It's Kan

In the DPJ leadership election today, Kan beat Ozawa - and pretty handily too. He got just over half of Diet member votes, 60% of the prefectural chapter votes and over 80% of individual member votes.

The DPJ Diet was evenly split between them, which at first blush would seem like a party breakup just waiting to happen. But the large overweight of chapter and especially individual votes should convince the Ozawa supporters that the party - and the lower house election voters - are not with them on this, and that a defection or split would risk their own Diet seats.

Ozawa would seem to be finished. He's old, he's in failing health, he's under police investigation and he's just lost his last, best hope of becoming Prime minister. But he's been written off so many times only to come back that he's one hockey mask away from being a grumpy political horror-movie cliché.

So Kan wins - what does it mean? Not much. Kan stands for a continuation of the current policies whereas Ozawa would have meant a minor shift. Kan is reluctantly in favour of the US base move to Futenma, but that looks like a completely dead issue, what with all relevant Okinawan political offices populated by a majority of opponents to the move. Kan seems more reluctant than Ozawa to divest power away from Tokyo and to the regions, but the emergence of strong regional politicians in combination with the never-ending circus that is Japanese national politics may force his hand.

And while he got through this scrape OK, he still has 167 days to go to avoid becoming the next record holder for shortest prime ministership. When you consider recent Japanese political history those 167 days are by no means a given.

Summertime, and the Leaving is Easy

Ah yes, beginning of summer. The cycle turns. As every year the rainy season will soon be upon us. Summer festivals will return. We can look forward to the yearly Obon holiday in August, when, as every year, half of Japan leaves the cities for their ancestral villages.

And of course, in an ancient yearly tradition¹ the fragile annual that is the Japanese Prime Minister will wither, to be replaced by a fresh new specimen that will surprise and delight us over the year to come.

This year brings us Naoto Kan², finance minister in the Hatoyama cabinet. With just a month or so before the upper house election, his election and appointment is being run through at the highest possible speed.

The pundits pretty much all seem to agree he's not only the best choice available, but a solid choice for Prime minister in his own right. As finance minister he's done a good job the past year in the face of the continuing economic crisis, he's got lots of experience in politics and in government, and he has a healthy distance to the Ozawa people, without being opposed by them.

And even more refreshingly, he's the first Prime minister in a good long while that is not the son or grandson of a former Prime minister (the last one was Koizumi; his grandfather only made "ordinary" cabinet minister). Even more, he's a self-made politician, with no family history in politics, so he entered the field from personal interest and conviction rather than a sense of family obligation or simply taking the easy road prepared by his parents. And being neither from a well-connected political clan, nor being all that liked among his peers, we can be pretty sure he reached this point using his own ability rather than riding the coattails of others.

Will this improve the fortunes of the DPJ and of Japan? Well, it's hard not to improve on Hatoyama³, and irrespective of the prime minister, having Ozawa leave can only be a good thing for Japanese politics. Also, it's easy to miss the forest for the trees here. Many people rightly call for a political realignment in Japan, as the old party and political structures just aren't a good fit to current reality anymore. But that realignment will be very messy, with large parts of the political world thrown into disarray. It will look quite a lot like events in recent years in other words. Chaos and confusion are not desirable of course, but hey may well be unavoidable if a more appropriate system is ever going to emerge.

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#1 Anything that happens twice is a tradition. If it happens a third time it's ancient and honourable. Remember that whenever you read tourist travel information.

#2 Really, Wikipedia is a very popular site, with lots and lots of visitors. Were I in the PR team for a public figure like Kan, I'd make a point of giving them a well-composed freely-licensed picture to use, instead of having them settle for some direct-flash keitai snapshot that would make even Ingrid Bergman look like Gollum on a bad day.

#3 I'm speaking relative to the top level people in Japanese politics of course. Hatoyama lasted eight months, but had I been put in that job we'd have measured the incumbency in weeks - hours if anybody was stupid enough to let me write my own acceptance speech.