Have something you want Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama to know? You could try tweeting about it to @hatoyamayukio!

@hatoyamayukio

All links in this post link to Japanese content unless otherwise noted.

The Prime Minister started using Twitter during the new year holidays as a means to “bring politics to the people”, in addition to the existing Kantei TV and a mailing list. He also has a new blog called Hato Cafe (鳩Cafe or “Pigeon Cafe”).

Following some confusion with a fake Twitter account [en], his first tweet was sent on Dec 31st, 2009 5:49 PM.

みなさん、あけましておめでとうございます。今年もよろしくお願いいたします。今日からツイッターとブログ「鳩cafe」を始めました。http://bit.ly/7OSH1o ご感想など@hatoyamayukioへお寄せください。馴れるまでは１日１ツイートが目標です。

(The translation above is quoted from @hatoyama_y_en, which is run by translation service MyGengo.)

The initiative is the brain child of the “Civilian Working Group to Shorten the Distance between Citizens and Politics” (国民と政治の距離を近づけるための民間ワーキンググループ). Members include playwright Oriza Hirata, blogger and art director Naoyuki Sato, CEO of eWoman, Inc. Kaori Sasaki, and art director Yuji Tokuda. Tokuda also designed the blog.

@hatoyamayukio's follower count is growing steadily, and is around 139,000 as of January 9th.

Is it really him?

This was the focus of discussion for the first few days and the very first issue that @hatoyamayukio addressed by clarifying that the PM sends a draft of his tweets by e-mail to his secretary, who posts it to Twitter.

This disappointed many people, as voiced by Makoto Chikazoe:

「基本的に私が書いています」と言いつつ、結局スタッフの意見を聞いて秘書官が投稿しているのだ。多くのTwitterユーザーが期待していたのは「首相の生の声」である。しかし、実際には何人もの人を経由した首相の声なのだ。これでは結局Twitterである意味はなく、従来通りの記者会見をテレビや新聞でチェックすればよいだけだ。

Akky from Ajiajin [en] has a different opinion:

Although many internet users expressed their disappointment to it, I personally don’t think that prime minister himself/herself should tweet on their mobile gears. It is reasonable as well as US president Obama never used Twitter.

Is he really reading our tweets?

Obviously, this was the next big question. The answer? Perhaps.

私がみなさんをフォローしていることについて「本当に読んでいるのか」「そんなにフォローできませんよね」などご指摘を頂きました。確かに全てのコメントは読めませんが、執務室のモニターにみなさんのコメントを常時表示し、それを読んで少しでもみなさんの生の声を知りたいと思っています。

(Again, the translation is from @hatoyama_y_en.)

Hato Cafe

Follow back

@hatoyamayukio will follow everyone who follows him. This is called follow-gaeshi (フォロー返し, literally “follow back”), an action that is considered by many in the Japanese twittersphere to be good etiquette.

The Japanese official site guide twitnavi published a post titled “Please wait a while longer to be followed by Prime Minister Hatoyama” on January 2nd, explaining that there is a limit on the system's side.

Tweets for @hatoyamayukio

@hatoyamayukio hasn't replied to anyone (yet?) but the editorial desk at Mainichi Shimbun @mainichijpedit is hopeful:

@HatoyamaYukio 総理！「Twitterの女王」こと歌手の広瀬香美 @kohmi さんとの勉強会にご参加いただけないでしょうか？毎週水曜日に一緒に政治や経済の勉強をしています。ご検討ください！ #kokkokokko

@yamachan_run recently started Twitter:

@hatoyamayukio首相が始めたことがきっかけで、ツイッターに登録してみました。 首相がブログ・ツイッターをどのように使いこなして見せるのかすごく気になります。

Comments from blogger Satonao

One of the signs that the Prime Minster was going to dip his toes into social media came when blogger Naoyuki Sato, better known as Satonao, was invited to have dinner with him. Curious, we posted [en] about the seemingly random event last October.

At that time, Satonao reported:

鳩山さんは Twitter 自体を知らなかったようだけど、とても素直に耳を傾けてくれた（どんな話題にも辛抱強く丁寧に相手の目を見て耳を傾ける人だった）。でもまぁなんというか、Twitter を理解してもらうことの難しさよ（笑）

書き込む姿を見てもらったり、ボクの実況へのみなさんの返信をパソコン画面で見てもらったり（熱心に読んでくれた）、いろいろしているうちにかなり興味はもっていただけた模様。殺し文句は「オバマも使っています！」（笑）。始めてくれるかどうかは全くわからないが、スタートラインには立ってくれたようである。閉じた世界が急にオープンになるのは無理だろう。まずは第一歩。少しずつ。少しずつ。