Born-Again Pols

By EDWARD W. DESMOND/TOKYO

Beneath the heat of TV klieg lights and the crush of security guards at a Tokyo hotel, the structure of Japanese politics began to crumble last week. Tsutomu Hata, three times a Cabinet minister for the Liberal Democratic Party that had ruled the country for 37 uninterrupted years, announced that he and 43 Diet colleagues had quit the L.D.P., forming a new party that would contest parliamentary elections to be held later this month. "Our party has been born to expedite a new wind, a new voice, a new system," said the smooth-talking Hata. "We pledge we will use all our strength to resuscitate politics and open a new page in history."

Hata's new party, roughly translated as Japan Renewal, the second group in three days to defect from the Liberal Democrats, is considered the most likely to pull together a coalition able to oust what is left of Japan's unruly and unroyal dynasty. Once the managers of Japan's rise to economic-superpower status under the warm glow of its alliance with the U.S., the Liberal Democrats today are noted for a single, sordid attribute: corruption. Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa sank to a lowly 9% approval rating two weeks ago after he buckled under party pressure and failed to deliver promised anticorruption legislation, despite intense popular demands to do so. That provoked a successful no-confidence motion in the Diet -- supported by Hata's group and 11 other L.D.P. legislators -- and hence the call for national elections.

Stunned by the legislative coup, Japan is now thoroughly absorbed by its newly chaotic politics. U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor arrived in Tokyo Tuesday looking for someone in the mood to negotiate in preparation for the Group of Seven summit meeting next week. It is unlikely that Miyazawa's lame-duck government will offer any major new trade concessions or initiatives to help boost the world economy, increasing chances that the Tokyo summit will be stillborn.

The fervent hope among most Japanese is that the emerging new order will destroy the powerful interest groups that have dominated the political and business arenas, eventually producing a genuine multiparty democracy of ideas rather than influences. But just how fresh are the new winds swirling around the Diet? Are Hata and company born-again politicians destined to shape the post-cold war era? Or are they rats fleeing a sinking ship? Hata and all his colleagues were members of the Takeshita faction of the L.D.P., which was close to the center of all the corruption scandals in recent years.

What is more, the political engineer behind Hata's insurgency is Ichiro Ozawa, a tough backroom operator who was right-hand man to Shin Kanemaru, the Takeshita faction's Mr. Big until prosecutors caught up with him last March. Kanemaru stands trial next month on charges of failing to pay taxes on the millions he allegedly skimmed off illicit political donations. Largely because of Ozawa's close association with Kanemaru, the national daily Asahi Shimbun is less than impressed with the new group. "They attack the limitations of the L.D.P.," the paper noted last week. "But weren't they at the core of such a party until only yesterday? Weren't they all brought up by the master of all scandalmakers, Shin Kanemaru?"

Hata's background is typical of the blue-suit mainstream of the Liberal Democrats. The son of a journalist turned L.D.P. legislator, he worked for 10 years as a tour guide and planner for a bus company in Tokyo. His hometown of Ueda, west of Tokyo, is where he likes to claim that he learned his "sensitivity for ordinary people, and what they really want from politics." Like many current L.D.P. legislators, Hata entered politics by taking over his father's seat and rose through the ranks by avoiding mistakes.

Friends say he is an outgoing, unassuming man with no edges -- and no ; intellectual pretensions either. On a trip to Washington in 1987 for talks about U.S. beef imports, he told a group of U.S. congressional leaders that the Japanese have trouble digesting American beef because "their intestines are longer than other people's" -- guilelessly passing on a widely accepted bit of Japanese folk wisdom. (Japan subsequently liberalized beef imports.)

Hata's grasp of political-reform issues is thankfully firmer than his knowledge of anatomy. He chaired the L.D.P.'s special commission to study reform in 1990 and produced widely applauded legislation to revise the system. One typical problem: most districts have several legislators, which means Liberal Democrats from different party factions must compete against one another. Since they cannot slug it out on the basis of policies, they compete in terms of patronage -- which in turn creates pressure to raise yen under the table. Hata's plan was shot down in 1991, however, when many of his colleagues saw that the reforms would throw a wrench in their own political machinery. "He has been a committed true believer ever since," says a professional acquaintance.

Ozawa too followed his father's footsteps into politics. Unlike Hata, he had a taste for the backrooms of the L.D.P., where power was divided among the factions, and where men like Kanemaru allegedly collected huge pay-offs from businessmen grateful for favors. Because there is widespread suspicion of Ozawa's close links to Kanemaru, he tends to stay out of the limelight, while Hata holds the press conferences. Nonetheless, Ozawa has both a stronger intellect and the more forceful personality. "Ozawa is quite rare among Japanese politicians because he speaks clearly and identifies problems," says Kensuke Watanabe, author of That Man, one of nine recent biographies of Ozawa. "Unlike most, he is not afraid to take decisions and even make mistakes."

Ozawa got the reform fervor during the Gulf War, when the U.S. demanded at least token participation in the coalition by Japan. Tokyo was paralyzed by indecision, convincing Ozawa that his colleagues were too deep into the pork barrel to take on the challenges facing modern Japan. He believes government must play a more active role in international peacekeeping efforts, and that Tokyo must sweep away the economic regulations and other barriers that play havoc with trade relations and keep consumer prices and taxes artificially high at home. "In our current political setup," says Ozawa, "you don't have ( to engage in serious debate or take responsibility for anything. We must create a system in which there is genuine debate."

That won't be easy. To win power, Hata's party will have to form a coalition to win a majority in what will be a 511-seat lower house. While several opposition groups, all grasping at the chance to pull down the L.D.P., are promising to support Hata, it will be extremely difficult to reconcile differences. The largest of the parties, the Social Democrats, has tried to ease the way by announcing that it will not argue with traditional L.D.P. economic and foreign policies, but at least in theory it still opposes nuclear power, the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, the existence of the Self-Defense Forces and the elimination of certain trade barriers -- all policies Hata and Ozawa favor. Miyazawa has already zeroed in on this contradiction. "I am not ready to leave politics up to the opposition," he said in an interview last week.

Ozawa and Hata's best prospect, however, may be to bring over more supporters from the L.D.P., where there is still considerable unhappiness with Miyazawa, 73, and worry about the voters' wrath on the reform issue. Former Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu announced a 105-member group of L.D.P. legislators who favor reforms. If the Hata group does well, they may just defect.

What worries the Japanese people most is that all the promises for a better Japan will get lost in the coalition bargaining, or in the chaos that will inevitably follow a weak outcome. "This is a struggle for power," says Motoo Shiina, a member of the upper house who just resigned from the L.D.P. "And I am afraid that the real issues, the basic policies that Japan must pursue, might be lost in the struggle." It would not be the first time that a fresh wind blew stale in the corridors of the Diet.

With reporting by Satsuki Oba/Tokyo