For those pondering the decline of American hegemony and rise of East Asia, recent events in Japan offer food for thought. In August 2009 the centre-left Democratic Party of Japan won a landslide election victory with a swing of over 11 per cent against the Liberal Democratic Party which had ruled almost continuously since 1955. Hatoyama Yukio, the new Prime Minister, had set out a new course for the country. ‘As a result of the failure of the Iraq war and the financial crisis, the era of us-led globalization is coming to an end’, he argued. ‘We are moving towards an era of multipolarity’:
The recent economic crisis resulted from a way of thinking based on the idea that American-style free-market economics represents a universal and ideal economic order, and that all countries should modify the traditions and regulations governing their economies in line with global (or rather American) standards. But globalization has progressed without any regard for non-economic values, or for environmental issues or problems of resource restriction.
The financial crisis, Hatoyama continued, ‘has also raised doubts about the permanence of the dollar as the key global currency’. In this context, Japan ‘must not forget our identity as a nation located in Asia’:
I believe that the East Asian region, which is showing increasing vitality, must be recognized as Japan’s basic sphere of being . . . We should aspire to move toward regional currency integration as a natural extension of the rapid economic growth . . . We must spare no effort to build the permanent security frameworks essential to underpinning currency integration.footnote1
Hatoyama spoke of working towards an autonomous East Asian Community, based on his notion of fraternity—yuai—as ‘a strong, combative concept’, and towards a ‘more equal’ relationship with Washington.footnote2 His party’s pre-election pledges included a democratization of Japan’s governmental process: instead of permanent civil servants setting agendas for ministers to ratify, elected representatives themselves would establish priorities and take decisions. There would be greater devolution of government power to the local prefectures.
The dpj is more of a broad umbrella grouping than a party. Founded in 1998, its adherents range from neo-liberal ‘modernizers’, represented by Hirano, Okada and Kitazawa, to a social-democratic Manifesto group, focused on education, welfare and poverty; it is supported by the 6-million-strong Rengo trade-union bloc and by a layer of independent-minded intellectuals.footnote3 In 2003, the dpj was decisively strengthened by fusion with Ozawa Ichiro’s Liberal Party. As leader of the dpj from 2007 until May 2009, Ozawa gave shape and force to what had been a rather vague foreign-policy agenda: fighting tooth-and-nail in the Diet against the extension of Japan’s Indian Ocean re-fuelling mission for us forces in Afghanistan and against the plan for a new American military base on the far-south Japanese island of Okinawa.
Ozawa is that rare Japanese politician, an effective operator with a shrewd sense of both strategy and tactics. Born in 1942, the son of an Iwate businessman, he was a rising star of one of the key ldp factions in the 1970s and 80s, having taken over his late father’s seat in the Diet. He became the Party’s General Secretary in 1989. Four years later, with his factional enemies closing in, he confounded them by leading a split that ousted the ldp from power for the first time since 1955. Ozawa was a key behind-the-scenes figure in the short-lived anti-ldp government of 1993. If he has asserted a consistent principle since then, it is that Japan should become a ‘normal’ sovereign state, able to determine its own foreign policy. After a chill encounter with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in February 2009, when the two did not see eye-to-eye on the new us base on Okinawa, a vicious media campaign erupted against him based on an ancient corruption charge. As a result, Ozawa stepped down as the dpj’s parliamentary leader in favour of Hatoyama. But as General Secretary he remained its key strategist and ‘shadow shogun’.