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While Washington's establishment this week grappled with the complex issues of the two Koreas during a visit by President Kim Dae Jung, Japan integral part to any East Asia formulation was going through another parliamentary crisis.
Prime Minister Mori faced down a vote of confidence. But it was a symptom of the chaotic party conflicts that a coalition partner the New Komeito Party, called for him to step down even though it voted with the government. He may well have to do that because of pressure from his own Liberal Democratic colleagues, perhaps as early as next month.
Mori has stumbled from one crisis to another. The latest include public censure when he continued playing golf after learning a U.S. submarine had sunk a Japanese fishing vessel off Honolulu, to his labor minister's corruption fiasco. If Mori does have to step down, only relatively faceless politicians in his own party could succeed him. Even some of them are reluctant to take an unrewarding hot seat.
Meanwhile, Japan's economy, second in the world, its stock market at its lowest ebb in 15 years, appears sliding back into a new trough. It has lowered the interest rates again, approaching zero. Japan's balance of payments with Asia is deteriorating. Tokyo's huge trading surplus with the U.S. principle source of friction with Washington through 40 years appears eroding. Japan will be the first victim of any downturn in the U.S. economy.
All of this in a Japan where there is a feeling that the postwar era of unprecedented prosperity is gone forever. Fundamental social changes are occurring. Japan faces a demographic catastrophe with birth rates dropping below replacement, with no sign it could turn to in migration like West Europe [and to some extent, the U.S.] for a crippling labor shortage.
There are voices calling for a new Meiji Revolution, which in the mid-19th century turned Japan within a few decades from a feudalism into a major industrial power. Certainly the new economic facts are dictating changes. Vaunted Japanese institutions [sometimes more honored in the breach] like lifetime employment, unswerving company loyalty, self-effacing roles, are disappearing.
Yet visitors see a prosperous society. The Japanese exhibit no sense of panic. Life is good; the new class of unmarried career girls with large disposable incomes no longer think of Hawaii but wander from ecotourism in Costa Rica to Stockholm discos. There are, of course, disturbing signs more violence in highly organized crime, increased drugs, teenage violence. But, however shocking to the Japanese, nothing like the level of such phenomena in other industrial societies.
Underneath this veneer, however, Japan may be, willy-nilly, moving toward "solutions." Despite much publicized antagonism to bailing out the banks, sinking under a new wave of nonperforming loans, Koizumi, one of the LDP politicians considered PM material, has called for privatization of the postal savings. This huge accumulation, protected with tax incentives and subsidies, had historically been used to subsidize industrial expansion. Japanese economists long ago made the decision, difficult to carry out politically, to abandon this mainstay of the old system for expanded capital markets.
The most contentious Japanese problem, how to maintain security in a still troubled world, is being addressed if cautiously. After the North Koreans fired a missile across Japan's bow, and Washington, reportedly, was slow to give the Japanese intelligence, Tokyo launched its own intelligence satellite. Tokyo continues to maintain communication through everything from visiting politicians to the underworld that supplies North Korea funds from Japan's pachinko betting parlors.
When the Chinese defied the nuclear test ban, Tokyo briefly, granted halted Export-Import Bank loans, a reminder to Beijing of its enormous dependence on Japanese capital and technology. When piracy in the South China Seas became an unavoidable issue, Japan announced long range aircraft would patrol critical sealanes as far as Singapore.
Most important, of course, was the renegotiation of Japan's military collaboration with the U.S., extending treaty cooperation yet to be tested in the event American forces must be used for regional emergencies. Tokyo tamped down local antagonism of the Okinawans when that crowded little island has erupted in anti-Americanism.
Japans permanent bureaucracy, with a minimum of debate, has done almost all of this. And this despite the bureaucrats, compromised in political corruption, being under unprecedented attack. Japan's administration, of course, has power unequaled, save, perhaps, by the French. And Japan's politicians, most "graduates" of that same bureaucracy, have wanted it that way.
All this means that Japan is operating on autopilot. The new political structure, if there is to be one, has yet to come into focus. It could well be the Japanese way of piling detail on detail, pragmatically working up to a decision. Often this permits the Japanese to implement decisions quicker than Westerners using deductive reasoning a surprise for Western businessmen. It risks, of course, that that structure may not arrive in time for Japan, and for the U.S. It could become crucial since the Bush Administration appears intent on shifting back toward a reliance on Tokyo as its main support in East Asia, away from the Clinton era "structural engagement" with China.
Sol W. Sanders is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International.
He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.