Torpedo the Dams, Full Astern on Public Spending

Popular author Yasuo Tanaka has a penchant for Versace leather suits, flight attendants and disclosing the intimate details of his many affairs. Until recently, he was best known for his three racy diaries.

But these days, Tanaka has been making headlines for his tactics in virgin territory: politics. Since his election last fall as governor of Nagano--a prefecture where corruption apparently ran so deep that officials torched records of their successful 1998 Olympics bid--the 44-year-old has been revolutionizing government and reviving residents’ jaundiced spirits.

Tanaka’s move to reduce spending has turned him into a national hero of sorts--but also has brought him face to face with Japan’s omnipotent bureaucrats, as well as politicians, who view spending as stimulus for the country’s moribund economy.

Like a modern-day David versus Goliath, Tanaka has canceled pricey public works projects that he says are driving Japan to the financial brink--but which are popular with the construction industry that bankrolls the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, or LDP. Some of his enemies brand him a second Hitler.

“But I’m trying to make people think,” Tanaka counters, “whereas Hitler was trying to stop them from thinking.”

The recent ascension of Junichiro Koizumi to the prime ministership has re-energized the prospects of the LDP, of which Koizumi has been a lifelong member. His slogan: The LDP must change.

But Tanaka, who won election as an independent, has been taking on the LDP front and center.

“‘Although citizens are trying to change the way society is, LDP politicians are trying to change the way LDP is, and it seems strange to me,” Tanaka told the Mainichi newspaper. “The [new administration] is a life-prolonging device.”

In an attempt to live up to his campaign promise to create a government that is “crystal clear and without secrets,” Tanaka used his own office as a metaphor. He moved his quarters from a corner of the third floor to the lobby, where the gawking public can, and does, monitor his every move. Locals stride up to take a gander at him, and television crews and reporters loiter outside his glassed-in office, even zooming in on what he’s eating for lunch at his desk--almost as if he’s in a zoo.

Tanaka has crisscrossed his rural prefecture to inaugurate regular forums with citizens that come about as close to revival meetings as reticent Japan gets: Those who thought that they never had a voice now are singing out as if in a karaoke club.

“I feel like I’m in ‘Little House on the Prairie,’ ” Shigeo Kusama, 51, said at a recent meeting, referring to the old-fashioned town-meeting democracy shown on reruns of the U.S. television series.

In Japan, such political openness stands out as much as the felt deer pin--which was given to him by disabled residents and has become his symbol--that Tanaka always wears on his lapel. And the upbeat mood contrasts with the overwhelming sense of powerlessness that has swept the rest of the nation, with citizens feeling they have little opportunity to influence the LDP.

Yet how much change Tanaka can actually initiate remains to be seen. One key test: whether he emerges victorious in his war on public spending. It’s being watched so closely nationwide, it’s been dubbed the “Nagano model.”

Tanaka has canceled three long-planned dams, along with some or all of 90 other projects, in an attempt to rein in the prefecture’s--and nation’s--onerous debt.

He has other battles to fight too. Recent disclosures revealed that he borrowed about $80,000 for his campaign from public interest groups that opposed the dams. (He has paid back most of it.)

Although such contributions aren’t illegal, they don’t help his image of impartiality. And he’s beginning to lose support of key insiders such as his chief aide, Yoshitaka Sugihara, who resigned, citing a lack of forward-looking reforms. “Gov. Tanaka is like Mt. Fuji--so beautiful when I look at it from a distance, but once I climb up, it’s strewn with rocks and litter,” Sugihara told Aera magazine.

Many Yearn for a Strong Leader

Moreover, Tanaka may end up like many would-be reformers before him: Group-oriented Japanese seem to yearn for a strong leader when they have a weak one but then quickly grow weary of him if he’s too individualistic or autocratic.

For now, however, finding a citizen in this prefecture who doesn’t like Tanaka is nearly as hard as finding someone who doesn’t like sushi.

“He’s two decades too late,” said Sumiko Okamiya, who was selling chestnut and sticky rice cakes near the famous Zenkoji temple in central Nagano. “If he’d been elected earlier, he could have changed the people of Nagano more.”

Local newspapers chart his approval ratings at as high as 90%. There’s so much interest in what he’s up to, the local newspaper now runs a “governor’s corner” column every day on his activities.

“All we could do was watch helplessly in the past,” said Shinichi Hayashi, a retired soil engineer. He voted for Tanaka’s opponent but now says he supports Tanaka. “I think he has established a close relationship with citizens.”

Hayashi is concerned about the debt the prefecture and nation are racking up. The nation has issued stimulus package after multibillion-dollar stimulus package--full of pork-barrel projects--but the economy continues to languish.

Local governments typically view public works spending as manna from heaven: At least 50%, and often as much as 80%, of the projects, such as bridges, tunnels and roads, are funded by the central government. Dams are favorites because they get among the highest subsidies: The government has spent about $7.74 billion on dams in the last two years alone.

Nevertheless, Tanaka says such spending is no bargain, for the prefecture or the nation. He says concrete dams aren’t good for the environment and wear out. The funding skews the equation so river salvage projects that might be cheaper--and more appropriate than, say, one Nagano dam that would cost $325 million to build--aren’t considered because they get a smaller proportion of matching national funds.

“It’s our own expense, considering we’re paying taxes,” said Tanaka, who speaks English.

Prefectural council members have criticized him for canceling the projects without consulting bureaucrats who worked on them. “He’s acting like a dictator,” said Tamotsu Shimozaki, leader of the largest faction in the prefectural council, who compares Tanaka to Hitler.

Adding to the indignity, Shimozaki says, is that funding already received from the central government will now have to be returned and allocated to other prefectures. “Nagano citizens pay tax to the central government,” he said, “so they have a right to receive it back.”

One prefectural bureaucrat folded Tanaka’s business card upon meeting him, an insult in a nation where exchanging business cards is essential and the cards are treated with utmost respect. The key central government official appointed as an intermediary between the national coffers and the state quit in disgust at the end of March.

The prefectural council has set some limits on Tanaka, establishing a 15-member committee to review any project he cancels.

But Tanaka’s concern may be justified. Nagano has been staggering under a public-debt hangover from the 1998 Winter Olympics, leaving residents of rural Nagano saddled with even higher tax bills than in Tokyo, but with lower salaries to pay them. Nagano has a debt of $12.5 billion, about half of it stemming from the Olympics.

Tanaka is doing his part to cut spending too. He refused to move into the sprawling governor’s residence, declaring it a waste of taxpayers’ money; he rents a condominium at his own expense.

1980 Book Became a Bestseller

Tanaka has always cut a high profile in Japan: He rose to prominence as a young man in 1980 with a best-selling book, “Somewhat Crystal,” about a woman who seeks meaning in her life by tracking fashion trends. He loves to wine and dine, publishing his reviews in a collection, “Recent Decent Restaurants.”

And although he’s no Tom Cruise--asked what they thought of him after they ran up and asked for his autograph, two giggling high school girls said, “He’s short”--his confessional writings suggest he is quite the Lothario.

“I met Mademoiselle U at a soba shop,” he wrote in one of his diaries, “Grinding and Caressing.” “We took a nap at the Park Hyatt hotel [one of the most luxurious in Tokyo]. The noise probably echoed through the entire floor. . . . Late that night, she returned to her husband.”

Since the campaign, he’s been steadily dating a Japan Airlines flight attendant, traveling with her to Europe for a week over the New Year’s holiday. Is he monogamous now? He won’t exactly say. “The most important thing is there are no secrets,” he replied. “It’s up to the local people to judge whether it’s good or bad. Some politicians and actors pretend to have good behavior but it’s totally different.”

His love life seems to be accepted in Nagano. “He’s a writer,” said Keiko Fujii, 58, the proprietor of a 350-year-old inn. “I don’t believe a lot of what he writes--some of it might be fiction. He’s seeing his girlfriend in the open, and since it’s all out in the open, we can accept it.”

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Hisako Ueno of The Times’ Tokyo bureau contributed to this report.