With two weeks left in the "non-campaign" season, before candidates officially file, which marks the official campaign season during which candidates can actually ask for votes, I thought it would be worthwhile to share a passage from Gerald Curtis's Election Campaigning Japanese Style. For those not familiar with the book, in 1966-1967 Curtis lived and …
Month: June 2007
A referendum?
Prime Minister Abe, speaking on NHK on Sunday, said that next month's elections will be a referendum on his government's record in office.Let that sink in for a moment.As I've argued before, what record exactly does the government have to run on? What does the government have to be proud of that will also attract …
Constructing modern Japan
Every social scientist must struggle with the question of human agency. Are human societies the product of grand social forces or are they the product of the decisions of individuals — Carlyle's heroes?The question is particularly important for Japan, which was pushed on to a drastically different path in the late nineteenth century when confronted …
Men are not angels
Working in the office of a Japanese Dietman and watching Japan's "sausage-making" process has been valuable in a number of ways — many of which I have documented here one way or another — but one lesson that I have left largely unmentioned is my renewed appreciation for the American political system.No political system is …
What grades will Abe bring home at term’s end?
So the Diet session that was due to end this week has been extended an extra twelve days.In a press conference on Friday, Prime Minister Abe tried to dispel reports of dissent within the LDP on the question of extending the session — there has been a steady drumbeat of stories in the major dailies …
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In Abe’s Japan, everything’s fine
At the LDP website, it's 大丈夫 time. (For non-Japanese readers, the word is daijyoubu, and it means essentially "everything's fine" or "all right" — try saying it like a surfer dude.)On the main page, overlaid over a picture of cool-biz Abe with a gentle sky-blue background, are links to campaign materials that inform readers that …
What would a liberal Japan actually look like?
Project Syndicate has posted an essay based on a speech by Joseph Nye in Tokyo last month, in which he foresees the rise of a "liberal" Japan.Calling attention to Asahi's series of twenty-one editorials [series available at Japan Focus] outlining a vision for Japan, Nye argues on its behalf, observing that Asahi's vision provides a …
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The hyper-nationalist spring offensive continues
Following pronouncements against Chinese war museums and the congressional comfort women resolution, Japan's hyper-nationalists have turned their attention once again to the Nanjing Massacre, arguing as before that "only" 20,000 people were killed in Nanjing, as opposed to the generally accepted range of 150,000-200,000 (IHT here; Japan Times here).The quibbling over numbers is one of …
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Are we all social democrats now?
I could not help asking that question — paraphrasing Richard Nixon's famous pronouncement — read a pair of articles that look at how post-industrial global capitalism is evolving, and how publics, especially in the US and other mature democracies, are responding to the emergent order.In Foreign Affairs, Kenneth Scheve and Matthew Slaughter, noting the rise …
Confluence of issues
It seems that in the aftermath of "The Facts" advert in the Washington Post, the House Foreign Affairs committee is prepared to move forward (Hat tip: Japan Probe) with the Honda resolution on the comfort women issue — and that there is something to the news emanating from Korean sources that Vice President Cheney in …
Tobias S. Harris 