SEOUL, South Korea — When Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama of Japan abruptly stepped down Wednesday, largely for his failure to move an American air base off Okinawa, he was essentially admitting he had not won popular support for a prominent campaign pledge: ending Japan’s postwar dependence on the United States for its security.

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Saturday, March 12, 2011


Shizuo Kambayashi/Associated Press
Updated: June 4, 2010
Yukio Hatoyama, leader of the Japanese Democratic Party, announced on June 2, 2010, that he would resign his post as Japan's prime minister. Mr. Hatoyama swept into power in 2009 with bold promises to revamp the country, then faltered over broken campaign pledges to remove an American base from Okinawa.
Since taking office in September 2009, he had come to be seen as an indecisive leader. The image was reinforced by his wavering and eventual backtracking on the base issue, which set off huge demonstrations on Okinawa and drove his approval ratings below 25 percent.
Calls had risen within his Democratic Party for him to step aside before the July 11 elections, which are seen as a referendum on the party's first year in power.
Moving quickly to find a replacement, Mr. Hatoyama's fellow Democrats chose Naoto Kan, a plain-spoken finance minister with activist roots. Mr. Kan was elected prime minister on June 4, 2010, making him the fifth Japanese leader in four years.
Many in Japan see Mr. Hatoyama as having frittered away his party's historic electoral mandate on the seemingly minor issue of relocating a single American military installation.
In truth, his government faltered on a host of issues, including scandals over political financing; an inability to deliver on other campaign promises like eliminating highway tolls; and the party's failure to focus on pocketbook issues affecting voters, like unemployment or Japan's anemic growth rates.
Still, Mr. Hatoyama's handling of the base issue seemed to crystallize all that went wrong with his short-lived government, including what many Japanese saw as its fatal flaw: his own indecisiveness. The prime minister seemed to waffle between appeasing Washington and assuring Okinawans that he would honor his campaign vows.