Tucson Forward

Japanese premier Yukio Hatoyama resigns; fourth PM to quit within 1st year

By John Pomfret The Washington Post
Tuesday, June 1, 2010

BEIJING — Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who ended five decades of single-party rule when he swept to power in August but stumbled when he confronted the country’s longtime ally, the United States, resigned Wednesday.

Hatoyama quit at a meeting of leaders of the Democratic Party of Japan, becoming the fourth straight Japanese leader to leave after a year or less in office.

“Since last year’s elections, I tried to change politics in which the people of Japan would be the main characters,” he said later Wednesday at a nationally broadcast news conference. But he said he was just misunderstood. “That’s mainly because of my failings,” he said.

Hatoyama ran for the premiership on a campaign platform of maintaining a more equal relationship with the United States, which still enjoys enormous support among most Japanese. His decision to challenge Washington over the details of a massive military base relocation plan on the island of Okinawa befuddled Japanese and American analysts and government officials alike. Hatoyama also called for Japan to become more of an “Asian nation,” which sparked concern in Washington that he wanted to move Japan away from its pro-U.S. stance and closer to China.

Analysts and diplomats predicted that Finance Minister Naoto Kan could succeed Hatoyama. On a trip to the United States in April, Kan laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Solder at Arlington National Cemetery — a visit that one senior diplomat described as a “campaign stop.”

Hatoyama’s resignation came just eight months after his party won an historic election ousting the Liberal Democratic Party, which had dominated Japanese politics for almost half a century.

Still, his exit was widely predicted. Public support for Hatoyama had dropped precipitously as he stumbled to handle Japan’s economy and its foreign relations — especially its relations with the United States. Hatoyama was criticized and even mocked in Japan for his indecisiveness.

He opposed moving the Futenma U.S. Marine Corps airbase from a populated part of Okinawa to a more isolated part of the island saying that he would prefer it if the Marines left Okinawa altogether. But he never came up with a different solution. And after months of battling with the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department, during which U.S. officials, including President Obama, questioned his trustworthiness to his face, Hatoyama finally gave in two weeks ago.

Behind Hatoyama’s stance on the United States sat Ichiro Ozawa, the DPJ’s top campaign strategist. Hatoyama said Wednesday that Ozawa would, too, resign.

In the past few days, Hatoyama’s comrades in the Democratic Party of Japan have begun to openly call for him to step down in a bid to revive the party’s fortunes. Those fortunes were weakened recently with the recent departure of a leftist party, the Social Democrats, from its ruling coalition. The Social Democrats had opposed any U.S. military presence in Okinawa.

In addition to the nervousness it created in Washington, the DPJ is facing a tricky economic situation at home. It needs to devise a way to cut Japan’s enormous public debt and at the same time figure out a way to grow the economy despite one of the fastest aging populations in the world.

Hatoyama’s resignation sets the stage in Tokyo for a move back to a more traditional relationship with the United States, which could be welcome in Washington. U.S. officials had been predicting the premier’s departure for several weeks, although some thought it would happen after, not before, the planned vote in July.

U.S. officials tried numerous tactics with Hatoyama’s young administration — recognizing that, after 50 years of almost one-party rule in Japan, it would need time to learn the ropes of government. Finally, Obama lost patience with him and, during the Nuclear Security Summit in April, he challenged Hatoyama’s trustworthiness directly in a brief tête-à-tête that left the Japanese leader in shock.

It is unclear how China will fare from the departure of Hatoyama and especially Ozawa, who is known to be a close supporter of strong ties with Beijing. (Ozawa has led several delegations, of hundreds of leading Japanese, to China.) China’s premier, Wen Jiabao, just concluded a trip to Japan during which he sounded a conciliatory note, offering negotiations on the joint development of energy resources around an island chain that both nations claim.