Posts Tagged: kan

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26
Aug 11

A New Prime Minister

It seems like it wasn’t that long ago that I was discussing how Japan’s Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio stepped down after only eight months to be replaced by Kan Naoto. Well, now, 15 months after Prime Minister Kan took power, he’s stepping down, too.  Take a look at what I wrote back then–it’s far more common for a political leader to step down in Japan than it is in the US. Japanese voters don’t even elect their Prime Minister directly. Instead, they elect their local representatives and those representative together elect the Prime Minister. Japanese culture, too, plays a large role.

“Taking one for the team” and taking personal blame so that the company (or in this case, the government) can move forward is much more likely to happen in Japan. Consider the fact that Hatoyama stepped down largely because he didn’t fulfill a campaign promise. (To close an American military base in Okinawa.) Well, in the time that Kan has been prime minister, Japan experienced one of the deadliest series of earthquakes and one of the most horrific tsunamis in all of Japanese history. While Kan can’t be blamed for an act of nature, there’s the failure of the nuclear power plants and leaking radiation to consider as well. These plants were built long before Kan’s time as prime minister, but there’s more to it. The disaster relief handling, the nuclear power plant disasters and the government’s response to the tragedies have been under the spotlight by upset citizens.

Much of the rest of the government pressured Kan into his resignation and offered to pass some of the bills he’s put forth in order to broker a deal with him to resign. Kan’s bills focus largely on finding clean, renewable sources of energy for the country so that Japan is less reliant on dangerous nuclear power.

Kan’s party, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) remains in power and will have the majority needed to elect a new prime minister from their party next week. The new prime minister will become Japan’s sixth prime minister in only five years.

Do you like the idea of the nation’s leader resigning to take the blame for failure of government, even if he alone is not responsible? Why or why not? Would you like your nation’s leader to change every few months or every year or so?

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9
Jun 10

Japan Has a New Prime Minister—After Only 8 Months

Last week was a busy week in Japanese politics news. Former Japanese Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio—the very same whose fashion choices and somewhat strange behavior made headlines a few weeks ago—resigned on June 3rd, after winning the election and becoming Prime Minister just last year on September 16th.

Hatoyama was adamant after his approval ratings dropped that he has no intention of resigning. Yet just a few weeks later, he did exactly that. Granted, he didn’t resign over horrible fashion attire, no should anyone have expected him to. (The “his bad fashion shows he’s not in touch with the common Japanese citizen” argument notwithstanding.) The actual reason he gave had to do with his failure to close the U.S. military base on Okinawa, which he promised to do during his campaign. While one could argue that he hadn’t served long enough to enact this change, Hatoyama did sign an unpopular treaty in late May with U.S. President Obama to ensure the continued existence of the U.S. military presence in Okinawa. This was mostly due to increased tensions between Japan and North Korea and Hatoyama’s desire for U.S. aid if need be.

Besides the failure with Okinawa, Hatoyama was also accused of perhaps having knowledge of a money scandal involving a top member of his party, the Democratic Party of Japan (not quite the same as the U.S. party of the same name). Facing summer elections, Hatoyama’s party asked him to step down to increase their chances of performing favorably at the next election.

Hatoyama was replaced by Kan Naoto, Hatoyama’s former deputy. Kan is actually Japan’s seventh prime minister in a decade. Why so many changes? Hatoyama’s not the first to resign by any means; it’s a much more common occurrence in Japan than in countries like America, where only one president has resigned in history. The other part of the reason for so many changes in leadership is that the nation’s prime minister is not directly elected by the Japanese citizens. Instead, Japanese citizens vote for their representatives in the Japanese parliament (the Diet). In turn, the members of the Diet elect the prime minister. The more seats a party has, the more likely that party is going to win the position, for which they usually nominate their elected leader. However, this somewhat disconnected way of electing a prime minister does seem to lead fewer Japanese people to be passionately political than many people in other nations.

Do you think Hatoyama should have resigned as soon as he failed with one campaign promise? Do you think the Japanese system of electing a leader would work in your country? Why or why not?