Much of the fascination, foreign and domestic, with Barack Obama's election as president of the United States, comes from its sheer novelty.

Obama didn't simply promise change, he embodies it. Japanese voters can now claim they've done the Americans one better. Two weeks ago, they passed power from the party that has ruled virtually continuously since 1955 to the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). The DPJ victory will bring about change. But for the foreseeable future, there will less to this change than meets the eye.

Few recognize how historic the DPJ victory really is. Japan's Liberal Democratic Party had held power for so long that the world had come to know it as "the ruling LDP." But as elections approached, Japanese voters told pollsters that the party had not responded forcefully to the country's recession. LDP approval ratings had been circling the drain for months. Only the scale of the DPJ's landslide win caught anyone by surprise.

A brand-new ruling party must now put the world's second-largest economy back on its feet. DPJ officials have made some extraordinary promises.

Just as Obama pledged that merit, not ideological affinity, would determine who fills key government posts, Japan's Prime Minister-in-waiting Yukio Hatoyama has promised that talent, not political loyalty, will determine who runs his country's state bureaucracy. As Obama pledged to reduce the influence of lobbyists in Washington, Hatoyama has promised to reduce the influence of business on economic policy and to look out for cash-strapped small businesses, farmers and consumers. As Obama warns that America must reduce its dependence on Middle Eastern oil, Hatoyama says he wants to reduce Japan's reliance on Washington for security -- and to promote better relations with China.

And just as Obama will soon test the limits of his (and his party's) power to enact sweeping change, the leadership of Japan's new government will face unexpected challenges that limit its room for maneuver. First, the DPJ should recognize the election outcome for what it is: an emphatic rejection of the LDP. Polling reflects substantial public skepticism of several aspects of the DPJ's campaign platform, and Hatoyama lacks the charisma and personal appeal that helped former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi set the agenda when he assumed power in 2001.

If the DPJ has any clear public mandate, it's to restore public confidence in the government's ability to get things done.

The DPJ's second problem is that it cannot rule alone. Though it won about two-thirds of seats in the lower house of parliament, it will need a coalition partner to build a working majority in the upper house.

America's Democrats don't really control 60 Senate seats, but they have much more legislative muscle than the DPJ can summon on its own. This problem will force policy compromise -- at least until next summer, when the DPJ hopes to win control of the upper house.

To ease financial burdens on families, Hatoyama has proposed a plan to pay parents about $275 per month for each pre-teenage child. The state already pays about $3,700 for each birth, an effort to promote population growth in a rapidly aging country. A firm majority of voters oppose the expensive plan because it would be financed in part via elimination of tax deductions for dependents. The Social Democratic Party (SDP), one of the DPJ's two prospective coalition partners, supports a less costly version -- one the DPJ may have to embrace. A plan to eliminate highway tolls isn't likely to fly, either.

On foreign policy, fears in Washington that the DPJ-led government will devalue the U.S.-Japanese security alliance are exaggerated. The first test will come as Japan's new government decides whether to renew an agreement that expires in January to continue with Japanese refueling of U.S. warships in the Indian Ocean. On the campaign trail, Hatoyama assured voters that the deal would not be extended, but that Japan would find another way to support the U.S.-led war effort in Afghanistan. He's left himself without good options.

As fighting in Afghanistan intensifies, there will be less support in Japan for any plan to put non-combat personnel in harm's way. If the new government simply writes Washington a check, it will face the same wave of criticism inside the United States that followed a similar decision during the Gulf War in the early 1990s. If Hatoyama reverses himself and extends the refueling deal, he will lose much of the support he needs from potential coalition partners in the SDP. An entrenched bureaucracy, a weak foreign ministry, and few forceful independent voices providing sound advice will further limit Hatoyama's ability to shift Japan's foreign policy, particularly as domestic problems demand most of the new government's attention.

As the new Japanese leadership finds its footing, it's likely to face a political criticism that Obama would recognize -- that the DPJ is pursuing the policy path of least resistance. But if Hatoyama can centralize state decision-making, staff the government with smart, hard-working professionals, and draft a credible budget, it will have given voters an important part of what they say they want.

When times are hard, nothing swings elections like promises of change.

But as Obama has discovered in the U.S., Japan's new government need not allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good.

Letter From Tokyo: New Regime, New Relationship
Kent E. Calder

The DPJ now holds nearly two-thirds of the 480 seats in the Japanese Diet's powerful lower house, which approves budgets, initiates most legislation, and selects the prime minister. Given such dominance, the party, however fractious, will likely remain in power for at least the four years of its new parliamentary mandate -- influencing the country's political-economic landscape during a crucial period of transition in East Asian affairs, and potentially in U.S.-Japanese relations as well.

Japan's New Leader and His Country's Fealty to Washington
William Pfaff

The landslide election of Japan's Democratic Party in last weekend's parliamentary vote parallels the election of Barack Obama to the American presidency last November. In both cases opposition parties long out of power (in the Japanese case, all but totally excluded from national power during the six decades of the postwar Japanese government's existence) have been elected at a time of crisis to change the nation's policy.

Communist China Turns 60 and Reveals Its Insecurities
William Pfaff

Nearly every comment being published on China's celebration of its brilliant economic successes has in one way or another raised the question of the future of a country that once was the most ideologically driven of major powers, but today has no governing ideology, or philosophy, or mobilizing goals. This above all threatens the governing Communist Party

(c) 2009 Tribune Media Services, Inc.