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By Kyoko Hasegawa, Agence Fracne-Presse
TOKYO: Incoming Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada—dubbed “Mr.
Clean” for his straight-laced image—will play a key role in
reshaping Japan’s relations with the United States.
The 56-year-old former opposition leader, who
confesses to a stubborn streak, is known for refusing all gifts from
supporters, and for usually avoiding alcohol. That has also earned
him the epithet of “Taliban.”
Okada, who was once a trade ministry high-flyer,
has said he sees the US alliance as the foundation of Japanese
diplomacy but also wants the country to reach out more in its Asian
backyard.
“Japan has tried too hard to adapt its stance
to that of the United States,” he told Agence France-Presse in an
interview last month.
Age of Asia
“It will be the age of Asia, and in that
context it is important for Japan to have its own stance, to play
its role in the region.”
Japan’s new Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who
said Saturday he had picked Okada for the post, has pledged to build
a more equal relationship with Washington and review the US military
presence in this pacifist nation.
A law graduate from Tokyo University, Okada has
also studied at Harvard. He joined the trade ministry in 1976 and
was in charge of energy policies.
He was first elected to parliament in 1990 as a
lawmaker with the long-ruling conservatives, but a few years later
he defected to an opposition party that later joined forces with the
newly empowered Democratic Party.
Okada was elected head of the DPJ in 2004 but
was forced to step down following a massive electoral defeat in
2005, when popular premier Junichiro Koizumi led his Liberal
Democratic Party (LDP) to a landslide victory.
He is the second son of Takuya Okada, who turned
his family business into one of Japan’s two biggest supermarket
operators, Aeon.
When asked in May about his good and bad points,
Okada said: “My downside is stubbornness and my advantage is
coherence.”
“I’ve been given various nicknames, such as
‘fundamentalist’ and ‘Taliban,’ which are all compliments to
me,” he said.
Not linked to factions
Okada has been dubbed a “lone wolf” by media
because he does not belong to any of the various internal groupings
within the Democrats, arguing that the party should turn the page on
the LDP’s faction-riven politics.
The father-of-three’s hobbies include
collecting things related to frogs, the Japanese word for which
sounds like “change”—the slogan used by the DPJ during last
month’s election campaign.
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