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  • The Hatoyama Dynasty: Japanese Political Leadership through the Generations
  • Ellis S. Krauss (bio)
The Hatoyama Dynasty: Japanese Political Leadership through the Generations. By Mayumi Itoh. Palgrave MacMillan, New York, 2003. xxiv, 286 pages. $59.95.

The issue of "hereditary" politicians—those who "inherit" their support base, including kōenkai, and thus the seat of a previous Diet member because they were related to the latter in some way—is of increasing interest in Japanese politics. The definitions of "inherited" vary, and so do the statistics. One can consider a "hereditary" politician one who received the jiban (loyal constituency base) and thus could attain the seat of a close relative, such as a parent, step-parent, or sibling. Usually those who once served as an aide to the Diet member at one time are also included. Some definitions even include those who inherited the constituency of a local politician as long as that politician was in the same district the new Diet member now represents. Using a wide definition, some statistics indicate that as many as 38 per cent of House of Representatives seats are held by second- and third-generation Diet members. In the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), they may compose fully half of all Diet members, and even in the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), a quarter.1 Some of the most well-known contemporary political leaders in Japan, such as current Prime Minister Koizumi Jun'ichirō and former Foreign Minister Machimura Nobutaka, former Prime Minister Hashimoto Ryūtarō, possible future Prime Minister Abe Shinzō, and of course Tanaka Makiko, in the LDP, and Ozawa Ichirō and Hatoyama Yukio of the opposition DPJ, are all "hereditary" politicians.

Mayumi Itoh, a political scientist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, has written a study of the mother of all hereditary politician families, the Hatoyamas. One of the things that makes this family particularly interesting is that they are probably not completely typical of hereditary families because every member of the lineage since the Meiji Restoration has been more than just an ordinary Diet member, attaining high leadership positions, [End Page 244] and each has been integrally involved in the major events of modern Japanese politics. This family has produced four generations of important politicians: an influential Meiji-period politician (Kazuo, first generation) elected nine times, who also served as speaker of a house of the Diet in 1896; an important prewar politician (Ichirō, second generation), who after the war attained the post of prime minister and was a founder of the Democratic Party, which merged to form the LDP; a high-ranking Ministry of Finance bureaucrat (Iichirō, third generation), who in his amakudari career became foreign minister; and in the fourth generation there are two brothers (Kunio and Yukio) who have been integrally involved in LDP and opposition politics for the last couple of decades, both of whom were Diet members who helped found the current largest opposition party, the DPJ, in 1996. Kunio became education minister in 1993; Yukio became the leader of the DPJ.

Each successive generation of Hatoyama politicians was also an interesting and talented person. Kazuo also was an educator in the Meiji era who received three degrees from Columbia and Yale Universities within a five-year span not too long after (1875–80) the Meiji Restoration. Ichirō was a prewar democrat and liberal man of integrity whom Itoh strongly argues was clearly wrongfully purged by the occupation as a rightist. Iichirō was apparently a modest, trusted, and competent finance official. Kunio graduated top of his class at the University of Tokyo and became an almost obsessively ambitious politician, constantly switching parties either to advance his career or principles or both. Yukio attained a Ph.D. in engineering from Stanford before entering politics. The two brothers of the fourth generation also had the courage to marry unusual spouses for Japanese of such elite standing.

Indeed, as Itoh describes them, the wives of the four generations were themselves quite exceptional, even if they do play only very supporting roles both in the lives of their husbands and in this book. First-generation Kazuo's wife, Haruko, was an educated woman and a pioneering...

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