こいつってさ、重要問題が起こると、逃げまくり黙りまくりで減点を避け、最後に出てきて権力を横取りするという卑怯者。
案の定尖閣問題でもほとぼりさめるまで逃げまくってた。
品性の卑しさが顔によく出ている。
Japan: Inventive intervener
By Mure Dickie
Published: September 22 2010 21:39 | Last updated: September 22 2010 21:39
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cdb28962-c67d-11df-8a9f-00144feab49a.html
Naoto Kan, prime minister of Japan, in his elegant Toykyo office
In just three months as Japan’s prime minister, Naoto Kan has seen his government suffer devastating defeat in an upper house election, fought off a leadership bid by a heavyweight rival from his own party and grappled with global currency markets. Now comes the hard part.
Not least, he must find a way to push DPJ legislation through a Diet whose upper house has been dominated since July’s election by fiercely hostile opposition groupings – in particular the formerly long-ruling Liberal Democratic party.
It is a daunting list. Failure would deepen fears that Japan is at risk of slipping into international irrelevance, a relative decline symbolised by China’s usurpation this year of the title of the world’s second-largest economy.
In his first full interview to any news organisation as occupant of Tokyo’s elegant prime ministerial residence, however, Mr Kan gives no sign of feeling dismayed. Instead, he lays out his plans to implement a strategy to raise Japan’s anaemic growth rate and to build cross-party consensus on how to pay for fast-growing welfare costs in one of the world’s most rapidly ageing societies.
Mr Kan has reasons for confidence. The challenge to his leadership from Ichiro Ozawa, the DPJ’s influential “shadow shogun”, underlined divisions within the ruling party. But it also dramatically boosted the popularity of the prime minister, whom the public vastly prefers to the haughty and scandal-plagued Mr Ozawa. After a reshuffle last week, the proportion of voters backing Mr Kan’s cabinet climbed to 64 per cent, according to a poll by Kyodo news agency.
PROFILE OF A PREMIER
● Naoto Kan was born in 1946 to an engineer whose struggle to buy a home led to focus on housing issues.
● After graduating from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, became a patent agent and social activist.
● Entered Diet in 1980 as an independent before becoming active in several opposition parties. As a minister in coalition government, won fame in 1996 for exposing a tainted-blood scandal.
● Helped lead Democratic party to victory in 2009. Replaced Yukio Hatoyama as party head and prime minister in June 2010.Now, a revitalised Mr Kan must grapple with the aftermath of Japan’s surprise sale of Y2,000bn ($24bn) in currency markets last week, as well as a worsening territorial dispute with China and worries that weakening global growth could derail the export-driven economy.
He can certainly bring a new perspective to the task. Most Japanese leaders in recent times – including Yukio Hatoyama, the DPJ’s hapless first prime minister – have been the scions of political or business dynasties. Mr Kan, by contrast, is a former social activist from what is commonly described as an “ordinary salaryman’s family”.
This break-the-mould prime minister has won domestic credit for the initial success of Japan’s dramatic solo intervention in the foreign exchange market, which eased the pressure felt by exporters from the strong yen by weakening the currency by more than 3 per cent against the dollar in a matter of hours. Though some politicians in the US and Europe have been critical of the decision to intervene unilaterally, Mr Kan makes clear his government will continue to act against “drastic changes” in the yen rate, while also seeking economic and monetary policies that will weaken the currency.
“There is a need for policies that will in total act to suppress the tendency towards a strong yen,” he says.
Pushing down the yen should go some way to preserving Japan’s recovery from its worst postwar recession. Continued growth in the economy is a prerequisite to any progress on an issue that Mr Kan has made a top priority since his elevation from finance minister in June: reining in the state’s soaring debt.
FOREIGN POLICY
Tension with China adds drama to a UN visit
Naoto Kan is studiously diplomatic about the reluctance of Chinese premier Wen Jiabao to meet him in while they are both in New York for UN meetings this week. Beijing’s demands for the immediate release of a Chinese fishing boat captain detained by Japanese authorities may be increasingly menacing in tone but Japan’s prime minister insists that, with calm handling, the dispute can be resolved “before too long”.
Relations “are fundamentally extremely good”, he insists, adding that both leaders have a “basic recognition” of the need to deepen a vital strategic relationship.
For all such optimism, the friction over the captain’s detention near a disputed island group in the East China Sea has underscored the foreign policy problems facing Mr Kan and his ruling Democratic party. When it swept to power last year, the DPJ promised to improve ties with China and other Asian neighbours while also deepening and modernising its half-century-old military alliance with the US. Both goals have proved elusive.
Instead, the long-simmering dispute over ownership of the unpopulated but potentially resource-rich Senkaku (known in Chinese as the Diaoyu) islands has flared into the biggest setback to Sino-Japanese ties since the thawing of a political chill in 2006.
Even before captain Zhan Qixiong clashed with coast guard vessels enforcing Japan’s long-standing control of the Senkakus, relations had been strained by differences ranging from Japanese objections to Beijing’s expansion of its nuclear arsenal to worries over China’s new mineral export regime.
Japanese officials insist disputes are inevitable between neighbours whose economies have grown deeply interlinked. Yet such spats could be highly risky given China’s increasingly nationalist bent and resentment of Japan’s brutal 1931-45 invasion.
Beijing is unlikely to be pleased by Mr Kan’s choice of new foreign minister – Seiji Maehara comes from the DPJ’s conservative wing and described China’s military expansion as a “real threat” in 2005.
However, he is expected to help restore stability to relations with Washington, badly strained by the government’s early decision to review a controversial plan to relocate the Futenma US marine base on the southern island of Okinawa. Japan eventually agreed to move the base to a scenic bay as planned. The foreign minister’s close ties to US security experts and officials are likely to be useful in winning Washington’s patience over likely delays in implementing the deal.
In New York, at least Mr Kan will be meeting Barack Obama, US president – and he seems keen not to let Futenma cloud the encounter. Rather than such individual matters, he said last week, the discussion should focus on broader issues.His willingness openly to discuss a possible doubling of Japan’s 5 per cent consumption tax in two or three years was widely seen as a factor in the DPJ’s drubbing in the upper house election. But the prime minister is still determined to find new sources of revenue as gross state debt soars towards an extraordinary 200 per cent of gross domestic product.
With social security costs rising by Y1,000bn a year, Japan needs to make a “major choice” between better welfare and higher tax or a US-style system where people are expected to look after themselves more, he says, adding: “I think that most Japanese want a future society where there is security for children and the old, even if it means taking on a somewhat greater burden.”
Yet the prime minister recognises that raising the consumption tax – widely seen as the only way to meet Mr Kan’s target of a balanced primary budget by 2020 – remains a political landmine. His strategy is to try to launch discussions with opposition groups about measures that include a consumption tax increase alongside other options, in the hope of achieving a cross-party agreement that would make legislation possible and implementation politically feasible.
The approach might sound like a recipe for dangerous delay, especially given Mr Kan’s repeated warnings that Japan risks a Greek-style fiscal disaster if it fails to rein in its debt. But he says he has no choice but to try to build consensus. “Discussion is essential. In Japan there is an expression: isogaba maware – make haste by going around. “By taking the long way around we can get there faster than if we tried the direct approach.”
Much will depend on whether opposition groups including the LDP – ousted from government in August last year – are willing to co-operate. So far the prospects do not look good, says Gerry Curtis, an expert on Japan at Columbia University. “Just as President [Barack] Obama is finding in Washington, the opposition don’t want to give the prime minister anything he can claim as a victory,” Prof Curtis says. “So – gridlock.”
Still, Mr Kan’s refusal to buckle in the face of electoral defeat and party revolt suggests he is made of sterner political stuff than many holders of a “revolving door” prime ministership that spat out his four immediate predecessors in a year or less. His rise from a relatively humble background speaks of energy and determination. Many voters find him a refreshing change from the stuffy elite and his record as a sign of genuine ideals.
During a stint as health minister in the 1990s, he successfully took on bureaucrats who had tried to cover up the government’s role in the infection of 1,800 haemophiliacs with blood contaminated by the HIV virus. His earlier record even suggests a potential for inventive solutions: as a student he patented an electronic mah-jong score calculator.
But not everyone is impressed by Mr Kan’s performance since midyear. A wavering in July on how the government might soften the impact on lower-income groups of a mooted rise in consumption tax was seized on as showing a weak grasp of policy. Even some associates say his focus on fiscal issues suggests he was “brainwashed by the bureaucrats” during five months at the ministry of finance. While he shows flashes of humour in conversation and at public events, his downbeat manner also makes him an often less than inspirational figure.
Jiro Yamaguchi, a political scientist at Hokkaido University who has close ties to the DPJ, observes that Mr Kan “looked dead” for nearly two months after his election setback, before being livened up by Mr Ozawa’s attempt to oust him. “I’m rather sceptical about his leadership,” Prof Yamaguchi says.
Mr Kan should benefit from the government’s growing experience in office and consequent ability to take more of the initiative. The LDP’s long grip on power meant all but a handful of DPJ ministers had to learn on the job. The prime minister himself says he aims to replace the “trial-and-error cabinets” of the DPJ’s first year in government with a cabinet finally able to “turn words into action”.
Effective implementation will be vital when it comes to a strategy intended to rescue the nation from chronic deflation and double the long-term real growth rate to 2 per cent by 2020. Mr Kan says his government is putting its “greatest energy” into making this work, which includes supporting the development of high-potential sectors such as health and agriculture while cutting corporate taxes.
“I think the sluggishness of economic growth in these [past] 20 years is a major reason for the decline in Japan’s international status or power,” he says.
It is a verdict that few would challenge. Yet reviving GDP growth will be no easy matter given the headwind created by a fast-declining working population. Nor will suppressing the yen – which in trade-weighted real terms is not even very high – do much to promote the expansion of domestic demand that is needed to reduce Japan’s reliance on exports.
But some see the source of the nation’s problems in a more general malaise – a loss of the energy and drive that fuelled its recovery from the radiation-laced rubble of the second world war into what is still one of the planet’s richest and most successful societies.
Mr Kan is himself troubled by what he sees as the passivity of many young Japanese, as symbolised by a decline in the number seeking to study overseas. “This loss of assertiveness is another reason for concern,” he says.
In his search for solutions, the prime minister finds inspiration in William Smith Clark, an American teacher and missionary who in the late 19th century founded what would later become Japan’s Hokkaido University. On departure, Clark, a stern civil war veteran, is famously said to have told his Japanese charges: “Boys, be ambitious!”
It is a message that Mr Kan says is needed again if he is to live up to his political slogan of “reviving Japan”. The nation must find the strength to battle against its relative decline, the prime minister says. “I want to [find] ways to ... once again appeal to young people: ‘Boys, be ambitious’.”
