After running up the largest debt per capita in the developed world and destroying the pension provisions of millions, the old warhorses of the LDP had finally been unhorsed, to be replaced by the fresher faces of the DPJ in the political firmament. With apparently new ideas about stimulating the economy and redefining Japan's relations with the rest of Asia and the world, most notably the United States of America, the new government seemed ready to offer a genuinely new start.

It seemed like a new beginning. And one which would ostensibly mean the creation of a new relationship between government and bureaucrats, a power relationship which has notoriously been biased in favour of the latter to the detriment of innovation and creativity. It was, indeed, a new start, but not in the way that everyone had hoped.
It seems barely credible that it is just a year ago that Yukio Hatoyama appeared as a new prime minister ready to rethink nuclear and foreign policy.

But it soon became clear that there had been a good deal of thinking about policies but not very much about their actual drafting or what the consequences might be of their implementation. Hatoyama might have had a slightly unreal air about him and while his wife believed in aliens, that was only a mild distraction. But it might as well have been the other way round.

He launched into a review of the basing of US Marines in Okinawa, giving their notoriously volatile citizens the impression that the Marines would soon be on their way out of the prefecture. The only problem was that the whole thing had not been thought through. Still less had the Americans agreed to the revision of an already agreed policy which involved moving the Futenma Marine Corps air base to another part of the prefecture rather than displacing it to another country in Asia. Cue deep anger and disappointment from the Okinawans, disillusion and declining support among the Japanese public and frustration from the Americans over an area of policy where they brook no opposition.

Coupled with the abandonment of several policy pledges by Hatoyama, the result was an accelerating decline in public support and dissatisfaction among party members that spelled the end of his leadership of the party and thus the prime ministership. The resulting resignation of both Hatoyama and his equally significant right-hand man, Ichiro Ozawa, boosted the poll standings of the party and for a while it appeared the DPJ might be able to pick itself up off the floor. But new leader Naoto Kan, a long-time opposition politician in Japan, had clearly failed to absorb the bitter lesson learned by the LDP back in the 1990s when they signalled ahead of similar summer elections that they planned to raise the consumption tax. The result was a severe drubbing at the polls.

A year ago anyone would have bet that the party would be able to pass legislation on its own after an expected triumph in this year's upper house elections. But in an exact replica of the LDP's gambit, Kan announced the possibility of a consumption tax increase during the upper house elections at the beginning of the month. The result should have      been predictable for all concerned. Kan's disapproval ratings surpassed his approval ratings within a month, proving certainly that the voting public had not changed its mind about tax increases at a time of economic difficulty. The DPJ coalition predictably took a hammering. So much so that it will not be able to pass legislation into law without assistance while the other parties in its coalition have been falling by the wayside.

The DPJ's coalition partner, the People's New Party, lost all three of its contested seats and so retains only three, leaving the coalition with 109 seats, well short of the 122 necessary for a majority. Though the coalition has a majority in the more powerful lower house, it does not have the required two-thirds majority necessary to override bills rejected by the upper house. The resulting mismatch does not augur well for the future.

The opposition LDP, drummed out of office at last year's lower house election, rebounded with 51 seats, up from 38, to record a total of 84 in the upper house. But that was nothing to celebrate: the DPJ has enjoyed such success as it has mainly because it is not the LDP and the latter has had this modest rebound because of frustration with the DPJ's tenure. The LDP has failed to articulate adequate policy alternatives so it must take care not to delude itself that its increased vote reflects any substantial change in approach by the public. And it would be irresponsible if it now settled in to just stonewalling everything that the battered coalition tries to do. But that is the likely outlook.

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