YUKIO HATOYAMA BEGAN WITH THE NOBLEST OF INTENTIONS, yet after 259 days as prime minister, seems only to have achieved the once impossible feat of infuriating both the population of Okinawa and almost the entire American political-military establishment.

To The Economist, he was “feckless” and his government “as incompetent, aimless and tainted by scandal as its predecessors.” In contrast to Kan, the Japanese economy evidently mattered so little to this scion of one of Japan’s richest families, as to escape any mention in Hatoyama’s political obituary in the Washington Post.

With this in mind, I have been re-reading the weekly “Yu-Ai” email I used to get from Hatoyama’s office. (“Yu-Ai” was the name of Hatoyama’s pet philosophy. It translates roughly as “brotherly love,” although “You and I” is pretty close.) The Jan. 29 message was a gem. Tired of “just going back and forth between my official residence and the Prime Minister’s Office and the Diet,” Hatoyama pays a visit to that favorite of the Tokyo American Club Women’s Group, Mashiko Town in Tochigi Prefecture. Savoring “the fresh sweetness” of “some ripe Tochiotome strawberries in a plastic greenhouse,” he “reaffirmed the potential of a tie-up between agriculture and tourism.” Next he visits a pottery and a company making dental equipment.

With refreshing candor, Hatoyama admits on Dec. 11 that public cynicism about “economic recovery” talk is justified.

“The government feels exactly the same way. To be sure, the numbers appear to show that the worst of the economic downturn is behind us, but that is only because of the external demand generated by economic growth in China and other Asian nations. In fact, the nominal growth rate, which better reflects our sense of reality, has been negative for some time; there is far too much supply chasing too little demand.”

Sadly, Hatoyama’s prescription fails to match this insightful diagnosis. Instead of trying to cure deflation, he merely offers to treat its symptoms, through various “countermeasures.”

In his New Year Message, Hatoyama unveils yet another strategy to return Japan to economic growth, following the failure of LDP public-spending programs, and the “market fundamentalism” associated with the 2001-2006 government of Junichiro Koizumi. New growth catalysts will be in environmental technology and in providing medical and nursing care to Japan’s aging population.

We hear no more of these economic policies in later “Yu-Ai” letters, but they surface again, almost word for word, in Kan’s policy speech in June to the Diet. Japanese and foreign media dutifully report this “Third Way” as if it is all Kan’s idea, and entirely new. ❶

Peter McGill writes for Asiamoney magazine and is a former president of the FCCJ