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Ellis Krauss on Next Japanese Prime Minister's Mandate

Kan Leaves Successor Facing ‘Impatient’ Japanese Irate Over Broken Pledges

08/22/2011
John Brinsley and Takashi Hirokawa, Bloomberg News

Naoto Kan is set to depart this month as Japan’s prime minister, leaving his party to choose a successor who can restore public faith shattered by a nuclear crisis and a procession of five leaders in as many years.

Parliament is scheduled to pass legislation this week that Kan said in June was a condition for him to honor a pledge to quit. His approval rating is below 20 percent over his handling of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that left over 20,000 people dead or missing and caused the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

Kan’s Democratic Party of Japan, which will elect its third leader since ending 50 years of one-party rule in 2009, has failed to deliver on a pledge to revive a country burdened by deflation, an aging population and the world’s largest debt. The winner of the succession race, who will become prime minister, will also have to cope with the threat that the yen’s rise to a post-war high poses to an export-led recovery.

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Ellis Krauss is a leading expert on Japanese politics, U.S.-Japan relations, and Japan's political economy. In 2010 Cornell University Press will publish his latest book, co-authored with Robert Pekkanen of the University of Washington, The Rise and Fall of Japan's LDP: Political Party Organizations as Institutions.

He can provide commentary on domestic politics in Japan, the Japanese mass media, U.S.-Japan relations and Japan's foreign policy and role in Asia.

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