No. 5: Renho joins Kan's Cabinet

Japanese politicians with international roots are few but not unprecedented. But Taiwanese- Japanese Diet member Renho's ascension to the Cabinet as minister for administrative reforms has been historic. Requiring the bureaucrats to justify their budgets (famously asking last January, "Why must we aim to develop the world's No. 1 supercomputer? What's wrong with being No. 2?"), she has been Japan's most vocal policy reformer.

Why this matters: Few reformers are brave enough to withstand the national sport of politician-bashing, especially when exceptionally cruel criticism began targeting Renho's ethnic background. Far-rightist Diet member Takeo Hiranuma questioned her very loyalty by saying, "She's not originally Japanese." (Just Be Cause, Feb. 2) Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara expanded the focus by claiming people in the ruling coalition had foreign backgrounds, and were therefore selling Japan out as a "duty to their ancestors" ( JBC, May 4). Fortunately, it did not matter. In July's elections, Renho garnered a record 1.7 million votes in her constituency, and retained her Cabinet post, regardless of her beliefs and roots.

After all the bad blood between these strikingly similar societies, Japan's motion to be nice to South Korea was remarkably easy. No exploitable technicalities about the apology being unofficial, or merely the statements of an individual leader (as was seen in Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama's apologies for war misdeeds, or Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono's "statement" about "comfort women" — itself a euphemism for war crimes) — just a prime minister using the opportunity of an centennial to formally apologize for Japan's colonial rule of Korea, backed up by a good-faith return of war spoils.