![\"\"](\"http:\/\/si.wsj.net\/public\/resources\/images\/OB-EN949_hatoya_G_20090927195218.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThis morning’s news was buzzing with the announcement that Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama will be stepping down from his position.\u00a0 This makes him the fourth PM in four years to quit, a statistic that will likely lead to some self-reflection in Japan.\u00a0 The 2 main reasons cited for his resignation were 1) \u666e\u5929\u9593\u554f\u984c (Futenma mondai<\/em> or the fate of the Futenma Marine Corps Air base on Okinawa) and 2) \u653f\u5e9c\u3068\u91d1\u00a0 (seifu to kane<\/em> or government and money, the investigations being carried out regarding Hatoyama’s political financing).<\/p>\n As for the former, Hatoyama directly apologized to Okinawans for his waffling on the matter and the loss of faith he had caused as a result.\u00a0 When on the street interviews were conducted with Okinawa residents, the response was largely one of disappointment and regret that Hatoyama was cutting and running.\u00a0 In terms of the latter, Hatoyama pledged to “return to a DPJ that separates government and money and to deal with the issue properly.”<\/p>\n The title of this post\u00a0 is \u9ce9\u5c71\u304a\u308d\u3057 (Hatoyama oroshi or <\/em>“Down with Hatoyama”), referring to the belief that Hatoyama was pushed out of office.\u00a0 Ironically, Hatoyama had criticized Asao oroshi<\/em> when this former PM was ousted.\u00a0 However, many believe that it was less a case of\u00a0 “Down with Hatoyama”\u00a0 and more one of “Down with Ozawa,” referring to DPJ Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa known as its behind the scenes power broker.\u00a0 He will also resign, and it is said that it was Hatoyama who needed less convincing and who was primary in convincing Ozawa to go along with it.\u00a0 The thumbs up pose shown in this image is even said to allude to Hatoyama’s acknowledgment that he was able to pull this off.<\/p>\n Hatoyama’s replacement will be chosen on Friday, and possible candidates include party veterans Finance Minister Naoto Kan and Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada.\u00a0 Doubts have been expressed as to how much things will actually change despite another leadership switch.\u00a0 Some concerns that have been raised regarding how Japan’s political instability will affect its international stature, how much this will contribute to really solving domestic problems, and the overall approval rating of the party which will be revealed during elections to be held on July 11.\u00a0 Coverage in the NYT can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" *********************************************************************************** WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Writer\/Interpreter\/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations. This morning’s news was buzzing with the announcement that Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[42,4,30,18,1,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anecdote-article","category-articlejournalism","category-japan-trends","category-translatinginterpreting","category-uncategorized","category-wit-life"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-378","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11974"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11990,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11974\/revisions\/11990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}