Hatoyama Yukio at large: Guffaw or gaffe?

A FAVORITE GAME OF NEWSPAPERS the world over is to play gotcha with politicians, and the Japanese press is no exception. Prime hunting season for them opens just after a new Cabinet is sworn in. All the new ministers give press conferences after their appointments, and at least one of them can be counted on to say something controversial, idiotic, or downright goofy.

The Japanese press bagged its biggest trophy in recent years when it helped bring down former Prime Minister Mori Yoshiro. Granted, Mr. Mori’s tendency to say things better left unsaid was tantamount to painting a target on his own forehead, but the press also didn’t care for him very much as a person. Therefore, they made sure to turn on the klieg lights and turn up the amplifier whenever they caught him in what they considered to be a gaffe.

Many of these comments might have been ignored or overlooked had they been made by someone more to the liking of the press (or to the liking of the public—reporters can be shameless toadies), but they made sure that everyone got to hear everything Mr. Mori had to say while he was busy digging his own political grave.

Overlooking DPJ clunkers

In contrast, the mainstream press in Japan usually gives a free pass to politicians not in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, whose orientation is to the right of center. For example, people on the left consider current Justice Minister Hatoyama Kunio of the LDP a buffoon who is liable to say something silly at any given moment.

Yet seldom will you see the same intense scrutiny applied to the public utterances of his elder brother Hatoyama Yukio, Secretary-General of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan. It’s possible that no one takes him very seriously either, but he was one of the founding members of the primary opposition party, and during his term as party president could have become prime minister had the DPJ won a majority in a lower house election.

One of his quirkier comments was almost overlooked entirely at the end of last year, and was reported only by the Sankei Shimbun. On 13 November, after the turmoil of current party president Ozawa Ichiro’s resignation and reentry into the DPJ had subsided, the party officers met for drinks and dinner at a fugu restaurant. Joining Mr. Ozawa and Hatoyama Yukio were DPJ bigwigs Kan Naoto and Koshi’ishi Azuma.

Those who follow Japanese politics will remember that Mr. Ozawa tried to cut a deal with the ruling LDP to create a grand coalition and install himself as deputy prime minister. The other leaders of his own party don’t trust Mr. Ozawa much, and the resultant uproar caused existing cracks in the party structure to grow wider.

According to Mr. Hatoyama, the men got together to repair the cracks, and they thought the best way to go about that was to let their hair down by having a few drinks and eating some potentially poisonous fish.
　
They seem to have enjoyed themselves. The quartet was a little tipsy when they left the restaurant and were intercepted by some reporters waiting outside. One asked what they talked about during their dinner, and Mr. Hatoyama replied that they had discussed whether it would be possible to travel to outer space on a magnetic levitation vehicle.

The reporters were nonplussed and wondered if he was being evasive, flippant, or actually telling the truth.

People do talk about the strangest things after they’ve had a few flagons of heated sake, so it’s possible that subject was batted around the table. Also, while politicians everywhere regard reporters as a necessary evil at best and a royal pain in the backside at worst, Japanese politicians can more easily get away with being abrupt and dismissive with the media. That’s partly because the media can often be more obnoxious here than in other countries, and also because the politicians can more easily prevent them from gaining access through the certification required in the reporters’ club system.

It’s also possible that Mr. Hatoyama was under the impression that he was being funny. Like former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, he is what the Japanese call a bon-bon, or a boy born into a family of means that did not have to struggle to get started in life and who turns out soft and socially tone deaf as a result. (Both men had grandfathers who were prime ministers.) And Mr. Hatoyama seems to have even less of the common touch than does Mr. Abe—during one campaign speech he tried to convince his listeners that he was a regular guy by claiming that he sometimes liked to eat cold pizza for breakfast.

Telling reporters that he wondered about traveling to outer space on a maglev vehicle? Most people would consider that a guffaw, though they would be more likely to laugh at him than with him.

Another of his recent statements was in an entirely different category, however.

Turning his back on free markets?

The DPJ held its annual party conference last month, and Mr. Hatoyama delivered a report on the party’s policies for the year ahead. During his address, he said:

「当たり前のように考えていたこの資本主義が、本当に国民を幸せにしつづけていけるのか」

“Can this capitalism, which people thought was the normal order of things, truly make people happy in the future?”

Is that not a newsworthy statement by one of the leading political figures of one of the world’s most important liberal democracies? But the only newspaper to report it was Akahata, or Red Flag, the newspaper of Japan’s Communist Party. (The Japanese-language only article is here.)

Akahata also reported he said:

「果たして、このような行き過ぎた金融資本主義が、これからの世界で多くの人々を幸せに導いていけるのか。（七月の洞爺湖サミットでは）こんな根本的な経済の議論もおこなってもらいたい」

“Can this extreme form of financial capitalism eventually lead most of the world’s people to happiness? I hope this basic economic debate is conducted (at the July summit).

For the JCP, of course, this was a chance to shoot some fish in a barrel.

They quickly referred their readers to some of Mr. Hatoyama’s other statements. In 2000, when he served as the party’s representative, he was a strong supporter of financial liberalization and backed reform of the tax and financial systems to facilitate new business start-ups. During a debate in the Diet the following year, he said he would have no hesitation to compete with the LDP to see who could more quickly implement reform.

Finally, they quoted Mr. Hatoyama calling for a relaxation of the Labor Standards Act to make it easier for companies to hire and terminate workers under short-term contracts.

Now we all know that any group that still insists on calling itself communist doesn’t have much credibility in a discussion of economic policy or theory (or much of anything else). But the JCP plays an important role in Japanese politics because they are the only party that can be counted on to tell the truth in situations such as these. That’s because they have so little to lose.

And no one seriously believes that Mr. Hatoyama has converted in late middle age to socialist principles—he started singing from a different political hymnal because labor unions provide his party with organizational muscle. Mr. Hatoyama himself is little more than a political wind sock.

Yet none of the mainstream newspapers saw fit to quote this part of Mr. Hatoyama’s speech. They, like everyone else in the country, want to see serious two-party democracy in Japan, but they often take it upon themselves to overlook the DPJ’s glaring flaws until the day comes when the majority of the electorate accepts them as a serious party.

If the electorate at large, however, found out that Mr. Hatoyama publicly questioned the free market system, regardless of whether he actually believed what he was saying, it might cause people to question whether the party was ever going to get serious.

After all, wondering aloud if free markets are not the best available way to provide the greatest happiness to the largest number of people is the equivalent of wondering whether it is possible to take a maglev vehicle to outer space.

And that’s not a guffaw. That’s a gaffe.

UPDATE: Frequent commenter Overthinker was thinking more than me when he pointed out that scientists are in fact discussing the use of magnetic levitation for space travel. That means the guffaw (and the gaffe) in the first part of the post is on me, and not on Mr. Hatoyama, who is also more aware of scientific developments than I am. Those are the perils of a one-man operation and a reminder of the need to retain the spark of wit to keep digging one more layer in my research!