The political change in Japan

Aug 30, 2009, this is the biggest day of Japanese political history. Since 1955 the cabinet in Japan was formed by the liberal Democratic Party of Japan(LDP), but this day the Lower House election was done and the Democratic Party of Japan(DPJ) got 308 seats out of 480 seats. This means LDP lost their position as be in the political power, And DPJ get it and Hatoyama become the Prime Minister.
After Prime Minister junichiro Koizumi come to the end of his term as the president of LDP in 2006, many change happened in Japan. Three Prime Minister in Japan changed only three years. Each person served as Prime Minister only one year. This is eccentric thing in a developed nation. This is because they couldn’t get support of public opinion because they got their position without an election by citizen.
This graph shows the percentage of approval rating when assumption of the Prime Minister searched by NHK.
According to this graph, the number of people who support the LDP and cabinet was dropped. In 2001 the percentage of those supporting Koizumi and In 2009 Hatoyama is almost over 70%.This number is clearly higher than other three peoples.
Prime Minister Koizumi became popular among people by he was a decisive person, he took the lead,his character and he worked as Prime Minister 1980 days,this is third largest period after WW2.His policy was supported but it sometimes brought about some problems. Then the percentage of not a regular employee became one-third and people’s life couldn’t improvement. After Koizumi three Prime Minister were bone,but they lose trust and the percentage of approval rating was dropped day by day.

It is said that most Japanese people think “change is not good thing” because people in Japan afraid changes especially big change such as change of government. So why Japanese people thought DPJ is better than LDP?Every people support his and LDP’s policy? It’s not. Most of citizen suspected LDP’s policy have some unreasonable and contradiction things. For example, before the Lower House election, the main theme of the Hatoyama Cabinet is using highways free of charge and it will be active for economic activity. But Hatoyama said in the United Nations Summit on Climate Change in NY that Japan may cut 25% CO2 by 2020.This is impossible if we can use highway without money.
This table shows “why you support LDP?”searched by NTV.
expectation for policy 40,9%
There are no one others 15,3%
Hatoyama’s personality 12,4%
Others 31.4%


Now we are facing a lot of problems financial,environment,international relations, welfare etc.What people in Japan need is “Change”. Everyone expect Hatoyama to do something for Japan.

Sakura times
politics and economics
Tomofumi Miyanoshita