Just as the health-care debate was showing how hard it is to translate the slogan of change into reality, newly inaugurated Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama swept into New York, branding himself as the Barack Obama of Japan.
By voting for change, Hatoyama told me during an interview last week, "each individual in the United States has gained vitality within themselves. We too, by changing our closed politics, have been able to generate vitality within each individual in Japan."
Personally the two leaders could not be more different: Hatoyama is oddly affectless rather than charismatic, and born into a family of long-standing wealth and power.
Yet to Japan watchers, his ascent is, in its way, as path-breaking as Obama's. By leading his left-leaning Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) to a smashing victory last month, he broke a half-century of virtually uninterrupted rule by the right-leaning Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). And with an overwhelming majority in the lower house of the Diet, Hatoyama may have an easier time enacting his change agenda than Obama is finding in the Senate Finance Committee.....
To read more, go to: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/27/AR2009092701442.html
No comments:
Post a Comment