Japan premier's approval ratings plunge

According to a recent survey by Kyodo News, approval for the cabinet plummeted 16.5 percentage points to 47.2 percent from the previous poll conducted a month ago, while other major opinion surveys showed similar results. His ratings were around 70 percent when he took office in mid-September.

The sharp drop indicated that many Japanese “felt betrayed after a change in government,” Kazuhisa Kawakami, a professor of political science at Meiji Gakuin University, said.

The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) won a historic landslide victory in the August general election, which ended more than half a century of almost uninterrupted rule by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

“Prime Minister Hatoyama failed to assert strong political leadership,” Kawakami said. “The public expected him to take a risk, cutting to the core of a problem and pushing through reform. But he failed to show he was a person with great drive.”

The disapproval rating rose 13 points to 38.1 percent in the Kyodo poll conducted on the weekend after prosecutors indicted two of Hatoyama's former secretaries over falsified political fund reports. The prime minister was not indicted.

Some 76.1 percent said they were not convinced by the account Hatoyama gave concerning the alleged irregularities involving his political fund managing organization.

Soon after the indictments, the prime minister made clear his intention to stay in office at a nationally televised news conference.

While 21.1 percent called for Hatoyama to resign, 64.3 percent wanted Hatoyama to remain in office but said he needed to fulfill his responsibilities and give a full explanation of the matter.

Hatoyama was also strongly criticized by the opposition and the media for postponing a decision over the construction of a new U.S. military base in Japan.

The U.S. also repeatedly pressed the government to stick to a 2006 agreement reached between Washington and Tokyo.

The U.S. and the LDP government agreed to build a new U.S. military facility on a sparsely-populated northern part of the Japanese island of Okinawa, in exchange for the closure of the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, located in a densely populated area of the subtropical island, where residents are opposed to the U.S. presence.

The DPJ insisted the new facility be moved off Okinawa prior to the general election. The Social Democratic Party (SDP), a left-leaning junior coalition party, threatened to pull out of the coalition if the government decided to implement the agreement.

Hatoyama announced two weeks ago that he was to put off the decision until sometime next year.

“His image of listening to the SDP too much was disseminated over and over again,” said Kawakami, adding that the prime minister was the kind of person who tried to avoid confrontation.

Kawakami said some of the things Hatoyama could do to revive his approval ratings included “boosting his image by gaining points in his diplomatic relations with such countries as China and Russia.”

While his image of indecisiveness continues to hurt Hatomaya, the media coverage of issues such as the U.S. military presence in Japan was also responsible for the drop in approval, said Kenichi Asano, a journalism professor at Doshisha University in Kyoto.

“The media have continued to emphasize the importance of the U.S.-Japan alliance repeatedly while other alternative views have not been provided,” he said.

“The media have never discussed a withdrawal plan of the U.S. military from Japan. Nor have they discussed why the U.S. military continued to be stationed more than 60 years after World War II,” said Asano. The media was moving ever further to the right, he said.

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