Dear Prime Minister Koizumi,
You've been in office for just over seven months now and there's little doubt you've captured Japan's imagination. Quite masterfully, in fact. With your populist instincts, jaunty style and youthful enthusiasm, you've endeared yourself to folks from Yokohama to Okinawa and charmed the international media like few, if any, Japanese leaders before you.
I'm troubled, however, and I'm not alone. A new year beckons, and, from where most observers sit, it looks much worse than the current one. As you said in the run-up to April elections that delivered you to power, Japan needs action, not talk. Yet you too have been all-talk-no-action, Mr. Prime Minister. Your time is rapidly running out.
Markets, as you've no doubt noticed, no longer buzz about the ``Koizumi phenomenon'' but the ``Koizumi let down.'' The Nikkei 225 stock average is now 3,500 points lower than when your reform drive began in April. While the global slowdown and assorted terrorist attacks are factors, investors are losing faith in your ability to revive Japan.
For what it's worth, Mr. Prime Minister, here's my ?2. You still enjoy the kind of high approval ratings most world leaders can only dream of. Use it. Exploit it. Wield it like a weapon against the well-fortified forces standing in your way. I'm referring to the Liberal Democratic Party fat cats thriving under the current system and resisting change at every turn.
Early on, voters fancied you Japan's answer to John F. Kennedy -- a leader with that ever so rare mix of charisma and vigor. Why not borrow a page from JFK's "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country" mantra?
Announce a televised address, appeal directly to Japanese households and challenge them to "Ask not what your government can do for you, ask what you can do to force it to change."
Sure, Japan could muddle along for a few more years. By then, however, you'll be an ex-premier known more for his love of Elvis Presley and mane of unkempt hair than economic reforms. That would be a shame, considering the name ``Koizumi'' has been synonymous with no-pain-no-gain economic change.
The appeal is your penchant for saying what others in Tokyo are afraid to. You said your policies would boost unemployment and lead to yet another recession. That Japan needed to try something new to end its malaise. That the status quo of issuing mountains of bonds to fund fiscal spending and keeping interest rates at zero percent can't last forever.
Trouble is, your reform drive has come up against monumental resistance. While you expected some, even you probably didn't appreciate just how much the LDP has riding on your failure. Sure, the bureaucrats that really run Japan want you to have a success or two. That way, they can show they too want to fix things. Yet it's window-dressing they're after, not genuine change.
Take your town-meeting performance on Nov. 18, when you flat-out pledged to starve those bloated, wasteful public corporations such as the Japan Highway Public Corp. Such operations, as we all know, are protected by LDP officials looking for a place to prosper in retirement. It caused quite a furor in Tokyo. More importantly, though, you reminded us that the take-charge Koizumi who wowed us months ago is still around somewhere.
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