The prime minister's keynote policy address in the Diet affords the nation's leader an opportunity to present their overall thinking to the people — as its name in Japanese, shoshin hyomei (declaration of convictions), would indeed suggest.
Shigeru Yoshida delivered the first of these "state of the nation" orations in 1953; Eisaku Sato made a whopping 13 between 1964 and 1971; while the last encumbent, Taro Aso, managed just one, in 2008.
In his first such speech, delivered before members of both houses of the Diet on Oct. 26, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama minced no words in expounding with crystal clarity, over 52 minutes (30 minutes longer than Aso), his vision of what Japanese people must do to reinvent and revitalize their country.