Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi led his Liberal Democratic Party to a landslide victory in the Sept. 11 general election he called as a de facto referendum on his drive to privatize postal services.

But if veteran commentator Soichiro Tahara is right, Koizumi's poll triumph did far more than just shake-up Japan's hidebound ruling establishment. In fact, Tahara -- whose prestigious "Sunday Project" morning talk show on TV Asahi has run since 1989 and is now watched by some 10 million viewers every week -- says Koizumi may have changed the country's power structure beyond recognition. Not only that, but he believes his premiership since April 2001 has done no less than ring the death knell of Japan's "ironclad web of vested interests" and the era of corruption and shady backroom deals that have flourished on the LDP's half-century watch.

Could be that Japanese politics just got interesting.

To find out just how interesting, The Japan Times last month asked Tahara to survey the new political landscape in which -- to the sure chagrin of the prime minister's many detractors -- he lauds Koizumi as a politician uniquely capable of ushering in healthy new alternatives. In his interview, 71-year-old Tahara also touches on efforts to recast Japan's war-renouncing Constitution and raps as "misinformed" Asian criticism of Japan's yearning for a full-scale military.

How has Japanese people's interest in the media changed over recent decades?

The population has had a variety of enemies in the past. At one point politicians were the enemy -- government and political parties. Look at the [bribes-for-aircraft contracts] Lockheed Scandal [of 1976], the Recruit Scandal [1988, involving bribery of businessmen, bureaucrats and politicians], the Kanemaru Scandal [1992, combining organized crime, tax evasion and charges of bribery]. In other words, there was one scandal after another involving money and politicians, and the media and public discourse reverberated with the view that Japanese politicians were just rotten to the core.

The Koizumi administration took the stage within such a context. The press had covered corruption aggressively, and Prime Minister Koizumi rose to the fore as a candidate seen as relatively untarnished by ties with vested interests.

Then there was a time when bureaucrats became the enemy. Naturally, they are mixed up with influence peddlers.

For example, take the former Construction Ministry, which is now the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, or take the the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, or the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare or what have you -- these, too, came to be viewed by the population as "enemies."

But now, the media itself has become the enemy. It's masu-komi (mass communications) bashing.

Criticism that Koizumi "spun" the press [before the election], preventing them from covering anything other than postal privatization, is one element of this trend. Another line of attack is to say that the press, as the Fourth Estate, is throwing its might around too much.

So you're saying there is no basis for so-called masu-komi bashing?

No, there are valid criticisms to be made.

For the press to pursue the truth thoroughly -- which is its original raison d'e^tre -- reporters have to do a lot of footwork. That's what journalism is all about! But gradually, with the rise of media organs' status -- for example, if you become a reporter at The Asahi Shimbun [newspaper] or some television company, you start to feel like you're somebody special and start slacking off.

It's not just at the Asahi; reporting has gradually become careless at many other newspaper and TV companies as well. This is an enormous problem. Reporters' articles become ambiguous, a TV broadcast vague.

Also, because you're suffering delusions of grandeur, you don't want to lose that status. Journalism, the way it used to be, meant boldly facing challenges regardless of the risk involved. But now everybody thinks risk is frightening, something to be avoided, and reporting has become self-protective -- not aggressive.

Because of that, the media has voluntarily restrained itself from putting pressure on the political and financial world. I think the current-day media truly doesn't live up to standards.

When Koizumi faces reporters in press conferences on the evening news, he answers in sound bites and does little to illuminate the public on what he's really thinking. But reporters usually don't press him to elaborate. What do you make of that?

It's a failing of the media. Media organs send young reporters to these things, people with too little experience who don't have the necessary knowledge to ask pertinent questions. They're just ardently passing on questions from the desk, like automatons.

How do you feel about the existence of Japan's restricted-admission press clubs covering everything from government ministries to local police departments?

Press clubs are good in so far as they are places secured by newspapers and TV companies where officials are obliged to hold press conferences. That much is good. But they also become the exclusive domain of their members, and I don't find this particularly desirable.

Magazine and foreign reporters are generally barred, though foreign reporters have been granted some limited access lately. What is your view of that?

It is not a good situation. Over-regulation of the press clubs prevents the aggressive pursuit of information. Reporters are so frightened of being kicked out for breaking the rules that they end up towing the line. This fosters self-protective reporting, and a pervasive ethos of self-censorship has developed.

In that regard, has anything improved since you published "Soichiro Tahara no tatakau telebi ron (Soichiro Tahara's Fighting Words on Television)" [his 1997 analysis of how the Japanese media and politics interact]?

One improvement is that at the time the LDP was completely comprised of a federation of its internal factions. It was like a labor union for its factions. A so-called "leader" would be just some guy sent from here or there in the federation. The prime ministers it produced had no leadership authority. Indeed, it was men who showed the least leadership who were tapped for the role.

The same was true of Cabinet appointments. Factions suggested people they wanted to fill this or that position, and the prime minister picked from among those.

Faction bosses made important policy decisions in backroom sessions. You needed money to run the factions, and bosses steered junior members by giving them money.

You're saying they bribed them?

You can't call it bribery; this was simply money. The top guys handed this money to intermediaries, and, in exchange for that, the recipients did as instructed. But those funds were procured from the web of vested interests surrounding the LDP. That money you could call bribery.

However, the public grew scornful of such practices, and the system became unsustainable. The factions couldn't raise the dough, and their operations bogged down. The LDP started to crumble.

It was against this backdrop that Koizumi was chosen [in 2001], primarily because among the LDP candidates for the post, he was seen as the least compromised by money from vested interests.

Japanese politics changed from that point on. Koizumi becomes prime minister, and unlike in earlier times -- when Cabinet members were drawn from pools of candidates floated by factions -- this man has made his own appointments without consulting the factions in the least.

The LDP old guard was beside itself with fury. They became adamantly anti-Koizumi. These four years, the story hasn't been about Koizumi's fight with the Opposition; it's been about his battle within the LDP with the anti-Koizumi camp! A baseball analogy would be that rather than competing on the field, the players are scrapping in the dugout!

Does this mean that Japan has become more democratic?

Defining "democratic" is difficult, but I will say that the web of vested interests has become unsustainable, structurally. More than saying Koizumi destroyed that web, though, it's better to say that it could no longer be supported.

What Koizumi did to pull Japan away from the web of influence was to introduce a style of politics in which he paid less attention to the faction bosses. That prompted old-school LDP politicians to cry, "That's undemocratic! You're supposed to consult with us first! You've short-circuited the process too much! This is dictatorship!" Some media also picked up the "undemocratic" theme.

On the other hand, others have called Koizumi's approach a necessary step toward democratization. So, you've got both interpretations.

I once asked an elderly Japanese man why -- from my perspective -- his nation seemed to take bribery scandals in its stride. He said that I had it all wrong, and that the more bribes a politician got, the stronger and more respectable that meant he was. Is that how older Japanese still think, or has there been a change?

There was such a time, but no longer. It's changed. For one, politicians can't get the kind of bribes they could in the past.

Bribery is certainly a bad thing. But let's look at it from a different angle and consider the example of [postwar Prime Minister] Kakuei Tanaka (1918-93). Until his (1972-74) term, every prime minister -- almost without exception -- graduated from either [the elite] Tokyo University or Kyoto University; and they had experience as highly placed bureaucrats.

Such people, in turn, were friendly with prominent people in the financial world, corporate chairmen and what have you. And money from such people would pile up. In that environment, if you didn't graduate from Tokyo University or Kyoto University . . . there was no way of becoming prime minister. It was a form of social discrimination.

Kakuei Tanaka graduated only from [junior-high] school. He didn't have any friends from such elite circles. A person like that who tries to rustle up money won't get contributions from anybody, so he has to forge connections on his own. That is how the web of vested interests came to be.

Then, even someone without a distinguished academic pedigree or family lineage could become a politician and join the web of influence. So, yes, vested interests can be bad, but you could say they also opened the political process to regular people. Until then, you had to be rich and connected.

It's a question of degree. The point is, politics became too dirty. But now it's becoming more transparent.

There has been talk of the LDP introducing the draft of a new Japanese Constitution in November. How expansive do you expect any changes to be?

That constitutional revision won't happen during Koizumi's tenure; that will be a post-Koizumi theme.

The most contentious issue is whether to change [war-renouncing] Article 9. The gap in opinion between the LDP and [the main opposition] Democratic Party of Japan on this has gradually narrowed, and this fact is worthy of note. The two parties may indeed jointly submit a Constitutional-revision bill in the future.

But for the time being, revision cannot occur because though the ruling party [and its New Komeito partners] control 68 percent of the Lower House [House of Representatives], they command less than 60 percent of the Upper House [House of Councillors] -- so they can't push it through.

For constitutional revision to become a reality depends at this point on whether the ruling party secures two-thirds in the next Upper House election [due in 2007]. I believe the LDP will lose power then and that there is almost no possibility of it garnering two-thirds. So revision can only occur through a partnership with the DPJ.

Do you personally think the Constitution's war-renouncing Article 9 should be changed?

It should. One reason is that the current Constitution doesn't acknowledge the existence of the Self-Defense Forces, the world's fourth-largest military in terms of funding. Either you change the Constitution or you change the SDF. If you're not going to change the SDF, you have to change the Constitution.

Another big consideration is the SDF's international contribution. During the first Gulf War [in 1991], when the U.N. Security Council assembled its peacekeeping forces, Japan didn't participate [militarily]. The Constitution wouldn't permit it. But it isn't really acceptable that a prominent country like Japan fails to participate in a multinational peacekeeping force.

Japanese opinion is divided on what shape that participation should take. But either way, the argument for participation must be made; then we can work out, for example, whether or not to allow force.

But no matter how much the Japanese government or SDF says it will not use force, China and the Koreas obviously do not trust this country's intentions . . .

That is due to misunderstanding on their part.

The other day I was interviewed by a South Korean TV crew. They asked me, "Don't you think Japan will once again become a militarist nation?" I turned the question around and asked them, "Doesn't your country have a military?" They said, "Of course." "And your military possesses the right of belligerency, right?" They didn't know the answer.

What's more, the South Korean military participated in the Vietnam War, and they are also in Iraq. And I said, "You're allowed to fight, right?" Yes, of course they are. Well, I said, Japan isn't! And they didn't know this. I said, "Don't you think it's odd for South Korea to worry about us remilitarizing when we don't have the right to belligerency?" And they said, "You have a point." There are misconceptions about this.

Critics worry that Japan's deployment in Iraq is an attempt to gradually change the law, to change domestic foreign-policy opinion.

What the world doesn't understand is that Japanese consciousness has changed drastically since the end of World War II. The Constitution hasn't changed in 60 years. No other country leaves their Constitution unchanged for 60 years.

There are other issues besides Article 9 that need addressing. The environment wasn't an issue when the Constitution was drafted, and issues relating to foreign workers also aren't in there. So many new issues have emerged that revision has become necessary.

And just because we change Article 9 doesn't mean we'll go off and attack somebody. That would be impossible.

Is that because the causal factors -- the international conditions, the Japanese yearning for parity with other global players -- that existed before World War II don't exist today?

Not only that, but also because the Japanese, deep in their hearts, understand the folly of bringing upon themselves the stinging blow of defeat once again.

There are people who look back to the prewar days with longing, and there are magazines that publish such views. But if you added them all up, they'd come to no more than 200,000 or 300,000 readers.

There are more than 100 million people in Japan. The overwhelming majority of Japanese believe another war like that must not be permitted.

So you do not perceive a turn to the right among the Japanese?

Until now, everybody was altogether too afraid to bring up the issue of national security. I think this matter must be thoroughly debated. But I don't equate that with a turn to the right.