Japan Headed in New Direction?

By Tom Plate

LOS ANGELES _ It is very difficult to wish a Japanese prime minister anything but excellent health and political success. This special nation is still the world's second-largest economy and Asia's largest; its proximity to China alone makes it especially strategically significant.

And wishing a new prime minister the very best of fortune is easy to do with the current office-holder Yasuo Fukuda. This self-effacing politician is a true gentleman of the old school, an internationalist of the best kind, and a genuine friend of the United States.

When his predecessor Shinzo Abe suddenly resigned last month, it did not take long for the oft-dominant Liberal Democratic Party to turn to this wise old head for leadership.

Unfortunately, however, being prime minister of Japan these days does not necessarily bode well for one's health. When the despondent and utterly defeated Abe stepped down, he immediately checked himself into Keio University Hospital for exhaustion and probably depression, though the official line was ``stomach and intestinal disorder."

In 2000, a sitting prime minister actually died while in office. This was Keizo Obuchi, who suffered a stroke and then fell into a fatal coma.

Obuchi, then only 62, was depicted by close intimates and admirers to have expired, literally, of overwork. In the last decade or two, the job has truly become a giant killer, especially politically.

In the nineties the position of prime minister more or less deteriorated into a maniacal revolving door. No one was secure in the job for long.

The giant trend-reverser, of course, was Junichiro Koizumi. He replaced Yoshiro Mori, who resigned ignominiously after little more than a year in the job.

Koizumi went the full five-year distance as PM, stepping down last year and then, smartly, all but vanishing from public view. He looks to be the enduring exception that will prove the revolving-door rule.

As the lead commentary in The Oriental Economist, the razor-sharp New York-based political monthly, puts it: ``But what if Koizumi were merely an interruption? What if Japan is returning to a path of weak, short-lived prime ministers? ... ''

Uncharitable or not, it does need to be said that Fukuda, at 71, is no spring chicken, and, in addition, he is no magician like Koizumi.

There is trouble these days in Tokyo. After the Koizumi-less party's smashing defeat in the Upper House this past summer, the more powerful Lower House has become a very bleak house.

Nobody wants to stick his neck out, the partisanship is pricklier than ever, and the sustainability of a Fukuda premiership would seem a rather far-out hope.

What's more, this sincere pro-American Japanese gentleman may wind up presiding over Japan at a time when the all-important relationship with Washington comes under severe strain. The Iraq war is at least as unpopular among Japanese as it is among Americans.

But under the popular Koizumi, Japan not only sent some troops to Iraq (now withdrawn) but allowed navy vessels to help transport fuel not only to Afghanistan but quite possibly to Iraq as well.

The aroused opposition, the Democratic Party of Japan, believes any Iraq aid violates the Japanese Constitution. And so the necessary reauthorization legislation to continue the oil refueling operations looks to be a very hard sell in this bitterly divided Diet.

It is certainly true that in many respects Washington and Tokyo are perforce joined at the geopolitical and economic hip. But it may also be that nothing is forever, that the U.S.' Iraq occupation will trigger all sorts of additional and unexpected casualties, and that the instability in Tokyo will nudge Japan into a more neutral relationship vis-a-vis America.

Now, should this happen, do not expect Beijing to be terribly unhappy. Any little wedge that can be stuck into the Tokyo-U.S. bilateral relationship offers tactical opportunities for China.

Indeed, Fukuda himself, for all his pro-Americanism, is well known to favor a softer, more talkative, less combative Japanese line toward the Chinese.

With China's continuing rise, of course, all of Asia's planets are being forced to do their own realigning with respect to the competing gravitational pull from Beijing and Washington.

And Japan is the solar system's giant Jupiter. Between Japan and China, of course, there is about zero love lost. Even so _ and as the saying goes _ politics can indeed make strange bedfellows. So we shall see.

Tom Plate, a board member of the Burkle Center on International Policy at UCLA, is a syndicated columnist whose words appears from time to time in the Japan Times and the Mainichi Shimbun, among other world papers.