Japan’s “Koizumi Kool” Fad

If the first half of the 20th century was the Age of Ideology, the second half was the Age of Personality. With last Sunday’s election, the Age of Personality has finally come to Japan. Politics have become intensely personalized.

That’s a whole new experience for Japan--and for the world. Ask yourself how many of the 25 elected leaders of Japan since World War II you can name. For nearly 50 years, Japan has been governed by a system. Now it’s governed by a leader, one who sees it as his mission to take on that system.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who was chosen in April, was not on Sunday’s ballot, which covered half the membership of the upper house of parliament. But it was a test of Koizumi’s electoral appeal.

And he passed. Koizumi’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has ruled Japan almost continuously since 1955, was on the brink of oblivion earlier this year. The previous prime minister left office with an approval rating of 7%. After just three months in office, Koizumi’s popularity turned his party’s fortunes around. The LDP gained nearly 7 million votes on Sunday and saw its share of the vote jump from 25% to 40%. And while the LDP gained, its coalition partners did not. The message? A vote for Koizumi’s party was a vote for him.

What happened in Japan has been happening all over the world. In country after country, leaders have replaced political parties with their own personal followings. Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton did that in the United States. Vladimir V. Putin did it in Russia. Tony Blair did it in Great Britain. Silvio Berlusconi did it this year in Italy.

Why is this happening? Because of television. The power of these leaders is essentially personal. Voters support them, not their party or ideology. They don’t need a party or ideology. They have television. Of course, Japan has had the tube for as long as the U.S., but it has also had a powerful political machine that resisted the personalization of politics for decades. In the end, even in Japan, television, which allows direct, personal communication between politicians and voters, won out. It’s a two-way process: politicians talk to the voters through television. Voters talk back to the politicians through polls.

Koizumi’s greatest skill is his ability to communicate with voters. “He speaks as your father would, making many feel a strong affinity toward him,” a prominent Japanese television producer told the Asahi Shimbun daily newspaper. Koizumi’s base of power isn’t his party. It’s the polls.

Koizumi represents a challenge to “the iron triangle” that has ruled Japan for almost 50 years: politicians, bureaucracy and big business. The LDP is the very embodiment of that system. The joke is that the Liberal Democratic Party is neither liberal, nor democratic, nor really a party. It’s a vast patronage machine.

Koizumi himself was a part of that machine. He has served in two LDP cabinets. He has managed a leading party faction. So here’s a leader running against the encrusted tradition embodied by his own party--and his own past.

Koizumi’s reform agenda would overturn all the assumptions that have governed Japanese politics since the 1950s. “Reform without sacred cows,” he calls it. It is something like the reforms made by Ronald Reagan in the United States and former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in Britain: curtail public spending, downsize government, reduce public debt and privatize public services.

But while Koizumi has now proven that his personal popularity extends to his party, another question remains: Can he transfer his personal popularity to his bold economic reform program? That remains to be seen.

Koizumi is likely to face considerable opposition in his own party. Huge and powerful interest groups, like a construction industry that thrives on public subsidies, will try to thwart Koizumi’s reforms. What does Koizumi have to fight them with?

Popularity. Koizumi is already threatening to call a new election in the lower house of parliament and force his critics to face the voters. “If my party tries to destroy my reforms, I will destroy the party,” he warns--an extraordinary threat coming from a Japanese prime minister.

Koizumi’s style of personal leadership might work in the U.S. But it is a far less certain bet in Japan, which doesn’t have the same tradition of direct democracy. It is, however, a country that goes for fads. Just in the course of this year, support for the prime minister went from 7% when former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori held the office to upwards of 80% as the Koizumi craze took off. The conventional wisdom in political circles is, not surprisingly, “This, too, shall pass.”

In American terms, Koizumi is a populist, although that’s not a term the prime minister and his supporters like. To them, populist means “irresponsible”--a leader who says, “I can give you something for nothing.” Koizumi is not irresponsible. He has made no effort to hide the fact that his reforms will be painful.

Still, the signs of populism are clear. First and foremost is Koizumi’s charisma. The Japanese treat their prime minister like a movie star. The press calls it, the “Koizumi Kool” phenomenon. He speaks to adoring audiences. Young girls scream when they see him. The LDP had to open a special shop at party headquarters to meet the public demand for Koizumi posters and t-shirts. A gigantic photograph of the prime minister adorns the party building in Tokyo.

Koizumi also embraces a proud, unapologetic nationalism. He favors changing the constitution to allow Japan to have a standing army. He points to the fact that twice in its history, Japan has reformed itself under pressure from the United States: after Commodore Matthew Perry forced the opening of Japan in 1853, and when Gen. Douglas MacArthur took over postwar reconstruction in 1945. Now, Koizumi says, he wants reform without “gaiatsu,” or outside pressure.

In his most controversial move, Koizumi has promised to visit the Yasukuni Shrine to Japan’s war dead on Aug. 15, the anniversary of Japan’s defeat. China and Korea have protested the visit because Japan’s leading war criminals are buried at Yasukuni. Koizumi claims he is simply showing respect for ancestors, not making a political statement. He is, of course, making a political statement. He is saying, “I am different from other Japanese leaders.”

And he is. Koizumi’s style is clear, frank and outspoken--yes means yes and no means no. That is very un-Japanese. He is an independent and a maverick in a country that prizes conformity. He cultivates an “outsider” appeal, even though he is a third-generation politician--like President Bush. Most important, he’s clean. No gossip, no rumors, no hint of scandal. That’s news in a country that has been rocked by financial scandals for years.

Koizumi is not a consensus politician. He is a straight talker. He’s the Japanese version of John McCain, the most popular figure in American politics--a maverick, an outsider, a man who takes on the special interests and challenges his own party. Imagine if John McCain were president of the United States. Even with a mandate from the people for his bold and unconventional ideas to change the system, he’d have to face the political insiders and special interests lying in wait for him. Just as Koizumi will in Japan.