The year 2010 will be a watershed year for the administration of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, which came into power last September, ending the Liberal Democratic Party's almost unbroken rule since November 1955. If the administration fails to produce results that meet people's expectations this year, the change of government achieved by the Democratic Party of Japan will become almost meaningless.
The approval rating of the administration has dropped from around 70 percent just after its inauguration to around 50 percent in late December. It's time for Mr. Hatoyama, Cabinet members and the governing party to give substance to the main philosophy expressed in the party's election manifesto: ending the traditional practice of relegating the development of policy measures to bureaucrats and, instead, realizing politics in which a ruling party's politicians work out policy measures in a responsible way under the principle of "valuing people over concrete" and of building a society of "fraternity" in which each person is useful to another and feels at home.
The historic general election of August, in which people chose to let the DPJ lead the nation, showed that they had lost trust in the politics of the LDP and its junior coalition partner Komeito. Mr. Hatoyama and DPJ lawmakers should realize that if the DPJ-led government fails to create its distinctive political style and to develop policies that bring real change to the nation, many people could despair to the point of losing trust in politics altogether. That could put Japan at a political dead end, spawning either deep-rooted political apathy or some form of extremism, or a combination of both.