Miyazawa Fails to Live Up to Hopes : Japan: Premier came into office amid high expectations. But his term has been marked by scandals and inaction.

Amid expectations of firm leadership and clear policies, Kiichi Miyazawa, one of Japan’s top policy brains, came into office armed with the most extensive experience in government and politics that any Japanese leader ever brought to the prime minister’s post.

But after five months, firm leadership and clarity in policy-making have yet to appear.

Instead, scandals, slips of the tongue, inaction and a vacuum of new ideas have become hallmarks of what experts had expected would be a “full-dress administration,” replacing the “pinch-hitter” government of Miyazawa’s predecessor, Toshiki Kaifu.

The only new policy that Miyazawa has launched--to transform economic giant Japan into a “living standards giant”--remains little more than a slogan.

Despite a growing Japanese trade surplus, U.S.-Japan trade frictions have been ignored, except during a visit by President Bush. No initiative has been taken to push forward negotiations in the Uruguay Round of multinational trade negotiations. Reform of Japan’s financial systems in the wake of last year’s scandals has been left to the bureaucrats. And only lukewarm attention has been given to demands for political reform.

Already, one commentator noted in the magazine Sentaku (Choice) that “Miyazawa-bashing” has become “trendy in Nagata-cho,” the section of Tokyo in which Parliament is located. There, political analysts widely speculate that Miyazawa, 72, will not last out his two-year term.

Nearly every week, opinion polls show support plummeting. Last week, Kyodo News Agency put his public support at 24%, down from 51% at the beginning.

And Miyazawa’s biggest challenge still lies ahead. It will come with the July election for the upper house of Parliament. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party lost its majority in the upper house for the first time three years ago, and the party faces an even bigger shortfall this time.

The experts are not quite sure what has happened to Miyazawa. Nor are they united in predicting what lies ahead. But one thing is clear: As if cursed, nearly everything Miyazawa has touched has turned to ashes.

“He needs to go through a purification ceremony,” said political commentator Minoru Morita.

Indeed, so bad has Miyazawa’s run of misfortune been that his finest moment so far may have come with the aplomb he displayed when Bush collapsed and vomited in his lap at a banquet here in January.

First, Miyazawa took office just as a severe downturn emerged in Japan’s economic growth rate. But he inherited a fiscal 1992 budget that was being compiled to cope with the opposite problem, economic overheating.

A trip that Bush had scheduled to Tokyo in November, which was to have focused on fixing goals for a U.S.-Japan “global partnership,” was postponed until January. It then was transformed by Bush into what many Japanese and others saw as a crass “trade mission,” seeking “jobs, jobs, jobs” for Americans.

When Miyazawa later traveled to Seoul, his trip was soiled with sudden revelations of evidence that the Japanese government had run brothels for its troops during World War II, forcing tens of thousands of Korean and other Asian women to serve as “comfort women.”

And then, just before Parliament reopened in January, Fumio Abe, one of Miyazawa’s closest aides, who had served until December as secretary general of the prime minister’s faction in Parliament, was arrested and charged with accepting a $640,000 bribe.

Abe’s arrest put scandal and demands for political reform back on the front burner. It also revived suspicions about Miyazawa himself. In December, 1988, he had been forced to resign as finance minister because of his inability to explain his secretary’s windfall stock profits from the Recruit Co. The renewed focus on the two scandals paved the way for two defeats of Miyazawa’s party in by-elections for the upper house in conservative strongholds.

Only last Sunday, when two ruling party candidates won a double victory in a by-election for the lower house, did Miyazawa finally get his first break. But, at best, it provided only a respite.

Meantime, his streak of bad luck has deprived the prime minister of leeway for new initiatives and turned the political spotlight to arenas in which his known weaknesses are most glaring. His own slips of the tongue--about a need to extend “sympathy” to a suffering America and his view of a declining American work ethic--added to the trouble.

A leader criticized throughout his 49-year career for wearing his intelligence on his sleeve, Miyazawa’s disdain for back-room politics was famous long before he took office. But since November, coping with Parliament has been Problem No. 1.

Lacking any personal ties of his own with opposition leaders, Miyazawa entrusted parliamentary operations to the party’s biggest faction, titularly headed by former Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita but led by king-maker Shin Kanemaru.

In December, Miyazawa stood on the sidelines as Takeshita faction leaders rammed through the lower house, over obstructionist tactics by Socialists and Communists, a bill to authorize sending Japanese troops overseas to take part in disaster relief and U.N. peacekeeping missions.

But the rough tactics, which included calling in security guards to prevent outraged opposition members from blocking a vote on the measure, persuaded the Buddhist-backed Komei (Clean Government) Party, which holds the swing vote in the upper house, to withdraw its support. The bill failed.

Now, it is up for consideration again. But even senior officials of the Foreign Ministry wonder whether support from the moderate opposition--both the Komei Party and the Democratic Socialist Party--can be won, partly, they say, because of Miyazawa’s “waffling” on the bill.

Miyazawa also failed to intervene in the parliamentary uproar caused by the arrest of his sidekick, Abe. As a result, parliamentary deliberations were paralyzed for almost a month.

As an economic expert who served as finance minister and director of the Economic Planning Agency, Miyazawa had been expected to play a far more active role in management of the economy than Kaifu, who left economic decisions to his bureaucrats.

But only last Tuesday did Miyazawa’s Cabinet approve a package of economic stimulants.

Even the kindest critics, however, pointed out that the implied extra spending in the package would add no more than 0.6% to GNP growth. The Tokyo Stock Exchange was not so kind. It reacted by plummeting to a five-year low.

The contrast with Miyazawa’s performance as finance minister from 1986 to 1988 was notable. So successfully did he work with then-Treasury Secretary James A. Baker III to manage exchange rates and international finance issues that the Group of Seven, the financial leaders of the seven major industrialized democracies, came to be called the “Group of Two.”

Miyazawa also was the originator of the proposal to help alleviate Third World debt, the package now called “the Brady Plan.” The United States rejected Miyazawa’s idea only to repackage and embrace it as a creation of Treasury Secretary Nicholas F. Brady.

“Miyazawa is great as a critic-commentator. But as a leader, you’ve got to persuade others to follow, and Miyazawa isn’t good at personal relationships,” said a Japanese political reporter, who asked not to be identified by name.

Miyazawa’s Misfortunes

With great fanfare about his record and skills, Kiichi Miyazawa became Japan’s prime minister last fall. But in the five months since then, his tenure seemingly has been cursed. Consider the following: * Budget troubles: He took office just as Japan’s mighty economy began to slump, with the Tokyo stock market recently plummeting. But he inherited a 1992 budget intended to address a different concern: Japan’s earlier economic overheating.

* A tense visit: He was supposed to have a visit by President Bush aimed at boosting a new, global role for Japan as a major foreign policy player. Instead, the visit was postponed. And when Bush finally arrived, the President, responding to U.S. domestic concerns, pursued a “jobs, jobs, jobs” trade mission that the Japanese found unpleasant, at best.

* Korean relations: He traveled to Seoul to try to improve ties with South Korea, an increasingly important economic force and a nation with historically poor relations with Japan. But his visit was marred by disclosures of Japan’s wartime practice of enslaving Koreans and other Asians to serve as “comfort women” for Japanese soldiers.

* War of words: He became involved in corrosive U.S.-Japan verbal exchanges, with surprisingly undiplomatic remarks about a need to extend “sympathy” to a suffering America and his view of a declining American work ethic.

* Taint of scandal: Just before Parliament opened, Fumio Abe, one of his closest aides, was arrested and charged with accepting a $640,000 bribe. That renewed suspicions about government scandal and Miyazawa himself.

* Overseas troops: He relied on others to steer through Parliament a controversial plan to authorize the overseas dispatch of Japanese military forces for participation in disaster relief and U.N. peacekeeping missions. But the rough lobbying tactics employed doomed the measure. It has been resuscitated; its fate, however, remains unclear, partly because of Miyazawa’s “waffling” support for it.

Source: Times Staff Reports