Andy Warhol predicted that in the future everybody would be famous for 15 minutes. The Japanese are perfecting an even more egalitarian system under which everybody gets to spend 15 minutes as prime minister. Admittedly, it is still a work in progress. Naoto Kan has already clung on to the premiership for an unseemly three months. But with a little luck Ichiro Ozawa will defeat him in party elections later this month, edging Japan ever closer towards its 15-minute target.
To be serious for a moment, in the two decades since the bubble burst, Japan has had no fewer than 14 prime ministers, twice the number that Italy managed over the same period. Since Junichiro Koizumi quit in 2006, Japanese leaders have averaged fewer than 12 months in office apiece. Far from stabilising the situation, the Democratic Party of Japan, which took over a year ago, has put the cycle into an even faster spin. If Mr Ozawa wins on September 14, he will be Japan’s third prime minister in 12 months.
This Andy Warhol-style politics is hurting Japan in several ways. First, it is deeply unsettling for a population that has been told insistently that politicians are finally wresting power from Japan’s long-powerful bureaucrats. That was one of the themes of Mr Koizumi’s government. It is also an express aim of the Democratic party, which seeks to portray itself as a modern organisation responsive to public will. The public is entitled to ask: “Why on earth would we want these idiots in charge?”
In theory, having elected politicians wrest power from the bureaucratic shadows ought to be a good thing. It would mark a break with the postwar system in which the public voted for a party (the Liberal Democrats) that cooked up policy behind closed doors. But in practice, politicians – because of infighting or allegations of corruption – are not around enough to enact a coherent agenda.
With each prime minister comes a new direction. The Democratic party was elected a year ago on a “go-for-growth” platform of tax breaks and payments to households with children. However, when Mr Kan took over three months ago, he changed tack entirely. Instead, he decided that Japan must do something about its mountainous public debt. He scaled back spending promises and proposed doubling consumption tax to 10 per cent. If Mr Ozawa wins, he is likely to reverse the policy again. All this leaves the poor public with whiplash. Neither individuals nor businesses can sensibly plan their future, a state of affairs hardly conducive to encouraging the consumption or investment the country needs.
Second, permanent political revolution (in the washing machine, spin-cycle sense of the word) has an impact on other areas. Politicians are in danger of ceding control to the very bureaucrats they aspire to rein in. The Bank of Japan, for example, is arguably freer today to exercise policy independently than it has been in years. The Democratic party has been pressing it to ease monetary policy further or adopt more unconventional measures to tackle deflation. But the bank can simply shrug its shoulders and wait for the next premier to come along. This week it took what many economists consider to be token measures to kickstart economic activity (although the bank insists it is being aggressive by flattening the yield curve). One senior Japanese official likens the central bank to GHQ, a reference to General Douglas MacArthur’s postwar administration, which did pretty much what it liked.
Third, political turmoil is affecting Japan’s international image. Japanese leaders must be among the more anonymous on the world stage. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president, floundered as he tried to recall the name of Japan’s last-but one prime minister. (Answer: Yukio Hatoyama.) “You say ‘good morning’ to one prime minister and ‘good afternoon’ to a different one,” was how he put it.
