Vox Populi, Vox Dei :: Time for DPJ to lead the sheep out of the fog

2009/12/26

Ezra Vogel is an American scholar known as the author of the 1979 book "Japan as Number One." I read about an observation by the scholar, who is well versed in Japanese and Chinese affairs, in "Hatoyama kara Hatoyama e" (From Hatoyama to Hatoyama), a recent book written by Yukio Matsuyama, a former editorial board director of The Asahi Shimbun, and published by Asahi Shimbun Publications Inc.

According to the book, Vogel once made a comment to the following effect: China has strategies but no tactics. Japan has tactics but no strategies. What he meant is that Japan is good at dealing with short-term goals such as "the next general meeting of shareholders," for example, but not at developing long-term strategies. Could this be a national characteristic? The same thing can be said of the current administration led by the Democratic Party of Japan.

While there are arguments for and against its policies, each one of them has a purpose. They can be likened to pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. But the entire picture remains unclear. When the "form of nation" that the government aims to achieve is ambiguous, the public becomes uneasy like sheep left in a fog.

The National Policy Unit, established with great fanfare and tasked to formulate policy strategies, remains inactive. Instead, what unexpectedly emerged from the fog was go-getter DPJ Secretary-General Ichiro Ozawa, who is eager to come up with tactics that focus on the short-term goal of winning the next Upper House election. And now, the Hatoyama Cabinet, which marked its 100th day in office Thursday, is seeing its public approval rating steadily fall like sand in an hourglass.

Writer Katsuichiro Kamei (1907-1966) referred to love as a "beautiful misunderstanding." He also bitingly defined marriage as the "harrowing realization that love was a beautiful misunderstanding." As its honeymoon with the prime minister comes to an end, perhaps that is the way the public is beginning to feel.

As the saying goes, beyond a three-month honeymoon awaits three years of fighting, then 30 years of patience. Fruitful fighting is not a bad thing. But that will only be true of this relationship when the prime minister accepts he has a responsibility to make tough, unpopular decisions when the need arises.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Dec. 24(IHT/Asahi: December 26,2009)