Japan’s new cabinet

Subtle change of seasons

The new prime minister’s appointments are few—but inspiring

THE government Naoto Kan unveiled on June 8th does not look very different from the previous one: 11 of the 17 cabinet ministers are to stay in their old jobs. But in Japan, it is the little details that matter. And in a myriad of subtle ways Mr Kan’s top team represents a refreshingly bold choice.

On the eve of his swearing-in as Japan’s new prime minister, Mr Kan has given something hopeful to those who voted for meaningful change in the way Japan is governed when they ousted the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) last August. That at least is what the polls are saying. Support for Mr Kan’s Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has soared since Yukio Hatoyama, his predecessor, and Ichiro Ozawa, the party’s secretary-general, both resigned last week. For the time being at least, disenchanted DPJ voters have flocked back to the party.

The new line-up deftly removes Mr Hatoyama from the picture and attempts to neutralise Mr Ozawa, the bogeyman of the DPJ, without ostracising his many supporters. If Mr Kan succeeds (obviously a big if), he will have managed to remove one of the poisons that paralyses Japan’s political system–the backroom faction boss who relies on money and patronage, not policies, to retain his grip on power.

In his bravest appointments, Mr Kan has put two of Mr Ozawa’s nemeses in the most important positions in his orbit. Yoshito Sengoku, 64, becomes Mr Kan’s chief cabinet secretary, and Yukio Edano, 46, replaces Mr Ozawa as the DPJ’s secretary-general.

Mr Sengoku is a fiscal hawk who will attempt to keep the government’s focus on an issue that Mr Kan grew increasingly concerned about in his previous job as finance minister: the country’s precarious public finances. In an interview with The Economist in March, Mr Sengoku was shockingly candid about the dangers Japan faced by running a gross debt-to-GDP ratio of around 200%. Worries about Greece’s fiscal sustainability have brought Japan to a “turning point”, he said. The government will require far more fiscal prudence in the future. Mr Sengoku was also scathing about Japan’s habit of using public money to rescue bankrupt firms.

Mr Edano shares Mr Sengoku’s concerns about Greece—and what it means for Japan. In many ways, these two appointments, both lawyers by training, are considered closer to each other than they are to the new prime minister. Which makes Mr Kan’s selection of Mr Edano to run the party all the braver. The new party boss has a lot on his plate, especially as upper-house elections loom in July. He is the first to admit he may lack the necessary experience.

According to the norms of Japanese politics, Mr Edano is young for the job, and he takes over a party whose funding and strategy have been monopolised by Mr Ozawa. That means it may have to be rapidly reinvented, even as it fights an electoral battle. So far Mr Ozawa has not been co-operative. Nor can Mr Edano count on support from a block of 129 lawmakers, allied to Mr Ozawa, who voted against Mr Kan’s appointment as party leader (and hence prime minister) last week.

But in attempting to give the party a younger, more modern image, Mr Kan and Mr Edano may well feel they can carry the electorate with them. A poll conducted on June 7th by NHK, the national broadcaster, found that for all the people who felt the wavering Mr Hatoyama should leave office, twice as many felt that Mr Ozawa should go. Mr Ozawa was his party’s biggest electoral liability by far.

The departure of both men allows the party to focus on restoring an image of cleanliness in government. This will be critical importance as Mr Kan’s government seeks to differentiate itself from its DPJ predecessor and the long history of the LDP. Mr Kan, for one, appears not to have used politics as a path to riches: his and his wife’s total assets amount to just 22.3m yen ($240,000), which is only a bit more than Mr Hatoyama’s heiress-mother quietly deposited into her son’s bank account every month. Mr Edano announced on national television that he would no longer accept corporate contributions.

If Mr Kan had wanted to show a more tangible break with the past, he could have included more women in his cabinet. There are only two. But the one new female minister he chose, who goes by one name, Renho, is likely to be a popular choice as minister for administrative reform. She is a 42-year-old former television presenter who is already well-liked by the public. Mr Kan’s wife (his first cousin) is also well-regarded, mainly for her straight-talking manner and no-nonsense influence on Mr Kan.

The new prime minister is not burning all his bridges with Mr Ozawa’s people. He has kept on Shizuka Kamei, the financial-services minister who is not a DPJ member but is a close friend of Mr Ozawa’s. He has made some other appointments that appear aimed at mollifying Mr Ozawa’s supporters. Clearly, he is concerned that Mr Ozawa might direct a stealth attack on his government during the DPJ’s leadership elections in September.

Concessions to Mr Ozawa’s camp could be smart if they prevent the DPJ from fracturing. The risk is that they bring in bad policies. One such would be maintaining the government’s support for Mr Kamei’s ill-conceived reversal of the postal privatisation. Parliament is due to vote on it the next few weeks. If Mr Kan wants to show that the changes represented by his government are better than skin-deep, stopping Mr Kamei’s bill would be a good start.