Japan’s first lady more than an accessory

Toronto — From Monday's Globe and Mail
Published on Sunday, Jun. 27, 2010 5:20PM EDT
Last updated on Sunday, Jun. 27, 2010 7:08PM EDT

Dakshana Bascaramurty


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Nobuko Kan takes an active political role but says she’s very different from Hillary Clinton, despite frequent comparisons.



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When Nobuko Kan made her diplomatic debut at the G8 and G20 summits this weekend, she was geared up to debate the other leaders’ spouses.

Unfortunately for her, conversation rarely strayed outside the safety zone of “nature, animals, hobbies, holidays, a little bit of talk about cooking and what they eat during the Christmas time.”

“I was ... hoping they might be more interested in talking about politics,” Ms. Kan, the wife of the new Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, says through an interpreter in an exclusive Canadian interview with The Globe and Mail. “But that wasn’t the impression that I had this time.”

Photo: Prime Minister Naoto Kan and his wife Nobuko Kan are greeted by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his wife Laureen Harper as they arrive at the G-20 Summit in Toronto on Saturday.

Don’t let her docile appearance and traditional dress fool you. She’s much more than an accessory to her husband when he travels.

Her auburn-dyed hair parted to the left and pulled back loosely on Saturday, the petite Ms. Kan abandoned the pantsuits and sweater sets she wears in Japan. At an elaborate tea ceremony at the Japan Foundation in Toronto, Ms. Kan (a tea master herself), wore a sky-blue kimono with a flower-printed obi sash. She traded in designer pumps for white tabi socks and silver platform sandals.

She respects ancient cultural traditions, but she’s also a shrewd thinker and talker. She may only be 2.5 weeks into the job as Japan’s Prime Minister’s wife (she has yet to move into the official residence) but the 63-year-old has decades of experience as a political spouse under her belt.

She met her husband when the two were student activists. Mr. Kan was elected to the House of Representatives in 1980 and was later appointed to cabinet, first as health minister and then finance minister.

In early June, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama resigned and two days later, there was an election for a new leader of the Democratic Party.

“I found out from a phone call from my husband that he decided to run for the election,” Ms. Kan says with a chuckle.

Japanese media credited her as an unofficial adviser to her husband in 1996 when, as Health Minister, Mr. Kan exposed his own government’s involvement in the tainted blood scandal of the 1980s.

The way Ms. Kan discusses and challenges her husband on his party’s policies has earned her comparisons to a famous former first lady.

Ms. Kan, for all her fascination with domestic and global politics (they dominate 80 to 90 per cent of family discussions, she says), has never had a desire to run for office herself. But like Ms. Clinton, who as first lady took on health-care reform, Ms. Kan has her own agenda items: She wants to eliminate sales taxes on produce and medication.



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“ I am the opposition party within my family, so we spend a lot of time discussing politics at home and that’s probably the reason people equate me as ‘Hillary of Japan,’ but I’m very different from Ms. Clinton. ”— Nobuko Kan



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She reveals what she sees as her true calling – motherhood, not politics – when she openly discusses the other issue dear to her heart: treatment for hikikomori.

The condition, which means “acute social withdrawal,” has hit many teenagers and young men in Japan who lock themselves in their homes and listen to music, surf the Internet or play video games, refusing to go outside and interact with others.

“That’s a very close subject to my own family,” she says candidly as the easy grin on her face fades.

Shortly before her sons were to write the entrance exams for high school, they developed hikikomori and stopped attending classes.

“I asked the school people: please don’t call us every day and ask, ‘Why is your son not coming?’”

Her younger son did leave the house, but only to transplant himself to Mahjong parlours all weekend long.

Ms. Kan felt helpless and tried to wait out what she calls the greatest challenge of her family life. After long family discussions led by her husband, her sons finally recovered.

“Both of them eventually broke out of that situation and became responsible members of society, but there’s no clear, easy solution,” Ms. Kan says.

She’s added to her husband’s already lengthy list of policy items to tackle during his term in office, though she is concerned that in the past four years, Japan has seen as many prime ministers.

“I'm not thinking of myself as an adviser. I'm one of the voters and a very high-demanding voter,” she says. “Hopefully they’ll have an opportunity to carry out those changes that they were voted for.”

Politics key to prosperity for hard-hit Asian powers

MARCUS GEE

From Monday's Globe and Mail
December 29, 2008 at 8:40 AM EST

In the rise of Asia's big powers, politics have been a side story, all but eclipsed by the drama of the Asian economic ascendance. If China was growing at near double digits, pulling hundreds of millions out of poverty in the game, who cared if it never had free elections? Chinese were freer and more prosperous than they had ever been. As long as India was following China's path to riches, what did it matter if its democratic political system was more and more dysfunctional? Indians were marching forward regardless, making their clownish political class seem almost irrelevant.

And Japan? It has been ruled by the same political party for all but 11 months for five decades. Whatever. It was stable, responsible and, despite some hard times over the last two decades, still prosperous.

But the days when Asian politics didn't seem to matter are coming to an end. All three of Asia's giants are in deep trouble. Japan, with Asia's biggest (and the world's second-biggest) economy, is already in recession as the global economic crisis crushes demand for its cars, cameras and video games. China, the marvel of the developing world, saw its exports actually shrink in November, a startling turnaround for a country that has seen nothing but growth, growth, growth for decades. India, too, is seeing its exuberant progress slow as industrial production shrinks and investors take flight.

In times like this, politics become desperately important. To avoid calamity and recover their momentum, Asia's giants need strong leaders with clear plans. So far, none are in evidence.

Japan is on its third prime minister in two years. Taro Aso was supposed to put some zing back in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party after the disappointing governments of Shinzo Abe and Yasuo Fukuda. A former businessman and foreign minister, he has an air of vigour and authority that the grey Mr. Fukuda lacked. But he has thrice put off holding an election. Japan, he claims, needs a steady hand on the helm to steer through the economic crisis. His critics counter that, with his popularity falling, he simply wants to avoid a drubbing at the polls.

His plight is a symptom of Japan's political gridlock. The LDP is factionalized and divided, holding on to power only by handing out lavish patronage to blocks of loyal voters. The main alternative, the Democratic Party of Japan, is just as divided. Many Japanese view its leader, Ichiro Ozawa, as an old warhorse with little to offer. Neither party has a coherent ideology. How, then, are they expected to grapple with a worsening recession?

China, of course, has only one party: the Communists. In recent years, that has seemed to be almost an advantage. China's leaders don't have to worry about opponents nipping at their heels. Calmly and without any fuss, they can bring in the sober, sensible policies the country needs to right itself. If only it were so simple. In fact, a country with an unelected, unaccountable leadership finds it much harder to work through problems, come up with solutions and get the public to believe in them. Discontent, bound to mount as hard times bite, shows itself in riots, protests and other forms of social discontent. We have already seen rioting at Chinese factories that have laid off workers. Expect many more as things get worse. Fearing for its survival, the ruling party may balk at making the hard decisions it will need to take to restore the country to economic health.

India has no shortage of dissenting voices. Proud of its status as the world's most populous democracy, it has a raucous political scene with a free press and many competing parties. It is gridlocked all the same. The ruling Indian National Congress, party of Nehru and Gandhi, has seen its traditional dominance fade. It lost power between 1996 and 2004 and has held power since only with the support of several minor parties, many of them leftist in outlook and opposed to any kind of sensible reform. Caste-based parties that cater to the masses of rural voters are on the rise, another blow to reforms that, at least at first, seem to benefit urban Indians most. As a result, the market-oriented reforms that began in 1991, and gave India a spurt of growth of near-Chinese magnitude over the past five years, have ground to a halt.

Each of Asia's giants faces enormous problems. Like the detritus on a beach, they are being exposed by the ebbing tide of economic growth. China still has far too much of its economy in state hands. It has next to no social welfare system.

Much of its rural population is stuck in poverty. India's public services are abysmal. Its roads and ports are a mess. More than 40 per cent of its population of 1.1 billion lives below the poverty line. Japan has an aging population and shrinking work force. Most of its companies are unproductive by Western standards.

To tackle huge problems such as these, Asia's giants need to make hard decisions. For that they need leadership. And for that they need flexible, functioning political systems. Politics is no longer an afterthought when Asia's economic future is concerned. It is the key to a prosperous future.