A French Kiss From Japan

There's more to Japan's new first couple than meets the eye. The prime minister's wife, Miyuki Hatoyama, claims to have befriended Tom Cruise in a previous life when he was, apparently, Japanese. Meanwhile, the prime minister himself has been behaving like the reincarnation of a French intellectual.

The evidence is an article titled "A New Road for Japan" that prospective prime minister Yukio Hatoyama wrote for a Japanese magazine just before the election. In terms that would be familiar to any Gauloise-puffing black-turtleneck-wearing denizen of Paris's Left Bank, the future prime minister lambastes "U.S.-led globalization."

Hatoyama warns that under "immoral" financial capitalism, human dignity has been lost and people turned into accounting entries. But there is good news too. The era of U.S. unilateralism is coming to an end, "as a result of the failure of the Iraq war and the financial crisis."

Referencing the construction of the EU, Hatoyama proposes the creation of an Asian political bloc, built around a single currency for the region. Domestically, he recommends "a politics of fraternity" to protect Japanese citizens from "the winds of market -fundamentalism."

What about the future of the U.S.-Japan military alliance? Hatoyama sees Japan as "caught between" the two great powers of China and the U.S. Though the U.S. is a necessary counterweight for the time being, it has no role in Hatoyama's East Asian version of the EU. There is no hint of a commonality of values between Japan and the U.S.; no mention of democracy or human rights, let alone free trade.

When a summary of the article appeared in the foreign press, diplomats and alliance managers on both sides moved quickly to calm the resulting brouhaha. Hatoyama's comments had been taken out of context, we were told. It was a storm in a sake cup. The U.S.-Japan relationship was as strong as ever.

The problem with that view is that Hatoyama's article (a full-length English version is available on his Web site) is so obviously heartfelt. Furthermore, there is nothing radical about his views, though the style was unusually cerebral for a Japanese politician. Similar opinions are common across the political spectrum, from the conservative wing of the Liberal Democratic Party to the social democratic wing of Hatoyama's own Democratic Party of Japan.

Pessimism about U.S. economic prospects is rife, and an Asian currency bloc currency has long been a dream of the Japanese Ministry of Finance. Both the Japanese elite and public grudgingly accepted the introduction of -American-style capitalism as part of the grand bargain that tied the two countries together after World War II, but they have long been uncomfortable with its emphasis on shareholder value and massive differentials in pay.