Japan would move away from its tight alliance with the United States toward a vaguely defined ‘independence.’ Before his election, Hatoyama had declared that the influence of the US was in relative decline and that the world was marching toward a multi-polar order in which China would play a decisive role. He paid little heed to the fact that China, while calling for a multi-polar world, sought nothing less than a uni-polar Asia. No more, Hatoyama announced, would Japan follow the path that led to obsequiousness. Japanese power and purpose would be engaged not on behalf of America but would instead be used to seek new accommodation with China. What mattered would be accommodating China and finding a new role for Japan in the orbit and shadow of its emerging power. Indeed, when the heir apparent to the leadership of the Chinese communist party came to call on Tokyo, all protocol would be abandoned in order to accommodate his desire to meet with the ailing emperor.

Ozawa Ichiro, the éminence grise of the DPJ, sought to inaugurate this strategic turn by leading a delegation of over 100 new parliamentarians to Beijing to shake hands with the new power from the East. The images of the new DPJ parliamentarians lined up in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing spoke volumes in diplomatic rooms of a tilt in the strategic wind blowing in the East. But the symbolism and strategic implications of the trip could no longer be ignored by the new administration in Washington. It was too blatant a challenge to America’s long held pre-eminence. But like blind Cassandras, sure that only they could discern the tragic outlines of the future, Hatoyama and Ozawa failed to grasp the ineludible reality that a policy of strategic deference to Chinese power did not come easy for such a proud nation. Hatoyama did not have the deft touch for foreign policy. If he had, he would have known that only in the shadow of defeat had Japan accepted that it had little choice but to adapt itself to the reality of American pre-eminence. China was different. The accumulation of history, politics, pride and prestige would not allow Japan to so easily accept absorption and relative subordination within any nascent Sino-centric order.

The second element of Hatoyama’s envisioned strategic reorientation would be his promise to re-examine the question of the US military presence on Okinawa, specifically the question of the Futenma airbase. The base would be moved out of Japan if possible and, if not, at least out of Okinawa. The crowds applauded but the reaction from America was determined and clear: There would be no renegotiation of the agreement. The strained meeting with the American president — in which Hatoyama would promise one thing to the protectors from afar and another to the people when the president left — contributed to the doubts that were beginning to surround his leadership. Hatoyama could not make up his mind. His heart and natural instincts were with those who sought to reduce the US presence and alliance but those in his party and the bureaucracy would not give free rein to his idiosyncrasies. The glow of victory was quick to desert him and Hatoyama was left with no tenable options, save resignation. He sought once more to restore his credit with the Japanese public and with the power in Washington that had turned on him. Privately, and toward the end, often publicly, he nursed the ambition to transcend all his problems and return to the beginning.

Hatoyama had experienced an unlikely ascendance to the leadership, but when the magic deserted him, he was undone by those whose initial infatuation had now turned to unrestrained bitterness. The swiftness of this change seemed to shake the mild leader more than anything else. The DPJ had allowed itself to be carried along by the charisma of this man who promised regime change and a clean break with the past. But he interpreted victory differently than his diverse party. For Hatoyama it was nothing less than an opportunity to loosen the constraints of alliance with the US and forge a new diplomatic path. The pact at the heart of Japanese politics over the 50-year alliance with the US would be reshaped to reflect his confidence in illusions. He made the cardinal error of Japanese prime ministers by fatally mishandling the political and security alliance with the US, while at the same time failing to consolidate power at home.

For Hatoyama’s successor, the former human rights lawyer Kan Naoto, his agenda is decisively domestic: Economic rejuvenation, security and welfare at home. Defeat in the recent election further narrowed the political space for manoeuvre and curtailed the incentives for taking the moral choices necessary to deal with the implications of Japan’s strategic vertiginous. There was no longer the political will for grand action, statesmen no longer seem capable or willing to transcend the historic inertia or shape the recalcitrant material of post-war Japan. In its stead, the lesser greatness of isolationism would inexorably follow. Statesman set priorities among the interests and pressures of both their society and the international system. Yet one cannot escape the almost ineluctable reality that Japan is, in an essential respect, diminished, and smaller for its resignation and the region itself more hazardous and uncertain for the absence.

Fouad Ajami has observed that the world has a way of calling the bluff of leaders and nations summoned to difficult endeavors. History and international politics possess a tragic dimension because the conflict over ideas reflects the incommensurability of conception and political action. Yet the true test of political leadership is to recognise the real relationship of forces and to translate this knowledge and recognition into successful political action. The tragedy of Hatoyama and the DPJ has been that they sought not so much recognition as a transcendence of all considerations of power and national interest. Transcendence requires overcoming the past and all its lessons on the recalcitrance of history and its power to thwart man’s designs. Accounts and alliances forged before the transcendence are simply the remnants of dead ways of the past. Moments of political euphoria and delirium give rise to irresponsibility and diplomatic failure, of which the long term implications can only be hinted at in the present. Such is the situation with Japan at this moment where politics seems poised at its apogee and decline.

Andrew Levidis is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne and a Monbukagakusho scholar of Kyoto University.

A longer version of this article can be downloaded from here.