I have an op-ed in Friday's Wall Street Journal Asia on the Hatoyama government's struggles.You can find it here.
Author: Tobias S. Harris
Tobias Harris is Japan analyst at Teneo Intelligence. He is the author of a forthcoming biography of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Washington continues to see Japan slipping away
Writing on the nuclear summit, Al Kamen, who pens a Beltway gossip column in the Washington Post, had the following to say about Hatoyama Yukio:By far the biggest loser of the extravaganza was the hapless and (in the opinion of some Obama administration officials) increasingly loopy Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama. He reportedly requested but …
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Why Hatoyama is failing on Futenma
Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio returned home to Japan Wednesday after attending the Nuclear summit in Washington hosted by US President Barack Obama. Whatever significance the summit had for Obama's diplomatic agenda, as far as US-Japan relations are concerned nukes were overshadowed by Futenma. Hatoyama's self-imposed deadline of resolving the dispute by May is approaching, and …
Ozawa will stay home
On a visit to Tokyo in February, Kurt Campbell, the US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, met with embattled DPJ secretary-general Ozawa Ichiro and extended an invitation to visit Washington. Ozawa said he would visit on the condition that he be able to meet with President Barack Obama. At the …
The Yosano-Hiranuma alliance of convenience
Michael Cucek has already pondered Yosano Kaoru's thinking behind his strange alliance with arch-revisionist Hiranuma Takeo — which has resulted in party that will supposedly be called Stand Up Japan! (the SUJ? As if Your Party wasn't bad enough) — but there's another factor beyond the electoral factors considered by Cucek.The alliance is a marriage …
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Can the DPJ legislate a new relationship with the bureaucracy?
On Tuesday, the House of Representatives began debate on the Hatoyama cabinet's bill revising the National Civil Service Law, the first of three cabinet bills intended to introduce political leadership to be considered in the Diet (the others being bills establishing the national strategy bureau and increasing the number of sub-cabinet political appointees).If passed, the …
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Exit, voice, and loyalty in the LDP
On Saturday, Yosano Kaoru, onetime contender for the LDP presidency and the Aso cabinet's second finance minister, met with LDP President Tanigaki Sadakazu and filed notice that he will leave the party from next week. Sonoda Hiroyuki, Yosano's ally who was forced to resign as a deputy secretary-general last month over criticism of Tanigaki, is …
Hatoyama is the problem
Watching the shambles that the Hatoyama government has become, I went back into the archives and found the post I wrote on the occasion of Hatoyama Yukio's being selected as DPJ president in May 2009.Called "The DPJ bets on Hatoyama," I stressed the risk associated with choosing Hatoyama to succeed Ozawa Ichiro, noting in particular …
Building a Westminster system
"Nowadays the members of Parliament, with the exception of the few cabinet members (and a few insurgents), are normally nothing better than well-disciplined 'yes' men," lamented Max Weber in "Politics as a Vocation.""With us, in the Reichstag, one used at least to take care of one's correspondence on his desk, thus indicating that one was …
The "losing Japan" narrative
In different ways, two articles published in Western media outlets this week suggest the emergence of a new narrative concerning Japan in elite circles in the United States. One might call that narrative the "losing Japan" narrative, reminiscent of the idea — propagated by newsman Henry Luce — that the United States, or rather, the …
Tobias S. Harris 