Who is in charge of Japan?

By Chris Hogg
BBC News, Tokyo

Some fear that the political stand-off may hurt relations with the US

Japan's Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda is running the country. But some say the leader of the opposition, Ichiro Ozawa, is controlling what Mr Fukuda can and cannot do.

That is because the opposition controls the upper house of parliament, which is still discussing a controversial anti-terrorism bill.

Mr Fukuda wants the bill passed, but Mr Ozawa decides when and if a vote is held on the legislation - at least until 15 January.

After that date the prime minister can ignore the upper house and get the bill passed without the opposition's say-so by virtue of his coalition's overwhelming majority in the lower house.

But until then he has no option but to keep trying to persuade Mr Ozawa to compromise.

Mr Ozawa appears in no mood to do this. Why would he? He knows that for now at least he is pulling the strings.

That is frustrating for Mr Fukuda.

He wants to visit China. He would like to visit Europe for urgent discussion with leaders there ahead of the annual meeting of the G8 nations in Hokkaido.

But it is hard for him to leave Japan before this issue is resolved.

Wartime guarantees

The Japanese government is determined to pass this anti-terrorism law to renew the mandate for its forces to contribute to the Bush administration's "war on terror".

Privately, officials say that since Japan withdrew its refuelling ship from the Indian Ocean at the end of the October, the flow of intelligence from the US and its allies has slowed.

Japan's refuelling of US warships has divided public opinion

They also express concern about the effect of the withdrawal on US-Japan relations.

Since the end of World War II, the US has guaranteed Japan its protection in the event of attack.

But if Japan is not prepared to play its part in anti-terrorism operations, officials argue, will that not lead to questions being asked in Washington about whether the security alliance is really worth it?

Tsuneo Watanabe, a fellow of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, says: "In the mid to long term the voices in the US promoting the US-Japan alliance as a major pillar for the future US security policy in Asia may be getting weaker."

But not everyone sees it that way.

"There is a small group of policymakers who work on US-Japan relations," says Professor Koichi Nakano from Sophia University in Tokyo.

"They are the ones who suffer the most from the setback because they are the ones who have been working so hard to 'normalise' or in fact 'remilitarise' Japan, and they gain influence in Washington as Japan becomes more useful to the United States," he says.

"That is why they are making such a big deal out of something that is, in the end, quite insignificant."

But Prime Minister Fukuda is rumoured to disagree vigorously with that analysis. On this issue he will not back down.

There are risks though in this approach.

For a start the polls suggest that less than half the voters think it is necessary to pass the bill.

Budget worries

Other problems are piling up. The government announced in the summer than the pension records of roughly 50 million people were inaccurate.

It has promised to sort out the mess and yet this week it announced that it is proving harder than expected.

At the same time, ministers are trying to deal with the fallout from a corruption scandal in the Ministry of Defence.

The government is facing demands for compensation from people who contracted hepatitis from infected blood products.

And there are fears the opposition's control of the upper house may make it impossible to pass legislation to implement next year's budget.

He won't want to call an election without any achievements to show the voters Prof Masatoshi Honda Deadlock over US mission

If Mr Fukuda forces the anti-terrorism bill through parliament, the opposition has made clear it will pass a censure motion against him in an attempt to force him to hold a general election.

So could his determination to get this bill through cost him his job?

Professor Masatoshi Honda, an analyst from the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, thinks not.

He does not think Mr Fukuda would see any benefit from subjecting himself to an early electoral test. The censure motion would be non-binding so he could just ignore it.

At the moment his coalition holds two thirds of the seats in the lower house, a majority that makes it possible for him eventually to override votes against government bills in the opposition-controlled upper house.

If he dissolves the lower house and goes to the country his majority will almost certainly shrink, if not disappear.

"He won't want to call an election without any achievements to show the voters," Prof Honda says.

Unelected leader

The other option available to his party in that scenario would be to sack him and choose a new leader to be prime minister.

Professor Phil Deans, from Temple University in Tokyo, says that is possible, but unlikely.

"Ruling parties in parliamentary systems tend to be cautious," he argues.

Mr Ozawa (L) and Mr Fukuda are both vastly experienced politicians

"And they are unlikely to drop Mr Fukuda at this point, in large part because there is no obvious successor waiting in the wings."

At this stage the smart money says that Mr Fukuda's government will survive into the summer and beyond the meeting of the G8 nations in July.

But the opposition will continue pressing the point that he was not elected prime minister, he was chosen by the Liberal Democratic Party to replace another leader who himself had been chosen, not elected.

If he fails to find solutions to the problems the polls suggest the voters really care about - the pensions crisis, the sluggish economic growth, the perception that economic inequalities are increasing - his party will find it very hard to win when eventually he does decide to call a general election.