Last August the Democratic Party of Japan defeated the Liberal Democratic Party, which had held power for most of the past half century. The new government rode to victory with promises to make high-school education free, pay families a monthly allowance per child to encourage a higher birth rate, reduce the gas tax, and abolish highway tolls, among other things. Already in the red, the new government, headed by Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who holds a PhD in industrial engineering from Stanford University, then set out to find ways to keep those promises.
Unusual for Japan, the review process that ensued was open to the public. “I agree with the philosophy [of transparency], but it became a public torture,” says Hitoshi Murayama, who splits his time between heading the Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe, a World Premier International Research Center Initiative (WPI) institute based in the...
