After reading this post by Matt Dioguardi at Liberal Japan. and reading that MTC was "not thrilled" with yesterday's admittedly dyspeptic post about gaiatsu and constitution revision, I feel that it is necessary to clarify about what the US should do over the coming years as Japan debates constitution revision.Pace Matt Dioguardi, gaiatsu is not …
Year: 2007
What if they had a debate…
Prime Minister Abe and DPJ President Ozawa had their long-anticipated head-to-head debate yesterday, reportedly the longest length of time ever in a Diet session without a direct clash between party leaders.That according to a handy table provided in the print edition of the Asahi Shimbun, which indicates that the previous record was in 2002, when …
Idealism, realism, and US China policy
Over at Foreign Policy, China scholar David Lampton and journalist James Mann debate the argument presented in Mann's new book, The China Fantasy: How Our Leaders Explain Away Chinese Repression. (The subtitle really says it all.) (Hat tip: China Digital Times)There is no love lost between Lampton and Mann in this debate, and its implications …
No gaiatsu on revision
Oh, to be the "grand strategist" author of best-selling books — and to be the peddler of a strategic concept that purports to explain everything.Clearly, that's the ticket to being able to get away with writing blog posts like this one by Tom Barnett: "Japan will and must un-pacify." In a single thirty-word post, Dr. …
Who to believe?
Earlier this week I noted that Condi Rice had told Japan that the resolution of the abductions issue was no longer an obstacle to the removal of North Korea from the US State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism.Indicating just how serious this issue is to Tokyo, Yomiuri (article not online) reported yesterday that …
What manner of constitution debate will Japan have?
In the wake of yesterday's passage of the national referendum bill, each major daily unsurprisingly featured an editorial looking forward to the next three years of debate on revision.In the left-wing Asahi Shimbun, the mood was, unsurprisingly, despondent about the passage of the bill. At the same time, though, the tone was defiant, taking up …
Continue reading What manner of constitution debate will Japan have?
Let the debate begin?
The Upper House of the Diet passed the national referendum bill this afternoon. In accordance with the bill's provisions, there will be a three-year moratorium on constitution amendments — meaning Japan has until 2011 to have a thorough debate on whether and how to revise the constitution. With luck Japan will have a new, slightly …
China’s history problems
On my recent trip to China — discussed here — I had a distinct sense of twenty-first century China being a country alienated from its past. Its modern past, the decades following the declaration of the "New China" following the CCP's victory in the Chinese Civil War in 1949, is passed over in the public …
Alliance tension out in the open
The Asahi Shimbun's English edition printed a story today suggesting that US Secretary of State Rice told Japanese officials last month that resolving the abductions issue is not a precondition for the removal of North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.In previous posts such as this one, I suggested that Japan seems …
Revision as redemption
Ozawa Ichiro, DPJ president, laid into the prime minister on TV Asahi this morning, emphasizing that he disagrees not just with the prime minister's position on constitution revision, but with the prime minister's philosophy root and branch.I'm with Ozawa on this one (and not because I work for a member of his party).Back in January, …
Tobias S. Harris 