Ryutaro Hashimoto
Ryutaro Hashimoto attempted the most ambitious restructuring of the Japanese state since the occupation and was destroyed by a tax rise of two percentage points. He was a party man of the old school, elected at twenty-six to a seat associated with his father, and had run the trade ministry during the worst of the disputes with Washington over cars, where his refusal to concede made his domestic reputation. He became prime minister in 1996 at a moment when the governing party had just clawed its way back into power after its first spell in opposition in almost forty years, and when the banking system was carrying bad loans that nobody had yet been willing to measure. His programme had six parts and would have amounted to a rebuilding of the machinery of government: the twenty-two ministries were to be consolidated into thirteen, the finance ministry was to lose banking supervision, the postal savings system was to be examined, the financial markets were to be deregulated in one movement explicitly modelled on London, and the fiscal deficit was to be brought under statutory control. Much of it was legislated and took effect after he had gone; the ministry reorganisation of 2001 and the financial deregulation were his. In foreign policy he agreed with the United States on returning the marine air station at Futenma to Okinawa, an agreement still unimplemented thirty years later, and he hosted the conference in Kyoto at the end of 1997 that produced the first treaty setting binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions. The fiscal half of his programme required the consumption tax to rise from three per cent to five, which it did in April 1997. Consumer spending collapsed, the Asian financial crisis arrived that summer, two large financial institutions failed in November, and the recovery that had been under way for two years ended. Economists still argue about how much of that was the tax and how much the crisis; the electorate did not, and after the upper house elections of July 1998 he resigned. Every subsequent Japanese government has treated raising that tax as an act of political self-harm.
- Lived: 1937 CE – 2006 CE
- Nationality: Japanese
- Roles: head_of_government
