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 Ozawa's
resignation sends Japan's opposition back to the wilderness
Ichiro
Ozawa, who announced his resignation as leader of Japan's main
opposition, the Democratic Party of Japan (DJP), was always a strange
figure to be an agent of change. He had no special charisma, was
reputedly a poor speaker and not even well liked in his party or the
public at large.
He
espoused no particular radical views. Indeed, on most topics he was
basically conservative. His book Blue Print for New Japan
expresses mostly conventional conservative views about the future of
Japan as a "normal nation", which is usually nationalist
code for jettisoning the country's pacifistic constitution.
Ozawa
did not come seemingly out of nowhere, like US President Barack
Obama. He was in fact a longtime Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) pol,
who had been a major political figure in Japan for more than 20
years.
He
was a protégé of ex-prime minister Kakuei Tanaka,
Mister "money man" himself", who often personified
what critics felt was wrong about Japanese politics, and it didn't
seem so out of character when last March his secretary, Takanori
Okuda, was indicted for allegedly accepting illegal campaign
contributions.
When
Ozawa does speak, he often speaks in riddles. Earlier this year he
casually suggested that Japan could depend solely on the U.S. Seventh
fleet for protection, presumably eliminating the need for any other
American bases. He never elaborated on this, and it gave the LDP a
small opening to criticize him, until the scandal of Okuda's
arrest gave them a much bigger cudgel.
He
does not seem to have been motivated by the pursuit of personal power
– at least not in a conventional sense. As secretary-general of
the governing party 20 years ago, it is almost inconceivable that he
would not have taken a turn as an LDP prime minister, becoming yet
another quickly forgotten leader, like Toshiki Kaifu.
But
for more than 20 years Ozawa has had one fixed idea, one overriding
goal, and that is to change the way politics works in Japan. By that
he meant reducing the inordinate power vested in the civil service, a
policy in which he finds wide spread support not only in his party
but with the public at large.
Another
ideal was to end Japan's status as virtually the only one-party
democracy in the developed world, the one democracy that has never
done what India has done, what Taiwan has done, what South Korea has
done - that is, to throw the rascals out. He wanted Japan to become a
normal democracy where parties alternate in and out of power.
The
irony is that to accomplish these goals, he used mostly
behind-the-scenes parliamentary maneuvers. Ozawa was the consummate
back-room boy. In 1993 he fomented a vote of no confidence in the
government of former prime minister Kiichi Miyazawa that led to a
very short non-LDP government.
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It is a mistake to ignore the reactionary policies of the DPJ, including the pledge to halt the privatization of Japan Post and restore agricultural subsidies that the Koizumian reformers eliminated.
Further, I have no idea why you're talking about the Confucian Mandate of Heaven in regard to Japanese politics. I've been reading the Japanese press for a quarter of a century and can't recall a Japanese ever talking like that.
Just because it's Asia doesn't mean they all think alike.
Try this for more info.
http://ampontan.wordpress.com/2009/05/14/japans-democratic-party-on-a-mudboat-of-its-own/