New era?

Japan's parliament selected former opposition leader Yukio Hatoyama as the new prime minister at a specially convened sitting early on Wednesday.

He was elected with 327 votes out of the 480 seats in the parliament's lower house. The upper chamber, the House of Councillors, confirmed him within minutes.

Hatoyama's Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) won a land-slide victory in last month's elections, sweeping the House of Representatives. However, it failed to win the two thirds majority needed in the lower house to override opposition in the upper chamber, where it didn't win a majority.

The DPJ, often described as a center-left party, took 42.4 percent of the vote in the general election on Aug. 30, profiting from widespread electoral dissatisfaction with former Prime Minister Taro Aso's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

The 62-year-old Hatoyama, a US-educated managerial engineer from a wealthy Japanese political family, ran on a platform of fighting corruption and having the government do more for ordinary Japanese.

But experts see little reason to expect that Hatoyama's new politics will be all that different from the old ones.

The "iron triangle"

One year on from the global financial crisis, the state of the world's second-largest economy is likely to be at the top of the Hatoyama government's agenda.

"He'll attempt to increase what the social welfare state does and bolster consumerism by putting more money in people's pockets," Patrick Koellner - Director of the East Asian Institute at the Hamburg-based German Institute for Global and Area Studies - told Deutsche Welle.

But Hatoyama is unlikely to push for massive government intervention in the economy. His appointment for finance minister, 77-year-old Hirohisa Fujii, has been critical of the outgoing Japanese government's stimulus package and of calls for the state to lower the value of the yen to boost exports.

Moreover, there are major limits on the power of Japanese politicians.

"Experts talk of an 'iron triangle' consisting of the government, the state bureaucracy and business," Thomas Buettner - a historian of Japan and researcher at the University of Heidelberg - told Deutsche Welle. "Japanese politics are relatively sluggish and the bureaucracy won't change."

So while Hatoyama's election may have shaken up the Japanese political landscape, both Buettner and Koellner agree that his ascent to power does not represent a revolution.

Shifts on climate, foreign policy

Hatoyama is, however, expected to reorient his country on some international issues, including Japan's relations with its Asian neighbors and its policies on climate change.

"He's quite ambitious on climate issues and has pledged to bring down Japan's carbon dioxide emissions by 25 percent compared with 1990 levels," Koellner said. "Those promises are contingent about other rich nations doing the same, but Japan could take on a leading role."

The new prime minister will also probably be more conciliatory to North Korea and more frank in admitting Japan's guilt for atrocities committed toward other countries in World War II.

"He's the first prime minister to have addressed the topic openly in public," Buettner commented.

And in January 2010 the new government is expected to end, as scheduled, the Japanese military's minor participation in the US-led war in Afghanistan, which consists of refueling US warships in the Indian Ocean.

But both experts dismissed speculations that Hatoyama would try to distance Japan significantly from the US, its biggest trading partner and most powerful ally.

Wacky wife

In the run-up to Hatoyama's assumption of power, considerable attention in the international press has been devoted to bizarre statements made by his wife, Miyuki. She has claimed that she was married to actor Tom Cruise in a former life - and she wrote in a book that UFOs once took her soul to the planet Venus, which she described as "extremely beautiful…and very green."

That's not what the Japanese public or foreign politicians expect from a Japanese leader's spouse, but the experts don't think her eccentricity will prove all that important.

"As is the case in Germany, Japanese 'first ladies' are more reticent than they are in the US," Buettner said. "It's likely that she'll be shielded from the media.

Koellner concurred with that assessment. "I don't think she'll have any substantial influence," he told Deutsche Welle.

What may prove more difficult for Hatoyama and his party is the fact that their popularity is based in part on dissatisfaction with the outgoing government.

"There are more elections coming next year, and he'll be expected to make good on his promises," Koellner said.

And Japan has a history of rapid changes at the top.

"The average length of time in office is one-and-a-half years," Buettner explained. "So it would not be that surprising to see him gone fairly soon."

If that scenario comes to pass, Japan's political "revolution" could be not only extremely mild, but fairly short-lived.

Author: Jefferson Chase
Editor: Rob Mudge