U.S. Sees Change of Personalities, Not Policies, in Japan’s Premier

Judged by charisma alone, Japan’s new prime minister, Ryutaro Hashimoto, easily surpasses his predecessor, Tomiichi Murayama. The rise to power of the aggressive, ambitious Hashimoto is being widely portrayed, both in Japan and in the United States, as a generational change, signaling the Japanese desire for more dynamic leadership.

Yet when judged by the practical realities of policy, Hashimoto’s new government will probably not be much different for the United States than the outgoing one. In fact, for all the recent hoopla over Hashimoto’s ascent, Washington has little reason to expect much change from Tokyo, at least until the next Japanese elections.

That is the consensus that has emerged among American policymakers over the last few days after witnessing the new government that Hashimoto has formed and a visit to Washington on Friday by the new foreign minister, Yukihiko Ikeda.

“I don’t expect him [Hashimoto] to do much until he holds an election and sees what kind of a majority he has,” said one senior U.S. official. Hashimoto’s government has not yet said when it will hold elections.

Other Japan specialists in the government pointed out that the new Japanese government still represents the same coalition as the last one, combining Hashimoto’s Liberal Democratic Party, Murayama’s Socialist Party and the smaller New Party Harbinger. “The LDP was in charge of that coalition in any case, and now it’s just the front guy [prime minister] who’s different,” said one of the Clinton administration’s top experts on Asia.

At stake between the United States and Japan is the future of the security relationship between the two countries, which has been clouded by the outpouring of protests in Okinawa last fall over the U.S. military bases there. In addition, a number of trade disputes are pending in areas such as semiconductors, insurance and photographic film.

The top item on the agenda between the countries now is President Clinton’s upcoming visit to Tokyo in April. The president had been scheduled to make the trip last November but postponed it on short notice after the budget deadlock with Congress produced the first of two shutdowns of the U.S. government.

In Tokyo, Clinton and Murayama were supposed to sign a joint statement reaffirming and broadening the security ties between the United States and Japan. Now, officials in Washington and Tokyo are working to make sure that the statement will be signed in April when Clinton meets Hashimoto.

Murayama’s Socialist Party had for decades opposed the U.S-Japan Security Treaty. But that didn’t turn out to matter much during the last government because Murayama, as prime minister in the coalition dominated by the LDP, wound up endorsing Japan’s military alliance with the United States.

Administration officials were happy to hear Hashimoto again voice support for the treaty in his inaugural news conference as premier last week.

Although most U.S. analysts agree with the notion that Hashimoto’s government represents more a continuity for Japanese policy than a dramatic change, there are some who disagree.

A few, both inside and outside the U.S. government, believe that Hashimoto could spell trouble for the United States because he is a tough negotiator and operator who is skillful at exploiting nationalist sentiments in Japan.

“He’s going to be tough to deal with,” one senior U.S. official predicted. Hashimoto is best known in this country for the role he played as Japan’s international trade and industry minister last year, bargaining hard to resist American demands in negotiations about autos and auto parts.

But several other U.S. experts said Hashimoto’s role in the auto talks has been exaggerated--and that, in any case, his performance as trade minister is of little value in predicting his behavior as prime minister.

“Sam Rayburn once said, ‘Where you stand depends on where you sit,’ ” observed a State Department official, referring to the former longtime Democratic speaker of the House from Texas. The official’s suggestion was that Hashimoto may be less aggressive on trade issues now than he was as trade minister.

On the other hand, a few other administration officials have contended that Hashimoto’s ascent to the prime minister’s office is actually good news for Washington and a welcome change from the past government. “He [Hashimoto] is a decision-maker,” said one senior State Department official. “We need someone who can be decisive.”

Yet most U.S. officials and scholars believe the change at the premier’s office, dramatic as it seems, will have little impact on policy toward the U.S.

“This is still just a holding operation,” said Chalmers Johnson of the Japan Policy Research Institute in San Diego. “It’s a total misunderstanding, as usual, by Westerners to project onto Japan the idea that personalities determine what happens in politics.”