Impact of Hatoyama's reforms
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The "reform movement" launched by Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama after his Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) defeated the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in the country's general elections last September has led to political repercussions at home and abroad.
Hatoyama's plan for an East Asian Community (EAC) and his avowed commitment to seek equal status for Japan in its alliance with the United States are expected to influence the security environment in the Asia-Pacific region as well as globally.
The high-profile reform campaign adopted by the Hatoyama administration was essentially a result of the country's self-reflection about its decades-long diplomatic line under the previous LDP governments as well as Tokyo's search for a new security and development approach against the backdrop of changed situations at home and abroad.
Since the 1990s, Japan's social and demographic structure has experienced another profound change following two rounds of change that successively took place after the Meiji Reform and World War II.
Such a change, together with its shifting external security and development environment and the preceding governments' failure to achieve expected results in their reform and development programs, have fueled public calls for the new government to come up with a more effective economic and foreign policy and a more viable international strategy.
Buffeted by a changed internal and external strategic environment, the Hatoyama government is expected to enhance Japan's declining strategic status globally through deepening cooperation with other Asian nations and seeking an equal relationship with the US.
A war-ravaged Japan benefited a lot from its much-needed alliance with Washington after World War II. However, the impact of former US president Richard Nixon's non-notified Asia policy and the decreasing attention Japan has received from its biggest ally since the end of the Cold War - due to its own declining position in Washington's strategic chessboard - are being regarded as counterproductive to Japan's interests and has brewed discontent among the public, chiefly towards the US.
Shortly after it came to power, the DPJ government showed better determination to shift Japan's strategic focus from the West to the East, claiming that East Asia needed a broader friendship to curb the emerging nationalist current in the region and forge a stable framework for regional economic and security cooperation - the backbone of the EAC proposal.
The DPJ holds that Japan should not ignore its policy orientation in Asia and, instead, should look upon East Asian nations, with which Japan enjoys increasingly intimate ties, as the basic strategic room for its survival and further development.
At the same time, it is the DPJ's belief that the world's accelerated transformation from uni-polarity to multi-polarity has made it particularly urgent for Japan to maintain economic and political independence from the US, especially at a time when the US is trying to extend its decades-long dominance into the future and China is displaying its "ambition" to be a new power.
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