ADELAIDE - Japanese Finance Minister Naoto Kan is the country's fifth prime
minister within four years following his selection on Friday as leader of the
Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) to succeed Yukio Hatoyama, who on Wednesday
stepped down as prime minister and president of the majority party in the Lower
House of parliament.
Kan, who was later in the day confirmed as prime minister in the DPJ-dominated
Lower House, moves up from the post of deputy
prime minister to be the DPJ's second prime minister. He will be looking to
survive in the top job longer than his four predecessors; none lasted a full
year in office.
Kan, 63, differs from many former premiers in being a first-generation
politician. He began his political career in the 1970s with three unsuccessful
attempts for a parliamentary seat, in 1976, 1977 and 1979. He was finally
elected to the Lower House in 1980 when he ran in a Tokyo electoral district
with the small Democratic Socialist Federation. He has been re-elected since on
different party tickets, before helping in 1998 to form the DPJ, for which he
has twice previously served as president.
One of Kan's immediate tasks is to consolidate his party ahead of next month's
Upper House elections. In particular, he will have to work with the group led
by Ichiro Ozawa. Some 150 Lower House DPJ parliamentarians are aligned to
Ozawa, who resigned as party secretary general at the same time that Hatoyama
stepped down.
A political heavyweight and a master strategist, Ozawa has become a highly
unpopular figure in recent years due to his alleged involvement in "money
politics", and many within the DPJ want to see Kan distancing himself from
Ozawa's influence. Balancing the need for a political strategist while
projecting a cleaner and fairer DPJ will test Kan's leadership skills.
Kan suggested on Thursday that he may not give Ozawa a key post in a new
government or party management, the Wall St Journal reported. "Mr Ozawa should
stay quiet for a while, and that would be good for him, the DPJ, and Japanese
politics," the report quoted Kan as saying. "We have to value Mr Hatoyama's
feelings that the DPJ should restart as a fresh party free from money
scandals."
In policy terms, it is highly unlikely that Kan will depart significantly in
the short term from those pursued by the DPJ under Hatoyama. As Kan observed at
a press conference after he was elected as party president, "I hope to carry
over the torch of rebuilding Japan passed on to me by Hatoyama."
The new prime minister starts off in office with strong public popularity after
a career linked closely with grassroot concerns. After graduating in 1970 in
applied physics from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, where he was active in
various protest movements, he became involved in organizing citizens' movements
related to the problems of housing, medical facilities, pollution and
environmental protection.
Kan also worked closely with Fusae Ichikawa - a women's suffrage leader - and
acted as her campaign manager for her election to the Upper House in 1974.
When this author interviewed Kan in 1980 in his Tokyo office, he summed up his
difficulty as a young non-traditional Japanese politician by saying na mo naku,
soshiki mo kane mo naku (neither name, nor organization, nor money). No
politician in Japan at that time would think of being successful without those
qualifications.
He had formed the shimin no kai (Citizen's Association) group, which
stood for clean elections, and refused to use either big organizations, such as
labor unions or business groups, or "unaccounted money", and in taking an
"anti-money politics" stance became a symbol of a new politics in Japan.
Kan was thrust into the national and international spotlight after being
appointed Health and Welfare Minister in 1996 in the coalition government led
by the Liberal Democratic Party's Ryutaro Hashimoto. After his appointment, he
learned that his ministry had permitted the sale and use of HIV-tainted blood
that infected thousands of hemophiliacs. His public apology and guarantee of
compensation to infected patients contrasted with an unbending bureaucracy that
had not wanted even to admit any wrong-doing.
His record was tarnished when he was forced to step down as DPJ leader in 2004
after admitting he failed to fully pay his national pension contribution and
was allegedly involved in an affair, but he enjoys strong support in Japan,
although not as popular as Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada and Seiji Maehara,
the present Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Minister and also a
former DPJ leader.
Purnendra Jain is professor of Japanese studies in the Center for Asian
Studies at Australia's Adelaide University.
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