Blueprint for a New Japan: The Rethinking of a Nation

Providing a new perspective on post-Cold War Japan, the author argues that Japan must become a "normal" nation--taking responsibility for its freedoms, international status, and citizens--evaluates modern Japanese politics, and offers solutions to problems he perceives.

A bestseller in Japan, this sweeping manifesto sets forth a bold blueprint for the transformation of that country's economy, society and polity. Ozawa, leader of the Japan Renewal Party, was the main strategist behind the coalition government that took power last year, ending 38 years of conservative rule. He outlines steps to foster a two-party system and to strengthen the authority of the prime minister and cabinet, thereby shifting power from bureaucratic officials to politicians. He advocates that Japan play a more active role in international affairs, including U.N. military operations, and make a greater commitment to environmental protection and foreign aid. Japan, Ozawa stresses, should open its markets to foreign competition and work with the U.S. to promote global free trade. He would also privatize public corporations, reduce work hours, promote the participation of women in the workplace, revamp a conformist educational system and decentralize power, population and resources away from Tokyo. Ozawa's analysis will interest policymakers, business executives and Japan-watchers.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A master plan for an institutional makeover of Japan from a political insider whose revisionist agenda remains firmly rooted in the ruling class's long-standing preoccupation with national security. A former Liberal Democratic Party shogun, Ozawa became an influential member of the upstart coalition that wrested power from the LDP last year. Aware that his economically formidable country faces a host of new challenges in the postCold War era, he offers a series of proposals at once parochial and visionary for making parliamentary government more accountable, responsive, and responsible on the home front, less hesitant in the wider world. To facilitate effective government action, for example, he would give local authorities greater autonomy, nurture a genuinely competitive two-party system, reform campaign finance, and redraw the electoral map. Noting that the industrious populace has derived precious little improvement in its standard of living from Dai Nihon's prosperity, Ozawa goes FDR one better in stumping for five freedoms (from teeming urban centers, corporate tyranny, overwork, ageism/sexism, and petty regulation). He advocates a shakeup in the nation's rigid educational methods to encourage students to think for themselves in order to help Japanese companies remain innovative players in the global marketplace. Ozawa also calls on Tokyo to become a high-profile source of foreign aid that sets the pace in environmental matters--a worthy ambition for a resource- poor nation that leads the league in slaughtering dolphins and whales. Senator Jay Rockefeller's pious introduction takes no note of such contradictions. Whether Ozawa's deadly earnest call for his fellow Japanese to create a more open society can gain a broad-based readership in the West is an open question. For certain, however, his grand design is in the self-interested tradition of an insular nation-state whose capacity to adapt has not been in serious doubt since the Meiji Restoration. (Maps) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In 1993 Ozawa bolted from his corruption-plagued Liberal Democratic Party, hastening its fall from power after 38 years of uninterrupted rule. This reform program, then, bears close scrutiny from Japan-watchers, though it was written for the average Japanese citizen. That reader, cossetted by one of the most paternalistic governments anywhere, pays for his prosperity with a suffocating lack of personal or consumer freedom: domestically, Ozawa wants to inject laissez-faire into the economy, and devolve power from Tokyo to the prefectures. In foreign affairs, he offers the opposite but realistic idea that power must be concentrated in a reformed office of the prime minister. Right now, the nominal boss has little power in international matters; consequently, trade and security issues drift along without long-term guidance, as Japan's inaction during the Gulf War revealed. Setting a course toward opening Japan's domestic markets, freeing "salarymen" from corporate enslavement, and solidifying ties to the U.S., Ozawa's platform may yet raise its author to power, a scenario libraries should anticipate. Gilbert Taylor

Ozawa is one of the political leaders who masterminded the 1993 fall from power of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party, which had dominated the government since 1955. In this book, widely read in Japan, he spells out his ideas for a broadly based reform of Japanese political and social life, intended to revolutionize his country in the years ahead. Concentrating on three main areas (political reform, Japan's role in international affairs, and the reform of Japanese society), Ozawa argues for what amounts to revolutionary new directions in all three areas, ranging from the decentralizing of Japan's highly centralized political system, to a more active and dynamic Japanese role in international peacekeeping efforts, to the engendering of greater individualism and independent thinking among his country's citizenry. Both for Ozawa's provocative ideas and because of his influential status, this book is highly recommended for anyone interested in contemporary Japan.
Scott Wright, Univ. of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.