http://www.asyura2.com/09/hihyo10/msg/869.html
| Tweet |
The Financial Times
"The shadow shogun is the man for Japan"
By Peter Tasker September 12, 2010
The Democratic Party of Japan is about to make a momentous choice. Its party leadership vote on Tuesday will decide who holds the office of prime minister. The contrast between the two candidates could not be more stark. In one corner stands a man who represents continuity with the failed policies of old. In the other his opponent, who promises to shake up economic and diplomatic strategy and rein in the all-powerful bureaucracy.
The reformer is Ichiro Ozawa. Calling him controversial is putting it mildly. Having left the Liberal Democratic party in the early 1990s and plotted its defeat in last year’s election for the DPJ, he is loathed by former colleagues. The nationalist right rages about his pro-China sympathies. The left of his own party fears and distrusts his Machiavellian skills. The media see his contest with Naoto Kan, current prime minister, as the equivalent of Darth Vader’s face-off with Luke Skywalker.
Yet it is Mr Ozawa, sometimes dubbed the shadow shogun, and not Mr Kan who remains true to the vision of change that swept the DPJ to power last year. The party promised generous child benefits of Y26,000 ($309) per month to tackle the demographic decline. This was also the first attempt since the bubble economy burst in 1990 to help consumption by bolstering incomes directly.
The brunt of the deflationary malaise has been borne by the lower middle classes, particularly younger people. Moves by Junichiro Koizumi, former prime minister, to deregulate the labour market were worthwhile but also put more deflationary pressure on wages. During the past 10 years the number of households earning less than Y3m has grown by 50 per cent. The slow decay of social cohesion was recently highlighted by news of people claiming benefits for pensioners who had been dead for years – including one found mummified in the family home.
The DPJ shift to policies that boosted consumption was the right move, and an electoral asset. Strange, then, that Mr Kan turned back, fighting this summer’s upper house election on an austerity platform. Child allowances were to be capped, consumption taxes doubled and corporate taxes cut instead. Unsurprisingly, Mr Kan’s proposal went down like a cup of cold rice gruel. Mr Ozawa was vocal in his disapproval. But why did Mr Kan reverse? The kindest explanation is naivety: he fell for the “Japan is the next Greece” story. By contrast, Mr Ozawa’s idea of securitising loans and other assets on the government’s bloated balance sheet sent shivers down the spines of bureaucrats, not to mention the bond market.
Mr Ozawa, meanwhile, is neither a nationalist rightwinger nor a pacifist. He favours a pragmatic foreign policy – which means, at the moment, more distance from the US and more proximity to China. He denies the need for American marines in Okinawa but sees the value of hosting the country’s Seventh Fleet. If anyone can resolve these tricky issues, it is Mr Ozawa.
Japanese politics has come to resemble karaoke night, with a succession of forgettable performers each taking a brief turn on stage. Mr Ozawa is different. Though only four years older than Mr Kan, he seems to have been around forever. He was a cabinet minister and held important party posts in his early forties, a feat in a gerontocratic country. He also became an ally of Kakuei Tanaka, the brilliant but corrupt populist who dominated politics in the 1970s and 1980s. It is this association that gave him his organisational prowess but also “something of the night” that makes him controversial.
All right-thinking people in Japan say they are against the “money politics” Mr Ozawa is said to represent. Yet the nation’s politics runs on money: politicians do not amass grand fortunes, but exchanging favours is a practice that runs through society from top to bottom. Some of Japan’s greatest leaders – including Nobel Prize-winner Eisaku Sato – were investigated on multiple occasions. Mr Ozawa, who has been investigated but not charged with anything, is merely the latest in a long and illustrious line.
According to a Japanese proverb, if water is too clean no fish can live in it. If Japan wants to carry on flopping around in clean, empty water, Mr Kan is the man. If it wants to adjust to the realities of the post-crisis world, the choice should be Mr Ozawa, dark side and all.
The writer is a Tokyo-based analyst at Arcus Research
この記事を読んだ人はこんな記事も読んでいます（表示まで20秒程度時間がかかります。）
▲このページのＴＯＰへ ★阿修羅♪ > マスコミ・電通批評10掲示板
スパムメールの中から見つけ出すためにメールのタイトルには必ず「阿修羅さんへ」と記述してください。すべてのページの引用、転載、リンクを許可します。確認メールは不要です。引用元リンクを表示してください。
