Japan's new face of politics

"Handsome" Koizumi follows a string of forgettable PMs

By Matt Frei in Tokyo

Japan's ruling party cannot believe its luck. After a string of unpopular and eminently forgettable prime ministers they now have a man with an 85% approval rating.

Prime ministers are not used to being mobbed

Junichiro Koizumi has even been starring in a TV ad - made to reassure the Japanese that he would not let them down and, yes, that he would continue to be weird.

So popular is this man they even made an ad about the making of the ad.

And all this not during an election campaign, but once he had been hoisted to the top job by the rank and file of his party.

I visited the drab headquarters of the Liberal Democratic Party, which has ruled - or some would say misruled - Japan since World War II almost without interruption. It was lunchtime and the lobby gift shop was full of people who would normally avoid the party's central office like the plague.

But on that day there were there to spend real money on Japan's latest craze: a wall sized poster of the new PM.

"He's very handsome," said one shopper.

Popular support

This uncritical adulation has rarely happened here before. But then no Japanese Prime Minister has ever had hair quite like his before.

I don't think there's any going back to what politics was in this country even three weeks ago

Professor Gerald Curtis

Mr Koizumi has not just become a barber shop pin up. The 59-year-old career politician also loves X Japan - the country's hippest rock band. The average age of fans is about 18.

Mr Koizumi is indeed weird, but in Japanese politics "weird" has become "good".

"Koizumi is there only because the rank and file forced the parliamentarians in the ruling party to vote for somebody they didn't want to be prime minister," said Professor Gerald Curtis of Cornell University.

"That is significant because this is being driven by the public rather than by factional politics.

Mr Koizumi is even the subject of a portrait competition

"Koizumi may fall on his face very fast. It's very tough to be a successful prime minister when your own party is largely against you.

"But if he does, it will mean the end of the Liberal Democratic party. The voters will find another way to get politics to change.

"I don't think there's any going back to what politics was in this country even three weeks ago."

Military past

The world is obsessed with Japan's faltering economy, but Mr Koizumi may be part of a far more profound change.

The Yasukuni Shrine is visited by millions of people every year. It was built in 1869 to commemorate all those who died in the so-called Meiji Restoration, when a unified Japan decided to open its doors to the West and modernise.

It was the beginning of the country's schizophrenic and troubled relationship with the rest of the world.

Yasukuni: 19th century shrine celebrates 20th century militarism

One of the shrine's attractions are doves of peace. There is even a special vending machine for dove food.

But the doves of peace seem strangely out of place in a shrine that openly worships war. A place where artwork commemorates Japan's most chilling contribution to the history of warfare: the Kamikaze pilot.

Nostalgia has its modern uses. At the shrine you can even buy Kamikaze phone cards. And once a year on commemoration day you can even meet wannabe Kamikaze pilots.

Among the 2.5m souls honoured there in the old style are those of notorious war criminals, tried and executed by the Allies. The criminals have been decriminalised and Japan is the victim not the aggressor.

They could all be dismissed as the members of a lunatic fringe were it not for the fact that this year they will be joined by one man who has been spotted here before: Junichiro Koizumi, now prime minister.

He has said his appearance at the shrine is a matter of policy.

Changes on the way

Japan is at an important crossroads in its post-war evolution.

The Yasukuni shrine itself has become a symbolic battleground for the very soul of the nation. More and more Japanese feel that this country has nothing to feel ashamed for in its past and that it is time for Japan to stop behaving like an economic giant - albeit a troubled one - and a political dwarf.

The direction of Koizumi is too much to the right, too much nationalistic

Professor Yoshinori Murai

They look to the new prime minister to fashion a more assertive role for this country.

Japan is known for its frenzied consumer culture and its icons, but the message is misleading. Worried about their future, about pensions, about jobs, the world's greatest shoppers have stopped shopping.

That is what is crippling the Japanese economy. Once the world was in awe of Japan's economic clout. Now it merely pities Japan.

"We are very much frustrated by the economy," said Professor Yoshinori Murai of Sophia University. "There's pressure from the US, pressure from our neighbouring Asian countries, like China and South Korea.

"We want to break through this frustrated feeling.

The rise in Japan's nationalism is a direct result of such frustration, said Professor Murai.

"The direction of Koizumi is too much to the right, too much nationalistic," he said. "I worry very much."

In search of 'Japaneseness'

The square in front of Shimbashi Station offers a glimpse of Japan's quiet despair. It is where the salary men in suits go to while away the afternoon. Dressed for jobs that no longer exist, circled by loan sharks with billboards, tempting the desperate and the indebted.

Some observers are worried that Mr Koizumi is too right-wing

Here brand-obsessed Japan stoops to buy second hand bargains.

It is also fertile ground for the men in grey on their battle bus - the Japan Young People's Association. The group's name sounds innocuous. But these men are not Boy Scouts. The group is one of eight far right-wing organisations peddling their vision to the disaffected.

"We want a cleaner prouder stronger country," goes their refrain. "A Japan that can stand up to the rest of the world."

Dressed like Western salesmen but obsessed with Nihonjinron or "Japaneseness", the men in grey are at the forefront of country's identity crisis.

"I think our moral decline has been shameful," said Junichi Kato of the Japan Young People's Association. "It all started when we turned our back on Asian values 130 years ago and Westernised our education.

"We no longer emphasise Confucian principles like respect for elders. We are trying to be too much like America."

Controversial film

The danger here is not extremism - it is boredom and spleen. The suicide rate rises with the number of unemployed. So does violent crime - on 8 June eight school children were knifed to death by a madman. The present offers little to be proud of.

School massacre: The present offers little to be proud of

But then you can always whitewash the past.

Those who do not want to kill time in a square can always go to a matinee showing of Merdeka, or Independence. This blockbuster, based in wartime Indonesia, casts the Japanese army not as an occupying force but as the liberator from Dutch colonial rule. The film, which has been in the top five for three weeks, is a rosy view of history.

Just outside we came across a procession of demonstrators - a rarity in usually placid Tokyo. They were a motley, but impeccably behaved, mixture of unionists, teachers and students who abhor the nationalist mood swing and Mr Koizumi's plans to change the constitution.

Mr Koizumi wants to call the Japanese defence force an army and abolish Clause Nine, which forbids Japan from ever declaring war, even if attacked. The plans have angered neighbours like China and South Korea.

But Nobutaka Machimura, acting Secretary General of the Liberal Democratic Party, denied that a change to the constitution would make Japan more nationalistic.

"All those countries who have changed their constitution, are they nationalistic?" he said.

Recently, Japanese tanks were on the streets of Tokyo for the first time since 1945.

Their intentions were perfectly innocent. They took part in an annual earthquake drill. But their presence caused a storm amongst left-wing groups and pacifists.

It raises the question whether Japan can ever behave like a normal nation, without frightening someone, somewhere.