A survey conducted by Yomiuri over the weekend asked whether it is "appropriate" for the government to use its two-thirds majority to pass the new anti-terror special measures bill over an Upper House rejection of the bill.Consistent with other recent polls, the results were decidedly tepid. 43% favored playing the supermajority card, 44% opposed. Meanwhile, …
Year: 2007
Discontent in the air
There is no shortage of discontent in Japanese politics today.The HANA right (that's Hiranuma-Abe-Nakagawa-Aso), including their sympathizers in the media, are finding their voice again, and as always, it's a belligerent, combative voice — as described by MTC in this post about the contents of Voice's latest issue. The November issue too was full of …
The post-Koizumi LDP and the search for a new Japanese model
Yamaguchi Jiro, a specialist in Japanese and British politics at Hokkaido University, had an article in the November Ronza that has been published in translation at Japan Focus.Yamaguchi competently explains the reasons for Mr. Abe's demise, and in the final portions of the essay, places Mr. Abe's decline and fall squarely in the larger narrative …
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On Ozawa’s statecraft
Over at 空, Ken Tanaka wonders about my criticism of Mr. Ozawa's remarks in China in this post, echoing the questions of several commentators to the same post.Let me be clear: Japan has no choice but to have cordial and constructive relations with China, the same as for the United States, Australia, India, and other …
Ozawa glorifies the Sino-Japanese relationship
I was way off target in my hopes that Mr. Ozawa would be reasonable on his trip to China."The intensely cold period in Sino-Japanese relations has been surmounted, and the warm period has advanced," he said. "Both of our countries must bear a great responsibility politically, economically, and even for the global environment, and there …
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Fukuda answers some questions
After weeks of uncertainty, Prime Minister Fukuda has moved to answer definitively the six unanswered questions of the current Diet session, answering at least two of them by announcing that he will use the government's supermajority in the House of Representatives to pass the new anti-terror law, and he will extend the Diet session into …
The right is alive, if not kicking (yet)
As planned, onetime Abe wingman Nakagawa Shoichi has formed a conservative study group within the LDP that will keep the flame of the Abe revolution burning.At the opening meeting, Mr. Nakagawa said, "The things which everyone said 'we must do' until a few months ago must not be forgotten." By which he means those things …
Ozawa, posturing
I was apparently mistaken to think that Mr. Ozawa might use the occasion of a visit to China to find some common ground with Mr. Fukuda by staking out a shared position on Japanese China policy.Mainichi reports that Mr. Ozawa plans to use the trip as an opportunity to criticize the Fukuda cabinet's approach to …
Surmounting decay
MTC, in a post on Japanese democracy that references this recent post, argues, "Right now Japan's democracy is just sitting down, frazzled and panting."There's not much I can add to this excellent post, other than that if this era is, as some (Mr. Ozawa especially) have suggested, the third paradigm shift for modern Japan following …
Vaarwel and au revoir to Belgium?
The FT's Gideon Rachman weighs in on the Belgian "crisis" in a piece called "For Nations, Small is Beautiful."(I realize that this has little or nothing to do with Japan, a country Edwin Reischauer once suggested "may be the world’s most perfect nation-state," although with Okinawa as a prefecture, Japan is not nearly as perfect …
Tobias S. Harris 