{"id":9419,"date":"2011-09-27T04:33:16","date_gmt":"2011-09-26T19:33:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=9419"},"modified":"2011-09-27T04:42:38","modified_gmt":"2011-09-26T19:42:38","slug":"japan-times-guest-column-top-10-most-useless-japanese-prime-ministers-i-contribute-murayama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=9419","title":{"rendered":"Japan Times guest column: “Top 10 most useless Japanese Prime Ministers” (I contribute Murayama)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"IN<\/a>
New novel IN APPROPRIATE, on child abductions in Japan, by ARUDOU Debito<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\"Handbook<\/a>\"\\"<\/a>\"\u300c\u30b8\u30e3\u30d1\u30cb\u30fc\u30ba\u30fb\u30aa\u30f3\u30ea\u30fc\u3000\u5c0f\u6a3d\u5165\u6d74\u62d2\u5426\u554f\u984c\u3068\u4eba\u7a2e\u5dee\u5225\u300d\uff08\u660e\u77f3\u66f8\u5e97\uff09\"<\/a>\"JAPANESE<\/a>\"sourstrawberriesavatar\"<\/a>\"debitopodcastthumb\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Hi Blog. I was invited last week to contribute a bio of who I thought was one of Japan’s “most useless” Prime Ministers. \u00a0I was surprised to find that Murayama was not taken. \u00a0So here’s my writeup (#5, ordered by when they held office). \u00a0There are nine other biographies done by some very knowledgable writers and observers of Japan, so have a read of them here<\/a>. \u00a0Enjoy! \u00a0(And if you think there are some even more useless PM notables, mention them in the Comments Section below — but give concrete reasons why, please!). Arudou Debito<\/p>\n

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The Japan Times, Tuesday, Sep. 27, 2011<\/strong><\/div>\n
THE ZEIT GIST<\/strong><\/div>\n

No-nos for Noda: Japan’s top 10 most useless PMs<\/h1>\n
Courtesy http:\/\/search.japantimes.co.jp\/cgi-bin\/fl20110927zg.html<\/a><\/div>\n
(excerpt, illustration by Chris Mackenzie)<\/div>\n

5. Tomiichi Murayama (1994-96)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n\n
\"News<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Short tenures, imprudent public statements, poor character judgment, weakness under pressure \u2014 when we think of useless prime ministers, all this seems like standard operating procedure. However, Tomiichi Murayama’s particular brand of uselessness was peerless. Essentially, everything he touched turned to sh-te.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

It’s not as if Murayama had a hard act to follow. His predecessor, Tsutomu Hata, only lasted two months, and was most famous for arguing (when agriculture minister) that beef imports were unnecessary because Japanese have long intestines.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But Murayama was a case study in gutless leadership. His pattern of playing evasive games with the media and the Diet served him poorly during 1995’s Kobe quake, when it took him a day to recognize the disaster and send assistance \u2014 and several days more before he even visited the site.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Even potentially notable acts stunk. Murayama’s general apology for Imperial war atrocities was caveated into meaninglessness by both sides of the political spectrum, not to mention overseas observers. He barely developed a concrete platform beyond the perpetual narrow-focus leftist issues (the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty and war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution), while ironically giving even more power to the already very-powerful Japanese police (through the Anti-Subversive Activities Act, a reaction to the Tokyo sarin gas attacks).<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

He was the first Socialist Party prime minister, and the last. Having made a Faustian bargain to take the top job, he then proceeded to sell his party’s soul so blatantly that in his wake the Socialists were moribund and fractured. He proved to Japan’s voters that the left cannot govern, putting the corrupt Liberal Democrats back in power for 13 more years.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

No other PM can be credited with setting back Japan’s development into a two-party democracy while killing his own party in the process. Yet. For that, he gets my vote not only as Japan’s most useless, but also its flat-out worst postwar prime minister.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Debito Arudou is the Just Be Cause columnist for The Japan Times<\/em><\/div>\n
The other nine Most Useless Japanese Prime Ministers can be found on the Japan Times at\u00a0http:\/\/search.japantimes.co.jp\/cgi-bin\/fl20110927zg.html<\/a><\/div>\n

ENDS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was invited last week to contribute a bio of who I thought was one of Japan’s “most useless” Prime Ministers. I was surprised to find that Murayama was not taken. So here’s my writeup (#5, ordered by when they held office). There are nine other biographies done by some very knowledgable writers and observers of Japan, so have a read of them at the Japan Times from this link here. Enjoy!<\/p>\n

JT: Short tenures, imprudent public statements, poor character judgment, weakness under pressure \u2014 when we think of useless prime ministers, all this seems like standard operating procedure. However, Tomiichi Murayama’s particular brand of uselessness was peerless. Essentially, everything he touched turned to sh-te…<\/p>\n

He was the first Socialist Party prime minister, and the last. Having made a Faustian bargain to take the top job, he then proceeded to sell his party’s soul so blatantly that in his wake the Socialists were moribund and fractured. He proved to Japan’s voters that the left cannot govern, putting the corrupt Liberal Democrats back in power for 13 more years.<\/p>\n

No other PM can be credited with setting back Japan’s development into a two-party democracy while killing his own party in the process. Yet. For that, he gets my vote not only as Japan’s most useless, but also its flat-out worst postwar prime minister.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,23,14,31,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-humor","category-japanese-politics","category-tangents","category-unsustainable-japanese-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9419\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}