Word: hatoyamas
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Yukio Hatoyama knows that change in Japan doesn't come easily. On Wednesday, Sept. 15, he became the country's 60th Prime Minister and only the fourth since 1955 from a party other than the long-ensconced Liberal Democrats (LDP). At his first presser since officially assuming the post, he asked the Japanese people for patience. "Through trial and error, we may make mistakes," he said. "But I would like the Japanese people to be gentle with us." He continued, "This is an encounter with the unknown, and we're embarking on a trip that we've never experienced...
...leader Yukio Hatoyama, who will be voted in as Prime Minister later this month, said the election represented "the first-ever proper change in government in the history of our constitutional politics." He leads a party cobbled together from groups united in not much more than their opposition to the LDP; it has no obvious coherent ideology of its own. Though there are a number of old heads in the party--its éminence grise, former LDP minister Ichiro Ozawa, has been a player in Japanese politics for 30 years--no fewer than 46% of its Diet members will...
...Hatoyama will have to get the budget under control and help shift Japan away from the export-oriented economic growth that served it so well in its golden age of the 1970s and '80s. To accomplish that, Japan needs to boost domestic consumption. But its people will spend only if they feel economically secure, which is why thoroughgoing reform of the pension, health-care and unemployment systems is vital. Japan's current social-security programs hark back to an era of guaranteed jobs for life, which places unsustainable financial burdens on companies and individuals...
China has replaced the U.S. as Japan's leading trading partner, and Hatoyama has said he would like Japan to develop more of an "equal" relationship with its American ally. That has raised concerns that the DPJ might tinker with some aspects of its security pact with the U.S. Such fears are probably unfounded; everyone in Japanese politics knows the alliance with the U.S. is the bedrock on which Japanese security rests. But as China grows in strength politically and economically, it is inevitable that any Japanese government will want to have close relations with Beijing as well as Washington...
...taken a long time, but we have at last reached the starting line ... This is by no means the destination.' --Yukio Hatoyama, DPJ leader