It has become increasingly clear that Prime Minister Fukuda will play the cabinet reshuffle card in response to sagging poll numbers, as early as mid-January, right around the time the House of Representatives will likely be voting a second time on the anti-terror law.He will have an extremely short window with which to launch a …
Month: December 2007
Fukuda’s "catch ball" diplomacy
Fukuda Yasuo is in China, and the contrasts, both with his earlier trip to Washington and Ozawa Ichiro's trip to China, are stunning, if not surprising.Recall how earlier this month I criticized Mr. Ozawa for his over-the-top visit to Beijing, when he traveled with an entourage of hundreds and spoke in effusive terms about the …
2007: The Year That Was In Japanese Politics
A recent article in the Yomiuri Shimbun surveying the Japanese political situation as 2007 gives way to 2008 included a sidebar that compared the present day with the bakumatsu, the last days of the Tokugawa.Looking back over the events in political Japan over 2007, that comparison does not seem inappropriate. The picture that emerges is …
Continue reading 2007: The Year That Was In Japanese Politics
Last chance to vote
Voting at What Japan Thinks for the Japan blogs of the year closes in less than twelve hours.My colleagues at Transpacific Radio and I have been running neck and neck in the category of Best serious blog on Japan.If you like what you've read on this blog over the past year, you can vote here.
The problem with Fukuda
The DPJ's Nagashima Akihisa, writing at his blog, cites Max Weber's "Politics as a vocation" to criticize not just Mr. Fukuda but his predecessors and express his hope for a different style of politics under DPJ rule.Mr. Nagashima quotes from the concluding paragraph of the essay:Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards. …
The DPJ will submit its own bill after all
In the latest twist in the saga over Japan's involvement in operations in and around Afghanistan, the DPJ has decided that it will submit its own bill today.Asahi notes that the DPJ move is in response to recent public opinion polls that show rising opposition to the MSDF's resuming its refueling mission.Hatoyama Yukio explained that …
Back to Japan
At least for a bit...I will be in Japan for two weeks from Tuesday. Blogging will probably be light. Although I am going to try to make this an actual vacation, I would consider doing a casual bar get-together with readers if there's enough interest.Let me know.
Will a reshuffle matter?
Mainichi reports that pressure within the LDP for a cabinet reshuffle is building, as Prime Minister Fukuda and his lieutenants search for ways to reverse the drastic decline in support for the government (the latest sign being a poll that shows more support for a grand coalition or a DPJ-centered coalition than for the current …
Haass on allies and rivals
Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, had an op-ed in the Financial Times this week (excerpted from a forthcoming article in The National Interest) in which he reconsiders the nature of US relationships with traditional allies and perceived enemies.Calling it the emergence of a "Palmerstonian moment," Haass wrote, "We are entering an …
Not your father’s (or grandfather’s) LDP?
Asahi reports that the LDP has leaped into the twenty-first century and set up a YouTube channel of its own, with Kono Taro, third-generation LDP member of the House of Representatives (and third-generation potential party leader) as the party's face on YouTube.The innovation is not in putting videos on the Internet — there has been …
Tobias S. Harris 