Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, whose administration is 4 1/2 months old, opened his policy speech for the coming year with words that bore his colors: "I want to protect people's lives. This is my wish. . . . I want to protect the lives of those who are born, of those who grow and mature."
Throughout his 13,600-character speech, which lasted 51 minutes — the longest for a prime minister's policy statement since 1976 — he used "lives" or "life" 24 times. He even said he wants "to protect the life of the Earth."
He called his fiscal 2010 budget — which includes an 18.3 percent drop in public works spending, a 9.8 rise in social welfare spending, a 5.2 percent increase in education and science spending, a ¥13,000 monthly child allowance and tuition-free high school education — one "to protect human life."