By anyone’s standards, Kazuhiro Haraguchi has his work cut out for him.

Haraguchi is minister of internal affairs and communications in the new Democratic Party of Japan government. His responsibilities include reorganizing Japan Post, tax reforms, promoting Japan’s terrestrial television standard internationally, the decentralization of power and legislation on giving voting rights to foreign permanent residents.

Speaking at an FCCJ luncheon on Jan. 14, Haraguchi admitted that he had only got four hours sleep the previous night as he pondered ways of reversing previous governments’ policies and alternative ways of dealing with some thorny issues.

High up on that list, he said, is freedom of speech.

“I would like to protect the rights of the people in communication first and foremost,” Haraguchi stated, outlining plans for a “fortress of free speech” that would serve as the basis of democracy and peace.

Underlining his own free-speech credentials, 51-year-old Haraguchi said he was the first Cabinet member to be active on Twitter. “It is very important to be constantly connected and constantly disclosing information,” he noted.

He has also managed to talk Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama into starting a blog and using Twitter to reach out to the Japanese public.

But, Haraguchi pointed out, historically it has not always been this way. Politicians have frequently been unable to resist interfering in the media, he noted, and, in many cases, have curtailed the public’s right to free speech. And while such interference may not always be enforced through the arrest or intimidation of anyone in the media who takes an alternative line, Haraguchi suggested that Japan’s “grand centralized administrative power” has led to an excess of government paternalism.

And that, in turn, is not helped by media that are essentially closed to new entrants, the news being controlled through the much-criticized kisha-club system, and the government wielding an inordinate degree of power over broadcasters, as Haraguchi’s own ministry is in charge of issuing and reviewing broadcasting licenses.

Before the August general election, the state of the media was one thing that Haraguchi vowed to look into.

“First of all, I would like to break down the industry’s vested interests, pry open doors that have been closed previously and give access to this sector to as many people as possible,” he said.

“We are working on a new bill on cross-holding within the media and we are of the belief that if all the print media and all the broadcast media are held by the same few companies then there can be no diversification of the message, there can be no critical voices.”

The ministry is looking into the possibility of distributing broadcast licenses in a different way in the future – including by auction – in order to “destroy” the present system by which they are allocated through the ministry. The drawback, of course, is that newcomers are unlikely to have the funds to compete for such licenses against established – and wealthy – broadcasters. It is, nevertheless, a proactive and positive new approach.

Perhaps a bigger concern is that with so many tasks on his plate – plus the small matter of the mid-term election that the party must fight in the summer, which already promises to be more exacting than August’s annihilation of the Liberal Democratic Party – Haraguchi will not be able to achieve all his goals.

With no fewer than 104 items on his "to do" list, it is inevitable that some will fall by the wayside or be left incomplete. Either that or Haraguchi gives up his remaining four hours of sleep every night. ❶