Peter Alford, Tokyo correspondent | June 13, 2009
Article from: The Australian
THE Japanese minister who campaigned for three years to make Taro Aso prime minister flamed out yesterday, leaving his leader and former friend scorched.
Kunio Hatoyama quit the internal affairs ministry yesterday over Mr Aso's insistence on reappointing Japan Post president Yoshifumi Nishikawa.
He compared himself to Takamori Saigo, the Meiji Revolution hero and led a trail of reporters to the Yanaka cemetery, where he summoned the spirit of his grandfather, Ichiro Hatoyama, prime minister in 1954-55.
Photo: Japan's internal affairs and communications minister Kunio Hatoyama is surrounded by reporters in Tokyo on June 12, 2009. Hatoyama resigned on June 12, dealing a setback to conservative Prime Minister Taro Aso just months before a general election."I think grandfather and the others (family members buried nearby) would understand what I have done," said Mr Hatoyama.
He had hounded Mr Nishikawa over the allegedly corrupt sale of Japan Post properties, which Mr Hatoyama stopped, and for trying to demolish the postal service's 78-year-old Tokyo headquarters, which he also halted.
"I don't think I'm a righteous person, I have made many mistakes," said Mr Hatoyama, whose record in 33 years of national politics confirms this.
"But I just cannot tolerate someone who did something dirty."
He heaped scorn on Mr Aso's "stupid" compromise to have Mr Nishikawa apologise. "It is the people Mr Nishikawa should apologise to, not me, because he has tried to plunder the people's assets."
Mr Aso became prime minister last September, partly due to the 60-year-old Mr Hatoyama's efforts.
Their Liberal Democratic Party must face an alienated electorate within the next four months. Yukio Hatoyama heads the Democratic Party of Japan, and his younger brother did not rule out quitting the LDP, saying: "I have been receiving various kinds of encouragement from many colleagues."
While his attack on Mr Nishikawa has been popular, seasoned observers gasped at Mr Hatoyama's self-comparison with the principled Saigo, who was a key military figure in the 1867 restoration to political power of the Meiji emperor.
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