I have sometimes said to my wife about a prominent politician, "Poor old so and so! He must be exhausted keeping to such a hard schedule. It's a tough life being a peripatetic politician." My wife's invariable response has been, "Don't waste your sympathy on politicians. They didn't have to accept their posts (of prime minister, foreign secretary etc.). They are not acting out of a sense of duty, but simply because they enjoy power. If the heat is too much for them, they can always retire to bed or to their families."
She is, of course, quite right. Politicians everywhere are in the political game for power, fame or money, or in some cases all three. A few may have an element of idealism in their makeup, but this soon disappears once they have got into the political game.
There has been some talk of a "sympathy vote" going to Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori because of the untimely illness of former Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi. Observers recall the sympathy vote for the Liberal Democratic Party after the death of Prime Minister Masayoshi Ohira in 1980. Perhaps the LDP hopes that people will vote for the party on the grounds that Obuchi's stroke was caused by overwork. Of course, everyone must be sorry for Obuchi and his family, but it is difficult for a foreign observer to understand why such sympathy should make the electorate favor his successor, whose policies are apparently to be identical with Obuchi's. They should vote for Mori and his party if they support his policies, and for no other reason. If the LDP's calculations about a sympathy vote are correct, the conclusion is inescapable that personalities still count more than policies in Japan and that democracy is immature.