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Shuzo Ogushi for TIME |
The Art of Survival
Once dismissed as "cold pizza," Keizo Obuchi has cunningly used low expectations to stay on top in the rough politics of a sinking Japan
By TIM LARIMER Tokyo
Anyone who thinks Japan will never reform should consider what took place in Tokyo last week. Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi got rid of the powerful and imperious Ministry of Finance. How? He changed the name. Now it's the Ministry of Treasury. That's reform, Japan-style, and it illustrates both the talents and the drawbacks of a likable but uninspiring career politician who took charge of an ailing country last summer. The move, following years of demands for housecleaning at the ministry, shows how Obuchi skillfully skirts delicate issues while at the same time riding out difficult times.
Call him the great survivor. Obuchi heads the world's second-largest economy, which in a decade has gone from dynamo to dud and shows little sign of revival. Joblessness is at a record high, with 3 million Japanese--most of whom probably thought they would be employed for life--now on the dole. The once-admired keiretsu system of spider-webbed business alliances is sagging under the weight of a bloated, non-competitive, inefficient corporate welfare structure. Blue-chip companies, it turns out, are in the red, and some are on the auction block to foreign bidders. Banks are collapsing under the weight of an estimated $600 billion in bad loans. Japan's public debt is piling up and now totals a staggering 111% of GDP, second only to Italy among the world's largest economies.
That's not all. The nearly fanatical strain of pacifism that has gripped Japan since the end of World War II is giving way to a more outspoken nationalism, as the country gets jittery over trash talk in a neighborhood that includes a powerful China flexing its global muscles and a paranoid and isolated North Korea lobbing missiles over the island nation. A predictable and paralytic political system is exasperating voters, who are starting to choose populist outsiders and nationalistic hate-mongers. Obuchi's own choice for governor of Tokyo finished an embarrassing fourth in this month's election; opposition parties didn't fare much better.
Adding to the malaise is a sinking feeling that the country's glory days as a global pacesetter are over. Japan Inc. is going bankrupt--corporations are taking advice from Americans, for heaven's sake, who used to bow at the feet of a management system credited with beating the pants off U.S. competitors. A dearth of creativity in software development means the country hasn't logged on to the sizzling e-commerce linked to the very computer industry Japan once figured to dominate. An education system that outsiders used to envy is now a shambles. Educators are starting to ask, Why can't little Taro read? A sad indicator: some job recruiters are starting to demand proof of college graduates' fluency--in Japanese. Even Japan's red-hot baseball exports are suffering. Hideo Nomo, a sensation in Los Angeles four years ago, has been relegated to the Iowa cornfields.
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