In a stunning fall from grace, Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama resigned yesterday, less than 10 months after taking power in a political landslide than swept away the half-century rule of the Liberal Democratic Party. This makes Mr. Hatoyama the fourth Japanese premier in a row to resign after less than a year in office. The reverberations from this resignation, however, will be felt far more deeply and widely than those of his immediate predecessors, not least because Mr. Hatoyama also publicly called for the resignation of Ichiro Ozawa, the power behind the scenes in the ruling Democratic Party of Japan. Far from entering a period of stability, Japan is now in one of the most unstable and dangerous political periods in its postwar history.
Mr. Hatoyama gave two reasons for his resignation: first, to take responsibility for the collapse of his coalition with the Social Democrats due to his quixotic and failed attempt to overturn a 2006 agreement with the United States over relocating Marine Corps Air Station Futenma within Okinawa Prefecture; second, to cleanse the DPJ of the taint of scandal attached to both Messrs. Hatoyama and Ozawa over fundraising illegalities that have led to the arrests of aides to both men. With eyes filled with tears, Mr. Hatoyama expressed his belief that in 10 or 20 years, Japanese would understand what his vision for Japan's future had been. This, he said, is how he would like to interpret being called a "space alien" by critics in the press and political world.
Associated Press/Kyodo News
Prime Minister Hatoyama passing a "keep the promise" banner in Okinawa.
Yet Mr. Hatoyama's fall was due to very earthly reasons that should stand as stark lessons to his successors. Most damningly, Mr. Hatoyama's failed premiership raises grave questions about the ability of the DPJ to find politicians able to rule Japan. Mr. Hatoyama, it must be remembered, was an accidental prime minister, becoming party leader only after Mr. Ozawa, the DPJ's founder, resigned due to the fundraising scandals Mr. Hatoyama referred to yesterday. The DPJ, moreover, is comprised of ideologically disparate factions, from former LDP members to Socialists. At a personal level, Mr. Hatoyama's inexperience and lack of governing skills proved fatal in the unforgiving political environment his DPJ helped create over the past decade.
Mr. Hatoyama's flip-flops on policy, his backing away from major campaign promises, his seeming detachment from the hard choices that have to be made by leaders, pointed to a politician who rode a wave of voter dissatisfaction and yet felt he was not bound by the same laws of political gravity. Japanese voters, who had long waited for change they could believe in, found their hopes dashed just months after finally taking the plunge with the DPJ. That the party would pick someone so untested and with questionable leadership qualities, and just at the moment when it was poised to take power, seemed to show how immature it was as a political organization.
Observers in Asia and America, moreover, grew increasingly concerned over the lack of strategic thinking in Mr. Hatoyama's cabinet. Nowhere was this on display more than in his catastrophic miscalculation of the draining effect his eight-month Futenma tussle with Washington had on his popularity at home, as well as in American trust of him as a negotiating partner and ally. Mr. Hatoyama's vague and idealistic calls for "fraternity" in Asia, his unrealistic pledge to cut Japan's greenhouse gas emissions by 25%, and his outreach to a China that was acting more and more assertively toward Japan, gave the impression of naivete. Lost in the avalanche of criticism were decisions to increase Japan's anti-piracy activities off Somalia and to provide $5 billion in aid to Afghan reconstruction efforts that showed attempts to maintain, and even expand, Japan's global role.
The real question, of course, is where Japan goes now. The proximate cause for the timing of Mr. Hatoyama's resignation is the Upper House election scheduled for July. Just a few months ago, predictions were that the DPJ would win a stand-alone majority, allowing it to break with its coalition partners and unabashedly pursue its campaign promises. Now, with public support at just 20%, the DPJ is scrambling to avoid losing so many seats that it cannot form a majority even in coalition.
The DPJ must now find a new leader, and do so while its two top members continue to face legal peril from the fundraising scandal. Current Finance Minister Naoto Kan is probably the most senior leader remaining, and any betting would likely place him in the lead. Mr. Kan, however, is not a particularly inspiring figure and has no discernable policies around which to build a compelling candidacy. The popular transportation minister, Seiji Maehara, is widely considered too young to challenge seriously for leadership. Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada has been savaged by a recent run-in with his Chinese counterpart over China's nuclear weapons policy, and in any case was the architect of the DPJ's biggest electoral loss, back in 2005.
More likely is that, no matter who becomes prime minister, Japan's voters will punish the DPJ by turning to the plethora of splinter parties that have emerged in the past several years, many of them breaking off from the formerly powerful LDP. Such an electoral result would insure the instability in Japanese politics and policy paralysis that is all but certain to follow from Mr. Hatoyama's resignation.
Political pyrotechnics such as we've witnessed in Japan over the past half-decade are worrying in any democratic country. They are doubly worrying in Asia's oldest democracy and the world's second-largest economy. At a time when China is flexing its political and military muscle, when democracy is besieged in Thailand, when North Korea is lashing out at South Korea, and when the global economic recovery is in danger of stalling out, it is not too melodramatic to say that the world needs a strong Japan. It has the human and material capital to play a leading role in Asia and around the globe, but it will not do so with a political system in constant upheaval.
Above all, the people of Japan, who have patiently borne nearly two decades of economic and political stagnation, deserve more from those in whom they have placed their trust and their dreams.
Mr. Auslin is director of Japan studies at the American Enterprise Institute and a columnist for WSJ.com.
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