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When Mori may be less

cover image

Japan has a new Prime Minister. But will he be anything other than a successful political infighter?

April 10, 2000
Web posted at: 12:45 p.m. EDT (1645 GMT)

With his bull neck and broad shoulders, Yoshiro Mori looks more like a rugby player than a politician. He is perceived as an overcautious, scandal-tainted back-room dealer with no discernible ideology, little international experience and zero tact. In recent months, he has managed to insult Americans, Okinawans, Osakans, AIDS sufferers and teachers. As for political courage, even friends say he has the heart of a flea. All of which makes Mori, 62, an ideal Prime Minister--at least in the eyes of the long-dominant Liberal Democratic Party, which last week chose him to replace the incapacitated Keizo Obuchi at the helm of Japan's government.

Mori's physical dynamism contrasted sharply with the dour frailty of his predecessor, who lay in a coma last week after a massive stroke. But the L.D.P. secretary-general was picked for the top post mainly because of his skills as a fixer in the back rooms of Japanese politics, where real decision making takes place. What his faction-riddled party needs most in these turbulent times--as the country faces a devastating volcanic eruption in the north, economic stagnation and a crisis of confidence--is someone who can hold things together.

Mori's first task will be to restore the public's faith in the government, which was badly shaken by the bumbling and deceitful handling of his predecessor's health emergency. It took 34 hours for Obuchi aide Mikio Aoki, who briefly stepped in as interim leader, to reveal the full extent of the Prime Minister's illness. Whether Mori can inspire trust and move the country along the path of badly needed financial and economic reforms remains to be seen. His 31-year career as a party apparatchik and former Education Minister and Trade Minister provides no evidence of any ideological convictions. Even members of his party struggled to find words to laud their new leader. "We don't have any qualified candidates, so he'll have to do," said Kazuo Aichi, an L.D.P. member of parliament.

Perhaps. But what he has most conspicuously arranged in the past has been pork-barrel projects for his home region in western Japan, including an unnecessary $14 billion bullet-train route. Mori made it clear last week that he will continue the profligate spending of his predecessor, who during his brief, 20-month tenure doled out more than $300 billion for government projects, making him Japan's all-time biggest spendthrift. Don't count on Mori to close the spigot. Government spending "has a natural impact on the economy," he said last week. "Right now the economy is slowly recovering. We want it to turn into a full-fledged recovery."

For all Obuchi's pump-priming efforts, however, the economy has barely begun to inch out of its decade-long doldrums. There have been some timid signs of a recovery: the stock market is booming, companies are restructuring, dotcom fever is starting to catch on. But the economy slid back into a recession last year and unemployment, once unheard of, is at an all-time high of 4.9%. Rather than pushing for the serious structural reforms that the country desperately needs, Mori is likely to offer more government largesse in order to beef up his popularity during the run-up to the parliamentary elections that must be held by October.

Even as the comatose Obuchi remains hooked up to life-support systems, he may turn out to be the most prominent figure in the upcoming campaign. Mori and his party colleagues can be expected to play shamelessly on the stricken leader's image to generate a sympathy vote while making critics of the Obuchi government's record look insensitive. In his first press conference last week, Mori repeatedly invoked the name of his longtime friend and former Waseda University classmate. "I feel like I can hear the voice of Prime Minister Obuchi from his bed, saying 'I trust you, so do it well,'" Mori told reporters.

Though Mori was known as a skilled debater at Waseda, he has lately distinguished himself more for loose lips than silver-tongued oratory. For example, he has inelegantly described Osaka as a "spittoon" and "a dirty city that thinks only about making money." Last January, reflecting on the difficulties of campaigning in enemy territory, he said that "all the farmers in the field ran away as if someone with AIDS was knocking on their door." In February, he asserted that the Americans had all "bought guns" in preparation for the Y2K bug "because when electrical power fails in the U.S., the gangs and murderers come out. Such is American society." Last month he charged that teachers in Okinawa were communist-controlled subversives.

Coincidentally, Okinawa will be the site of Mori's first major international appearance when he is host of the G-8 summit in July. That leaves him just three months to hone his diplomatic skills and demonstrate his potential as a national leader before he sits down with the heads of the industrial world's most powerful countries. On that occasion, his peers will be watching closely to see if Japan's new leader-by-default is anything more than a successful party infighter.


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Cover Date: April 17, 2000

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