FROM THE EDITOR

POLITICAL WOES This issue’s political section looks at the declining fortunes of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, featuring an interview with former Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro and an article by Gerald Curtis, an authority on Japan’s political system. In addition, we carry a contribution from Sakaiya Taichi describing his experiences as the cabinet minister responsible for economic affairs during a critical juncture for the Japanese economy. Sakaiya, a writer and commentator who began his career in the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, served as director general of the Economic Planning Agency under Prime Ministers Obuchi Keizô and Mori Yoshirô until Mori reshuffled his cabinet last December. His article should make it clear why this civilian cabinet member made a hit with his plain-spoken style.

The articles appearing in Japan Echo are, as a rule, written by Japanese. In this issue, though, we have included three pieces by foreigners currently living in Japan. Apart from Curtis’s political analysis, we carry an article by China’s Zhu Jianrong, who is teaching in Japan, on China’s prospects and another by America’s Mel Bohn on the Nanking Incident and related issues involving Japan’s wartime misdeeds.

By the time of this issue’s publication, Japan may well have a new prime minister. First there is a budget that needs to be passed for fiscal 2001 (April 2001 to March 2002) to give the economy another shot in the arm, but after that, people are openly conjecturing, Prime Minister Mori is bound to step down. Though he still wants to be prime minister and has made no disastrous blunder, very few people have any confidence in him. Support for his government has followed a downward path ever since he took office and is now at the single-digit level. The stock market has also given him a vote of no confidence. The Nikkei average on the Tokyo Stock Exchange was in the vicinity of 20,000 points when his government was inaugurated but had fallen to some 13,000 points as of the end of February.

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LDP PRESIDENTIAL RACE Mori Yoshirô was thrust into the post of prime minister last April, when his predecessor, Obuchi Keizô, suffered a stroke. On receiving news of this emergency, five executives of the Liberal Democratic Party met and decided to support Mori as the new party leader. As a result, throughout his term of office Mori was criticized for having become prime minister in a backroom deal.

Whatever the circumstances of his appointment, Mori was officially elected prime minister in the Diet, and if his helmsmanship of government had gone smoothly, the process by which his administration came into being might never have become an issue. But during his time in office Mori was plagued by a series of his own ill-judged pronouncements and scandals involving close associates. He was the subject of constant public criticism for these, as well as for his decision not to interrupt the game of golf he was engaged in at the time of the collision between the Ehime Maru fisheries training vessel and an American nuclear submarine.

Consequently, the Mori cabinet was beset by a very low support rate, and many within the LDP had come to feel that the party could not win this summer’s House of Councillors election with Mori as their leader. With some even questioning his suitability for the job of prime minister, Mori decided to resign, even though Diet deliberations on some important bills were still ongoing.

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Four candidates ran for president of the LDP, a post that virtually guarantees the premiership, including former Prime Minster Hashimoto Ryûtarô and former Minister of Health and Welfare Koizumi Jun’ichirô. They each put forward their policies, and the race between them attracted broad national interest, despite its being an internal LDP election. In the end Koizumi overwhelmed his opponents, attracting the support of rank-and-file LDP members by advocating sweeping party reform. The unexpected defeat of Hashimoto, who had the backing of the LDP’s largest faction, may be a sign of big changes to come in the LDP and Japan’s political world as a whole.

In forming his cabinet, Koizumi rejected the usual practice of apportioning posts from lists provided by faction leaders. There are five female ministers in the new administration, including Foreign Minister Tanaka Makiko, as well as several nonpoliticians. This created a fresh impression on the public and gave Koizumi some of the highest support ratings at the start of an administration in recent history. He will no doubt attempt to sweep away many of the LDP’s antiquated practices on the strength of his popularity but is likely to meet fierce resistance to this initiative.

Looking back on the year or so of the Mori administration, there have been no especially damaging blunders. The biggest problem for the Mori cabinet was probably that it did not take appropriate action to deal with Japan’'s serious economic problems. A vague feeling of dissatisfaction spread among the public, which reached a catharsis as people denounced Mori and the LDP-style politics he represented. The media played a considerable role in fanning the flames of discontent.

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BACK TO RECESSION? The economy, which until about last June was thought to be heading for recovery, took a turn for the worse. Mori failed to take the lead in tackling the downturn, delegating the formulation of an emergency economic package to LDP Policy Research Council Chairman Kamei Shizuka.

As for the content of the package, many welcomed the fact that it contained measures to set a deadline for the disposal of nonperforming loans, but there is deep-rooted resistance to the proposal to prop up the stock market by establishing a public body to buy up shares, which is seen as government interference in the market. These issues are discussed in the economy section in this issue.

Whether the LDP can win July’s upper house election is still open to question. What the Japanese public has rejected is not an individual but the very nature of the LDP. The commentary by Kabashima Ikuo in this issue gives a clear analysis of these currents. But even though support for the LDP is declining, the Democratic Party of Japan and other opposition parties do not seem to be picking up support. Some voters in the next House of Councillors election may find themselves in a quandary, wishing to cast a vote but unable to find a suitable candidate to support.

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In the Chiba gubernatorial election in late March, Dômoto Akiko, a former upper house member running as an independent, was elected over candidates backed by the LDP and the DPJ. Following similar victories by independents in Nagano and Tochigi, this trend is causing unease among party-affiliated candidates.

Dômoto was asked to run by citizens’ groups and chairs the Global Legislators Organization for a Balanced Environment (GLOBE)—an international environmental organization. She was not particularly well known domestically as a politician, however. With no real support group, she achieved victory in the highly conservative prefecture by repeatedly engaging in discussions with suburban and rural residents and thanks to the backing of a group of highly motivated volunteers. Dômoto’s victory made her Japan’s third woman governor.

REFORMING EDUCATION Issues surrounding education and textbooks have recently been attracting considerable public interest. In this issue we present three articles on education. At one extreme of the educational debate is the view that textbooks should be rich in content that encourages learners to study for themselves, while at the other is the opinion that textbooks should cater to the lowest ability range so that any child can study with them. The reform plan recently adopted by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) is based on the latter perspective and reduces educational content by 30%, a move that has provoked strong criticism. This is only natural. Fearing a drop in academic standards, parents are likely to send their children to juku (cram schools) even more than before.

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Japan does not have state-written textbooks along the lines of those used in countries like China and South Korea. In Japan’s authorization process, which is designed to maintain educational standards nationwide, textbooks compiled by private-sector publishers are screened by MEXT to decide whether they are suitable for classroom use. This process takes place once every four years, and the latest round resulted in the approval of 155 textbooks for elementary school use and 105 for middle school use. In practice, textbooks are screened by the Textbook Authorization Research Council, composed of academics and school principals, in line with authorization guidelines, such as ensuring that the texts adhere to MEXT's Courses of Study and looking out for any one-sided comments. In many cases, the council informs publishers of alterations that it deems should be made.

Recent controversy surrounding the authorization process has centered on a middle school history textbook produced by the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform. The council requested 137 corrections to this text, all of which were undertaken before it gained approval. South Korea, China, and others protested, but it should be noted that this was only one of several middle school history textbooks to gain approval. The choice of which of these to use is made by local boards of education, which take account of the opinions of teachers in the classroom.

Not only does the fact that textbooks are distributed free of charge place limits on the contents of any one textbook but every author takes a different approach to selecting historical facts and placing them in the overall context. What is more, however significant a certain fact may be, there are always questions as to whether it might not be suitable for children of a certain age.

Undertaking a project in cooperation with neighboring countries to share historical knowledge about the region and produce common textbooks, as proposed by the LDP's Nonaka Hiromu, while not an easy task, would represent a welcome development. Another idea is that by making use of several textbooks written by authors with differing views of history in lessons, students are exposed to a variety of historical perspectives, which helps them to understand the true nature of history. (Iwao Sumiko)

© 2001 Japan Echo Inc.