Yoshihiko Noda will today become Japan’s sixth prime minister in the five years since Junichiro Koizumi stepped down. He was on Monday elected leader of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, which ditched Naoto Kan – officially he resigned – after little more than a year in office.
Mr Noda has not set expectations very high. In his speech just before the party vote, he said he was not as flashy as a goldfish, but more like a loach. As a bottom-feeding fish, he was content to make laborious progress through Japan’s “muddy politics”.
Muddy sums it up. Japanese people say they want a strong leader who can provide a sense of national direction. But the political process by which those leaders are chosen, and summarily dismissed, is anything but transparent. Of the past six prime ministers, only Yukio Hatayoma, the DPJ’s hapless leader, was chosen in a general election. The other five all came to the premiership after party reshuffles. As if to underline the point, the clear popular favourite this time – Seiji Maehara – limped in third in the party vote. In other parliamentary systems too, the prime minister is not always popularly elected. Gordon Brown replaced Tony Blair as UK prime minister in 2007 after a vote by Labour party MPs. But in Japan, such opacity is the norm. That is a disservice to democracy and accountability.