April 6 marked Koizumi Ju'nichiro's 1,807th day as prime minister. His is the third longest postwar cabinet after Sato Eisaku's and Yoshida Shigeru's. In the last five years under the Koizumi cabinet, poverty has increased and the social gap has widened; U.S. military bases in Japan have been strengthened; and Japan's Asia diplomacy is at a serious impasse.
The mass media's analysis is not one of cheering on the long-serving government. The Yomiuri Shimbun in its editorial on April 5 criticized the government for having 'led to rampant speculative investment funds, having promoted the specter of unbridled mammonism and for continuing Yasukuni Shrine visits leading to a deterioration in relations with China and South Korea.'
During the five years of the Koizumi Cabinet, major corporations amassed 87 trillion yen in surplus funds, which is even greater than those in the bubble economy period. In contrast, people have been impoverished. The number of low-income households in need of public assistance increased from 600,000 in 1997 to one million, and the percentage of households without savings rose to 23.8 percent from 10 percent. From April, people are forced to pay more for nursing care and national pension premiums.
Far from reviewing the policy of imposing heavier burdens on the public, the Koizumi Cabinet aims at enacting an 'administrative reform bill' that will slash funding for public services such as education, welfare, and firefighting in line with neo-liberal policies.
The Koizumi government has pursued the destruction of the Constitution by getting the adverse revision of the Constitution on the political agenda for the first time since the end of WW II.
The Koizumi Cabinet in 2003 violated the Constitution by sending the Self-Defense Forces to Iraq, the first postwar dispatch of troops to a country at war.
Alleging that the 'Japan-U.S. alliance exists in a global context,' Prime Minister Koizumi shows his subservience to the United States by accepting and promoting the strengthening of U.S. bases in Japan in the name of U.S. military 'realignment and transformation' and increasing the integration of the U.S. forces and the SDF.
In the plebiscite in Iwakuni City, Yamaguchi Prefecture, an overwhelming majority of citizens rejected the plan to strengthen the U.S. base there. In Okinawa and Kanagawa prefectures hosting U.S. bases, local governments are also involved in opposing the strengthening of the bases.
Prime Minister Koizumi's five Yasukuni visits have made Japan's relations with Asian countries even more difficult.
With the negative effects of the Koizumi policies exposed, the true colors of the Koizumi Cabinet, which once boasted of its high rate of popularity won by shrewd campaign tactics and by manipulating the mass media, are becoming indisputable.
