He might have been dragged off to Nagata-cho to meet an LDP bigwig, or even up to Otemachi to chat with the Keidanren elite. As many Japanese painfully acknowledge, the ministries are discredited, the LDP is transparently inept, and the business elite is unwilling to step forward to fix what is broken. No one seems to be in charge here. But they are wrong to blame the system. The fault lies with the leaders themselves.
Japan actually has a rich tradition of leadership .
Whether or not one agrees with their goals or their methods, men like Ito Hirobumi, Yoshida Shigeru, and Nakasone Yasuhiro were real statesmen . They exercised leadership from stage center. So did business leaders like Doko Toshio. Others, such as Sasakawa Ryoichi or Matsunaga Yasuzaemon, were considered fixers and kuromaku, and led from behind the scenery. Either way, they knew where they wanted Japan to go, and they knew how to get it there.