Which, then? He's the Gorbachev of Japan, some sort of political Elvis, or -- my favorite to come of this counter-productive exercise -- the Thatcher of the Liberal Democrats. With the governing party's grip on power confirmed in elections here Sunday for seats in the national legislature's upper house, will the real Junichiro Koizumi please stand up? Probably not. And if he does, the hugely popular prime minister will turn out to be none of the above. Gorby was plainly in another class altogether, and Thatcher -- well, let's just say the Japanese ought to count themselves fortunate that their man of the moment is no Iron Lady knock-off. The only one of these analogies even vaguely interesting concerns the king: Elvis, you will recall, did a whole lot of shaking but always managed to stay in the same place.
Japan has just completed what are without question the most watched elections of the postwar era. But this is less a measure of their importance than of the world's outsized expectations. It can't be long now before voters here and the many foreign observers who have invested in the Koizumi phenomenon are forced to recognize that change remains someplace off in the middle distance -- and that Japan's current leader is unlikely to be its agent.
PHOTO: AP
In the immediate term this is probably a blessing. Koizumi displays little grasp of Japan's economic problems, and his proposed solutions to them are dangerously deflationary. But this still leaves unanswered the question of just where Japan is -- or isn't -- going.
Though Koizumi's approval ratings have dipped of late, he still managed to use his immense public appeal -- unprecedented in Japanese political history -- to hand the Liberal Democrats a comfortable margin in the Diet's upper house. He thus saved a wheezing, outdated political machine from what looked only a few months ago like certain ruin. It was Koizumi's mission from the moment he took office in April -- no more and no less.
But now what? Sunday's elections do not leave Koizumi with a mandate. They are better understood as another of the popularity contests that have long punctuated Japanese politics. Mandates confer the power to implement change, and that still lies beyond Koizumi's grasp. He has measured up as a clever pol, and that might pass as an accomplishment if Japan didn't need so much more than that now.
Some strange numbers came out a couple of weeks before Sunday's polls, and they measure the moment here well enough.
Asked if they supported Koizumi and his promised reforms, 98 percent of LDP candidates raised their hands. But when queried about some of the most important ideas the prime minister has floated, the percentages turned upside down.
Reform the postal savings system? Can't have that, 86 percent of the ruling party candidates said. Reallocate road taxes away from wasteful boondoggles? Not for me, said 76 percent. The only question the party seems to agree on now is a controversial one that has more to do with the past than either the present or the future. Should the prime minister honor the war dead at Yasukuni Shrine in an official capacity? Nobody had any trouble joining the scrum on this one: More than 90 percent of the LDP ticket said yes.
You see the same thing among voters. As Koizumi's approval rate has drifted down from almost 90 percent to less than 70 percent, the public's true ambivalence has begun to bleed through the thoughtless euphoria of the past few months. While almost 60 percent of voters favor measures to fix the economy, according to a recent newspaper survey, half that percentage support Koizumi's gain-for-pain "structural reforms." There are important lessons in this. "Reform" has by now assumed a totemic significance among the Japanese, a bit like "internationalization" did during the bubble years. Everyone is for it in some notional fashion -- and nobody knows what it means or should mean.
"Kaeyo," Koizumi said 10,000 times out on the stump -- "Let's change." Voters here are ready for it, clearly, but they seem to have begun recognizing that the LDP doesn't want it and Koizumi hasn't thought it through. The only credible plan for change has come from the opposition Democrats, and though they remain a presence in both houses of the Diet, they were pushed aside in these elections by that creaky but still immense LDP machine -- along with a disgracefully one-sided national press.
It is not short of astonishing how much anticipation Koizumi has conjured -- here and abroad -- out of thin air. His accomplishments since assuming office are nearly non-existent, and he has no draft legislation ready for the post-election Diet.
His single advance, so far as I can make out, has been to win agreement on getting the Japan National Oil Co, a long-useless leftover, off the government's books.
What does it mean that a prime minister promising so ambitious a future for the Japanese must begin by asking voters for the benefit of the doubt immediately after he comes to office? Here's a better question: Why does he deserve it? He is "eight sides beautiful," as the Japanese say: appealing to everyone but genuine to none, and his language betrays him. Yes, it is straightforward in a fashion not seen in politics here since the 1970s, when Kakuei Tanaka, the LDP's blunt, earthy kingmaker, commanded the electorate. But Koizumi's presentations are made of slogans and verbal gesture; listen long enough and you realize that his intent is to seduce while avoiding substance.
The substance will come from the party of which Koizumi is effectively a prisoner. Having kept Japan on hold for the past three months, LDP insiders now say it will be October or November before the government can set a path. But I don't think anyone will have to wait so long to discern this government's way ahead.
Koizumi may stand for a reduced public deficit, but LDP policy people -- at the old guard's behest -- are already discussing a post-election supplementary budget, and in its elasticity it resembles all of the others Japan has declared over the past decade. "They're not only talking about it," one observer says. "It's inflating by the day." It began life at ?2 trillion to ?3 trillion (US$16.2 billion to US$24.3 billion) a couple of weeks before the polls, I'm told, and was up to ?4 trillion to ?6 trillion as the Japanese went to vote Sunday.
To dolly out briefly, the question here now is not decidedly different from that raised in China: Can one expect anything other than incremental change unless the governing party is turned out of power? Koizumi bears all the marks of a reformer, but he is a political reformer, and his progress may finally not extend beyond a change of the guard at the LDP. Not long before he was elevated to office in April, Koizumi came close to splitting from the governing party and joining the Democrats. It would have been a wise and interesting course.
As it is, Koizumi needs a crisis if he is going to shake this nation loose from its moorings as he says he will. Otherwise, he risks a lasting legacy that consists of wasting a great deal of time -- his own, Japan's, and the rest of the world's, as well.
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