But Hatoyama's legacy is likely to be greater than that of his three hapless predecessors, writes DAVID MCNEILL
DUBBED “THE Alien” for his big, staring eyes and penchant for head-scratching philosophical rambling, Yukio Hatoyama was always an unusual choice of leader.
The offspring of a political and business dynasty, Mr Hatoyama built a solid academic career before following his grandfather, father and brother into politics. But he never quite lost the air of a slightly befuddled professor.
Voters knew what they were getting. "All humans are aliens," he wrote in a book written 10 years ago that preached the importance of "going beyond the bounds of global awareness into universal consciousness". Won over by his promise to revolutionise a political and economic system that the Economistlast year dubbed "a shambles", they elected him anyway. Many are surely now regretting that decision.
Mr Hatoyama rarely seemed comfortable dealing with the hard realities of political office, a weakness typified by his handling of the Okinawa base issue that eventually brought him down.
He made little secret of his desire to end one of his country’s great injustices: that 99 per cent of Japanese never have to face the consequences of its military alliance with the US because tiny Okinawa – with 1 per cent of the population and 75 per cent of American military facilities – carries most of the load.
But despite promising to cancel a 2006 deal foisting a huge military heliport on one of Okinawa’s most scenic areas, the prime minister quickly realised he had no stomach for a fight with Washington, which would have tugged at the foundations of Japan’s entire postwar defence architecture. So instead he took to pleading with Okinawa, with disastrous results.
Time and again he appeared on TV to “appeal for the understanding” of islanders, despite the fact that they have repeatedly and clearly rejected the base, in elections and polls. When he eventually delivered his verdict to Okinawa last month, he had the air of a weary postman bringing a year-old letter.
His fall leaves the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in a bind. Without him and party bigwig Ichiro Ozawa, the party hopes to shrug off the taint of money politics that hung around its predecessors, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), like a cloud of bluebottles. Only time will tell if they succeed.
The man tipped to take over, finance minister Naoto Kan, made his name scrapping with bureaucrats, a sign that the DPJ intends to continue with perhaps its key policy aim: dismantling the bureaucrat-led system that engineered Japan’s rise from humiliated second World War pariah state to economic superpower.
But more prosaic problems will impose themselves, including Japan’s vast public debt, currently running at over 180 per cent of GDP and widely predicted to hit 250 per cent within five years.
That is likely to constrain another of Mr Hatoyama’s best-known ambitions: creating a European-style welfare system that shifts resources away from the LDP-led construction state to education, health and Japan’s plummeting birth rate – people over concrete in his words.
The new leader may also have to deal with a worst-case scenario: a drubbing in the July upper-house election and months of legislative gridlock, hounded by a revived LDP.
Despite his weak political skills, Mr Hatoyama is likely to be seen as a much more important leader than his three hapless predecessors, who all quit in less than a year. He ended the rigor-mortis grip of the LDP over the country after half a century, tripled Japan’s target for cutting greenhouse emissions and kick-started a political revolution that may prove unstoppable after he is gone.
He also started a tentative debate about the logic of an anti-nuclear, pacifist country depending on a nuclear-armed superpower to protect it. His successors will have to grapple with one possible conclusion: the prospect of an independent defence policy befiting a country Japan’s size and importance.