A six-party conference of government and opposition parties met Friday to negotiate a compromise on the future of the special fund for road construction. Debate will begin in earnest on Wednesday, a week before the governing coalition is expected to use its HR supermajority to reimpose the temporary gasoline tax.According to Mainichi, at the initial …
Year: 2008
Nearing a climax?
Japan's political air is once again full of election talk as the end of April approaches, bringing the first by-election of the Fukuda era and the end of the sixty-day period after which the HR can vote again on the tax bill containing the temporary gasoline tax.Ibuki Bunmei, LDP secretary-general, hinted in remarks in Nara-ken …
Miscellenia
Following the example of Arthur Goldhammer of the blog French Politics, I have decided to set up a Google Reader shared page, which you can access here.Thanks to Google Reader I read far more articles daily than I have time to write about; I will use this page to share articles (often on topics other …
Ashamed
I am back in Chicago for a bit, and have managed to make it out to Wrigley Field twice to see Fukudome Kosuke, the first Japanese addition to the Chicago Cubs roster. Readers will recall that I was quite pleased about this, and so far I haven't been disappointed. With a .317 batting average and …
The LDP looks to its past
By the late 1960s, just over a decade into LDP rule, the LDP was governing an increasingly wealthy but increasingly polluted Japan. This was bad enough for Japanese citizens forced to breathe polluted air, but it quickly became a political problem for the LDP.Dismayed by the lack of progress in the central government in addressing …
The domestic constraints on Japanese foreign policy
Prime Minister Fukuda, originally scheduled to visit Germany, Britain, and France as well as Russia during the Japanese political world's Golden Week holiday in early May, has changed his plans, announcing that he will be restricting his travels to a trip to Russia 25-27 April to meet with Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev. The reason …
Continue reading The domestic constraints on Japanese foreign policy
Komori on US China policy
Komori Yoshihisa, veteran correspondent and Washington-based editor of the Sankei Shimbun, was invited to speak to Nakagawa Shoichi's "True Conservative Policy Study Group" last Friday, where he explained the reality of US China policy and contemporary attitudes in Washington towards the US-Japan alliance.He provides a summary of his remarks at his blog.For the most part, …
Caption contest! (2008 edition)
The following picture from the Sankei Shimbun begs for funny captions.Post your suggestions in the comments.
Can’t go forward, can’t go back
Mainichi reports that prime ministerial initiatives in two areas — consumer affairs and regional decentralization — are stalled thanks largely to opposition from the ministries.The government's headquarters for the promotion of decentralization issued a mid-term report earlier this month on decentralization, which got no response (i.e., a cold response) from the various ministries and agencies …
More trouble headed Fukuda’s way?
According to the Washington Post, in exchange for North Korea's "acknowledging" US concerns about its nuclear activities, disabling Yongbyon, and provide a full accounting of its plutonium stockpile, the US will be prepared to "remove North Korea from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism and to exempt it from the Trading With the …
Tobias S. Harris 