Having read and enjoyed Jacob Adelstein's Tokyo Vice, it was with considerable interest that I read his article "The Last Yakuza" in the World Policy Journal (h/t to Corey Wallace).Like Wallace, I have no particular expertise with which to assess the role played by the Yakuza in Japanese society. But also like him, I am …
Month: July 2010
The 2006 roadmap’s impasses
In the wake of its defeat the Kan government has made it patently clear that the Hatoyama government's "ratification" of the 2006 realignment plan was nothing of the sort — it is now saying that it will be impossible to complete negotiations before Okinawan gubernatorial election in November. The government once again is considering alternatives …
What next for the LDP?
With the exit polls suggesting that the LDP will edge out the DPJ in this election and recover some of its strength in the upper house, it is worth asking what will be the consequences of victory for the LDP.Most obviously, LDP leader Tanigaki Sadakazu will have a new lease on his position, delaying generational …
Twisted again
The various newspapers are reporting that according to exit polls, the DPJ won somewhere between forty-three and fifty-one seats, falling short of the total needed to preserve control of the upper house.Once again the Diet is "twisted," barring the formation of a new coalition that enables the DPJ to retake control of the upper house.Adamu …
Is Ozawa back?
If there is one lesson that this upper house campaign has taught us, it is a lesson that we all should have already learned: there is no stopping Ozawa Ichirō. Despite what looked like a marvelous coup by Hatoyama Yukio in getting Ozawa to step down as DPJ secretary-general, Ozawa has been a public critic …
Facing constraints in the alliance
Prime Minister Kan Naoto had his debut on the world stage at the G20 meeting in Toronto this week. While in Toronto he had his first meeting with US President Barack Obama.As Reuters notes, Kan met with Obama for a half-hour, considerably more time than Hatoyama got when he visited Washington in April (when Hatoyama …
Tobias S. Harris 