Why do Japan’s leaders keep quitting? Todd Crowell, who covered Tiananmen as Chief of Correspondents for Asiaweek, gives three reasons why in a piece on RealClearWorld.
Here’s his intro:
TOKYO – Many Western commentators on Japan’s recent change of leadership focused on the extraordinary short tenure of former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who resigned last week after spending fewer than nine months in office, and that of his immediate predecessors in the now opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).
For all of his brevity in office, Hatoyama’s tenure was by no means the shortest. Four prime ministers in post-war Japan have had even shorter tenures. And the previous three leaders from the former government each served only about one year (one should probably excuse Taro Aso, who naturally and properly resigned after losing an election).
It should be remembered that the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) and the now opposition Liberal Democrats both enjoyed huge majorities in the powerful lower house – in the LDP’s case enough to muster a two-thirds vote on key issues. They did not face votes of no confidence or losses on important bills, things that usually precipitate changes in leadership in other parliamentary democracies.
So why do Japanese leaders seem to have such a hard time clinging to power? There are, I think, three major reasons:
The three reasons he gives are the key role of opinion polls, the culture of apology, and “weak sisters.”
Go to the link to read his explanations of these reasons.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.