Perotism Across the Pacific

...an international party...

...Since he announced his plans to organize, he has been receiving telephone calls from all over the country...

...A 29-year-old officer told the Asahi newspaper he will go to Cambodia if he is assigned, but added: "We really need a well-established compensation system for death and injuries, as well as nationwide support for such an operation...

...In the typical event, the ruling party feigns adjournment, then rushes back to the chamber and enacts the desired bill before the opposition can return to disrupt the proceedings...

...I cannot understand why Japan, a nonmilitary country that is not prepared for battle, should suddenly dispatch Defense Forces," says Kimio Miyaoka, chairman of Nippon Yusen, a large shipping company...

...The ordeal frequently was captured by news cameras in the 1950s and '60s, and, of course, during the PKO vote...

...Pols like Ozawa privately predict that the dozen or so candidates the N JP will run in the July 26 Upper House election could receive as many as 5 million votes, and perhaps take five or six of the chamber's 252 seats...

...In addition, he proposes spending up to 2 per cent of the gross national product to preserve the nation's natural environment...

...Looking at Tokyo, Hosokawa sees "a stagnant political situation caused by struggles between conservatives and liberals...

...But when he launched the New Japan Party (NJP) last May, he cited motives similar to Chung's and Perot's...

...But regardless of the strategy he pursues, his candidacy will mark the first time in Korean history that a businessman, rather than a general or a political mandarin, stands at least a chance of becoming the national leader...

...The problem with Japan is that our leaders have no imagination,' Kato believes...

...By allowing troops to be sent abroad, the bill instituting the PKO seemed to violate the spirit of the so-called Peace Constitution...

...If the party attracts talented members, it might be able to create a big wave," observes Ichiro Ozawa, amajor power broker in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), and a man who hopes someday to be Prime Minister...

...Others in the SDF say their attitudes were changed by the Gulf War...

...Although the legislation that finally cleared Parliament (after two years of debate) permits troops to be dispatched solely as part of United Nations teams participating in strictly humanitarian operations, it has touched off a furor...

...Another, a small outfit called the Silver Volunteers, is geared to older Japanese helping people in foreign countries...

...Hosokawa recently helped his cause by taking the most sensible stance of any opinion-leader here on Japan's controversial new Peace-Keeping Organization (PKO), a 2,000-man unit carved out of the national Self-Defense Forces (SDF...

...At various times he has been a newspaper reporter, a 12-year member of the Upper House of Parliament, and a popular governor of Kumamoto Prefecture, his home district on the western island of Kyushu...

...The proposal went unheeded and a political row ensued...

...Today, he works part-time for one of its smaller subsidiaries...

...On this occasion, though, the LDP did not do the ramming by itself...

...Now he appears likely to challenge the two main contenders in a presidential election scheduled for late in the year...

...To shore up his power base, he may try to form a coalition with another opposition party...

...Each time the collision was physical, and none was an accident...

...MAKING WAVES Perotism Across the Pacific BY MICHAEL BERGER Tokyo The Ross Perot phenomenon is catching on in East Asia?for many of the same reasons that the Texas businessman has proved so popular in the United States...

...He advocates shifting power from bureaucrats to elected representatives of the people, and creating a more pluralistic society...

...That the 54-year-old aristocrat could christen himself a national savior demonstrates that if political disgust reaches peak levels, the electorate will grasp at nearly anything...

...Domestic policy, he maintains, should be aimed at improving the living standards of ordinary people...

...Their distress over the PKO bill led to a series of tragicomic scenes in Parliament—manifestations of what is known as the gachanko process...

...Although Japanese political pros say Hosokawa is a long shot, they don't dismiss him...

...Kazuo Kato, a businessman who says he is tempted to back Hosokawa's NJP, sees the issue from a different perspective...

...Indeed, that may be precisely why political insiders here do not discount the New Japan Party, or the prospects of a Japanese Ross Perot...

...Hosokawa describes his venture in language designed to attract the disgrunded voter: "a new network-type party...

...Upon turning 60 three years ago, he was forced to retire from his job as a manager at an electronics firm...

...He also sees an opportunity to profit from the stalemate...

...Many Japanese who remember the days of unbridled militarism regard the PKO as the first step toward dismantling the Constitution, designed by U.S...

...An officer who was sent to the Gulf for mine-sweeping duty after the fighting ceased said: "I learned that the local people recognized our contribution only when we actually went to the site and got involved in the operation...

...The solution, Hosokawa suggested, was to form a group of civilian volunteers for overseas relief missions, with Parliamentary approval required on a case-by-case basis...

...Other Japanese Silver Volunteers are serving in Pakistan, Bangladesh and similar Asian nations...

...One organization, the Japan Corps of Overseas Volunteers, is for young people and is modeled after the U.S...

...At a time when close to one-third of Japanese describe themselves as independent voters, however, such a showing could indicate considerable potential for the NJP...

...Hosokawa offers a broad platform that would have resonance in middle-America or Eastern Europe...

...People want to know how they can join the party," he says, "because they want a change in the system...

...Members of the SDF themselves have mixed feelings about being posted overseas...

...I am just being given trivial tasks...

...His most radical plank calls for outlawing corporate campaign contributions...

...One of a large group of Japanese words that faithfully represent sounds, gachanko captures the aural effect of two objects crashing together...

...He is the grandson of a prewar Prime Minister and the 18th-generation descendant of a historic samurai family (once feudal lords...

...Because it no longer has a majority in the Upper House, it was forced to cut a deal with the minority Komei and Democratic Socialist parties, who insisted on the most innocuous bill possible...

...South Korea has Chung Ju Yung, the wealthy industrialist who last year organized his own political party out of frustration with the country's entrenched leadership...

...Should that fail, the burliest deputies of the governing party position themselves around the Speaker's podium, forming something like a rugby scrum...

...Beneath the puffery there is a calculating and experienced political mind...

...This would hardly threaten the conservative establishment that has governed Japan for more than a generation...

...foreign policy at promoting world peace...

...Peace Corps...

...I am not helping my present company much," he says...

...I wish I could find something else...

...Nearly half a century of watching Japanese soldiers do little besides pile sandbags alongside rising rivers has not diminished the vigilance of the Social Democrats and Communists, who can still be counted on to automatically resist any step that might enhance the Armed Forces...

...There are a few groups in Japan designed to meet such needs, but they do not receive wide publicity...

...Don't our leaders understand that there are thousands of talented Japanese who are eager for a new challenge...

...Most of the significant postwar decisions of the Japanese Diet, including historic votes on the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty and on key diplomatic, defense and education issues, have been achieved by gachanko...

...Kato has a friend of equal age, a former engineer, who for the past two years has been helping a factory in China upgrade its production system...

...In the recent balloting for the National Assembly, Chung's group unexpectedly took 31 seats...

...The debate about the PKO law angers me...

...occupation authorities to prevent the resurgence of Japanese aggression...

...Michael Berger frequently contributes to The New Leader from Japan...

...Japan's surprise challenger, Morihiro Hosokawa, doesn't quite fit the Perot mold...

...Keiko Usui, who represents a citizens' movement demanding that the government apologize for Japan's past belligerence, argued that the LDP should do that before committing military personnel to foreign crises: "If we send any troops overseas, all Asian people will undoubtedly see that the Japanese have not reconsidered what we did before and during World War II...

...a party that puts idealism into action...

...The objective is to prevent enraged opposition members from reaching the microphone and interrupting the official declaration that the bill has passed...