The Rising East
Firing of foreign minister
reflects Japan’s paralysisThe firing of Makiko Tanaka as foreign minister of Japan has underscored the political stagnation that has gripped Tokyo for nearly a decade. Once again, a running power struggle between entrenched bureaucrats and elected politicians plus the convoluted intrigue among political factions has kept Japan immobilized.
Why should Americans care? Three reasons: First, American presidents have long proclaimed Japan to be the "linchpin" of the U.S. security posture in East Asia. Second, the emergence of a powerful China of uncertain intent suggests that the United States can use all the support it can get, and a weakened Japan does not help. And third, a sluggish Japanese economy drags down other Asian economies and that of the United States.
Koizumi came to office last April showing what many analysts saw as great promise. His political style bordered on the flamboyant, he pledged to revive the staggering Japanese economy, and he suggested that Japan would assume more leadership in Asia.
His achievements, however, have been distressingly few. Perhaps most noteworthy has been to crack Japan's taboo against using military force by dispatching warships to the Indian Ocean to support U.S. operations there as he sought to avoid the humiliation Japan suffered during the Gulf War 10 years ago. Tokyo was roundly disdained for limiting Japan's endeavors to "checkbook diplomacy."
Among Koizumi's flashier moves was to name Makiko Tanaka the first woman to be foreign minister of Japan. She surely had the pedigree, being the daughter of a former prime minister, Kakuei Tanaka, himself an aggressive politician if something of a ruffian.
She immediately ran into trouble, some of it her own making when she missed appointments, scolded senior diplomats, and failed to absorb the diplomatic issues confronting Japan. Tanaka, who speaks Japanese and English a mile a minute, lived up to her reputation for being outspoken. Some saw that as refreshing in a land where circumlocution has been raised to an art form; others saw it as, well, shooting her mouth off.
More trouble came from sniping within the ruling party where Yasuo Fukuda became chief cabinet secretary. He is the son of another former prime minister, Takeo Fukuda. The senior Tanaka and the senior Fukuda were bitter rivals -- and memories live long in Japan.
For most of the last 50 years, Japanese bureaucrats, politicians and business executives have competed for the upper hand in the establishment that governs the nation. Tanaka got caught up in those machinations as she sought to take control of the foreign ministry.
The national press, which is part of the ruling establishment in Japan, was at first supportive of Tanaka, then turned against her and was a conduit for critical leaks from foreign ministry and political opponents.
Koizumi, whose popularity started to plummet within minutes of his dismissal of Tanaka, has tried to extricate himself from his downward spiral by naming another woman as foreign minister. In doing so, however, he seemed desperate and generated speculation about how long he would remain in office.
First on the short list of replacements was Sadako Ogata, the widely respected former high commissioner of the United Nations for refugees and probably the most prominent woman in Japanese public life today. She turned the prime minister down, perhaps because she thought his cabinet would have a short life span.
Koizumi then offered the position to Yoriko Kawaguchi, who has been a rising star ever since she was a junior official in the Ministry of International Trade and Industry almost 30 years ago. It will be interesting to see what sort of reception she gets in the foreign office, which considers the MITI people across the street to be bitter rivals in the conduct of economic relations with other nations.
In 1989, the death of Emperor Hirohito, now known as the Showa Emperor, marked the beginning of the end of the postwar period as he was among the last of the wartime leaders to pass away. The fall of Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa's cabinet four years later marked the end of the end as he was the last of the proteges of Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, the towering figure of the postwar era, to hold that office.
Since then, Japan has had seven prime ministers, including Koizumi. The countdown may have started to see who will be the eighth.
Richard Halloran is editorial director of the Star-Bulletin.
He can be reached by e-mail at rhalloran@starbulletin.com