"I would like to face history with sincerity," said Japanese Prime Minister Kan Naoto in a statement issued on 10 August, the 100th anniversary of Japan's annexation of Korea. "I would like to have courage to squarely confront the facts of history and humility to accept them, as well as to be honest to reflect …
Year: 2010
What can the Yakuza explain anyway?
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 …
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 …
The meaning of the Upper House election
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 …
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 …
Tobias S. Harris 