Analysis: Hatoyama Speech to 173rd Session of the Diet: Part 1

Written By: guyjin on October 27, 2009 17 Comments

Yesterday Prime Minister Hatoyama gave a lengthy (very lengthy….) speech to open the 173rd Session of the Japanese Diet. His remarks were light on details, but outlined the man’s thinking on some of the most important issues facing Japan. This article is the first of a 4-part series through Friday this week, which will look at what Hatoyama had to say yesterday, and what this may mean for future policies. Today I will focus on the tone and introduction of the speech, and tomorrow I will look at the concept of yuai (’fraternity’) and Hatoyama’s hopes for Japanese society. On Thursday I will cover the economics portion of the speech, and will finish up with foreign policy and Hatoyama’s closing remarks on Friday. For even more coverage, check out the headlines from various news services at the top of the main page.

The speech was about twice as long as is customary, coming in at around 12,000 words, and was full of cliches and emotive language. So why am I covering it here in such depth, with stories all week long? The main reason is that I feel the speech quite clearly shows the personality and priorities of the new Prime Minister, as well as expressing his thinking on many of the key issues of the day. Much of this is actually a rehash of thinking that Hatoyama revealed in his essay in VOICE (English language excerpts here), and in his speech to the United Nations (see Hatoyama Adresses UN), but the former was not covered here (since this blog hadn’t started yet….), and it is worth looking at these issues in some detail, as they will likely form the basis of Japanese government over the next several years at least…

The beginning of Hatoyama’s speech is quite aspirational in tone and content, calling on the members of the Diet to ‘recall the voices [they] heard from the people in towns and villages…all around the country’ during the election period. He acknowledges the obvious, in that there is great expectation among the public but also a great many doubts, as well as some sense of resignation that ‘government will never change, or that even if it does, people’s daily lives will not’. There is a lot of rhetoric in this speech about this theme of ‘politics for the people’, and a kind of ‘compassionate’ government that will ‘put people first’. At times though, Hatoyama tends a little too much towards the idea that ‘government can solve everyone’s problems’, and this is something that both he and the general public will fast come to realize is not the case… Actually, I get the sense that he does already know this, but it is important that politicians don’t get so caught up in the job of ‘leading the country’, that they forget that they are not there to ‘lead people’s lives’.

The first meaty topic that Hatoyama delves into is the need to conduct a full scale cleanup of the government. He says that:

“The Government Revitalisation Unit which I chair will undertake a review of all government budgets, operations and projects and also the modalities of regulation. We will thoroughly eliminate the wasteful use of taxpayers’ money and expose to the public the existence of any secret internal governmental agreements or memoranda among government ministries and agencies.”

To be fair, the new government has begun on this process, and more information has voluntarily come to light in the last two months than perhaps the last two years….Indeed, while its entirely anecdotal, many of the people that I have spoken to in recent months (including those that were and remain skeptical of the new government) have noted that there has been a great deal more information coming out about things that were not previously known. Of course, its one thing to bring to light the secrets and deals of a long-term government that you have just replaced, and quite another to do the same about your own secrets and deals once your own party become entrenched in power. It will not be possible to truly judge the actions of the DPJ until they have spent long enough in power to be disclosing information about their own actions – but at least they have made a start…

Hatoyama also categorically promises the prohibition of amakudari and watari, two contraversial practices whereby former civil servants end up with cushy jobs. This in spite of the recent announcement that the new head of Japan Post will be former Vice Minister of Finance Saito Jiro, a move that some have referred to as ‘Super Amakudari’… I guess the policy begins now…. no, now…. no,… now….

The Prime Minister also makes a glancing comment about the contraversy concerning his political funds (see Hatoyama’s Dead Donors Being Probed), saying that he intends to ‘cooperate fully in the ongoing investigation so as to recover trust in politics’.

More tomorrow…