Under pressure from his own constituents, Defense Minister Kyuma offered his resignation to Prime Minister Abe, who accepted.Asahi reports that he told reporters that his reasoning was based on fears that he would influence the Upper House elections.His tenure as Japan's last JDA director-general and the first defense minister was marked by ill-considered public remarks, …
Month: July 2007
Those other historical issues
Defense Minister Kyuma Fumio — a Lower House representative from Nagasaki of all places — remains under attack today despite backing away from his argument that the US atomic bombings "could not be helped."The Nagasaki Prefectural Assembly has, in fact, passed a resolution condemning Kyuma's remarks.Kyuma has once again showed his utter lack of political …
How many angels fit on the end of an SM-3?
James Auer, director of Vanderbilt's Center for US-Japan Studies and Cooperation, spoke tonight at Temple University Japan to a large audience composed of US and Japanese diplomats and policymakers, scholars, and others interested in the US-Japan alliance.Auer is one of the elder statesmen of the alliance, having served in Japan while in the US Navy …
That sinking feeling
It's a new month, the Diet session has wound down, and there is less than a month until the Upper House elections (and ten days to kouji, when candidates officially file, marking the beginning of the official campaign season).And to start the month off right, here's the result of a recent Mainichi poll showing that …
After the Yoshida Doctrine, what?
Over at Shisaku, MTC notes in a thoughtful post on the Yoshida Doctrine, "Yet even now, sixteen years down the line, the Yoshida tradeoff rules as the master narrative underpinning all discussion of Japan's security options."Yet I wonder if the Yoshida Doctrine lives on only as a function of the institutional and constitutional constraints that …
Tobias S. Harris 