Japanese prime minister to resign

Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama ended weeks of internal discontent about his leadership by announcing today that he would resign from office, a swift fall from grace for a politician who just eight months ago led his endemic opposition party to a historic victory.

His collapse in approval ratings was prompted largely by his failure to deliver on a campaign promise to move a major U.S. military base off Okinawa’s main island. The move was a centerpiece of Hatoyama’s successful run for office last year, but its implementation would have required American consent to alter a painstakingly negotiated 2006 deal with the previous Japanese government to move the base to another part of Okinawa.

In elections last year, Hatoyama’s pledge to move the base off the island was part of a broader agenda to give Japan more say over security matters in its alliance with the U.S. It struck a chord not only with Okinawans, who contend the base’s intrusion on their lives is ignored by politicians in Washington and Tokyo, but with those Japanese leery at how the U.S. alliance has dragged Japan into conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Once in office, he was unable to push the security establishment into reopening the Okinawa deal. The perception that he was dithering in delivering on his promise came to be seen as the symbol of a waffling leadership style. After months of failed efforts to persuade the Obama administration to revisit the arrangement, Hatoyama was forced to concede last week that he could not fulfill his promise.

Polls showed Hatoyama’s popularity dipping below 20 percent. And they showed the governing party – the Democratic Party of Japan – sliding into a statistical draw with the Liberal Democratic Party, the political behemoth that had ruled Japan for most of the post-war era.