On Thursday campaigning for the House of Councillors election scheduled for 11 July begins, as 440 candidates vie for 121 seats. (Michael Cucek has the breakdown here.)The significance of this election has been thrown into clear relief since Kan Naoto took over from Hatoyama Yukio as prime minister and head of the DPJ. What once …
Month: June 2010
Mr. Kan’s Third Way
The Third Way has, belatedly, arrived in Japan.The style of politics popular in advanced industrial democracies during the 1990s among center-left leaders keen to reconcile their left-wing parties to the rise of neo-liberalism and the onset of austerity after the 1970s had heretofore failed to surface in Tokyo. But with the ascendancy of Kan Naoto, …
The Kan system
The Kan government has formed, having retained eleven ministers from the Hatoyama government (as expected). Among the new faces in Kan's cabinet of "irregular forces" are Noda Yoshihko (finance), Yamada Masahiko (agriculture), Arai Satoshi (national strategy), Genba Kōichirō (administrative reform), and, perhaps most prominently, Renhō (government revitalization).Looking at the transition from the Hatoyama-Ozawa regime to …
It’s Kan!
Kan Naoto has been elected head of the DPJ and is line to become Japan's ninety-fourth prime minister this afternoon. He received 291 votes to Tarutoko Shinji's 129.(Image by Kenji-Baptiste OIKAWA and used under a Creative Commons license)
Meet the new cabinet, (mostly the) same as the old cabinet?
As Japan waits for the DPJ's Diet members to choose a new party leader and then for the Diet to confirm the new prime minister, the media is speculating about the new lineup for the cabinet and the party leadership.Among other items of speculation, Sengoku Yoshito is supposedly the front runner to succeed Ozawa as …
Continue reading Meet the new cabinet, (mostly the) same as the old cabinet?
The virtues of Kan
Kan Naoto, Hatoyama Yukio's second finance minister, was the first DPJ member to declare his intention to run in the party election scheduled for Friday — and it seems unlikely, for reasons outlined by Michael Cucek here, that he will be denied the job.What would be the significance of Kan's replacing Hatoyama?I think that what …
Ennis on the resignation
Peter Ennis, formerly of The Oriental Economist, has picked the perfect time to start blogging.His take on the resignation can be found here.
Discussing the resignation
I will be on Asia Squawkbox on CNBC Asia at 8:30am Japan time Thursday to discuss the implications of the resignation.
Regime change?
It seems that in addition to Hatoyama's resigning from the premiership, Ozawa Ichirō will resign as secretary-general of the DPJ.If Ozawa does resign — together with his lieutenants in various leadership positions within the DPJ with him — and actually manages to retire from politics and not try to run the party from the shadows, …
Tobias S. Harris 