“A person who longs to leave the place where he lives,” Czech novelist Milan Kundera once wrote, “is an unhappy person.” Judging by the resignation of two prime ministers in the past year, Japanese political leaders have found their historically stable nation, with the world’s second largest economy of $4.7 trillion, in a despondent state. A politically unmanageable condition has dishearteningly thwarted all attempts at internal cooperation. The resignation of Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda on September 1 was preceded by the halt of Japan’s longest post-World War II economic expansion. This development was instigated by debilitating quarrelling between Fukuda’s consistently dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the steadily rising Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ).
Unlike his youthful and nationalistic predecessor Shinzo Abe, who resigned on grounds of “ill health” in 2007, Fukuda directly targeted government entanglements as his primary, if not only, justification for resignation. Lacking sufficient economic reforms, Japan’s GDP has gradually fallen, while inflation has crept onto the laundry list of pressing threats. Astonishingly, even with Fukuda and Abe’s absent-minded and dysfunctional administrations, Japan has yet to be harmed by the credit crunch and housing market crisis plaguing the United States, its economic step-brother. Japan’s economic woes can instead be traced to its large national debt and aging population.
In his sudden and unanticipated announcement of resignation—of which his wife was not even aware—Fukuda averred damage caused by a “political vacuum” in Japanese politics created by the LDP’s dynastic prime ministers and the DPJ majority in the Parliament’s Upper House. Fukuda blamed Parliament for his abysmal approval rating (which sank as low as 20 percent), as the DPJ, led by Ichiro Ozawa, constantly blocked his proposed bills. The rancor between Fukuda and Parliament reached its apogee in April when Parliament issued a nonbinding censure against Fukuda—the first time since WWII Parliament has taken this action against a prime minister. Fukuda’s controversial plan to increase healthcare payments for elderly citizens as well as his botching of over 10 million pension plans legitimized this censure. Wrangling between Fukuda and the Parliament became so severe in 2007 that for three weeks the position of Central Bank Governor was abandoned, spawning fiscal chaos. But it was most likely Abe and Fukuda’s continued support of the wildly unpopular Indian Ocean project to refuel ships bound for Afghanistan that put the final nail in their political coffins.
From the beginning Fukuda was doomed to fail, but his resignation was unforeseen, abruptly following his announcement of a $17 billion economic stimulus package. After keeping an almost identical cabinet to Abe’s—for which he was criticized—Fukuda reshuffled his cabinet only a month ago, garnering additional criticism and unfavorable comparisons to his flippant predecessor. Abe and Fukuda have damaged the LDP’s reputation so greatly that there is even speculation that Junichiro Koizumi, who served as Prime Minister from 2001 to 2006, may come out of retirement to realign Japan’s political factions.
“I’ve decided to quit,” pouted the stone-faced Fukuda in his speech, “it’s time for someone else to take a turn.” By this, Fukuda implicitly means that another member of the LDP will rise to the occasion on the September 22 election, most likely Taro Aso, the LDP’s Secretary General and Japan’s former Foreign Minister. Fukuda won the position of Prime Minister with 330 parliamentary votes to Aso’s 197 in the 2007 election following Abe’s resignation. The trend regarding Japan’s prime ministers closely resembles a relay race, with one member of the LDP passing a baton to another with worsening splits after each lap. The appointment on September 22 will mark the third in a row decided completely by the right-wing LDP—there will not be a popular election until at least September 2009. In the past 50 years, the LDP has ruled Japan for all but eleven months.
Interestingly, Fukuda’s biography is unnervingly similar to Abe’s. Born into a family of politicians (his father Takeo Fukuda also served as prime minister), Fukuda was highly educated and enjoyed a moderately successful career in the private sector working for an oil company, but eventually left to work for his father in government. Never a notably enthusiastic politician, Fukuda turned down an offer to vie for LDP leadership in 2006. During his brief stint in office, Fukuda accomplished little, if anything. He was briefly lauded for hosting a productive G8 summit and had a strong reputation as the longest serving Chief Cabinet Secretary prior to becoming Prime Minister. An enigmatic and solemn individual, he refrained from revealing his resignation until ten minutes before his emergency press conference.
In many ways the LDP is as much a vestige of post-WWII Allied diplomacy as the Marshall Plan. In 1990 it was revealed that beginning in 1955 (when the party was founded) and continuing throughout the ’70s, the US Central Intelligence Agency pumped millions of dollars into the LDP in order to prevent Communist opposition parties from taking hold of the nascent democracy. With time, the LDP will weaken and a more democratic balance of power will take hold, as shown by the success the DPJ has had in recent Parliamentary elections. But right now we are witnessing the most exciting and progressive age of politics in a Japan that has been stagnant throughout the post-War era. That is, of course, aside from Yukio Mishima’s fanatical act of political seppuku.
With its urban culture being devoured by hungry big-name business and its cities expanding unceasingly, Japan is a country in transition. But even in an age of economic development and political turnover, Japan has retained relatively stable levels of growth and its economy has not been hurt as much by the prime minister crisis as may be first assumed. Like West Germany, Japan exhibited the strength of its national willpower by making an almost impossible social, political and economic recovery following WWII with an unrelenting effort to establish a stable middle class.
Despite an initial negative reaction to Fukuda, he should not be burned in effigy in Japan nor lambasted by Western intellectuals: He was submerged in an arduous situation that would have been near-impossible for even the lithest politician to escape. Similarly, the LDP cannot be held completely responsible for its recent failure, because although much of its prowess is gained from underhanded patronage, much of it is attributable to the weakness of opposition parties—especially the DPJ. If the DPJ were more organized and centralized, then Japan could wean itself off of a top-down political system.