been in charge of covering. They were expected to act as liaisons between individual ministries and the party, but their roles were never clearly defined. Neither party headquarters nor the Hatoyama administration ever gave these staff a clear mission, and thus their roles and responsibilities were primarily left to each minister (and to each state minister and parliamentary vice minister) to determine. Moreover, because these individuals were not officially government employees, they did not have the same legal obligations as government officials to protect classified information. Concerns about the degree to which they should be able to access sensitive information were raised by some bureaucrats and leaked to the media. Previously, under LDP rule, each minister had only brought one staff with them to the ministry to fill the role of “political secretary” in the minister’s office, a post stipulated by law as a special state civil servant. There had been some exceptions, but that had been the norm. There was basically a single staff member dispatched to support his or her minister and to coordinate all of the political appointees—the minister, state ministers, and parliamentary vice ministers—and that staff person’s primary loyalty was to his or her boss’s agenda rather than the agenda of the ministry bureaucrats. Meanwhile, bureaucrats became quick to cultivate cabinet appointees as their ministry’s representatives, in many cases encouraging them to develop greater attachment to the ministry than to the cabinet they served in. This tendency for cabinet ministers to start identifying more with the ministry they headed than with the administration they were supposed to represent had been widely criticized by DPJ members. A proposal had even been put forward to create an office for each cabinet minister inside the Prime Minister’s Office so that ministers would spend more time outside of the ministry and therefore be more likely to make decisions from the standpoint of the

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overall good of the government rather than on the basis of an individual ministry’s interests. Foreseeing victory in the months leading up to the August 2009 general election, core members of the DPJ began researching and discussing possible new systems of governance.4 Naoto Kan, then serving as acting president of the party, was especially keen on learning from other countries’ experiences, and case studies were undertaken of changes in government in other countries. A number of DPJ politicians were impressed by the steps taken by Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney after his Progressive Conservative Party won the 1984 elections, toppling the Liberal Party from power for the first time since 1968. When he took over as prime minister, Mulroney was concerned that bureaucrats had served the Liberal Party for too long, developing a deep attachment to it and becoming overly accustomed to the Liberal Party way of conducting business. Therefore, he decided to enable each cabinet minister to bring 10 to 20 of his or her own staff to the ministry and he secured the budget needed for the additional personnel. At the same time, to keep from discouraging the civil servants, let alone giving them reason to resist the incoming administration, he made it clear that bureaucratic personnel would remain unchanged. In other words, party staff would not be brought in to take over the work of civil servants or be named to their posts but would cooperate with them and complement their work in areas such as handling the media and managing relations between the party and the Diet. Although it required sizeable budget allocations, the practice of bringing in the party staff to work in each ministry worked well, and this practice was adopted by the Liberal Party when it later came back to power, becoming a permanent feature of Canadian governance. Although DPJ members had the post-election transition in mind, they did not follow the example of Prime Minister Mulroney by systematically and comprehensively preparing for the day after, but rather operated on more of an ad hoc basis. Most critically, the party’s key figures—President Yukio Hatoyama, Acting President Naoto Kan, and former President Ichiro Ozawa—failed to work together on this issue. Despite the fact that they had cooperated to win the general election, each seemed to have his own agenda and idea of what kind of DPJ government he wanted to see. Ozawa, in a nutshell, was not particularly interested in the idea of introducing a new government structure; he was content merely to change some symbolic features. For example, Ozawa insisted on abolishing

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the law that allows senior bureaucrats to answer questions at the Diet committees, saying that only cabinet ministers with the rank of minister or state minister—people who could shoulder sufficient political responsibility—should be allowed to answer. He also masterminded the abolishment of the Policy Research Committee and seemed quite content to do away with the vice ministers’ weekly meetings. For Ozawa, getting rid of such obstructions to effective political leadership was sufficient to change Japan. Basically, Ozawa abolished a number of existing features of the way the government and the Diet were run, but never really seemed to think about the need for alternative mechanisms. He felt that once the DPJ took over the government and demonstrated that it would wield maximum power—especially managing the personnel assignments for government officials—bureaucrats would cave in and faithfully carry out the orders of the prime minister and his cabinet. Hatoyama and Kan were more interested in changing the government structure to enhance political leadership and thus the effectiveness of the government in achieving its policy goals, although they made few concrete moves to make this happen. Some of the party’s leaders, such as Seiji Maehara, Motohisa Furukawa, Goshi Hosono, Tetsuro Fukuyama, and Koji Matsui, felt even more acutely that it was important to introduce reforms. But their efforts to draft a blueprint for the post-election change of government were limited and scattered. In the first place, these reformers lacked the manpower and means to tackle the planning process because they were already overwhelmed with their party responsibilities and the daily work of their offices. DPJ politicians have been viewed with a mixture of respect and derision as hard workers who try to do everything by themselves—from A to Z. The higher their rank in the party, the harder they work, or so it seemed. The flipside of this was that they never had sufficient numbers of staff to whom they could delegate their work. In part, this was an issue of resources. Generally speaking, DPJ Diet members were less wealthy than their LDP counterparts, leaving them incapable of paying out of pocket for the salaries of many additional staff beyond the three normally subsidized by public funds.5 Of course, DPJ members could have tried to come up with new ways of recruiting staff and outside advisors on whom they could depend, but they generally were not successful, often gaining only half-hearted support from outsiders. As a result, there was little capacity left over on the part of DPJ leaders and their staff—including the DPJ headquarters staff—to undertake extensive preparatory work on how to structure the post-election government.

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The Handling of Public Relations One important component of governance is managing public relations (PR) and explaining policy directions to the public. It is no exaggeration to say that the Hatoyama administration sailed off with neither the backing of the bureaucrats nor sufficient numbers of their own staff installed in government posts. This effectively left Hatoyama’s political appointees on their own in the ministries, trying to figure out how to advance the campaign pledges made by the DPJ in its manifesto. When Hatoyama took office, his administration’s greatest strength was the overwhelming popular support that had swept the party to a landslide victory. It was vital that this support be harnessed to tackle a handful of key policy initiatives that could stabilize the new government. Time was of the essence, and many DPJ members knew that the party’s popularity would not last just on its own. They were also aware of the need for effective PR operations that would allow the government to build and maintain as much support as possible for its policies. Even prior to the election, as a change of government seemed more and more likely, DPJ members increasingly voiced the need for a new PR approach. One proposal that was raised repeatedly was the creation of the post of press secretary or spokesperson. Reporters chased after the party’s leader, Hatoyama, peppering him with all kinds of policy and political questions on issues small to large, and he tried to answer these in turn, even when he was not well equipped to do so. Meanwhile, Ozawa was completely unapproachable. It became clear that someone was needed during the campaign to act as a spokesperson who could clearly articulate the party’s policies, eloquently argue why they were necessary, and handle the media skillfully—preferably somebody who was not a politician and would therefore not be busy with his or her own Diet duties and campaigning. Some party leaders felt that the role of spokesperson would become even more crucial once the DPJ took power, even though that had historically been one of the duties of the chief cabinet secretary. Creating the post of spokesperson could spare the chief cabinet secretary from having to do twice-daily press briefings, giving that person more time to work on coordinating the government position on policy issues. Hatoyama seemed to have someone in mind whom he considered to be a good candidate for the job, but when he formed his cabinet, that candidate was flatly rejected by the new chief cabinet secretary, Hirofumi Hirano. As a consequence, the government’s PR operations remained

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basically unchanged, although one noteworthy innovation was made in the area of access to the government press briefings. Until then, attendance at the prime minister’s and other ministerial press briefings had only been permitted for reporters with passes issued by the “press clubs,” in effect meaning that only representatives of the established Japanese major media outlets could attend. Recognizing that the old-line major media tended to be more sympathetic to the LDP, the DPJ government decided to open up the press briefings to magazine reporters, freelancers, foreign journalists, and others—although not all at once. Another less important but still symbolic measure was the cancellation of the vice ministers’ weekly press briefings. As the top career civil servants in each ministry, vice ministers were accustomed to giving press briefings that complemented those of the ministers, but the DPJ administration took the position that only political figures who represent the government should explain government policy to the press. In essence, though, the abandonment of the vice ministers’ formal press briefings did not make much of a difference since numerous bureaucrats, irrespective of their rank, continued to comment anonymously to the press. Those leaks typically did more harm than good for the DPJ since they tended to consist of criticisms of the DPJ administration. In the end, the government’s PR operations remained basically unchanged after the DPJ took office. This proved costly in the aftermath of 3/11. To respond effectively to this unprecedented national disaster, the Kan administration had to disseminate critical information to the public in a timely manner while also reassuring people that the country would not fall into chaos. As the government spokesperson, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano had to take on the burden of doing this through his twicedaily press briefings. His briefings were clear and succinct, earning him widespread praise. But most of his time ended up being spent preparing for them as they took on heightened importance—the condition of the Fukushima nuclear power plant changed minute by minute and each word he uttered was likely to be dissected. The problem was that his role was not just to serve as spokesperson—in fact, his main role was coordinating the entire government’s operations and advising the prime minister so that Kan could make sound decisions on pressing issues. But as Edano busied himself with his spokesperson duties, he had little time for government coordination or for counseling the prime minister. In his book on the Fukushima nuclear disaster, then Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Tetsuro Fukuyama admits that the Prime Minister’s Office failed in risk communication with the public in the aftermath

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of 3/11.6 In contrast, the DPJ’s 2013 report on its failings makes scant reference to PR, concluding merely that the DPJ administration’s PR strategy was poor and ineffective, resulting in the party’s inability to effectively sell itself despite its many achievements and in its failure even to adequately counter baseless criticisms. In any case, these analyses point to an important missed opportunity.

Managing Foreign Relations during the Transition Since its founding in 1998, the DPJ has prided itself on being a policyoriented party.7 At that time, party leaders placed great emphasis on drafting a set of “Basic Principles” (kihon rinen) to be the guiding principles of the party, and they were thus upset to be criticized during their time in power as lacking policy principles and not knowing in which direction they wanted to lead the country.8 Each DPJ manifesto, the policy platform they created before every election, was drafted based on the “Basic Principles,” and the DPJ members were particularly pleased that the party’s manifesto for the 2009 campaign was generally perceived as thorough and substantive. Overall, the Japanese public viewed the DPJ’s efforts to come up with an in-depth policy platform in a positive light and as a sign that the party was serious about policy. Seeing that the change of government was imminent, the manifesto was drafted bearing in mind the likelihood that its proposals would be adopted as actual policies by the new DPJ government. Accordingly, DPJ members who played key roles in drafting the manifesto made a number of deliberate choices, such as intentionally dropping language about the Futenma base relocation, in order to avoid tying the party down on diplomatic issues involving foreign governments—in this case, the United States, Japan’s most important ally. But the considerations that went into the drafting of the manifesto were not fully shared by all of the party’s executives, let alone the rankand-file members. While the manifesto was seen as the baseline for the party’s policy approaches, party leaders differed on the nuances of each policy issue and on what to prioritize. Moreover, nobody around Hatoyama—including fellow DPJ leaders and staff—seemed to have a full understanding of what he might pick up as his main policy priorities, especially in the diplomatic arena. Hatoyama surprised many when he contributed an article about his political philosophy, including foreign

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affairs, to the September issue of the journal Voice, which was released just days before the general election.9 It seems even his fellow party members and DPJ staff close to him (with the exception of his own personal office staff ) only learned about the existence of this article a few days to one week before its release. Hatoyama claimed that the article outlined his own personal views and did not reflect his position as the party head. But it took quite a different tone from the manifesto, especially on foreign relations and the US-Japan alliance, confusing not just outsiders but also insiders. He stressed his vision of an “East Asian Community” as a potential supplement to the US-Japan alliance but left the substance vague and raised a storm of questions overseas about his thinking. Even putting aside the evaluation of the article’s content, this was an indication of what was to come under the Hatoyama administration—seemingly impromptu actions and decisions that were made on a personal basis rather than as the head of a huge institution, and that had the potential to cause unintended consequences on a national scale. Looking back, it is clear that if the DPJ was serious about preparing to take over the reins of government, Hatoyama, as the party president, should have designated someone as a foreign minister in advance, at least internally, and tasked the handling of foreign affairs to this person and his or her team so that there would be a responsible politician who could focus on managing the transition externally. However, Yoshio Hachiro, who had been designated as foreign minister in the “Next Cabinet,” was not given that post when Hatoyama formed his actual cabinet after the election. Instead, Hatoyama appointed Katsuya Okada to the post. This was a reasonable decision if judged on its merits. Hatoyama’s choice of Okada and the other ministers in his first cabinet can generally be viewed as policy oriented—those who were appointed as ministers were strong on policy issues. They were also those who had distanced themselves from Secretary-General Ozawa. However, it pointed to a lack of foresight in the selection of the Next Cabinet, given that the ministers in the Next Cabinet had generally been assigned based on a different logic—namely, they were assigned in light of party balance and the extent of their contribution in the latest party leadership election.

Conclusion Despite a number of positive achievements, the missteps taken at the start of the new DPJ administration under Prime Minister Hatoyama

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haunted—and at times were exacerbated by—the successive administrations of Prime Ministers Kan and Noda. The prime minister’s power over both his fellow DPJ members and the Diet became weaker. The public increasingly viewed the ineffective cabinet with disappointment. The growing incoherence of the cabinet’s decisions, set against the backdrop of dwindling popularity, led to a change of leadership from Hatoyama to Kan. This change of face temporarily improved the government’s polling numbers, but the short cycle of leadership worked against DPJ administrations in the long run.10 In essence, the rapid turnover of prime ministers undermined the DPJ’s efforts to exercise strong political leadership, resulting in a vicious cycle of declining political capital. This happened despite the fact that some DPJ leaders realized that the longer a prime minister or cabinet minister’s term, the more effective they could be. It is only possible for a political leader to turn policy into action when bureaucrats reach the point of accepting a policy directive as inevitable even though it counters the bureaucrats’ interests, and when the ruling party members (or members of the ruling coalition) accept the decision of the prime minister as an imperative. For instance, as one senior official in the DPJ government noted, Prime Minister Koizumi became more powerful and effective as his own party’s members, bureaucrats, the media, and other people around him came to believe that his administration would be in office for the foreseeable future, and thus concluded that they had better take his orders seriously. On the contrary, people around a prime minister or a minister who is deemed unlikely to retain his or her post for long are unlikely to work hard for him or her or, in the worst-case scenario, may try to take advantage of the circumstances.11 DPJ members, the media, and the public increasingly had the perception that, as the DPJ administrations experienced difficulty in running the country, they relied more on the bureaucrats for advice. Some symbolic features of the DPJ’s politician-led policymaking were reversed during the Kan and Noda administrations, and the party report on the problems the DPJ encountered in governing notes that the DPJ members appointed to cabinet posts ended up being hemmed in by bureaucratic walls and gradually lost their sense of where they stood. Others went further, though, in criticizing the swing back toward a greater reliance on the bureaucracy. Former Prime Minister Hatoyama, for example, lamented that the DPJ lost its identity of being a reform-focused party that projects strong political leadership, and this led to disenchantment among many DPJ supporters, which eventually contributed to

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the party’s defeat in the December 2012 general election.12 Hatoyama’s comment can be seen as self-serving, but nevertheless, one should not disregard the fact that those views exist13 and that the DPJ still needs to reconcile its views on the proper division of responsibility between political leaders and bureaucrats. Even though many DPJ members stopped insisting on the need for politician-led policymaking after the party’s defeat in the 2012 election, it is clear that there is still a need to reform government structures as well as Japan’s political culture to better equip the prime minister and others to exercise stronger political leadership. Today, leaders operate in a rapidly changing and increasingly globalized world in which there often is no time to wait for all corners of the government, the ruling party, and the general public to come around to a grudging acceptance of new policy directions. Without stronger political leadership, action on vital national interests can end up coming too late to do much good. However, the meaning of political leadership also needs to be defined clearly and understood more fully. Moreover, Diet members need to recognize that political leadership does not mean that politicians must be involved in every aspect of policy issues and projects. Political leadership should mean that politicians have the power to make decisions on policies, and that both individual politicians and a party collectively as a ruling organ exhibit the utmost self-discipline in carrying that policy out. In this sense, Sir Harold Nicolson’s observation in his classic book, Diplomacy, written shortly before World War II, is still relevant today: For whereas “foreign policy” in democratic countries should be a matter for the Cabinet to decide with the approval of the elected representatives of the people; the execution of that policy, whether we call it “diplomacy” or “negotiation,” should generally be left to professionals of experience and discretion.14

Obviously, with today’s advances in transportation and communications, world leaders have more occasions to meet and exchange views. This better enables them to build trust with one another on their own, something that enhances peace and stability in a world that is becoming ever smaller and where crises are able to spread with greater speed. However, the increased ability of political leaders to get involved directly in the details of diplomacy and policymaking does not change the fact that they should delegate the responsibility for carefully laying out the groundwork for new policy directions to policy professionals.

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Nicolson’s observation concerns foreign policy, but it holds equally true for domestic policy. And it was this laying of the groundwork that the DPJ neglected to do. The DPJ was understaffed before and after the change of government, hindering its ability to prepare and execute a smooth transition. Its PR was not adequately handled and thus the DPJ administration’s policies and intentions were not translated in a cohesive way. In many cases, poor party discipline prevented DPJ leaders from making sound policy decisions. In fact, the more important a matter, such as the formulation of the national budget, the more it tended to trigger ugly infighting. In sum, in too many instances, DPJ members neglected the fact that good governance entails orchestrating the movements of various institutions and crafting policy through them, not trampling over them. It is only through such practices, and thus through the daily establishment of trust with the bureaucracy, the public, and party members, that the policy decisions made by a prime minister or a minister can be sound (based upon the expedient access to necessary information from all relevant sections) and effective (quickly executed). The DPJ is now struggling to regain the support of the people it once attracted, but its philosophy of making government more accountable by creating the conditions for elected officials to exercise stronger political leadership remains as important now as it was before. Because disillusionment with the DPJ still runs deep, it may be hard to revive the party. But at some point, the Japanese electorate will look for an alternative to the LDP. Whether that alternative will be the DPJ or another opposition party is not certain, but when the next time does come, the opposition camp needs to be ready to run the country—in terms of resources, party discipline, relations with bureaucrats, PR strategy, and policy priorities. That means that the ability of the DPJ, as well as the LDP and others in the political world, to digest the lessons from the DPJ’s three years and three months in government, is crucial for Japan’s parliamentary democracy and its future.

NOTES 1. Democratic Party of Japan, “To Kaikaku Sosei Honbu dai-1-ji hokoku” [Initial report of the Party Reform Headquarters] (February 24, 2013), http://www.dpj. or.jp/article/102018.

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2. Similarly, the second Abe administration started with the election of Shinzo Abe by the LDP on December 26, 2012, just 10 days after the December 16 general election. 3. The departure of Ozawa and his followers, who were often antagonistic toward the administration and who formed a new party in July 2012, also failed to help create a better working relationship between the administration and the party. 4. The proposal to create a National Strategy Bureau within the Cabinet Office was one product of these meetings. 5. In short, DPJ members were lacking in terms of what LDP politicians used to call jiban (connections to an electoral area), kanban (name recognition), and kaban (money)—the three important factors in becoming an elected official. The reason why there is a high ratio of second- and third-generation politicians is that they can inherit all three factors from their fathers. 6. Tetsuro Fukuyama, Genpatsu kiki: Kantei kara no shogen [Nuclear crisis: Testimony from the Kantei] (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 2012), 190–6. 7. The former DPJ was established in 1996, but it merged with Tsutomu Hata’s party in 1998, which had broken away from Ozawa’s New Frontier Party. 8. The February 2013 party report argues that this accusation is groundless, saying that the party always had “basic principles.” But the DPJ referred to them as “kihon rinen” rather than “koryo,” the more common phrase describing a political party’s principles, and the DPJ could not convince the public that what they called “kihon rinen” was in fact equivalent to “koryo.” This could be seen as another example of a PR disaster. 9. Yukio Hatoyama, “Sofu, Ichiro ni mananda ‘yuuai’ to iu tatakai no hatajirushi” [My Political Philosophy], Voice, September 2009, http://www.hatoyama.gr.jp/ profile/fraternity.html. 10. Ironically, the removal of one prime minister and appointment of another through internal party processes, instead of via election, was something that the DPJ, when in the opposition, criticized the LDP for doing. Although Japanese voters never vote directly for a prime minister, they often cast their ballots as an endorsement of the leader of the party that they favor, especially on their proportional representation ballots. Therefore, the DPJ had argued that prime ministers chosen only by the party without a general election did not have sufficient legitimacy. 11. Key DPJ members, interview by Yuka Uchida Ando, summer 2012. 12. Yukio Hatoyama, “Daijin, Taiho, tamagoyaki, soshite Jiminto” [Giants, Taiho, fried eggs, and the LDP], interview by Junko Takahashi, Asahi Shimbun, March 22, 2013. “Giants, Taiho, and fried eggs” were said to be the three favorite things of Japanese citizens in postwar Japan. But here, Hatoyama adds the “LDP.” 13. For the article that reviewed the DPJ’s three years and three months of administration, Nikkei Shimbun used the title, “Political Leadership Ends in Slogan— Inexperience Created Confusion and Brought Back the Bureaucrats to Power,” November 25, 2012. There were other similar articles. 14. Harold Nicolson, Diplomacy (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1939), 3.

Political leadership and foreign policy

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The DPJ Government’s Failed Foreign Policy: A Case of PoliticianLed Government Gone Wrong R yo Sahashi

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ollowing Japan’s historic 2009 change in power, when the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was soundly defeated after a nearly unbroken 54-year stretch of dominance over the political system, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) retained control of the government for three years and three months. However, statements made by the DPJ’s first prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, and his cabinet ministers in the early days of their administration created so much confusion over the issue of relocating US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma that the party never recovered. The DPJ’s woes were deepened by failures in policy coordination and its leader’s lack of a sense of responsibility for his words as a head of government. The fact that, following a chaotic nine months, the Hatoyama administration settled on almost exactly the same plan as what was in place prior to the change in government raised doubts among the public about the DPJ’s ability to govern. It also engendered a substantial degree of mistrust among the people of Okinawa and on the part of Japan’s closest ally, the United States. It is no easy task for a government to dispel doubts about its competence on foreign policy and national security after they have taken hold, and these doubts became an

Ryo Sahashi is an associate professor at Kanagawa University.

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enormous burden for the DPJ government to bear over the remaining two and a half years that it controlled the premiership. Adding to these troubles was the Senkaku Islands issue, which continues to smolder between Japan and its rising neighbor, China. Twice, crises flared up that required difficult responses from the DPJ government—first in September 2010, when a Chinese trawler that had illegally entered Japanese waters rammed Japanese Coast Guard patrol boats, and then again when the governor of Tokyo proposed that his city buy the islands from a private landowner. This prompted the national government to preemptively purchase them instead, which in turn touched off a wave of criticism from the Chinese government as well as a spate of anti-Japan demonstrations and vandalism targeting Japanese companies in China. Given the circumstances, it would have been difficult for anyone to handle either situation in a way that would have been completely satisfactory. However, the responses of the DPJ administration can only be deemed a failure of crisis management. Despite the great importance of Japan-China relations to the peace and prosperity of Japan and East Asia, the mishandling of the situation by the DPJ government—combined with an unnecessarily provocative response by China—seriously damaged the very basis on which those ties have been sustained since the 1972 normalization of bilateral relations. This is an ironic outcome given that the DPJ came to power in part by espousing a platform of stronger relations with Asia, which included its proposal to champion an “East Asian Community.”1 In a sign of how little the DPJ government could get right, this half-baked proposal caused problems of its own. The Obama administration, seeking to shift its foreign policy focus from the war on terror to Asia, saw the heightened sense of a Chinese threat regarding South China Sea sovereignty as an opportunity. While being careful to engage China through its bilateral outreach, the United States began its “rebalance” toward Asia, attempting to shape the regional economic and security architectures in such a way as to retain its predominance in the region while reaping the benefits of Asia’s prosperity. This helped create some opportunities for Japan to advance its foreign policy objectives, and largely thanks to the efforts of foreign ministry officials to sustain Japan’s diplomatic momentum, the DPJ-led government did maintain some continuity with LDP policies in terms of building stronger relations with Australia and India. However, after having created confusion in the region with its “East Asian

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Community,” a concept that did not reflect realities on the ground, the DPJ administrations failed to invest significant policy resources in Asia. With a succession of short-lived cabinets, Japan’s political influence in Asia and the rest of the world continued to decline. The Japanese public was probably not expecting a drastic reform of foreign policy when it voted in a new administration in September 2009. The change in government that took place that summer was the result of the declining support for the series of LDP administrations that had followed the long, stable administration of Junichiro Koizumi. These latter-day LDP administrations led voters to think that a change of government might improve the state of politics in Japan or simply convinced them not to cast their vote for the LDP. It was not, however, a positive show of support for the policies of the DPJ, which it had outlined in its so-called “DPJ Manifesto,” or party platform, prior to the election. As Professor Yoshiaki Kobayashi of Keio University has pointed out, “The voters, needless to say, but even the supporters and party members are hardly ever involved in creating the political party’s manifesto . . . What is written in the DPJ Manifesto is not the grand design for the direction that Japan should take; there is almost no comprehensive plan whatsoever, and it centers instead on an item-by-item discussion intended to garner votes.”2 Even though the change in government may have changed the people in power, it did not mean that Japanese politics had changed, and it did not signify a shift toward policies that the voters had said they wanted. Even though some voters in Okinawa may have altered their voting behavior based on Hatoyama’s famous “kengai” statement—his assertion during the campaign that the Futenma base should at least be relocated outside of Okinawa Prefecture—for the majority of voters foreign policy was not the reason they voted for the DPJ. Moreover, the foreign policy spelled out in the manifesto was moderate in content. Nonetheless, with a landslide victory in the Lower House election, there was a sense that the DPJ was expected to be highly “reformist.” With majorities in both the Upper and Lower Houses, the new DPJ administration and its prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, were in an extremely powerful political position. The overwhelming support of the public created an atmosphere in which the DPJ felt compelled to deviate from preexisting policies and come up with new plans. This was further complicated by the fact that Hatoyama’s first policy speech to the Diet—both the process by which it was prepared and the content—was what might perhaps be most aptly described as “flighty.”3

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Certainly in the United States, when the government shifts between the Republican and Democratic Parties, it is a given that there will also be a shift away from the previous administration’s policies, as seen in recent years first with the push for policies that were “ABC” (anything but Clinton’s) and then “ABB” (anything but Bush’s). However, those shifts occur after serious policy issues are debated and considered over a long period of time through the presidential and congressional elections. Japan’s DPJ government pursued overarching reforms on an array of domestic and foreign policy issues with little regard for the high costs those changes would incur. Much of the policy review process that usually accompanies a change in government was simplified and was placed at the mercy of populism. Of course, we need to examine just how many of the foreign policy failures were actually the fault of the DPJ government. For example, it is a fact that Japan’s national strength is waning in relative terms with the rise of emerging nations, including its closest neighbors, and this trend cannot simply be attributed to a single political party. Diplomatic tensions related to territorial issues are also inherently difficult to manage. And it is true that many of the complaints regarding the DPJ’s diplomacy were simply criticism for criticism’s sake. In fact, the DPJ government did have some meaningful foreign policy accomplishments. At the same time, however, because of the DPJ’s over-adherence to reformism and so-called “politician-led government,” as well as its pursuit of changes beyond what would be required simply for a change in government, it ultimately failed to build a domestic consensus on foreign policy. Even after a gradual return to more grounded and pragmatic approaches, the party was never able to regain the initial levels of trust and support it had enjoyed. In order to assess the diplomatic conduct of the DPJ government, this chapter analyzes four cases. It begins with the Futenma relocation plan and the East Asian Community concept, examining the problems that arose in the diplomatic processes related to those two issues immediately after the change of the administration. It then examines the problems that arose in the DPJ’s response to the Senkaku Islands crises, before finally turning to those aspects that can be viewed as successes of the DPJ’s foreign and defense policy. The concluding section considers lessons that can be drawn from the DPJ’s diplomatic record.

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The Hatoyama Administration and the Futenma Relocation Plan A Broken Promise: The “Out of Okinawa” Campaign Pledge In 1995, the governments in Tokyo and Washington started to search for a way to reduce the footprint of US military bases on the island of Okinawa. These discussions were triggered by the horrific rape that summer of a 12-year-old schoolgirl by three US Marines, which understandably spurred local protests against the bases. The incident was the tipping point after a series of accidents and crimes involving servicemen from the base. The following year, Japan and the United States agreed to move Marine Corps Air Station Futenma out of its urban setting and relocate it to the less-populated Henoko in another area of Okinawa, where the potential for accidents and incidents that could harm civilians would be greatly reduced. The relocation plan, however, soon became bogged down as local opposition grew, becoming a major sticking point in bilateral relations. On July 19, 2009, as the dissolution of the LDP-controlled Lower House loomed, Hatoyama, then serving as the DPJ’s leader, made his so-called kengai (“outside the prefecture”) statement. At a gathering in Okinawa Prefecture, he stated, “I want to proactively take action to at least move the base outside of Okinawa,” and with regard to relocating the base to the coastal portion of Camp Schwab in the Henoko District, he declared, “I cannot allow Okinawa to continue to shoulder the excessive burden of military bases.”4 The DPJ Manifesto announced on July 27 was intentionally vague and did not specifically call for a review of the base relocation, presumably as a result of a warning from US Under Secretary of Defense Michele Flournoy during her June 2009 meeting with DPJ Secretary-General Katsuya Okada.5 However, the statements made by Hatoyama himself went well beyond a call for a review, and he repeated them in a debate among party leaders held on August 17 at the Japan National Press Club. Why did he make these pronouncements? After his election, Hatoyama emphasized that in an earlier DPJ policy paper, “Okinawa Vision (2008),” and elsewhere, the party had taken the position that it would examine the possibility of moving the bases out of Okinawa and out of Japan (along with a review of the US-Japan Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA).6 In terms of prospective new locations outside

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of Okinawa, Hatoyama pointed to the Japan Air Self-Defense Force’s Nyutabaru Air Base and Tsuiki Air Base, which had been mentioned in the 2005 and 2006 reports of the Japan-US Security Consultative Committee and which he mistakenly believed were strong candidates for a new site.7 In addition, after visiting the United States that summer, a DPJ party staffer misinterpreted the mood in Washington and reported that because the American government was placing priority on Afghanistan and Iran, it would be possible to gain concessions on the base relocation issue.8 In the heat of the election battle, then, Hatoyama made a public pledge based on misunderstandings, but there was no consensus on the issue within the DPJ as a whole. Following the party’s historic victory in the Lower House election, the Hatoyama administration took office in September 2009. Hatoyama, his newly appointed foreign minister, Katsuya Okada, and the new defense minister, Toshimi Kitazawa, each began to address the Futenma relocation plan. Okada and Kitazawa both reviewed the deliberations that had previously gone on in their respective ministries and Kitazawa quickly concluded that the existing plan was the best option, which he publicly stated. At a press conference on October 23, Okada also stated that relocating the base outside Okinawa was not an option, although up until December he continued to firmly support a competing proposal to transfer the facilities at Futenma to Kadena Air Base as an alternative to building a new base at Henoko. Even in meetings held with US Defense Secretary Robert Gates during his October visit to Japan, while the US side sought to compromise on a revised plan that would move the proposed new runway at Henoko slightly offshore to meet local concerns, Okada brought up the deliberations on the Kadena-Futenma consolidation plan.9 Based on personal experience, the senior Obama administration officials handling US policy on Asia at the time were well-versed in the history of the US Global Posture Review, which is periodically used to assess basing requirements and which had previously ruled out this alternative. However, the DPJ’s commitment to have politicians be more hands-on in managing the government led it to disregard the advice of the senior bureaucrats who had been on the frontlines of the basing negotiations, and so the Japan side needed time to bring the inexperienced politicians heading the defense and foreign ministries up to speed. Gradually, the ministers—first Kitazawa and then Okada—shifted back to the original plan, but Hatoyama still would not accept it. As if contradicting the statements of his cabinet ministers, Hatoyama wrote

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in the November 7 edition of his official e-mail magazine, “We want to clearly show Japan’s will through this issue,” and stated, “I intend to seriously study all options available for relocation—inside and outside both Okinawa and Japan—before coming to a conclusion.” He then added that a conclusion should not be rushed.10 However, when President Obama visited Japan the following week, contrary to the Hatoyama administration’s expectations, the Futenma relocation was higher on the US agenda than aid for Afghanistan. In response to Obama’s request for a quick resolution of the issue, Hatoyama reportedly told him, “Trust me,” which the Obama team took as a sign that the relocation plan would soon be back on track. Around the same time that Hatoyama was telling President Obama to trust him, his private brain trust was also coming around to the original relocation plan. They were also returning to the idea of a two-stage process for dealing with the relocation plan and the SOFA issue over the medium to long term, and it appears that Hatoyama eventually began leaning in that direction as well.11 However, a crucial coalition partner that the DPJ needed in order to retain its grasp on the Upper House, the Social Democratic Party (SDP), remained adamantly opposed to the relocation plan. In late November, as the tide was increasingly shifting toward approving the original plan by the end of the year, the SDP and Okinawan politicians began to rally their forces. As there were indications that the DPJ’s political coalition could crumble, then DPJ Secretary-General Ichiro Ozawa, known as the single most influential politician in the DPJ, indicated to the SDP that its position had been heard, and Hatoyama and his colleagues began leaning back toward concluding for political reasons that they would have to postpone any decision on the base. On December 3, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano indicated at a press conference that the Futenma decision would be postponed until after the New Year, and Hatoyama instructed Okada and Kitazawa to search for a relocation site other than Henoko.12 The next day, US Ambassador John Roos spoke directly to Okada and Kitazawa, conveying President Obama’s frustration that the matter had not been resolved even after the US-Japan summit meeting.13 With a mayoral election set to take place the following month in Nago, the city in which Henoko is located, it was likely that putting off the decision would only make the situation more difficult. However, at a meeting of relevant cabinet ministers on December 14, and again at a meeting of the cabinet committee on basic policy held on December 15, it was agreed that the decision would be postponed.

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Hatoyama decided to put the issue off, saying, “I would like to determine the new relocation site by May of next year.” The US government could not conceal its dissatisfaction. On a day when the federal government was shut down in the aftermath of a record-setting blizzard, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suddenly summoned the Japanese ambassador, Ichiro Fujisaki, and demanded that Japan fulfill its commitment to the original plan. But in Japan the following week, Ozawa stated to senior party officials, “We cannot permit the reclamation of land in the beautiful sea,” further complicating the issue.14

Searching for a New Site and Then Abandoning It At the end of 2009, it was decided that the relevant cabinet ministers, along with leaders of the DPJ’s coalition partners, the SDP and the People’s New Party (PNP), would gather to consider new sites for the relocation of the Futenma base. These discussions were to be led by Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirano. At that time, they did not yet have a clear candidate for the new site. There were various alternative proposals, including a plan to utilize a section of Camp Schwab for the relocated facilities, the so-called White Beach plan to move the base to the Katsuren Peninsula, a plan to temporarily relocate outside Okinawa, and proposals to shift the base completely out of Japan to Guam, Saipan, or Tinian Island.15 The alternative Camp Schwab proposal had already been explored within the Ministry of Defense, and the White Beach proposal was something that had been raised by US officials. In January, another proposal emerged that suggested relocating the base to Tokunoshima, an island in Kagoshima Prefecture. By March, the choices were whittled down to Camp Schwab, White Beach, and Tokunoshima, but because Hatoyama disliked the White Beach proposal, which would have required environmentally sensitive landfill, the idea was floated of possibly combining Camp Schwab and Tokunoshima. However, it was unclear if this would meet the operational needs of the Marines. Foreign Minister Okada, who visited the United States in March 2010, also stated that this would be impossible to achieve and argued for a return to the original plan. Nonetheless, through April, the Prime Minister’s Office continued to discuss the relocation of the heliport to Tokunoshima. However, details about the central government’s

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thinking were reported in the media before they consulted with Kagoshima Prefecture officials and the mayors of the three towns being considered, arousing further distrust among those communities and strengthening local opposition movements. Okinawan politics further heightened the tensions. In the Nago mayoral elections held on January 24, the pro-base incumbent, Yoshikazu Shimabukuro, was defeated by Susumu Inamine, the former chairman of the city’s school board, who opposed the relocation of the base to another site within Okinawa. Hirokazu Nakaima, the conservative governor of Okinawa who was seeking reelection in October of that year, was forced to navigate a difficult path as the anti-base voices in the entire region became increasingly outspoken. That difficulty led him eventually to attend a major anti-base rally on April 25, 2010, and to declare that there was “discrimination” against Okinawa by the mainland.16 Hatoyama and Hirano were being pushed toward a cliff. Tadakatsu Sano, executive secretary to the prime minister, traveled to Washington in April of that year, and upon his return he spoke frankly to Hatoyama about the extremely cold reception he encountered there. It was also becoming clear that, no matter how they might try, it would not be possible for the Marines to shift some of their training exercises to Tokunoshima, which would be a prerequisite to make this alternative work. Meanwhile, a proposal to avoid using landfill in the sea off of Henoko by instead using a jetty built on pilings for the new runway was also eliminated for various reasons, including its susceptibility to terrorism. Thus it became evident that there was no option but to return to the original agreement with the United States. During the May 2010 Golden Week holiday, Hatoyama paid his first visit to Okinawa since becoming prime minister. He announced that he had given up on the idea of relocating the base outside of Okinawa, explaining that he personally had not had a sufficient understanding of the “deterrence function of the US military.” At the end of May, the US and Japanese governments jointly announced the relocation to Henoko, along with a new plan for the runways. By that time, Hatoyama’s initial approval rating of over 70 percent had flipped to a 70 percent disapproval rating. Hounded by persistent questions about a political funding scandal, Hatoyama called a plenary meeting of the DPJ Diet members on June 2 and announced the “double resignation” of himself and DPJ Secretary-General Ozawa, thereby bringing to an end his short-lived administration after just over 250 days.

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The Cause of the Failure Why did the DPJ administration “fail” on the issue of relocating the Futenma base? The first reason was that it led with ideology before fully ascertaining whether or not it was possible to achieve its proposed outcome. Hatoyama and Ozawa were of the mindset that they needed to demonstrate Japan’s independence from the United States. Moreover, they were probably conscious of the need to be consistent with the various statements they had made over the years while in the opposition. Of course, when a party comes to power and its politicians find themselves in a position of responsibility, they must transform their ideological positions one by one into policy, using the national interest as their fundamental criteria. However, the DPJ came to power at a time when it was not completely clear on what constitutes the national interest. Its leaders’ unfounded optimism that the new government had a mandate to undertake a complete overhaul of all of the country’s policies and that the United States would understand and respect Japanese demands contributed to their failure. Second, the politicians neglected to look at how they could utilize the bureaucracy in order to give form to their ideas. Under the LDP, there were also cases where the prime minister’s private-sector brain trust played an important role. However, an inordinate number of political appointees and personal advisors tried to involve themselves in the policy process during Hatoyama’s tenure in the name of politicianled government. In some cases, these appointees and others close to Hatoyama also visited Washington as self-designated envoys claiming to operate in the name of the prime minister, which confused the policy channels between the two capitals and fueled mistrust. Third, it was clear that there were strains both within the DPJ and within the DPJ’s coalition with the SDP and PNP. Looking at the situation in December 2009, it is possible that if the government had been able to reach a conclusion on the base issue by the end of the year, the trust in the DPJ may not have eroded as badly as it did. But faced with the political constraints of needing to maintain the coalition, the DPJ chose to postpone the policy decision. Fourth, negotiations with the United States were handled too late in the process. It appeared that the administration’s decision-making process was internally oriented, and it was not conveying information adequately or consistently to the US government through official channels. In particular, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirano, who ended up in

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charge of the relocation deliberations, is said to have been averse to the idea of direct communication with either the United States or local officials in Okinawa. Fifth, while it is true that the media had a hand in whipping up a frenzy over the issue, the politicians also played a role in whipping up the media. The cabinet members did not have an adequate grasp of the ways in which the media creates sound bites out of statements. Given that today’s technology makes it easy to confirm the record of what a politician has said, the Hatoyama administration’s lack of consistency in its statements cast doubt on its trustworthiness when dealing with the United States and Okinawa. Sixth, there was an element of NIMBY (not in my backyard) politics. While searching for a site “outside Okinawa,” Hatoyama administration officials explored a number of possible locations, but they received an extremely cool response from governors and local leaders throughout Japan. The strong resistance from almost all prefectures probably caught some members of the administration by surprise. However, the fault is not solely that of the DPJ. The fact is that following the 1995 Special Action Committee on Okinawa agreement, no prime minister had been able to move forward with the construction of the replacement facility. After the Keizo Obuchi administration, not a single administration wanted to openly push the issue in the face of opposition from the local community. These administrations failed to accept the risks of forcing a resolution to the dispute and continued to put the problem off. As a result, the possibility that the Futenma base would remain in place by default grew, despite the fact that all of the players involved agreed that such a fate had to be avoided due to the danger that accidents posed to nearby residents. All the while, China’s rise meant that the Nansei-shoto Archipelago (also known as the Ryukyu Arc—the entire chain of islands stretching from Kyushu to Taiwan and including Okinawa) was gaining in geopolitical importance, but the people of Okinawa, where most US and Japanese bases are located, were becoming increasingly distrustful of the mainland.

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Retreat from the “East Asian Community” Concept The “Initial Shock” to US-Japan Relations Looking back, it is clear that the American distrust of the DPJ actually predated the Futenma fiasco and was initially the result of Hatoyama’s articulation of the “East Asian Community” concept.17 First announced in an essay released under Hatoyama’s name shortly before the DPJ took power, this concept could only be interpreted as an expression of unease with American-led global capitalism and a desire to ensure that US power in Asia was counterbalanced to some degree. In addition, statements by Foreign Minister Okada and the actions of Ozawa—who made a highly publicized visit to Beijing rather than to Washington DC immediately after the election with a group of 600 leaders, including about 140 Diet members—created misunderstandings about whether Japan’s stance toward the United States and its Asia diplomacy were undergoing a fundamental shift. In the end, these provocative moves did little good for the DPJ. Hatoyama’s East Asian Community eventually morphed into a policy of strengthening the same types of functional cooperation that were already occurring. Also, Ozawa’s visit to China did not achieve the desired results in improving relations between the DPJ administration and China, as was subsequently made clear by the Senkakus crises and the increasingly provocative actions of the People’s Liberation Army Navy in the waters surrounding Japan. But this approach damaged US-Japan relations. The East Asian Community debacle began in August 2009, when Hatoyama published a piece titled “My Political Philosophy” in the September edition of the Voice, which then appeared roughly two weeks later in an abridged translation in the international electronic version of the New York Times as well as a number of other major English-language papers, including the Christian Science Monitor.18 The article drew attention as a treatise that included anti-American overtones both in its declaration of the failure of “US-led globalism”—marked, according to Hatoyama, by unfettered free market capitalism—and in its positioning of an East Asian Community as a counterweight to US predominance in the region. Although Hatoyama recognized the Japan-US Security Treaty system as the “pillar of Japan’s diplomacy,” at the same time he called for a “common Asian currency,” which would presumably

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displace the US dollar, and for efforts “to build the permanent security architecture essential to underpinning currency integration.” Based on the context in which those statements were made, the implication was clearly that the United States was not included in Hatoyama’s vision of regional integration.19 Moreover, the article was noticeably lacking two key elements that had been important aspects of the policies of successive administrations up until that point—open regionalism and the pursuit of universal values. Soon afterward, when he took office, Hatoyama denied that he would back any regional architecture that excluded the United States, yet at the same time, Foreign Minister Okada declared that the United States would not be included in an East Asian Community.20 Even after that, Hatoyama proved incapable of clarifying the specifics of his East Asian Community concept in a way that made sense to US leaders or other foreign observers. It was this lack of clarity and consistency that was at the root of the confusion between the DPJ government and other nations. In the first month of the administration, as the prime minister’s inaugural policy address to the Diet was being drafted, the East Asian Community concept gradually became similar to the previous government’s position. In a Diet speech in late October as well, Hatoyama described it as a “cooperative entity which is open to other regions.” Shortly thereafter, in a policy speech he gave in Singapore in November, he emphasized the creation of a “multi-layered network of functional communities.” In these speeches, he never returned to the characterization of the international situation that he had expressed in his original article; moreover, in his Singapore speech he went so far as to state that Japan’s Self-Defense Forces (SDF) would participate in the US-led Pacific Partnership, implying that the US alliance network would continue to constitute the key security architecture in the region.21 From the fall through the winter of 2009, leaders of Southeast Asian countries, notably Singapore and Thailand, pushed back against Hatoyama’s East Asian Community concept by emphasizing the importance of American involvement in the region. The Obama administration also highlighted the US commitment to Asia in a November 2009 presidential address in Tokyo and in Secretary of State Clinton’s January 2010 speech in Honolulu. With the international pressure from the United States and from Japan’s Asian neighbors, the East Asian Community concept inevitably had to be revised. Toward the end of his administration, Hatoyama once again raised the issue of an East Asian Community. In March 2010, in a keynote

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speech at a public symposium held by the Japan Institute of International Affairs, he denied that the concept was exclusionary. After touching on the importance of the US-Japan alliance, he stressed the philosophical significance of the Japanese people opening up their country through the creation of an East Asian Community.22 It was probably intended to telegraph that Hatoyama was maintaining some consistency in his policy line as he tried to keep the administration afloat until the end of May, his self-imposed deadline to announce a decision on the Futenma relocation plan, but in reality it signaled a winding down of the East Asian Community proposal. In May 2010, in the final speech he gave on the East Asian Community, Hatoyama went no further than to present a slightly more detailed plan for the functional cooperation that had formed the content of his proposal since the fall.23 A paper put together by the Prime Minister’s Office on the East Asian Community concept was released on June 1, 2010—the day before Hatoyama’s resignation—but it began by calling, as previous governments had, for the promotion of “open” and “highly transparent” regional cooperation, including with the United States, before going on to note that the US-Japan alliance is the cornerstone of regional peace and security and that continued US engagement in the region is indispensible. The remaining content was nothing more than a general list of cooperative efforts that had already been proposed many times before.24 In the end, the East Asian Community proposal never produced any original initiatives for the international community to consider, and when the next administration failed to embrace the concept, it faded away. The lack of substantive results does not mean, however, that the idea had no impact. The initial introduction of the concept gave rise to a distrust of the Japanese government within the US government, and because the concept was raised in the context of the Japan-China-Korea Trilateral Summit, it also became unpopular among ASEAN nations, which were adamant that they should play the driving role in East Asian regional cooperation. These diplomatic failures lingered throughout the DPJ’s time in power. Following Hatoyama’s resignation, Naoto Kan became Japan’s next prime minister. Kan and his foreign minister, Seiji Maehara, showed a great deal more consideration for the US-Japan alliance in the East Asian security architecture. In a foreign policy speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC in January 2011 titled “Opening a New Horizon in the Asia Pacific,” Maehara rejected the

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idea of forming a regional order without the United States and stressed the need for Asia Pacific cooperation. Although he did not announce any new policies in his speech, it was clearly understood that he was attempting to set Japan back on the right course following the previous administration’s “East Asian Community” departure, and it was generally well received in Washington.

The Senkakus and the DPJ Government If we say that the mishandling of the Futenma relocation plan and the bungled East Asian Community proposal initially raised doubts about the administration’s “governance capabilities,” then it was clearly the response to the two Senkaku-related crises—coupled on the domestic front with the mismanagement of the Great East Japan Earthquake and subsequent Fukushima nuclear crisis—that fueled the deterioration of the DPJ government’s reputation. In September 2010, the Japan Coast Guard spotted a Chinese fishing trawler operating illegally in Japanese waters near the Senkaku Islands, which are also claimed by China. When confronted, the captain proceeded to ram his boat into the patrol vessels. The trawler was seized and the captain arrested. Rather than attempting to decrease tensions, the Chinese government made repeated public appeals for the captain’s release and then moved to more heavy-handed tactics, including delaying rare earth exports to Japan and arresting four Japanese employees of a construction company for allegedly entering a restricted Chinese military zone. The Kan administration continued to detain the trawler captain rather than take the more cautious approach of promptly releasing him to Chinese authorities as had been done in past cases. In part, this was because the Japan Coast Guard, which reports to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, considered the ramming of Coast Guard ships to be more malicious than the illegal landings on the Senkakus that had been carried out by some groups in the past. Seiji Maehara, who at the time was the minister of land, infrastructure, and transport, and Katsuya Okada, minister of foreign affairs, approved and in fact promoted this hardline response.25 The captain refused to admit to the illegality of his actions, perhaps at the advice of Chinese counsel who felt that an admission of any illegal conduct could be regarded as recognizing the legitimacy of Japanese

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territorial claims to the Senkakus. As a result, the Japanese prosecutors kept him in custody for about two weeks. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshito Sengoku, who is an attorney, insisted on trying to settle the issue following Japanese domestic law, even while acknowledging the need to ensure that the crisis did not get out of control and seriously damage bilateral relations. At last, after consultations between the prosecutors and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the captain was released, and the local prosecutor explained that the decision had been made due to diplomatic considerations, which further incensed the Japanese public.26 Meanwhile, the prolonged two-week detention of the captain perplexed the Chinese government, which felt disappointed by the lack of political savvy shown by the Japanese government. Yuji Miyamoto, who had served as ambassador to China just prior to this incident, offered this analysis of the escalating tensions: The Chinese determined that the Japanese approach—particularly the statement that “We will handle this as a criminal case based on Japanese domestic law”—was an effort to strengthen Japan’s de facto control and went beyond Japan’s past policy. From the Japanese perspective, the Chinese reaction appeared excessive, and they responded strongly. On the Japanese side, there was inadequate foresight or readiness for the extremely serious diplomatic problem that would develop in China-Japan relations if they handled the case “based on Japanese domestic law,” and there was also inadequate preparation for handling the situation once it arose.27

In the spring of 2012, the Senkakus once again became the focal point of China-Japan relations. Tensions were heightened by other factors, including an inflammatory February 2012 statement by the mayor of Nagoya on the Nanking Massacre and the government’s decision to allow the World Uyghur Congress to convene in Japan. However, it was when the governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, announced his plans to purchase the property rights to three islands in the Senkakus—islands that had long been owned by a private citizen—that the political game among Prime Minister Noda, Governor Ishihara, and the Chinese government really started.28 Noda feared that if the Tokyo Metropolitan Government succeeded in buying the islands and began constructing port facilities on the island as Governor Ishihara repeatedly promised, it would add a new element of instability in China-Japan relations. At that time, the islands were being leased by the central government from the private owner and civilians

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were barred from landing there. Noda decided to preempt Ishihara by having the central government instead purchase the islands, hoping to calm the situation and avoid friction with the Chinese government. He was terrified by Ishihara’s remarks that Japan should not fear going to war with China if necessary, which Ishihara even mentioned in a faceto-face meeting at the Prime Minister’s Residence.29 On September 11, 2012, the cabinet approved the use of funds for the purchase and the government proceeded to buy the three islands. Noda had just met informally with then President Hu Jintao at an APEC summit in Vladivostok, and Hu had warned him not to do this, but he immediately went ahead and did it anyway. The Chinese government lodged vehement protests, and it stood aside as anti-Japanese demonstrations erupted in numerous locations around China, some of which became violent and resulted in the vandalism of Japanese-owned factories and shops. Three critical mistakes were made. First, the Japanese government failed to properly interpret the Chinese government’s stance on the purchase at a time when China was going through a leadership transition. Japanese diplomats kept their Chinese counterparts informed at the highest level through vice ministerial dialogues, stressing that no matter which entity had legal ownership of the islands, it would have no bearing on the issue of sovereignty, and explaining that the effort to prevent Ishihara’s purchase was purely to head off the risk that he would take provocative actions. However, the incoming members of the Chinese leadership gathered in August and refused any diplomatic settlement of the issue. Second, Noda mistakenly believed that if they made this move in the waning days of Hu Jintao’s tenure, the incoming government, headed by Xi Jinping, would be open to “resetting” China-Japan relations after a brief period of tensions. And third, at the very last moment, Parliamentary Senior Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs Tsuyoshi Yamaguchi visited Beijing to meet State Councilor Dai Bingguo, the top Chinese official in the foreign policy establishment, but Yamaguchi failed to adequately relay Noda’s resolve to purchase the islands and his rationale for doing so, and then he also failed to bring back the message of how strongly China was opposed to the plan.30 Since 1972, the foundations of China-Japan relations had evolved to the point that both sides professed to being committed to the promotion of a “mutually beneficial relationship based on common strategic interests,”31 but this all evaporated after September 2012. In the two

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Senkaku incidents, politicians on both sides adopted hardline policies for domestic reasons, and as a result, the relationship was shaken to its very core. The DPJ government certainly cannot bear all the blame—the Chinese government was engaged in increasingly assertive behavior, regularly dispatching government ships and aircraft to challenge Japanese control of the Senkakus, in addition to tacitly encouraging the illegal fishing. However, as they became caught up in the maelstrom, neither government exercised sound judgment that was sufficiently based on a big picture view of the relationship.

Some Foreign Policy Successes Of course, the three years of the DPJ administration were not completely devoid of foreign and defense policy successes. For example, while the DPJ strained US-Japan relations by carrying through on its promise to terminate Japan’s Indian Ocean refueling mission in support of the war in Afghanistan, it also pledged up to Us$5 billion toward rebuilding efforts in Afghanistan, which is being used in a variety of fields in cooperation with Japan’s foreign aid community. In addition, it reached a nonpartisan understanding for Japan to continue its antipiracy efforts off the coast of Somalia and in the Gulf of Aden, and it dispatched a large SDF force to participate in the peacekeeping operation (PKO) in Haiti in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake there, as well as to South Sudan, which had emerged from Africa’s longest civil war and had begun to build a new nation. Overall, the DPJ government dispatched many more SDF personnel for PKO and other missions to contribute to international security than had its predecessors. In addition, it built on the LDP policy of strengthening partnerships with Australia, India, and Southeast Asian nations, many of which were simultaneously deepening their security ties to the United States as well. Finally, the DPJ revised the standards governing arms exports, opening the door to the joint development of defense equipment with allies and friends, the provision of arms for humanitarian objectives, and so on. However, even though the DPJ governments did make significant progress on these issues, the media rarely covered them. Even when its successes were reported, the coverage tended to deal with highly technical diplomatic and defense issues, so it generally did little to raise the popularity of the administration. By contrast, the DPJ’s easy-tounderstand failures created a lingering image of incompetence.

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The Ministry of Defense’s “Spring” and “Winter” Notably, the critical actor in each of these successes was Toshimi Kitazawa, who was appointed as defense minister under the Hatoyama administration. Kitazawa was first elected to the Upper House in 1992 to represent Nagano Prefecture for the LDP, and he left the LDP in late 1994 to join a breakaway party formed by his political mentor, Tsutomu Hata, before eventually joining the DPJ. Although Kitazawa had served as the chairman of the Upper House’s Foreign Policy and Defense Committee since 2007, his position on defense policy was ambiguous and he was reportedly surprised when he was tapped to be the minister of defense. Despite that, he brought an exceptional sense of stability to the post. Kitazawa appointed as his advisors Tetsuya Nishimoto, who in the mid-1990s had chaired the Joint Staff Council, as well as another senior bureaucrat, Kozo Oikawa, who began his career at the Ministry of International Trade and Industry and had served as the director-general of the Bureau of Equipment at the Japan Defense Agency. (He also served as the commissioner of the Japan Patent Office). The intention behind Nishimoto’s appointment was to promote coordination with the uniformed personnel on reforming the Ministry of Defense. The top bureaucrats in each ministry in Japan had traditionally played a key role in policy formulation. However, immediately after the new government came to power, there was an emphasis on politician-led governance that shifted decision-making power from the senior bureaucrats to the politicians appointed to the top three posts in the ministry. In many ministries, the top bureaucrats ended up being left out of the decision-making process and even out of major policy discussions, but in the Ministry of Defense, the collaboration between politicians and bureaucrats was managed relatively smoothly. Priority was placed on communication regardless of whether the person was in a business suit or a uniform, and departmental councils were utilized as well.32 In his two years in the post, Kitazawa earned the deep respect of those within the ministry, especially from civilian officials, and one major factor underlying that was the weight he carried within the cabinet. As one example of how he used his clout to support the ministry, Kitazawa strongly urged that a new position be created in the Kan administration for an additional executive secretary to the prime minister, to be filled by a defense bureaucrat (the Noda and Abe administrations have followed suit). He is said to have insisted, “I don’t care if you have to string a hammock from the ceiling and have the

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secretary from the Defense Ministry work there—you need to have that person in the secretariat.”33 When Kitazawa assumed his post, he immediately put the review of National Defense Program Guidelines, initiated by Taro Aso’s administration, on hold for a year and launched the Council on Security and Defense Capabilities in the New Era to advise him. After the council reported on its findings, the government announced the new National Defense Program Guidelines in December 2010, along with the MidTerm Defense Program for FY2011–FY2015. These were characterized by the adoption of a “dynamic defense force” concept that emphasizes the outcome of coordinated actions rather than the quantity of military hardware and SDF troops.34 During the drafting of the new guidelines, there were complaints about the process. However, given the growing importance of SDF operations in the areas surrounding Japan in terms of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, the overall direction of the dynamic defense force concept, which takes into consideration the need for rapid, seamless responses to all types of situations, was well received as responding appropriately to an era of heightened regional tensions. The establishment of new standards for arms exports also went a step beyond the previous policies. In 1967, Prime Minister Eisaku Sato had attempted to clarify Japan’s principles as a peaceful nation through the Three Principles on Arms Exports, prohibiting the export of arms to nations that were part of the Communist bloc, that were banned by UN resolutions from receiving imported arms, or that were involved in international conflicts. This policy was strengthened under the government of Takeo Miki, at which time all arms exports were prohibited. Since that time, however, a series of provisions that allowed exceptions were enacted as needed, for example to permit the joint development and production of weaponry with the United States or the transfer of patrol boats to the Philippines. Kitazawa made considerable headway in paving the way for a rethinking of the arms exports ban, persuading Kan to put in motion a process of reconsidering it.35 (According to Kitazawa, he had personally tried to convince Hatoyama to adopt this policy earlier, but had been refused on the spot.36) This yielded fruit on December 27, 2011, when Osamu Fujimura, the chief cabinet secretary for Yoshihiko Noda—the next and third DPJ prime minister—announced a comprehensive relaxation of the ban.37 This made it possible for Japan to participate in joint development and production of weapons with other countries and to supply military equipment for peacekeeping

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purposes. (For example, as an initial step, the SDF supplied bulldozers to Haiti in 2012.) Kitazawa remained in his post through the Kan administration and then stepped down when Kan left office. Ironically, Kan’s successor, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, who was known as a conservative proponent of a strong defense policy, repeatedly dismissed defense ministers, casting further doubt on the DPJ’s governance capability. His first appointee to the post was Yasuo Ichikawa, whose interests lay in areas such as agriculture. Ichikawa was a self-proclaimed “novice,” and he proceeded to make repeated verbal gaffes. He was replaced by Naoki Tanaka, who could also hardly be called an expert in defense policy, and whose lamentable performance when responding to questions in the Diet did little to help the administration’s declining support rate. There had been a substantial turnover of defense ministers under LDP administrations as well, and many of the appointees were said to have lacked sufficient knowledge when they took their posts. But the DPJ already had an image as being weak on defense policy, and in the context of Japan’s shift toward a two-party system and the increasingly confrontational tone of questioning in the Diet, the appointment of successive politicians who were incapable of handling the Diet hearings was ill advised. For that reason, as his third defense minister, Noda selected Satoshi Morimoto, an expert who had also been advising LDP politicians for many years and who was expected to provide a sense of stability in Diet hearings. But Morimoto was given an exceedingly short amount of time, and one could say that time was already up in terms of achieving anything substantial in US-Japan relations. The Noda administration managed to conclude a well-received joint statement for a US-Japan summit held in April 2012, but given the lack of stability within the Japanese government at that point, it did not have any energy to spare on trying to organize negotiations on taking the US-Japan alliance to the next stage.

Progress on Asian Diplomacy Despite repeated mistakes in his selection of defense ministers, Noda’s reputation was not that bad, at least initially after taking over the premiership in September 2011. He certainly was not someone who stood out at first, but given that control of the Diet was divided at the time, his natural speaking ability and his commitment to take a low-key approach

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to politics—memorably likening himself to the humble bottom-dwelling fish called dojo, or loach—succeeded in winning him broader support. Even after his appointment as prime minister, his clarification that he would follow Japan’s long-running diplomatic strategy of considering US-Japan relations as a core priority, combined with the fact that his father had been a uniformed SDF officer and that Noda himself was a graduate of the esteemed Matsushita Institute of Government and Management with conservative views on foreign policy, seemed to successfully dispel the reputation that the DPJ had developed for being weak in foreign affairs and security. This can be seen, for example, by the high praise Noda earned for his address at the October 2011 Air Review of the Japan Air Self-Defense Force. He also began efforts to simultaneously reform the tax and social security systems and to start discussions on Japan’s participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiations. As a result, he started to be perceived favorably by the overseas media in the United States and elsewhere. Immediately before his April 2012 trip to the United States, the Washington Post described Noda as trying to tackle a number of difficult issues and praised him as being “the most sensible” of Japan’s recent spate of short-lived prime ministers.38 Noda’s downfall, however, was his response to the second Senkaku Islands crisis. During this time, the foreign ministry and defense ministry tried their best to keep Japan’s foreign policy on track. There was a strong bureaucracy-led element to these efforts, but there were also cabinet ministers at the time who espoused constructive, new policies. Koichiro Gemba, who served as foreign minister under Noda, was one of them. He spoke consistently and repeatedly in his speeches about “creating open and multilayered networks” and “rulemaking in accordance with international law,” and advocated the creation of a new framework for China-Japan-US cooperation.39 At the 2011 East Asia Summit, Japan succeeded in inserting a proposal for an expanded ASEAN Maritime Forum into the final chairman’s statement, and it was enacted the following year. Also during this period, progress was made on security cooperation with Australia, India, Russia, the Philippines, and others, while the government also began a trial dispatch of SDF troops to countries in Southeast Asia as part of its capacity-building efforts. However, the Noda administration struggled to secure the cooperation of the LDP for ratification of the Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement with Australia, which ended up being shelved for quite some time. The DPJ also was proactive in seeking

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security cooperation with South Korea, particularly in the context of a succession of threats from North Korea in 2010, but even low-key cooperation met with opposition within South Korea and thus no headway could be made. It is not widely recognized, but relations with Taiwan also moved forward under the DPJ government. Japan-Taiwan relations have consisted primarily of practical cooperation at the nongovernmental level, but during this period the governments in Tokyo and Taipei decided to commence direct flights between Haneda Airport and Taipei Songshan Airport. An open skies agreement was eventually reached, as well as accords on investment and patents. The level of governmentto-government contact was also upgraded, as there was an increase in Japanese participation in dialogues and events by director-general level officials. In addition, legal preparations were undertaken in Japan for a planned exhibition of antiquities from the collections of Taiwan’s National Palace Museum. There were a number of factors that helped to make this possible. The advent of the Ma Ying-jeou administration in 2008 and the resultant improvement in cross-straits relations made it easier to make progress in Japan-Taiwan relations. An increase in the number of high-level officials involved in Taiwan’s Japan policy and the efforts of the Japan-ROC Diet Members’ Consultative Council also helped, and the large amount of donations from Taiwanese citizens after the Great East Japan Earthquake further improved the atmosphere in Japan for deeper cooperation with Taiwan.40 Nonetheless, it was especially important that two DPJ chief cabinet secretaries, Sengoku and Edano, had a deep understanding of the Taiwan issue.

Conclusion Despite the successes outlined above, the DPJ’s foreign policy was generally viewed as a failure, underscoring the fact that policymaking in Japan has become considerably more difficult in recent years. Over the past two decades, Japan has had to adapt to an increasingly complex regional environment that has evolved from the binary system of the Cold War, in which Japan’s foreign policy choices were relatively straightforward, to a more ambiguous era characterized by a shifting balance of power, tense relations with neighbors such as Korea, and a sense that Japan’s national security is directly threatened for the first

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time in the postwar era. Meanwhile, changes in the political system, the relationship between politicians and bureaucrats, and public sentiment regarding international affairs have made the policymaking process even more complicated. In light of this, what lessons can be drawn from the DPJ government’s tenure? First, the missteps of the DPJ demonstrated just how important it has become for the prime minister and his cabinet to get the foreign policy process right. The base relocation debacle exemplifies the need to rethink unmerited “politician-led governance” and the ad hoc use of private brain trusts. The problem was that the DPJ’s politician-led government was inevitably seen as lacking professionalism. In order to strike the right balance in relations between legislators and bureaucrats, outside experts should have been brought into the government system in a more structured and transparent manner through official appointments to government agencies. (Such appointments can now be made to the National Security Council and the National Security Secretariat, which were created in 2013 by the Abe administration.) Meanwhile, the role of politicians, who have legitimacy in the sense that they were elected by the people, should have been to overcome the highly compartmentalized structure of Japan’s bureaucracy—which prevents the government’s ministries and agencies from coordinating effectively—and to work to harness those institutions in the service of overarching policy goals. Second, the DPJ’s failures highlight the need for Japan’s leaders to find a way to pursue a consistent and strategic foreign policy while managing to maintain public support. Top leaders, even if they have a strong political base, are apt to be sensitive to their day-to-day popularity ratings because they believe that signs of declining public support may trigger internal challenges to their authority from within their party. Unfortunately, the majority of the public favors taking a tough stance toward other countries over the more nuanced, skillful management of bilateral relations, and this populism tends to force leaders to strengthen their defense policy and pursue economic nationalism. However, falling into the trap of populism leads to diplomacy that reflects society’s sense of being trapped, and in many cases that does not serve the national interest. At the same time, though, to be successful, an administration must come to grips with the need to maintain a reputation for competency in foreign policy and security policy. If perceptions take hold that the ruling party lacks “governance capability” in terms of foreign affairs

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and security, that image tends to become amplified over time, and since foreign policy successes rarely draw as much attention as failures, it is not easily overcome. Third, and related to this, one of the greatest lessons from the turnover in power from the LDP to the DPJ is that leaders should not be fixated on “reformism.” Of course, there are risks involved if one follows the policies of the previous administration. But even if the previous administration has had its share of failures, it will inevitably have posted some successes as well. If a new administration tries to completely overhaul foreign and defense policies, it runs the risk of abandoning policies that are in the public interest, in essence forcing the two-party system to move away from its essential function. In other words, politics should serve as the force that guarantees an appropriate mixture of both innovation and continuity in government. A fourth lesson is that, in order to pursue sound foreign and defense policy while maintaining the requisite political support needed to be effective, it is first necessary for the ruling party to display some degree of consensus, sharing common foreign policy goals, regardless of the short-term popularity of a particular administration. Unfortunately, the DPJ was unable to muster even the slightest degree of consensus. One step that can help parties come to consensus is to better nurture foreign policy expertise through the party structure. During the DPJ administration, we saw politicians who had experience in cabinet posts in the foreign and defense ministries continue to serve later as medi­ators in relations with the bureaucrats. Now that they are back in the opposition, it is also important that the politicians who have had experience in those posts form the core of the party’s Policy Research Committee and seek common foreign policy goals as a party. Of course, it is important for leaders to be disciplined in their approaches, too. For example, in terms of the major themes of foreign policy—US-Japan relations, China-Japan relations, diplomacy toward Asia, and so on—an administration needs to be consistent in its public statements, ensuring that these are clear and in keeping with the national interest. One final lesson from the DPJ tenure is that, in light of the fundamental shifts in the strategic environment being caused by the rise of China and other factors, it is important that Japan pursue a bipartisan approach to developing a grand strategy for its diplomacy. Only by doing so can Japan create a foundation for an effective foreign policy that cannot be unduly influenced by a divided Diet or populism. This

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involves encouraging a more active public debate on foreign policy, as well as efforts to build greater consensus among politicians in the leading parties. Of course, there will always be extreme factions in each party, but setting a foreign policy agenda through bipartisan foreign policy study groups including Diet members and specialists, bipartisan foreign travel, and other means will enable party leaders to restrain the more radical positions. In short, to ensure that the Japanese prime minister can provide the leadership needed in foreign affairs, one of the most critically important tasks facing Japan today is to build up the intellectual foundations for a more strategic, bipartisan foreign policy.

Notes 1. A number of Japanese prime ministers, most notably Koizumi, had spoken about the desirability of creating a community in East Asia, so the terminology was not new. However, while Hatoyama never clearly articulated what he had in mind, his proposal was substantially different from early manifestations in that it seemed to exclude the United States. 2. Yoshiaki Kobayashi, Seiken kotai [Political power shift] (Tokyo: Chuo Koron Sha, 2012), 5–8. 3. Oriza (Oryza) Hirata and Koji Matsui, Sori no genko [The prime minister’s manuscript] (Tokyo: Iwanami, 2011). 4. Nikkei Shimbun, July 20, 2009. 5. Katsuyuki Yakushiji, Shogen: Minshuto seiken [Testimony: Inner politics of the Democratic Party] (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2012). Mainichi Shimbun, Ryukyu no seijoki [Stars and stripes in the Ryukyus] (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2010), 62–64. This paper refers to the e-book version of Shogen: Minshuto seiken, which due to technical problems does not have any page numbers. On the DPJ foreign policy approach, see Daniel Sneider, “The New Asianism: Japanese Foreign Policy under the Democratic Party of Japan,” in Japan Under the DPJ: The Politics of Transition and Governance, ed. Kenji E. Kushida and Phillip Y. Lipscy (Stanford: Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, 2013), 369–402. 6. Yukio Hatoyama, “Futenma mondai: Subete no hihan ni kotaeyo” [The Futenma issue: Responding to all of the criticisms], Bungei Shunju 2013-nen no ronten 100 [Bungei Shunju opinion 2013] (Tokyo: Bungei Shunju, 2013), 56–60. 7. Mainichi Shimbun, Ryukyu no seijoki, 54–55, 129. 8. Ibid., 70–75. 9. Ibid., 104–11. Okinawa Prefecture officials had asked at one point that the runway be shifted offshore, so planners felt that this change could contribute to the settelement of the dispute. 10. Hatoyama Administation Offcial Mail Magazine, vol. 5 (November 7, 2009), http:// www.mmz.kantei.go.jp/jp/mmagazine/backnumber/2009/1107ub/index.html.

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11. Yakushiji, Shogen: Minshuto seiken. See also Nikkei Shimbun, November 15, 2009. 12. Yakushiji, Shogen: Minshuto seiken. 13. Mainichi Shimbun, Ryukyu no seijoki, 150–51. 14. Nikkei Shimbun, December 29, 2011. 15. See also Satoshi Morimoto, Futenma no nazo [The mysterious twists in the US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma relocation plan] (Tokyo, Kairyusha, 2010), 438– 83. During this period, a series of self-designated messengers visited Washington, where they aroused suspicion and frustration among US policymakers. 16. NHK Special Task Force, Kichi wa naze Okinawa ni shuchu shite iru no ka [Why are there so many bases in Okinawa?] (Tokyo: NHK, 2011). 17. Michael Green points out that the East Asian Community proposal was the “first shock” from the Hatoyama administration and it was regarded as counterbalancing American influence in Asia. Nikkei Shimbun, July 20, 2010. 18. Yukio Hatoyama, “My Political Philosophy,” Voice, September 2009. See also, Ryo Sahashi, “Hatoyama’s New Path and Washington’s Anxiety,” East Asia Forum, September 6, 2009. 19. During the campaign, Hatoyama stated that if necessary, he would ensure that Japan keep some distance from the United States in terms of security policy. Asahi Shimbun, August 29, 2009. 20. Nikkei Shimbun, October 8, 2010. Okada served as foreign minister for about a year, during which time he also made efforts to reveal secret deals between Japan and the United States on nuclear weapons and Okinawa-related issues from the 1950s through the 1970s, which caused even more tensions with Washington. 21. Address by Yukio Hatoyama, Prime Minister of Japan, “Japan’s New Commitment to Asia—Toward the Realization of an East Asian Community,” Singapore, November 15, 2009. 22. Yukio Hatoyama, “Toward East Asian Community,” Kokusai Mondai [Inter­ national Affairs], no. 591 (2010): 52–56 (in Japanese). 23. Yukio Hatoyama, Prime Minister of Japan (speech given on the occasion of the 16th International Conference on the Future of Asia, hosted by the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Tokyo, May 20, 2010), http://japan.kantei.go.jp/hatoyama/ statement/201005/20speech_e.html. 24. Cabinet Secretariat of Japan, “Policies of ‘East Asian Community,’” June 1, 2010 (in Japanese), http://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/tyoukanpress/201006/__icsFiles/ afieldfile/2010/06/01/koso_east_asia.pdf. 25. Tsuyoshi Sunohara, Anto: Senkaku kokuyu-ka [Secret feud: Nationalization of the Senkakus] (Tokyo: Shincho-sha, 2013), 9–14. 26. Ibid., 25–34. The eventual decision to release the captain evoked a strong backlash within Japan, which led to the resignation of Sengoku. 27. Yuji Miyamoto, “Japan-China Strategically Mutual Beneficial Relationship and Ways Forward” (keynote speech given at a joint symposium between the Association of Japan-China Relations and the Chinese Association of ChinaJapan Relations History, September 5, 2012), http://www.mmjp.or.jp/nichukankei/kokusai/2012.9.15tyunitisympomiyamotokouen.html. 28. Governor Ishihara outlined his plans in a speech at the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC on April 16, 2012, and soon thereafter private citizens around Japan began donating large sums to underwrite the purchase.

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29. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak landed on the disputed island of Takeshima/Dokdo on August 2012, and presumably that accelerated Noda’s efforts to avoid domestic criticism on territory issues. However, the primary factor leading to his decision was undoubtedly the need to deal with the Ishihara plan, as Noda told Maehara about the risk that Ishihara’s purchase of the Senkaku Islands posed right after he had met with the governor. See Sunohara, Anto, 141–59. 30. Ibid., 201–8. 31. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, “Joint Statement between the Government of Japan and the Government of the People’s Republic of China on Comprehensive Promotion of a Mutually Beneficial Relationship Based on Common Strategic Interests,” http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/china/joint0805.html. 32. Yakushiji, Shogen: Minshuto seiken. 33. Ibid. 34. Also of note were several items in a table included in the defense guidelines, such as a proposal to increase the number of submarines to 22. This showed the sense of Japanese concern over maritime security in light of China’s rise. 35. Yakushiji, Shogen: Minshuto seiken. 36. Ibid. 37. The ban on the export of weapons was lifted altogether in April 2014. 38. Fred Hiatt, “Can Yoshihiko Noda Set Japan Back on Course?,” Washington Post, April 19, 2012. 39. Koichiro Gemba, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Japan, “Building Order and Making Rules in the Asia-Pacific Age” (speech given at the 9th CSIS/Nikkei Symposium, Tokyo, October 26, 2012); Yakushiji, Shogen: Minshuto seiken. 40. Ryo Sahashi, “Japan-Taiwan Relations since 2008: An Evolving, Practical, NonStrategic Partnership,” in Political Changes in Taiwan under Ma Ying-jeou: Partisan Conflict, Policy Choices, External Constraints and Security Challenges, ed. Jean-Pierre Cabestan and Jacques deLisle (London: Routledge, 2014), 232–46.

7

Political Leadership in Japan and Japanese Foreign Policy: Lessons from the DPJ Governments Satoru MORI

T

he question of what it takes to exercise political leadership in Japan is gaining more relevance than ever in the area of Japanese foreign policy. Japan’s external environment is rapidly shifting as on the one hand China is engaged in a heavy arms buildup and North Korea is developing nuclear weapons, while on the other hand East Asian states are expanding economic interdependence and a web of security cooperation networks. It is imperative that Japan adapt to this changing security and economic landscape in order to maximize its opportunities for economic growth and minimize its security risks. There is no doubt that foreign policy will need to be formulated, decided, and implemented effectively and without delay. Nevertheless, domestic political conditions can work against swift policymaking and decision making. As public support for political parties tends to fluctuate more dramatically now compared with the era when the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) overwhelmingly held control of the government during the latter half of the 20th century, the political consequences of the conduct of foreign policy appear to have increased in recent years. Japan’s system of parliamentary democracy requires the prime minister to maintain a sufficient level of confidence Prof. Satoru Mori is a professor of international politics at Hosei University.

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within the ruling party in the Diet in order to stay in office. If a motion of no confidence is passed in the House of Representatives, the prime minister must resign from office. This institutional feature of Japan’s system of parliamentary democracy can complicate prompt and effective policymaking. How, then, can Japan’s leaders overcome those institutional constraints to ensure that the government is able to respond appropriately to the rapidly evolving global challenges? This chapter examines the two sources of political capital the prime minister can obtain to bolster his ability to implement policies, then briefly assesses how the lack of political leadership during the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) governments affected the conduct of foreign and security policy, and finally concludes with recommendations on ways to improve the prime minister’s political leadership.

The Prime Minister and the Ruling Party How is the prime minister’s leadership bounded by the parliamentary democracy system? The fact that the prime minister must maintain a sufficient level of confidence among members of the ruling party complicates his policymaking and decision making in at least three ways. First, there are instances in which the prime minister will have to balance “policy soundness” with “political soundness” in order to avoid a substantial loss of confidence from the ruling party. The prime minister will face relatively less political difficulty when a particular policy is “sound” both from professional and political perspectives. However, in certain instances, what is considered sound from a professional policy perspective could be damaging from a political perspective. If a professionally “sound” policy has negative political consequences by alienating certain constituencies and voters, then the prime minister must make a difficult decision. He will have to decide whether to (a) sacrifice the policy’s “soundness” by modifying the policy, (b) maintain the policy’s “soundness” and compensate for the consequent political damage by providing side payments or compensation to those who are adversely affected by or opposed to the policy, or (c) postpone the policy initiative all together until a later date. It would appear that option (b) would be the most rational one to choose, but the feasibility of this option depends largely on the amount of political capital that the prime minister has at his disposal. In other words, a weak prime minister who

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lacks sufficient political capital will have to choose between options (a) and (c), meaning that professionally “sound” policy will either be compromised or be shelved. Second, in order to maintain the confidence of the ruling party, prime ministers will be induced to pursue policy agendas that are likely to be salient during an election. Prime ministers will also be motivated to aim for short-term gains rather than long-term gains when elections are being held frequently. Under these circumstances, a limited amount of political capital will force a prime minister and his cabinet to prioritize their political agenda, which could result in a competition between domestic and foreign policy initiatives that require expending large amounts of political capital. It is often the case that accomplishments and initiatives relating to domestic socioeconomic issues draw more public attention and support than foreign policy or security-related policy issues during an election. This means that prime ministers will generally prioritize and expend more political capital on domestic issues, and that major foreign policy initiatives that require substantial political capital consequently will be given less attention or will only be undertaken when there is a high probability of delivering success and political support for the prime minister. Conversely, if the prime minister is able to mobilize a large amount of political capital, he will be more capable of pursuing a comparatively larger number of policy initiatives, including those related to foreign and security affairs. Third, a coalition government will be especially susceptible to political indecision due to the divergent positions held by the coalition members on foreign and security policy issues. Party coalitions are rarely formed on the basis of foreign policy platforms; rather, they are more often formed on the basis of major domestic issues. Under these circumstances, the foreign policy platforms of political parties that form a coalition government may diverge significantly. Consequently, a compromise to coordinate their positions is likely to dilute the positions of all parties. This will hinder the prime minister’s ability to take any decisive foreign policy action in a particular direction for fear of dissolving his coalition government. Nevertheless, if the prime minister has a large amount of political capital at his disposal, he will be in a better position to bargain with the other coalition parties and conclude an agreement that is more favorable to his own party’s platform. The three inhibitive factors mentioned above result from the fact that the prime minister must always maintain a sufficient level of confidence within the ruling party. These institutional pressures are permanent

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features of a parliamentary democracy. If the prime minister fails to secure a sufficient level of confidence within his party, then that will adversely affect his ability to implement policies and policy change, which in turn will cause the general public to lose faith in his ability to govern and resolve the outstanding items on the national reform agenda. Falling support under these circumstances will make his resignation more likely. Therefore, it is vitally important to understand that the prime minister’s political leadership or his ability to overcome these barriers and maintain the ruling party’s confidence depends essentially on the amount of political capital that he is able to procure and the way in which he utilizes it. A prime minister with strong institutional authority combined with strong personal competence will have the ability to obtain enough political capital to overcome resistance from within the ruling party and the Diet so as to establish the political legitimacy of his agenda, and also to formulate feasible and sound policy initiatives informed by professional advice in order to ensure the policy rationality and feasibility of his initiatives. The experiences of the three governments under the DPJ rule seem to suggest that even when prime ministers have institutional authority they sometimes lack personal competence and therefore experience difficulty in exercising political leadership.

Political Leadership of the Prime Minister Since 2000, eight prime ministers have assumed office in Japan: Yoshiro Mori, Junichiro Koizumi, Shinzo Abe (twice), Yasuo Fukuda, Taro Aso, Yukio Hatoyama, Naoto Kan, and Yoshihiko Noda. It is well known that with the exception of Junichiro Koizumi, most recent prime ministers have remained in office for only a relatively short period of time (see table 1). Table 1. Days in office of recent prime ministers (2000–present) Prime minister

Yoshiro Mori Junichiro Koizumi Shinzo Abe (1st term) Yasuo Fukuda Taro Aso Yukio Hatoyama Naoto Kan Yoshihiko Noda Shinzo Abe (2nd term)

Term

Days in office

4/5/2000–4/26/2001 4/26/2001–9/26/2006 9/26/2006–9/26/2007 9/26/2007–9/24/2008 9/24/2008–9/16/2009 9/16/2009–6/8/2010 6/8/2010–9/2/2011 9/2/2011–12/26/2012 12/26/2012–present

387 1980 366 365 358 266 452 482 —

Source: Prime Minister’s Office, http://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/rekidai/ichiran.html.

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As emphasized at the outset, the nature of parliamentary democracy requires the prime minister to continuously maintain the confidence of the ruling party—a prerequisite for any prime minister who seeks to exercise political leadership by leading and effecting change in existing policies and institutions. Under these circumstances, a prime minister who can exercise political leadership in Japan is one who is able to lead the ruling party on the basis of his policy initiatives and also keep dissatisfaction and resistance within the ruling party at a sufficiently low level. A prime minister with strong political leadership will thus be able to deliver results by implementing policy and policy changes and also to defend existing policies that are challenged by his opponents, but only if he is able to overcome resistance effectively. Failure to lead and manage the ruling party—i.e., losing influence within the ruling party—will adversely affect his ability to implement policies and policy change, which in turn will cause the general public to lose faith in his ability to govern and to resolve outstanding items on the national reform agenda, and will eventually lead to his resignation. Scandals of various sorts could also decrease the level of confidence that the ruling party and the general public have in him. The grand task of leading and managing the ruling party while pursuing sound policy has become more difficult in the contemporary world, where globalization progresses every day and the socioeconomic fabrics of individual nations have become inextricably interwoven. Global financial shocks have a profound impact on the national economy, and political leaders around the world need to make difficult choices about “adequate policy packages” to adjust to a shifting global and domestic environment. This task has been further complicated by an increasing number of voters who do not identify themselves with any particular political party, thus placing public support for any government or prime minister in a state of high flux. This means that prime ministers who are also party leaders cannot simply rely on loyal party supporters or interest groups to win an election or maintain approval ratings. Leaders must be able to formulate sound policy in order to adjust to the ever-changing socioeconomic and politico-military landscape, and they are often compelled to engage in structural reforms and to launch new policy initiatives that require the reallocation of national resources, which will inevitably face resistance and backlash. In short, leaders must have the ability to formulate sound policy initiatives and the political clout to push them through the political decision-making process.

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The sheer difficulty of pursuing this task was perhaps the reason that prime ministers after Koizumi were unable to remain in office for a long enough period of time to advance major policy initiatives. For any prime minister to exercise political leadership, he must generally have at least two abilities. First, he must be able to obtain the necessary political capital to overcome resistance from within the ruling party and the Diet so as to establish the political legitimacy of his agenda. This means that the prime minister must have the power to command the decision-making process. Second, the prime minister must be able to formulate feasible and sound policy initiatives that are informed by professional advice in order to secure policy rationality and feasibility for his initiatives. In other words, the prime minister must be competent to judge sound policies. While recent experience and existing scholarship have pointed out that empowering the prime minister with the institutional authority to command the decision-making process is important, what is equally important is the simple fact that the prime minister must be competent enough to formulate sound policy initiatives and advance them in a politically astute manner. Thus, Japan’s ability to have a leader who can exert strong political leadership will depend substantially on whether or not the Japanese political system is so designed as to nurture and produce statesmen who possess these qualities.

Command Power—Obtaining Political Legitimacy A prime minister must have sufficient political capital to forge enough support to legitimize his policy initiatives and overcome resistance. How can a Japanese prime minister gain the political capital needed to effectively command the decision-making process through a combination of persuasion, co-option, and pressure? The Japanese prime minister has at his disposal two sources, one institutional and one variable, that can help him increase his political capital.1

Institutional Sources of Political Capital The institutional source of the prime minister’s command power refers to the prime minister’s institutional authority over the ruling party and

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the bureaucracy. Two institutional reforms implemented in Japan during the 1990s have relatively increased the prime minister’s institutional authority over the ruling party and the bureaucracy: (1) the reform of the electoral system that changed the multi-seat constituency system into a single-seat constituency system, and (2) the reinforcement of the offices that support the cabinet. First of all, the introduction of the single-seat constituency system has empowered the prime minister. The single-seat constituency system has increased the prime minister’s authority as the leader of his party because he has been given more discretionary power to decide who will get the party’s nomination during an election. In addition, the prime minister, as party leader, also has the authority to assign government posts to members of the ruling party. Second, the establishment of the Cabinet Secretariat and the Cabinet Office has empowered the prime minister to initiate the drafting of bills by the Cabinet Secretariat, and to operate much more through the chief cabinet secretary and cabinet ministers of state for specially designated affairs to command the policymaking process, utilizing professional bureaucrats from the various ministries in the Cabinet Secretariat and the Cabinet Office. One recent study shows that members of the ruling party and bureaucrats who are outside of the Cabinet Secretariat and the Cabinet Office have less access to the prime minister than before these reforms were implemented. Indeed, the reforms have brought about what has been termed the “Westminsterization” of Japanese parliamentary democracy.2 These reforms have effectively reduced the influence of other actors3 over the decision-making and the policymaking processes and conversely have increased the prime minister’s institutional authority. In effect, the two institutional reforms have made it easier for the prime minister to exert more influence over members of the ruling party and bureaucrats than before. These institutional powers have provided the prime minister with political capital that he did not have prior to the reforms, and has enabled him to direct rather than simply follow the ruling party and the bureaucracy.

Variable Sources of Political Capital The variable source of the prime minister’s command power refers to general public support. Public opinion appears to play a bigger

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role than it did 30 or 40 years ago because low public support for the prime minister is likely to affect the fate of the ruling party in the subsequent general elections. The fact that national elections are no longer determined by strong interest groups and large numbers of loyal party supporters seems to have made this aspect of Japanese politics more salient. The prime minister may increase public support for both him and his government by adopting a popular line of policy or by creating a favorable image among the general public. The prime minister’s ability to mobilize public support through the use of mass media affects his relationship with the ruling party. If the prime minister is highly adept at rallying strong public support behind his policy initiatives, he will have relatively less difficulty dealing with his opponents in the ruling party and the Diet. Nevertheless, public support for any particular government is generally in a state of high flux, which means that bad policy judgment and management can cause even high levels of public support to recede rapidly, and can result in a large swing of votes during an election. The high fluidity of public support results from the increasing number of independent voters or those who fall in the middle of the political spectrum. One recent study points out that the increasing number of independent voters has been caused by two factors. First, the combination of a proportional representation system and a single-seat constituency system seems to have compelled Japanese voters not to consistently attach loyalty to a particular party. Since party preferences among the Japanese voters are relatively diverse, parties with only limited support tend to be represented more than if there were a purely single-seat constituency system. Second, both the DPJ and the LDP have tended to nominate candidates who are tailor-made to win support in their respective districts, and as a result, it has become more difficult for the voters to see a distinction between the candidates from the two major parties.4 These two factors combine to create a situation in which the voter is less loyal to a particular party and is more prone to changing the party that he or she supports. Under these circumstances, the prime minister must be able to convince not only the loyal supporters of his party, but also independent voters that his policies are of benefit to them all. This means that the prime minister’s ability to use the mass media to boost his public approval level and to justify his decisions plays a significant role. Those

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who are highly adept at using the mass media will have an easier time increasing public support or minimizing damage to their public images. If the prime minister is able to maintain a high level of public support, he will have a better chance of suppressing any opposition to his policies and pushing them through the decision-making process. It should be noted that if the level of public support for the government or the ruling party decreases significantly, the prime minister’s institutional authority over the ruling party will also likely diminish. This is due to the fact that when the prime minister is leading the party in a top-down manner under the single-seat constituency system, he is likely marginalizing his opponents in the party. When public support for the government or the ruling party recedes, then the prime minister’s opponents will calculate that the dissolution of the lower house is unlikely. They will also anticipate that the prime minister could lose the next election, and thereby become convinced that it is in their interest to openly challenge the prime minister as well as the party’s executives. One Japanese political scientist has termed this phenomenon “the reverse function of centralization.”5 In short, a prime minister’s institutional authority is affected by the level of public support he receives, which in turn depends greatly on his personal competence.

Naoto Kan, Yoshihiko Noda, and the Case of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Institutional empowerment of the prime minister occurred in the 1990s, so if this were the primary source of political capital, prime ministers after Koizumi should have been able to command the decision-making process just as Koizumi did. However, they were unable to remain in office as long as Koizumi and were unable to push through new policy initiatives. Why? A brief review of how the issue of Japan’s participation in the so-called Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations was handled by Prime Ministers Kan and Noda will demonstrate that their inability to increase public support and suppress opposition from within the ruling party prevented them from pushing through a decision to participate in those negotiations. Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who held office from June 2010 through September 2011, and his successor Yoshihiko Noda, who served until December 2012, both wanted to make progress on the issue of Japanese participation in the TPP. This international trade initiative was a sound

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policy choice for Japan, but neither Kan nor Noda could gain enough political capital to overcome their opponents. They seem to have had a realistic political calculus because they refrained from prematurely committing to the negotiations. Nevertheless, the level of public support for the Kan and Noda governments was not sufficiently high to suppress opposition to participation in the TPP talks within the DPJ. Prime Minister Kan had to manage the issue of TPP participation during a period when public support for his government was declining as a result of an incident involving the ramming of a Japanese patrol boat by a Chinese trawler near the Senkaku Islands. His handling of the incident caused public anxiety over the prime minister’s ability to manage crises and security issues.6 After this incident, a Yomiuri opinion poll that was conducted on October 3–5 showed that 84 percent of the respondents said that they now felt insecure about the way the Kan government was managing its foreign and security policies.7 Russian president Medvedev’s visit to the Northern Territories on November 1, 2010, further reinforced the image that Japan was being slighted by its neighbors. It was against this backdrop that Kan had to manage the issue of TPP. As public support for his government waned, TPP opponents within the DPJ began to openly protest the country’s participation in the negotiations. Consequently, on November 9, in order to preserve the integrity of the party, Kan announced his decision to forego participating in the negotiations. When Kan resigned from office on September 2, 2011, the torch was passed to Prime Minister Noda. During a bilateral summit meeting on September 21, Noda was urged by President Obama to consider joining the TPP negotiations. The DPJ had established an Economic Partnership Project Team to discuss TPP, but at its meeting on October 14, the team failed to produce a consensus recommendation because opposing voices were too loud.8 Having faced this deadlock within the ruling party, Noda decided to increase his political capital by directly addressing the public to shore up public support for his TPP initiative. Noda appeared on national television and explained to the public the necessity and the merits of participating in the TPP negotiations. This compelled the DPJ’s project team to draft a consensus document, but the team refused to entrust the prime minister with the authority to make the decision. Nevertheless, on November 11, Noda announced that he was now going to begin preliminary “consultations” with other negotiating governments on the

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assumption that the agricultural sector would be provided with a special budgetary allocation. It appeared as if Noda was going to gradually overcome his opponents, but during a consultation with US authorities in Honolulu on November 12, they came to realize that the two governments had different understandings on the scope of goods that would be subject to tariff reductions.9 In April 2012, Prime Minister Noda decided to postpone the decision to participate in the actual negotiation because the DPJ’s project team was completely divided again. It was reported in the news that Noda wanted to avoid splitting his party because if he did, it would hinder his initiative to raise the consumption tax—a major domestic policy objective that he was pursuing.10 Ideally, strong institutional authority and strong public support will enable a politically astute prime minister to either engage in favorable bargaining with his opponents in the ruling party and the Diet or, in extreme cases, directly confront them through a snap general election. Prevailing over resistance and delivering results can provide the prime minister with more political capital, which will generate greater opportunities for launching policies and policy changes that would otherwise be difficult to achieve. However, both Kan and Noda had great difficulty rallying strong public support behind the TPP initiative. Even though they both believed that participating in TPP negotiations was the sound policy choice, they could not garner the high level of public support necessary to overcome the opposition. These cases demonstrate that the potential of a prime minister to pursue a particular policy initiative can be undermined by the mismanagement of another issue. The fluidity and sensitivity of public opinion seems to be a major factor that persistently constrains the prime minister’s ability to generate political capital and thereby push for controversial policy initiatives.

Competent Judgment—Ensuring the Rationality and Feasibility of Policies It is important to keep in mind that the increase in the prime minister’s institutional authority also means that if a prime minister who lacks competent judgment assumes power, national governance can easily go astray. So how can a Japanese prime minister formulate and adopt feasible and sound policy initiatives? The prime minister and his cabinet must make decisions about what policies and policy changes are needed to maximize the opportunities of national growth and minimize national

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insecurity in an ever-changing socioeconomic and politico-military landscape. To achieve these ends, it is essential that the prime minister possess at least two kinds of competencies: a realistic political calculus and a willingness to absorb professional advice from the bureaucracy.

A Realistic Political Calculus The prime minister must be sufficiently competent to constantly judge whether he has the right balance between the amount of political capital that he has at his disposal and the policy initiatives that he intends to launch. In this regard, it is equally important that the prime minister has the capacity to correctly sequence his initiatives—controversial policy initiatives must be shelved until he has attained, or has the prospect of attaining, sufficient political capital to counter or overcome resistance. All prime ministers have a range of items on their political agenda, but unless they are able to discern what can be achieved in the shortterm and what needs to be achieved in the mid- to long-term, they will face opposition from multiple fronts and become cornered in a position where they will be accused of lacking leadership. Thus, prime ministers who pursue overly ambitious policy initiatives that require more political capital than is available will fail to produce results and will subsequently lose the confidence of the ruling party and the public. A typical case is one in which a leader promises a large-scale reform or announces multiple initiatives that require substantial political capital but cannot secure enough support in the Diet. For foreign policy goals that require domestic ratification by the relevant stakeholders, the prime minister must have enough political capital and a workable roadmap to establish an equilibrium that optimizes domestic and foreign demands.

A Willingness to Absorb Professional Advice The competence of the prime minister to absorb and apply professional policy advice from the bureaucracy in order to discern the feasibility of an initiative within a given timeframe is important—especially in the realm of foreign and security policy—for several reasons. First, the relevant ministries possess highly specialized knowledge and skills to collect, process, analyze, and assess information regarding

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foreign governments and to engage in sophisticated consultations and negotiations with them. Thus, in order for prime ministers to obtain results on the diplomatic and security fronts, they must establish a solid and effective policymaking process that combines intelligence and professional policy advice. This does not mean that prime ministers should blindly accept bureaucratic advice. Instead, one of the principal political functions of the prime minister and his executive aides is to reconcile policy with politics when these two have conflicting consequences. Therefore, it is essential that the prime minister be able to digest professional policy advice from the bureaucracy. Second, it also means that when a change of government occurs, the first step before making any announcement about overturning existing foreign and security policies must be to review those policies with input from the bureaucracy. In this regard, it is vital that manifestos or party platforms for an election be adjusted as necessary after a policy-review period following an election because voters do not necessarily endorse every single item in a manifesto or a party platform. Once in office, the prime minister must be ready to defend and promote even unpopular policies for the sake of pursuing the good of the whole. In order for the prime minister to fully appreciate what is required in terms of policy and what is politically feasible, he must be able to understand the intricacies of foreign and security policy. This underlines the need for prime ministers to have sufficient experience in dealing with foreign and security policy before assuming the position of premier.

The Case of Yukio Hatoyama and the Futenma Base Relocation Issue Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s handling of the Futenma base relocation issue demonstrates that a prime minister who lacks a realistic political calculus or a willingness to absorb professional advice will cause enormous confusion both domestically and internationally. Hatoyama publicly committed to searching for an alternative relocation site for US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma outside of Okinawa, but he had no understanding of how much political capital would be required to achieve that goal. He seems to have ordered Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada and Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa to conduct a review of the existing 2006 US-Japan Roadmap for Realignment

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Implementation, which outlined the relocation of the Futenma airbase to Henoko. However, he announced his intention to find an alternative relocation site outside of Okinawa before any review was complete.11 This demonstrates his complete failure to appreciate how much political capital would be required to establish a new Marine base on Japanese soil. In order to proceed with a base relocation in Japan, a political equilibrium must be established whereby the interests of the US government, the Japanese government, and the local authorities and communities are optimized. It does not take an experienced statesman to realize that it would require meticulous intergovernmental consultation as well as substantial domestic politicking to generate this kind of a delicate equilibrium. If Hatoyama had a realistic understanding of the political calculus, he would have exercised prudence before making any public statement about seeking an alternative relocation site outside of Okinawa. In addition, Hatoyama lacked a willingness to absorb professional advice, which ultimately proved fatal for his government. One of the major items on the DPJ reform agenda was to have elected members of the Diet take the policymaking initiative instead of bureaucrats, which became commonly known as seiji shudo (essentially “politician-led policymaking”). This idea presupposed that all existing policies were the product of an LDP that blindly endorsed the recommendations of bureaucrats who put their organizational interests before the interests of the general public. The hope was that cabinet ministers and their deputies would change existing policies to reflect the general public’s interest. As a result, some cabinet ministers challenged, and at times rejected, recommendations made by professional bureaucrats. However, in the case of the Futenma base issue, this was not necessarily the case. Foreign Minister Okada and Defense Minister Kitazawa came to the conclusion by November or December 2009 that Henoko—the existing option—was the only viable option after having reviewed the existing agreement between the Japanese and the American governments. Okada seems to have tried to convince Hatoyama that Henoko was the only possible option.12 Kitazawa, however, thought that the Hatoyama government would eventually come around to the same conclusion, so he did not actively discourage the prime minister from seeking an alternative option.13 Despite the unenthusiastic ministers, Hatoyama decided to go it alone. He ignored Okada’s recommendation and sought an alternative site without heeding the advice of his own foreign and defense ministers, the Japanese bureaucracy, or the US government.

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Hatoyama’s decision to ignore professional policy advice seems also to have been partially motivated by a political consideration, namely his desire to hold the coalition government together. He decided to postpone a decision on relocation in December 2009 because the Social Democratic Party (SDP) was opposed to the existing relocation plan. Hatoyama calculated that he would need the SDP’s support to pass the next year’s budget.14 Faced with the resistance shown by Okada and Kitazawa to his plan, Hatoyama subsequently relied on Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano to examine potential alternatives to Henoko, including the island of Tokunoshima, but to no avail.15 Astonishingly, Hatoyama later admitted that he had not fully understood or appreciated the concept of deterrence when seeking an alternative to Henoko. The above is an extremely abbreviated version of complex events that took place within the Hatoyama government, but this case demonstrates that a prime minister is in fact able to introduce his own policy initiatives without regard to political calculus and professional advice from the bureaucracy if he so wishes. One could argue that Hatoyama was exercising political leadership in the sense that he pursued what he wanted to pursue. However, political leadership is not about the leader simply doing what he wants to do. There are many definitions, but the term implies a high quality of judgment that ultimately delivers a positive outcome in either the short or the long term. In that sense, Hatoyama’s decision and actions regarding the Futenma base relocation issue were not an example of genuine political leadership because they resulted in a major fiasco, the consequences of which reverberate even today. This raises a more fundamental question: Why was it possible for such an individual to become prime minister in the first place? The concluding section of this chapter will address that issue and offer recommendations on how to improve the quality of leadership in Japan.

Conclusion As seen in the cases outlined in the preceding sections, the problems that inhibited political leadership during the DPJ governments appear to be predominantly personal in the case of Hatoyama’s handling of the Futenma base relocation issue, and more structural in the case of Kan and Noda’s handling of the TPP issue. However, even in the cases of Kan and Noda, there were personal elements that affected their exercise of political leadership. In both cases, cabinet approval ratings were low,

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making it a challenge to shore up public support for Japan’s participation in the TPP talks and also to placate TPP opponents within the DPJ. In the end, Kan could not come up with concrete measures to placate the opposition, nor did he have the wherewithal to boost public support for this initiative, so he had to postpone any action on the issue. In contrast, Noda exercised limited political leadership. He was discerning enough to make a public speech on national television to increase public support for his initiative, and attempted to placate TPP opponents by announcing action plans for the agricultural and fishery sectors. These measures had the effect of compelling the DPJ’s Economic Partnership Project Team to draft a consensus document and allowed the prime minister to consult with the TPP negotiating parties. However, in the end, public support was not strong enough and the compensatory measures were not substantial enough to allow Noda to command the DPJ to enter into the actual TPP negotiations. These cases reveal that even though the institutional authority of the prime minister is important, the personal competence of the prime minister ultimately matters a great deal. In order for the prime minister to exercise political leadership in the conduct of foreign policy, he must have the personal competence to apply both a realistic political calculus and professional policy advice to his decisions, as well as having institutional authority buttressed by public support. The prime minister’s ability to utilize the mass media to rally public support behind his policy initiatives is also a matter of personal competence—those with charismatic qualities will have an easier time gaining popularity than those who lack a favorable image. Prime ministers who have these traits are more likely to be able to exercise political leadership and to succeed in advancing foreign policy goals that require political heavy lifting at home. It is quite obvious that it would be difficult to elect an individual who possesses all of these qualities as prime minister. Nevertheless, the following measures should be taken to increase the possibility of nurturing competent, high-caliber statesmen. • Hone a realistic sense of political calculus among politicians that enables them to discern the best tactics to effectively gain and expend political capital. Political parties should adopt a systematic training process in order to nurture and prepare statesmen who possess the necessary traits to exercise competent judgment about political capital and the soundness of policy initiatives. The so-called habatsu (factions) have

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traditionally functioned to allow senior Diet members to train more junior Diet members. Although the habatsu system seems to have acquired a negative image and in recent years has faded in significance due to the changes in the electoral system, some of its positive functions should be preserved to provide a platform for training Diet members with strong potential. • Establish a systematic process for the training of Diet staff by the political parties. The success or failure of a prime minister also depends on the competence of his political advisor(s), and thus the experience and knowledge of retired or senior political advisors should be accumulated and institutionalized by the party secretariat so that the younger generation of political advisors can absorb that knowledge. • Enhance understanding of the intricacies of foreign and security policy in order to be able to appreciate and absorb professional policy advice. In order to nurture strong candidates for the premiership, Diet members should be exposed to foreign affairs early in their careers. It is always important for a Diet member to have strong convictions about his or her direction and future vision for the nation, but convictions alone based on limited information and experience cannot be the basis for sound decision making. In order to prepare Diet members to make sound policy judgments informed by professional policy advice, they should be given more opportunities to be exposed to foreign and security policy debates. More specifically, political parties should establish a custom of assigning Diet members to legislative committees relating to foreign and security policy if they are elected to office several times and achieve a certain degree of seniority. In addition, party and Diet regulations concerning foreign travel should be relaxed so as to allow Diet members to visit other countries and exchange views with their foreign counterparts. Furthermore, think tanks should be provided with public funds to convene closed international conferences and workshops that would allow Diet members to engage in frank, informal, and substantive discussions with policy experts and academics. • Develop the skills and the system to effectively utilize the media to shore up public support for policies. A popular prime minister potentially has stronger command power over the ruling party and the bureaucracy. Thus, the prime minister’s ability to utilize the media to bolster public

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support for his cabinet in general and for his individual policy initiatives is critical to the exercise of political leadership in an age when perceptions about the prime minister’s credibility held by the public and Diet members are heavily influenced by media reports. Political parties should invest substantially in training Diet members to become effective communicators through the mass media, especially television. In addition, prime ministers should hire public relations specialists to assist them in devising and implementing a systematic media strategy.

Institutional reforms are important for the purpose of reinforcing the prime minister’s political leadership in the sense that they remove political veto points for any leader. In other words, institutional reforms like reducing the power of the Upper House or even abolishing it altogether would have the effect of reducing the amount of political capital that a prime minister would have to gain and expend upon exercising political leadership. This means that it would make it easier for a less masterful politician to manage the Japanese political system if his institutional authority were to be relatively strengthened through the removal of veto points where stakeholders of various policies are able to reject proposals for change. However, as argued at the outset, institutional reforms that remove barriers to political leadership do not necessarily generate political leadership per se. The prime minister himself must ultimately exercise political leadership. The elements of political leadership differ under different political systems, but in the case of Japan, having command power over the ruling party and the bureaucracy as well as the competence to identify and implement sound policies are of crucial importance. Reviving political leadership in Japan will require more than simply waiting for an individual with heroic qualities to rise to power; political parties should actively take measures so that promising mid-level politicians can develop and acquire the necessary qualities to eventually lead the nation.

notes 1. The prime minister can increase his political capital by exercising his authority to decide on the distribution of benefits like campaign funds. However, since the extent to which this factor plays a role in the making of specific foreign policy is elusive, the current chapter will acknowledge this source

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but will limit its focus to more tangible sources of institutional authority and public support. 2. Satoshi Machidori, Shusho seiji no seido bunseki [The Japanese premiership: An institutional analysis of the power relations], (Tokyo: Chikura Shobo, 2012), 97–126. 3. This includes members of the ruling party in general who do not have formal positions within the circle of the cabinet, Cabinet Secretariat, and individual ministries. This was not a tendency unique to DPJ governments. Ibid., 113–26; Satoshi Machidori, “Minshuto seikenka ni okeru Kantei-shudo” [Prime Minister Office’s leadership under the DPJ governments], in Iio Jun, ed., Seiken kotai to seito seiji [Government change and party politics], (Tokyo: Chuokouron Shinsha, 2013), 76–102. 4. Taku Sugawara, “Minshuto seiken to yoron: Naikaku shijiritsu rankouge no haikei kozo wo saguru” [The DPJ governments and public opinion: Exploring the underlying structure beneath the fluctuating approval ratings of the cabinets], in Takashi Mikuriya, ed., Seiji-shudo no kyokun [Lessons from politician-led policymaking], (Tokyo: Keiso Shobo, 2013), 12–13. 5. Machidori, Shusho seiji no seido bunseki, 178–9. 6. A Chinese fishing boat rammed into a Japan Coast Guard ship on September 7, 2010. The Japanese government made the decision to detain the skipper and sent him to the Ishigaki Branch Office of the Naha District Prosecutor’s Office on September 9. The Ishigaki Summary Court decided to remand the skipper on the 10th and again on the 19th. Then the Chinese authorities launched retaliatory measures on the 19th and the 20th in order to put pressure on the Japanese government. Eventually, on September 24, the Head Prosecutors’ Council made the decision to release the skipper. 7. Yomiuri Shimbun, “Naikaku, seito shiji to kanren mondai” [Cabinet, party support, and related issues], October 4, 2010. A total of 72 percent of the respondents believed that it was inappropriate to have released the Chinese skipper. 8. Yoshiaki Kobayashi, Seiken kotai [Change in government] (Tokyo: Chuokoron shinsha, 2012), 137–8. 9. Ibid., 138. 10. “TPP: The Postponed Announcement to Participate in the Negotiations,” Mainichi, June 22, 2012, http://mainichi.jp/feature/news/20120605org00m010050000c.html. 11. Okada clearly stated in an interview that both he and Defense Minister Kitazawa told Hatoyama to distance himself from the Futenma base relocation while they handled it, but Hatoyama ignored their advice. Katsuyuki Yakushiji, Shogen: Minshuto seiken [Testimony: Inner politics of the Democratic Party] (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2012), 35–36. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid., 87, 93, 101, and 103. Kitazawa was convinced that Henoko was the only option at an early stage. 14. Ibid., 38, 92–93. 15. Ibid., 96–104.

conclusion

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Japan’s Way Forward: The Prospects for Political Leadership and the International Implications

James Gannon and R yo Sahashi

T

he success that Shinzo Abe had after his 2012 election in breaking Japan’s pattern of one-year premierships offered hope to some that a new era of effective political leadership was at hand for the country. However, it appears that any respite from Japan’s “leadership deficit” will be temporary. As the authors of this volume argue, there are bound to be exceptions to the parade of short-lived prime ministers who struggle to advance their agendas—strong premiers such as Yasuhiro Nakasone, Junichiro Koizumi, and Abe are likely to emerge from time to time—but without further changes to the political system, powerful institutional factors will continue to make it difficult for prime ministers to exercise political leadership in a sustained and effective manner. Of course, Japan has never been renowned for having charismatic, strong political leaders. However, the challenges associated with political leadership are particularly worrying now because over the past quarter century, societal shifts, political reform, and voter expectations have elevated the profile of Japan’s prime minister, making the individual holding that post and the performance of that person increasingly consequential. Furthermore, in recent decades, the rise of summit diplomacy James Gannon is the executive director of the Japan Center for International Exchange (JCIE/USA), and Ryo Sahashi is an associate professor at Kanagawa University.

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and advances in communications technology have expanded the diplomatic role of heads of government. As a result, a return to the pattern of weak, short-lived prime ministers seems destined to complicate efforts to cope with the daunting economic and demographic challenges facing the country, and it would have important ramifications for Japan’s external relations and for how foreign policymakers around the world should think about relations with Japan.

Why Does Weak Political Leadership Continue to Be a Problem? As the analysis in the preceding chapters makes clear, the electoral reforms of the 1990s offer an object lesson in the risks of unintended consequences. Reform proponents argued that the introduction of single-seat constituencies in the Lower House would increase party competition, make politics more issue oriented, and reduce political corruption. This, in turn, should have paved the way for more effective political leadership. But things did not turn out as planned. Of course, the overhaul of the electoral system has accomplished some of what it was meant to do. It increased party competition and helped to erode the utility of party factions. That, together with campaign finance reform, has played a part in reducing the sway that money politics has over the Japanese system. Also, as Harukata Takenaka explains, it has helped shift Japan’s parliament away from the type of consensus model that is best suited to a multiparty system and closer to a Westminster model in which the prime minister and his cabinet have greater clout in the legislative process. Meanwhile, the administrative reforms passed a few years later, in 1996, did indeed help to strengthen the hand of the prime minister to some degree. Yet, when taken together, it is clear that these reforms have not yet sufficed to create to a system that consistently nurtures effective political leadership. This is because the prime minister still faces numerous veto points that can hobble his agenda. Plus, a new political dynamic has emerged that makes it even harder for the prime minister to sustain his political capital. Most notably, the shift toward a system in which power is more likely to alternate between parties has increased the likelihood of twisted Diets, where the different chambers of parliament are controlled by rival parties. Importantly, the Lower House only prevails over the Upper House

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in a handful of situations; otherwise, the Upper House is surprisingly powerful, at least compared with the UK House of Lords or upper houses in other bicameral parliamentary systems. When combined with the increased likelihood that the Upper House may fall into the hands of the opposition—thanks to electoral reform as well as shifts in voting behavior—the power that the Upper House has to derail the prime minister’s agenda has made it even more likely that the prime minister’s legislative initiatives will run aground. In fact, both the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) quickly learned during their time in the opposition how to exploit the twisted Diet’s propensity for legislative gridlock in order to block the ruling party’s agenda and thus set themselves up for victory in the next election. The cabinet also continues to have remarkably little direct control over the legislative process. As Takenaka explains, the administrative reforms of the 1990s gave the prime minister and his Cabinet Secretariat greater authority to initiate policy. However, unlike in the British system, the legislative agenda and parliamentary order are all determined by Diet committees rather than the cabinet, leaving the prime minister with few formal powers to advance his legislative priorities. This becomes a problem when the prime minister and other leaders in the ruling party, many of whom are rivals, have diverging opinions. These challenges are intrinsically linked to the difficulties prime ministers have had in managing politics in their own parties. In their chapters, Takao Ochi and Yuka Uchida Ando describe how intraparty rivalries have stymied decision making in both the LDP and the DPJ. With the decline of money politics and an absence of strong ideological leanings or societal cleavages to motivate party members, there is little to inspire party loyalty among politicians other than their party’s capacity to help members be reelected and get appointed to influential posts. As campaigns have become increasingly nationalized, the influence of party leaders seems to depend more and more on their individual popularity and the degree to which this can rub off on their fellow candidates at election time. It is no coincidence that since the electoral reforms went into effect, Japan has seen one wave of “children” after another—the “Koizumi children” who rode Junichiro Koizumi’s coattails into the Diet, the “Ozawa children” who powered the DPJ’s ascent, and the “Abe children” who heralded the return to power of the LDP in 2012. These waves of new faces elected thanks to their association with other popular politicians have been one sign of how much personal popularity has become a driving force in Japanese politics.

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But popularity is fickle and, as Ochi notes, public support for politicians has become much more volatile. Public polling now fluctuates more wildly month to month than before, and cabinet support ratings now tend to start out higher and decline more precipitously after a new prime minister’s first few months in office. This has contributed to the emergence of a sort of “polling politics,” in which excessive significance is placed on the frequent polls measuring cabinet support. Party members are reluctant to show any opposition to a party leader when the leader is riding high in these polls, but are quick to turn against that person once the support ratings drop below a certain level. Paradoxically, the growing prominence of the prime minister has helped create an expectations trap that can undermine his power. Yuichi Hosoya explains how there has been a “presidentialization” of the premiership, at least to the extent that the Japanese public now sees the prime minister as the face of the ruling party and has higher expectations that he be a strong leader. As with any job, though, heads of government need time to learn how to effectively wield power and, especially in the Japanese system, they gain credibility by staying in power long enough that those who might otherwise undermine their authority realize they cannot outlast them. However, a vicious cycle has emerged in which public expectations are quickly dashed and new prime ministers find their support dropping before they can start to make good on their promises. As polling politics take hold, waning support makes it progressively harder for premiers to advance their agenda, fueling further declines in public support. When he returned to power in 2012, Prime Minister Abe was acutely aware of the importance of properly managing the new polling politics and, in the first two years of his administration, he and Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga did a masterful job of handling public sentiment and keeping the ruling party unified. But Abe was helped considerably by the convergence of a number of factors: utter frustration among voters with the opposition DPJ; the fortuitous timing of an Upper House election just seven months after he took office, while he was still riding high; and a lack of credible opponents. Despite Abe’s success, the limited formal powers designated to the prime minister’s office means that the bar still remains high for Japanese prime ministers. They operate with little margin for error, needing to combine exceptional political skills with extraordinarily good timing and good fortune in order to be able to stay in office long enough to develop into effective leaders.

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What Does This Mean for Japanese Foreign Policy? The probability that strong political leadership will remain elusive in Japan has important implications not only for the Japanese public but also for the rest of the world. From 2006 to 2012, when premiers rotated through the office on an annual basis, Japan’s allies and partners often became frustrated with the futility of working with leaders who seemed unlikely to stay in power long enough to deliver on their promises or to credibly make bold foreign policy commitments. These frustrations can be expected to return when the pattern of prime ministerial weakness reasserts itself. In particular, there are five trends in Japanese foreign policy behavior that are likely to become more pronounced if Japan continues to struggle with weak political leadership. Continuity in foreign policy strategy: It may seem counterintuitive, but a return to the pattern of frequently rotating prime ministers makes it more likely that there will be a great deal of continuity in Japan’s foreign policy on top-tier issues, and that the overall contours of Japan’s grand strategy, at least to the degree that it can be said to have one, will remain the same. Foreign policy change in postwar Japan has almost always been incremental, and major foreign policy initiatives have typically only occurred under strong prime ministers. It took Eisaku Sato, Japan’s longest-serving postwar prime minister, to secretly negotiate the reversion of Okinawa; Nakasone was responsible for some of the most consequential efforts to strengthen US-Japan security relations; and Koizumi made his surprise visit to North Korea after almost a year and a half in office, while he was still as popular in the polls as any other prime minister in the previous decade. When they are weak and have only been in office for a short time, though, premiers have found it perilous to try to buck precedence in foreign relations. This is even more likely in the current political climate. The foreign policy failures that helped bring down Yukio Hatoyama should only reinforce the reluctance felt by Japanese prime ministers who lack firm support about charting a new diplomatic course. Meanwhile, the fact that Japan will almost certainly continue to be ruled by coalition governments provides further incentives for continuity. The current electoral system and rules governing the legislative process make it important for the party with the majority of seats to align itself with smaller coalition partners, and the need to reach consensus within the ruling coalition

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for major moves makes dramatic foreign policy shifts more unlikely than they might otherwise be. Another important factor reinforcing the tendency toward continuity is the post–Cold War emergence of a rough nonpartisan consensus among Japan’s policy elite about its broad foreign policy strategy. Practically all mainstream figures in the ruling and opposition parties feel, to some degree or another, that maintaining the US-Japan alliance needs to be a top priority for Japan, that it is important to make an effort to balance China’s rise even while ensuring that Sino-Japanese relations do not become too tense, and that Japan needs to strengthen ties with other Asian countries that are concerned about Chinese dominance.1 Leaders may differ in terms of their rhetoric, the degree to which they prioritize these objectives, and the ways in which they pursue them, but when all is said and done, consistency rather than change is bound to be the rule in terms of the overarching direction of Japanese foreign policy. And when change occurs, it is likely to be incremental, driven more by exogenous factors than by a proactive prime minister. More frequent diplomatic crises: While it is hard to envision any radical departures in Japan’s overall foreign policy approaches, a return to the frequent rotation of prime ministers is likely to invite greater volatility in the country’s relations with its neighbors. This is because heads of government who have only been in office for a short period of time tend to lack sufficient experience in crisis management. Plus, they normally have not had the opportunity to build the types of personal relationships with other world leaders that can be leveraged to head off misunderstandings and deescalate crises. There is little outside of actual experience that can fully prepare prime ministers to balance the complex considerations that come into play in international crises, and leaders find it particularly difficult to identify wise counsel and avoid being carried away by the momentum of events when crises flare up early in their terms. American history offers a classic example of the difference that experience on the job can make. Less than three months after taking office, President John F. Kennedy gave the final go-ahead to a CIA plan to support the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, which quickly turned into a fiasco. A year and a half later, though, when he faced the Cuban Missile Crisis, a more seasoned Kennedy had the confidence and wisdom to critically evaluate the recommendations he was getting from his advisors, resist pressure from those urging rash measures, and deftly manage the situation. Few Japanese prime ministers

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have the luxury of lasting in office that long, though—only 2 of the last 10 managed to stay in power as long as Kennedy had by the time of the missile crisis. Accordingly, it is difficult for them to develop the type of judgement that is essential in such crises. The 2010 and 2012 flare-ups with China over the Senkaku Islands give a taste of the types of crises that are likely to occur more frequently if the pattern of weak leadership returns. In addition to inexperience and a lack of personal channels between Japanese and Chinese leaders, a sense of domestic vulnerability also limited the Japanese prime ministers’ room to maneuver in responding to each of these crises. For instance, if he was stronger politically, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda might have been able to find ways to outflank or quietly pressure Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara in spring 2012 to head off his inflammatory bid to purchase two of the Senkaku Islands, or at least he could have leaned more heavily on the islands’ owner not to go ahead with the sale. However, by that time the Noda cabinet’s support ratings were hovering close to 20 percent, the point of no return in Japanese politics. Widely perceived as a lame duck, there was little political capital that Noda could muster to keep matters from coming to a head. Meanwhile, Chinese leaders had little incentive to compromise with a prime minister who everybody knew would soon be out of office. More appeals to populism: Third, with the weakening of party institu-

tions, the rise of polling politics, and changes in the media, more opportunities have emerged for ambitious politicians to strengthen their hand by appealing directly to public sentiment. The way has already been paved by successful prime ministers such as Koizumi, who made a habit of forgoing normal party mechanisms and instead orchestrating political drama to rally the public behind his agenda, and Abe, who initially rose to prominence by championing the issue of Japanese citizens abducted by North Korea. Now, a return to political instability and weak political leadership at the top is likely to make it even more tempting for political leaders to resort to demagoguery, and the absence of strong political leaders who might otherwise pressure them to tone down their rhetoric gives them license to proceed. This dynamic is particularly worrying in terms of Japan’s relations with China, as well as with Korea. Given the extent to which public opinion in Japan has turned against both of those countries, more populist—and occasionally nationalistic—stances on regional relations can provide an appealing vehicle for politicians eager to advance their

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careers. Of course, there are limits to how much influence populist appeals can truly wield given the nature of Japan’s democracy. The Japanese citizenry is skeptical of rapid change and deeply committed to a peaceful foreign policy approach, populist politicians have faced substantial difficulty in consolidating their power due to the same proliferation of veto points that make strong political leadership difficult, and the permanent bureaucracy continues to wield considerable influence. So it is unlikely that emotional appeals will lead to major policy changes. Accordingly, insinuations that Japan is in danger of veering into militarism reflect either alarmism or a cynical effort to score political points while ignoring the true nature of Japan’s policy processes. Instead, the real risk of more nationalistic rhetoric is that it makes it harder for Japanese leaders to pursue cooperative relations with neighboring countries. Even when they clearly do not reflect any official position, inflammatory statements by Japanese public figures easily strike a nerve in China and Korea, provoking rounds of back-and-forth recriminations that further damage public sentiment about bilateral relations. Strong prime ministers are better positioned to work with overseas leaders to keep these types of irritants from souring bilateral relations, softening the impact of populism and keeping things from spiraling out of hand. Furthermore, in an era of weak political leadership, populist appeals are more likely to shape Japan’s foreign policy debate, pushing it in directions that can limit the freedom of movement of the government and making it risky for leaders to be seen as taking conciliatory approaches. A larger role for bureaucrats: A fourth important factor to consider is the fact that when Japan goes through spells of weak political leadership, career bureaucrats tend to assert more influence over foreign affairs. Skilled ministry officials know how to move the levers of policy when political leaders are distracted, and weak leaders have few options but to rely on them. While they are unlikely ever to return to the level of prominence they held through the 1980s, bureaucrats still wield considerable influence when there is a vacuum of leadership. This has a number of implications. First, it reinforces the sense of continuity in foreign policy. While politicians rotate in and out of the government, officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who are on the front lines of foreign policy stay in their jobs for decades. As a result, the foreign ministry tends to hew to the policy lines that Japan

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has pursued in the past, bringing a sense of stability and moderation to foreign policy discussions. Second, a larger role for bureaucrats in foreign affairs also makes Japan likely to be less generous. Given its control over the government’s purse strings, the Ministry of Finance traditionally plays a dominant role in interministerial relations and it is hard for other ministries to push back against it without the counterweight that strong political leadership might otherwise provide. In recent years, the finance ministry’s top priority has been reducing the country’s large national debt, so without a strong leader to advocate for bold international contributions and more development assistance, it seems probable that finance ministry officials will manage to gradually shrink Japan’s official development assistance budget no matter how hard the foreign ministry argues against this. Similarly, it is difficult to envision major additional increases for Japan’s defense budget despite a bipartisan consensus that Japan should be contributing more proactively in the context of the US-Japan alliance. Gridlock on sticky issues: Finally, a return to the pattern of short-lived,

weak prime ministers also means that Japan will probably find it even harder to deliver on international commitments that require leaders to expend significant domestic political capital. The relocation of US Marine Corps Air Station in Okinawa has famously been bogged down for two decades as tensions between the local Okinawan community and the national government have grown. The issues that have made US basing in Okinawa so contentious are liable to continue to fester with a return to weak leadership. Similarly, Japan is likely to struggle to make good on international agreements in other areas that threaten powerful domestic interests, such as on trade or the environment. Unless Japan’s partners can find ways to downplay these persistent problems or reframe them in a more favorable context, they are likely to feed a sense of stagnation in bilateral relations. When all of these considerations are taken into account, it appears likely that a reemergence of the pattern of short-lived, weak prime ministers will leave Japan muddling through in its foreign policy, maintaining a consistent policy line but finding itself challenged by frequent crises that it remains ill-equipped to handle. Regional relations seem bound to remain a flashpoint and occasional outbursts of populist or nationalistic rhetoric by enterprising politicians may nudge the policy debate

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in Japan rightward, although concerns overseas that Japan is on the verge of becoming more aggressive in regional affairs are overblown. Instead, the real risks associated with a persistence of weak leadership are threefold. First, Japan’s international presence is in danger of waning even more. When Japan’s prime ministers struggle to stay in office for just a year or two, they are unlikely to wield much clout in international diplomacy. And, with the country’s economic clout on the wane, Japan’s international contributions are also likely to be less generous. Second, the cumulative impact of a series of regional crises and populist appeals at home may gradually shift the parameters of Japan’s foreign policy debate, making it even harder for prime ministers already grappling with fragile political bases to take conciliatory approaches in dealing with neighboring countries, even when it is in Japan’s long-term interest. Third, the true damage of sustained political instability at the top may lie in the opportunities Japan is liable to miss to shape the regional order in Asia at a critical juncture. Without more proactive and strategic approaches, it will become difficult for Japan to partner with the United States and other likeminded countries in proactively managing the regional shift in power that is accompanying China’s rise.

The Implications for Japan’s Partners The likelihood of a return to the pattern of short-lived prime ministers changes the calculations that foreign policy thinkers in other countries have to make about dealings with Japan. There are a number of points they would do well to keep in mind. First of all, it is important to operate with the awareness that Japan is likely to continue struggling with its domestic politics and that this constrains its prime minister more than is customary elsewhere. This does not mean that Japanese leaders should be excused when Japan falls short on its commitments or fails to contribute to the international community in a manner befitting its stature and wealth. However, it has implications for the tone and style that should be taken in dealing with Japan. Overseas leaders need to remain cognizant of the importance of giving weak prime ministers sufficient space to figure out face-saving ways to move forward, allowing Japan’s leaders to appease their domestic political constituencies while ultimately producing the desired results. In particular, foreign governments should be careful to avoid being portrayed as forcing Japan to make painful domestic sacrifices. There

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is a strong tendency in Japan for leaders to justify measures that hurt domestic constituencies by arguing they are necessary due to foreign pressure (gaiatsu), even when they are steps that the Japanese leaders wish to take for their country’s benefit. In some cases, it is difficult to avoid becoming a domestic political scapegoat, but it becomes even more important for Japan’s partners to tread carefully in eras of weak political leadership, when opposition leaders are tempted to target foreign relations to score political points and when the Japanese prime minister cannot persuasively argue that difficult steps are necessary for Japan’s own self-interest. At the same time, foreign leaders have to be careful not to “give up” on Japan, even when the prime minister cannot readily make the types of bold and straightforward commitments often expected of world leaders. Japan’s leaders and the general public are cognizant of their country’s decline in relative power, which seems even more precipitous when juxtaposed with China’s rise, and this leaves them especially sensitive to indications that China or other countries are getting greater attention at Japan’s expense. This sentiment is what made Abe’s declaration during his 2013 visit to the United States that “Japan is back” resonate so strongly with some in Japan, even if little had changed substantively in bilateral relations. Moreover, it is important to remember that even if Japan’s prime minister does not tend to wield authority like the American president or UK premier in making international agreements, the fact remains that relations with Japan are increasingly multifaceted and many things can be advanced through steady engagement at lower levels of governmentto-government relations. For instance, considerable progress has been made in strengthening US-Japan security cooperation over the past decade, even as a series of prime ministers rotated through office. While big wins may be rare in dealings with Japan, incremental gains are often possible, and they are more sustainable than high-profile commitments that are incompatible with political realities. This makes it essential for Japan and its partners to consistently press forward on multiple levels, not just through high-level summitry, and to get as much accomplished as possible without requiring top-down political intervention. The likelihood that Japan will continue to face spells of weak political leadership—coupled with the fact that electoral reforms make the rotation of power more likely—also means that it is essential for other countries to engage in a nonpartisan manner with leaders across the political spectrum in Japan, not just with the ruling party. This is important

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in order to sustain a nonpartisan consensus on bilateral relations as well as to be prepared for future changes of government. In 2009, when the DPJ came to power, few American leaders knew what to make of Hatoyama or most other top DPJ officials, and the impression quickly took hold that the DPJ was less friendly to the United States than its predecessors and, conversely, that the United States preferred the LDP over the DPJ. These impressions were as unhelpful as they were inaccurate, and they stemmed in part from a lack of familiarity and personal connections between American leaders and the new leaders who rode into power with the DPJ. Under the old 1955 system, it could suffice for overseas leaders to just worry about nurturing ties with the ruling LDP, since the prospects of the opposition Socialist Party coming to power were negligible. But this experience should serve as a reminder of how important it is now to be engaged in an evenhanded manner with all of the major political parties in Japan. The probability of sustained political weakness also underscores how important it is for Japan and its partners to continue strengthening people-to-people ties. Even when there is little rapport between political leaders, a web of strong ties spanning different sectors of society serves as a stabilizing force in bilateral relations. This makes it all the more important strategically to nurture international educational exchanges, grassroots ties, and connections among professional associations. Similarly, efforts to encourage deeper nongovernmental cooperation on a range of common challenges—for instance, encouraging research institutions to team up on energy issues, helping humanitarian groups from both countries to work together, and encouraging NGOs from Japan and its partner countries to team up in tackling health threats— can create momentum for bilateral cooperation that can later be ratified by political leaders, even if they were not strong enough or prescient enough to help catalyze this cooperation in the first place. Finally, the challenges that weak prime ministers have tended to face in managing crises make it even more important for Japan’s partners—particularly the United States—to help to put in place mechanisms that can reduce the risk that a crisis will spiral out of control. Particularly when it comes to Sino-Japanese relations, there is a tendency for domestic politics in the two countries to become entangled in destructive feedback loops, and it should thus be a top priority for American leaders and others to encourage Japan and China to implement a package of measures that would help prevent crises by expanding mutual understanding and transparency, as well as to create mechanisms for deescalating crises.

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Japan’s Way Forward As the authors in this volume explain, much can be done in Japan to overcome the institutional imbalances that make it difficult for prime ministers to lead effectively and, by extension, to ameliorate the impact that weak political leadership in Japan has on international relations. There are institutional fixes that can be implemented, changes that can be made to party practices, and steps that leaders can take to help insulate foreign policy management from political instability. Of course, the most straightforward path would be to reform Japan’s governing institutions. Important steps have already been taken to strengthen the hand of the prime minister, most significantly through the establishment of the Cabinet Office, the strengthening of the Cabinet Secretariat, and in 2013, the creation of a National Security Council. But to date, no changes have dealt directly with the imbalances that electoral reform has exacerbated, making it difficult for the prime minister and his cabinet to advance their legislative agenda. Takenaka and others outline a number of steps that could help reduce the power of the Upper House to block legislation. These range from tweaks to the current system—for example, revising the “60 day rule,”2 making it easier for the prime minister to make appointments, and giving the cabinet greater power to control the legislative process—all the way to such wholesale changes as abolishing the Upper House and moving to a unicameral system. However, these would all require a constitutional amendment, so they are unlikely to be implemented in the current political climate, even if they are worthy of serious consideration. As Ochi notes, other institutional fixes worth exploring involve ways to minimize the likelihood of disparities in the results in the Lower House and Upper House elections in order to reduce the chances of a twisted Diet. One approach could be to hold elections for the Lower House and Upper House at the same time. However, while party leaders may occasionally decide to do this, it is hard to envision any way to introduce an official mandate for unified elections short of changing the entire electoral system. However, the only other step that would conceivably reduce disparities in the voting for the Upper and Lower Houses in a consistent manner would be a reversal of the electoral reforms that created single-seat constituencies in the Lower House in the first place.3 Of course, history shows that institutional reforms often lead to unintended consequences, so careful consideration has to be given to any major changes. As Satoru Mori cautions, any measures to further

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strengthen the powers of the prime minister will inevitably leave more to his discretion, so it is important that those changes be coupled with steps to ensure he can draw on astute counsel and has the personal capacity to exercise sound judgment. Also, any changes should be implemented in a way that leaves viable checks and balances on the exercise of executive power, just not so many that it prevents the government from operating in a strategic and effective manner, as is all too often the case nowadays. In addition to reforms of Japan’s governing institutions, there are also a number of measures that the political parties can take to help their leaders be more effective. For example, revising party rules so that a sitting prime minister does not have to run for reelection as party head in the middle of his premiership is a commonsense measure that would eliminate one stumbling block that often helps force prime ministers from office. There are also steps that can be taken to better coordinate the policymaking process between the ruling party and the cabinet, including renewed efforts to make party leaders without government posts feel that their views are being taken into consideration. In addition, one particularly important task that parties need to consider is how to train and nurture up-and-coming political leaders so that they can gain governing experience and have a better grasp of policy issues, including foreign policy. Party factions used to play this role, but as their power has waned, there is a growing need for parties themselves to pick up the slack. Also, the example of recent prime ministers shows that their governing approaches can make a big difference in terms of their longevity. One major lesson that can be drawn from the DPJ’s tenure in power is the need for the prime minister and the cabinet to find a middle ground between allowing the bureaucracy an unfettered hand to shape policy and tightly controlling its every move. Especially in its first year in government, the DPJ overcompensated for years of hands-off treatment of bureaucrats by the LDP, choosing instead to try to micromanage ministry officials. They paid a heavy price when bureaucrats proved unable, and in some cases unwilling, to do what was needed to carry through on the new policies, demonstrating just how critical it is for the cabinet to find ways to delegate the implementation of policies to expert bureaucrats while remaining engaged enough to skillfully steer the government as a whole. The issue of how to manage relations with the media has also become more important for political leaders. As Ando notes, one innovation that would help is the creation of a government press secretary post,

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essentially shifting this function out of the portfolio of the chief cabinet secretary. This would allow the chief cabinet secretary to concentrate more on the critical job of policy coordination. Even if reforms cannot be advanced in other areas, there are steps that can be taken to ensure that foreign policy management will be more consistent and strategic at times when Japan struggles with political leadership. Political leaders need to ensure that the foreign policy process works properly by striking the right balance in drawing on the advice of experts in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs while still steering the overall direction of Japan’s diplomacy. Sustained efforts to strengthen the coordination of foreign policy are also crucial, particularly those that utilize the new National Security Council. It is also important to have more concerted efforts to sustain and strengthen a consensus on foreign and defense policy, both within parties and across party lines—especially on key issues like the US-Japan alliance, relations with China, and Japan’s overall Asia strategy. These could include the creation of more study groups on foreign policy for political leaders from different parties and the encouragement of foreign travel by multiparty delegations. Finally, there is much that can be done to strengthen Japan’s nongovernmental policy community, which has a much weaker institutional base than in most other advanced democracies. Especially in light of the changing relationship with the bureaucracy, the prime minister and other political leaders need to be able to rely on alternative sources of policy advice, but the nongovernmental institutions that have the potential to provide such input remain underfunded and understaffed.

Conclusion Japan is not unique. Most of the world’s major democracies regularly grapple with some form of “leadership deficit” and struggle with political dysfunction. However, Japan’s political institutions continue to leave the country’s leaders in an especially weak position and, without further change, Japan seems bound to periodically slip back into the familiar pattern of short-lived, ineffectual premiers. At home, the persistence of weak leadership is likely to feed further public disenchantment with politics and hamper efforts to implement bold, new policies. The daunting challenges that Japan faces—from economics to demographics—make it crucial for Japan to seriously consider further reforms to empower its leaders.

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On the foreign policy front, a return to the pattern of short-lived leaders would be unfortunate, although not disastrous. A lack of strong political leadership does not mean that Japan cannot move forward gradually in strengthening its alliance cooperation with the United States, it does not mean that relations with China are destined to worsen, and it does not mean that Japan cannot deepen ties with its other Asian neighbors. Japanese foreign policy has been remarkably consistent, and it is buttressed by a general consensus across the political spectrum on the major issues of the day. The Japanese government can muddle through without a strong prime minister. But weak political leadership threatens to inject further instability into regional relations and it erodes Japan’s influence in global affairs. In the end, Japan and its partners risk missing opportunities to contribute to the international community and to shape the regional order in Asia at a pivotal point in history. That is the price that the Japanese public and others around the world are likely to pay without further steps to solve the dilemma of political leadership in Japan.

Endnotes 1. For instance, Sheila Smith points out that although relations with China have become a hot-button issue in Japan, even the most ardent conservatives still stick to the general consensus that, in dealing with China, it is important to maintain the formula of working toward “mutually beneficial relations based on common strategic interests.” Sheila Smith, Intimate Rivals: Japanese Domestic Politics and a Rising China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 254. 2. As Harukata Takenaka explains in Chapter 3, according to the “60 day rule” outlined in Article 59 of the Japanese Constitution, once the House of Representatives has passed a bill and submitted it to the House of Councillors, the latter has 60 days to take action on that bill. If the House of Councillors fails to take final action on the bill within the 60 days, the House of Representatives can take up the bill again and pass it into law with a two-thirds majority vote. In practice, opposition parties with significant representation in the House of Councillors have occasionally been able to use the 60 day rule to run out the time in the legislative session, blocking the ruling party from passing legislation that has overwhelming support. 3. Another step that might help around the margins is continued efforts to reduce the voting disparity in the Upper House that gives excessive influence to rural voters, making it less likely that different results will emerge from Upper House and Lower House elections.

appendix

Prime Ministers of Japan

Name

Dates

Years in office Political affiliation

Hirobumi Ito

1885–1888

2.4

—

Kiyotaka Kuroda

1888–1889

1.5

—

Aritomo Yamagata

1889–1891

1.4

—

Masayoshi Matsukata

1891–1892

1.3

—

Hirobumi Ito

1892–1896

4.1

—

Masayoshi Matsukata

1896–1898

1.3

—

Hirobumi Ito

1898–1898

0.5

—

Shigenobu Okuma

1898–1898

0.4

Constitutional Government Party (Kenseito)

Aritomo Yamagata

1898–1900

1.9

—

Hirobumi Ito

1900–1901

0.6

Society of Political Friends of the Constitution (Rikken Seiyukai)

Taro Katsura

1901–1906

4.6

—

Kinmochi Saionji

1906–1908

2.5

Society of Political Friends of the Constitution

Taro Katsura

1908–1911

3.1

—

Kinmochi Saionji

1911–1912

1.3

Society of Political Friends of the Constitution

Taro Katsura

1912–1913

0.2

Constitutional Society of Comrades (Rikken Doshikai)

Gonbe Yamamoto

1913–1914

1.2

—

Shigenobu Okuma

1914–1916

2.5

Constitutional Society of Comrades

Masatake Terauchi

1916–1918

2.0

—

Takashi Hara

1918–1921

3.1

Society of Political Friends of the Constitution

Korekiyo Takahashi

1921–1922

0.6

Society of Political Friends of the Constitution

Tomosaburo Kato

1922–1923

1.2

—

Gonbe Yamamoto

1923–1924

0.4

—

Keigo Kiyoura

1924–1924

0.4

—

Takaaki Kato

1924–1926

1.6

Constitutional Society (Kenseikai)

Reijiro Wakatsuki

1926–1927

1.2

Constitutional Society

Giichi Tanaka

1927–1929

2.2

Society of Political Friends of the Constitution

Osachi Hamaguchi

1929–1931

1.8

Constitutional Democratic Party (Rikken Minseito)

Reijiro Wakatsuki

1931–1931

0.7

Constitutional Democratic Party

Tsuyoshi Inukai

1931–1932

0.4

Society of Political Friends of the Constitution

Makoto Saito

1932–1934

2.1

National unity cabinet

Keisuke Okada

1934–1936

1.7

National unity cabinet

Koki Hirota

1936–1937

0.9

National unity cabinet

Senjuro Hayashi

1937–1937

0.3

National unity cabinet

199

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Fumimaro Konoe

1937–1939

1.6

National unity cabinet

Kiichiro Hiranuma

1939–1939

0.7

National unity cabinet

Nobuyuki Abe

1939–1940

0.4

National unity cabinet

Mitsumasa Yonai

1940–1940

0.5

National unity cabinet

Fumimaro Konoe

1940–1941

1.2

Imperial Rule Assistance Association (Taisei Yokusankai)

Hideki Tojo

1941–1944

2.8

Imperial Rule Assistance Association

Kuniaki Koiso

1944–1945

0.7

Imperial Rule Assistance Association

Kantaro Suzuki

1945–1945

0.4

Imperial Rule Assistance Association

Naruhiko Higashikuni

1945–1945

0.1

—

Kijuro Shidehara

1945–1946

0.6

Japan Progressive Party (Nihon Shimpoto)

Shigeru Yoshida

1946–1947

1.0

Japan Liberal Party (Nihon Jiyuto)

Tetsu Katayama

1947–1948

0.8

Japan Socialist Party (Nihon Shakaito)

Hitoshi Ashida

1948–1948

0.6

Democratic Party (Minshuto)

Shigeru Yoshida

1948–1954

6.2

Democratic Liberal Party (Minshu Jiyuto)/Liberal Party (Jiyuto)

Ichiro Hatoyama

1954–1956

2.0

Japan Democratic Party (Nihon Minshuto)/Liberal Democratic Party (Jiyu Minshuto)

Tanzan Ishibashi

1956–1957

0.2

Liberal Democratic Party

Nobusuke Kishi

1957–1960

3.4

Liberal Democratic Party

Hayato Ikeda

1960–1964

4.3

Liberal Democratic Party

Eisaku Sato

1964–1972

7.7

Liberal Democratic Party

Kakuei Tanaka

1972–1974

2.4

Liberal Democratic Party

Takeo Miki

1974–1976

2.0

Liberal Democratic Party

Takeo Fukuda

1976–1978

2.0

Liberal Democratic Party

Masayoshi Ohira

1978–1980

1.5

Liberal Democratic Party

Zenko Suzuki

1980–1982

2.4

Liberal Democratic Party

Yasuhiro Nakasone

1982–1987

4.9

Liberal Democratic Party

Noboru Takeshita

1987–1989

1.6

Liberal Democratic Party

Sosuke Uno

1989–1989

0.2

Liberal Democratic Party

Toshiki Kaifu

1989–1991

2.2

Liberal Democratic Party

Kiichi Miyazawa

1991–1993

1.8

Liberal Democratic Party

Morihiro Hosokawa

1993–1994

0.7

Japan New Party (Nihon Shinto)

Tsutomu Hata

1994–1994

0.2

Japan Renewal Party (Shinseito)

Tomiichi Murayama

1994–1996

1.5

Japanese Socialist Party (Nihon Shakaito)

Ryutaro Hashimoto

1996–1998

2.6

Liberal Democratic Party

Keizo Obuchi

1998–2000

1.7

Liberal Democratic Party

Yoshiro Mori

2000–2001

1.1

Liberal Democratic Party

Junichiro Koizumi

2001–2006

5.4

Liberal Democratic Party

Shinzo Abe

2006–2007

1.0

Liberal Democratic Party

Yasuo Fukuda

2007–2008

1.0

Liberal Democratic Party

Taro Aso

2008–2009

1.0

Liberal Democratic Party

Yukio Hatoyama

2009–2010

0.7

Democratic Party of Japan (Minshuto)

Naoto Kan

2010–2011

1.2

Democratic Party of Japan

Yoshihiko Noda

2011–2012

1.3

Democratic Party of Japan

Shinzo Abe

2012–present

—

Liberal Democratic Party

About the Contributors

Yuka Uchida ANDO served as political secretary to Foreign Minister Seiji

Maehara from September 2010 to March 2011, essentially acting as his closest aide on policy affairs. Prior to that she spent a decade working in the secretariat for the Democratic Party of Japan, most recently as the manager of its International Department. She is currently working toward a PhD in international relations at Japan’s National Graduate Institution for Policy Studies. Ando has also been a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies, and a visiting fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington DC. From 2000 to 2002, she served as special assistant for political affairs at the Japanese Embassy in Kuwait. She received her BA from Keio University and an MA from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. She has authored a number of publications and received the Yomiuri Commentary Award for the Next Generation in 1998.

James GANNON is the executive director of JCIE/USA, the American sister organization of the Japan Center for International Exchange, where he oversees a wide range of research, dialogue, and exchange programs that strengthen USJapan relations and encourage deeper international cooperation. Before joining JCIE/USA in 2001, he was a researcher with the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, and from 1992 to 1994 he taught in Ehime Prefecture as part of the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program. Gannon graduated from the University of Notre Dame, conducted graduate research at Ehime University, and has a master’s degree in international affairs from Columbia University. He is co-editor of A Growing Force: Civil Society’s Role in Asian Regional Security (2013) and the author of Strengthening US-Japan NGO Partnerships on Humanitarian Responses—Lessons from 3/11 (2015), as well as numerous other reports and articles on US-Japan relations, the role of transnational civil society, and Asia’s evolving regional order. Yuichi HOSOYA is a professor at Keio University in Tokyo, where he specializes

in international relations. He also served as visiting professor and Japan chair at Sciences Po in Paris (Institut d’Études Politiques) from 2009 to 2010 and as visiting Fulbright fellow at Princeton University from 2008 to 2009. Hosoya is a regular commentator in the Japanese press, and he won the Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities for his book Sengo kokusai chitsujo

201

202

Looking for Leadership

to igirisu gaiko [Postwar international order and British diplomacy] in 2002, the Sakurada Prize for Research on Political Science for Gaiko ni yoru heiwa [Diplomacy and the search for peace] in 2007, and the Yomiuri Yoshino Sakuzo Prize for his book Rinriteki na senso [Ethical wars] in 2010. He received a BA in international politics from Rikkyo University, a Masters in International Studies from the University of Birmingham, and his PhD from Keio University in 2000. Satoru MORI is a professor in the Department of Global Politics, Faculty

of Law, Hosei University. Mori’s fields of interest are US foreign and defense policy and international politics. He is currently involved in policy research projects organized by the Japan Institute of International Affairs, the Institute for International Policy Studies, and the Tokyo Foundation, among others. He has delivered remarks at workshops and events organized by the US Department of State, the US Pacific Command, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Center for a New American Security, the Stimson Center, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Center for the National Interest, and the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation, among others. Mori also leads a team of seven Japanese diplomatic historians working on an academic research project regarding the international history of détente. Mori received his LLB from Kyoto University, and his LLM from Kyoto University as well as Columbia Law School. After serving in the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a career diplomat (1996–2001), he resumed graduate study and received his PhD with honors from the Graduate School for Law and Politics at the University of Tokyo in 2007. He was also a postdoctoral research fellow at the International Center for Comparative Law and Politics at the University of Tokyo, as well as a visiting researcher at George Washington University (2013–2015) and Princeton University (2014–2015). He was the recipient of the Nakasone Yasuhiro Incentive Award in 2015.

Takao OCHI is a third-term Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) member of Japan’s

National Diet, representing Tokyo’s 6th District in the House of Representatives. From September 2014 to October 2015, he was parliamentary vice-minister of Cabinet Office in the Shinzo Abe cabinet. He served one term from 2005 to 2009 before returning to the Diet in 2012. Prior to joining the Abe cabinet, Ochi served on the Committee on Financial Affairs as well as the Committee on Foreign Affairs. Within the LDP, he was chief deputy chairman of the Diet Affairs Committee. Before his election to the Diet, Ochi worked for 13 years at Sumitomo Bank (now Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation) and served as a Diet staffer. He received a BA in economics from Keio University, obtained a diploma from the ESSEC Business School in France, and has a master’s degree in Japanese political and diplomatic history from the University of Tokyo.

About the Contributors

203

Ryo SAHASHI is an associate professor at Kanagawa University and a research fellow at the Japan Center for International Exchange. He specializes in international politics and is currently focusing on regional security architecture in Asia Pacific as well as Japanese security policy. Previously, he served as a postdoctoral fellow at the Australian National University, as well as an assistant professor at the University of Tokyo. He was also visiting associate professor at Stanford University and Shigeru Yoshida Chair at Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México. Sahashi’s recent publications include “Japan-Taiwan Relations since 2008: An Evolving, Practical, Non-Strategic Partnership,” in Political Changes in Taiwan under Ma Ying-jeou (2014), and “The Rise of China and the Transformation of Asia-Pacific Security Architecture,” in Contending Cooperation: Bilateralism, Multilateralism, and Asia-Pacific Security (2013). He is a regular contributor to numerous media outlets. Sahashi received a BA from International Christian University after spending a year at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, as well, and he received his LLM and his PhD from the Graduate Schools for Law and Politics of the University of Tokyo. Harukata TAKENAKA is a professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) in Tokyo, specializing in comparative politics and international political economy with a particular interest in Japan’s political and economic stagnation since the 1990s. He has been affiliated with GRIPS since 1999. Takenaka entered the Ministry of Finance in 1995, and from 1998 to 1999 he served as chief of secretariat for the Headquarters for the Administrative Reform of the Central Government, an agency created inside the Cabinet Secretariat. He received his BA from the Faculty of Law at the University of Tokyo and his MA and PhD in political science from Stanford University. His publications include Failed Democratization in Prewar Japan: Breakdown of a Hybrid Regime (2014) and Sangiin to wa nani ka 1947–2010 [What is the role of the House of Councilors, 1947–2010] (2010).

About the Japan Center for International Exchange (JCIE) Founded in 1970, JCIE is one of the few major independent, nonprofit, and nonpartisan organizations active in the field of international affairs in Japan. Operating in a country where policymaking has traditionally been dominated by the government bureaucracy, JCIE plays an important role in broadening debate on Japan’s international responsibilities by conducting international and cross-sectoral programs of exchange, research, and dialogue. JCIE operates in cooperation with its New York–based counterpart, JCIE/USA, and it sponsors a wide range of projects in collaboration with institutions around the world. These include policy research and dialogue on cutting-edge issues in international relations, leadership exchanges, and efforts to strengthen the contributions of civil society to domestic and international governance. Through these, JCIE aims to create opportunities for informed policy discussions. JCIE receives no government subsidies; rather, funding comes from private foundation grants, corporate and individual contributions, and contracts.

JAPAN CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGE (JCIE/JAPAN) www.jcie.or.jp

JAPAN CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGE (JCIE/USA) www.jcie.org