When the campaign officially began, I noted that the difference in the average age of LDP candidates (55.5) versus DPJ candidates (49.4) was one of several significant features separating the parties.I was curious, however, about the median age of DPJ candidates, which I think says more about the youth of the party than the average …
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.
The LDP’s unlucky numbers
With two days until the general election, Asahi anticipates that turnout this year might be higher than 2005's 67.5% and might even top 70% for the first time since the 1990 general election. The weather should cooperate: there is some rain in the forecast for the Kanto area Sunday, but otherwise it looks clear across …
More on Ozawa
Foreign Policy's website has an essay I've written regarding the role of Ozawa Ichiro in a DPJ government here. For the record, I did not pick the detail.MTC has some excellent thoughts on the Ozawa dilemma here.
TV appearances
I will be talking about the election on Al Jazeera English at 1pm this afternoon and will also be appearing in a segment on the election airing on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's 7pm news and again at 10:30pm on Lateline.
The LDP on the brink of disaster
The general election campaign is heading into its final days. Despite another two days of campaigning, the LDP and DPJ are mostly battling for seats on the margins — the LDP to keep from falling below 100 seats, the DPJ to reach the magic number of 320, the number required for a supermajority. As the …
Hatoyama in the New York Times
There isn't much I can add to MTC's comments on the New York Times's publication of the translation of Hatoyama Yukio's essay in Voice (which originally appeared in the Christian Science Monitor). I am stunned that no one at DPJ HQ thought better of having Hatoyama's provocative essay appear — again — in an American …
The DPJ prepares for its first steps towards a new style of government
The general election may be another four days away, but the DPJ's position in the polls seems secure and so the party is acting like a "responsible party" and putting plans in motion for its transition into government.I have already written of the names mentioned for the leading positions in a Hatoyama cabinet — but …
Continue reading The DPJ prepares for its first steps towards a new style of government
The DPJ contemplates its opening moves with the US
In a survey of candidates' political attitudes, Mainichi found that DPJ and Komeito candidates overlapped more than Komeito and LDP or LDP and DPJ candidates. Whether the policy affinities between DPJ and Komeito candidates presages cooperation between the two parties after the election will depend on other factors, but what interested me about this survey …
Continue reading The DPJ contemplates its opening moves with the US
The election will be cathartic, but catharsis is short-lived
The general election is still six days away, but despite pernicious negative campaigning across Japan, the LDP seems to be incapable of reversing what the DPJ has taken to calling — switching from a meteorological metaphor to a geological metaphor — a "tectonic shift."The LDP's heavyweights are pinned down defending their own districts...Koizumi says once …
Continue reading The election will be cathartic, but catharsis is short-lived
Hatoyama is a problem for the DPJ
In the current issue of the Economist, the news magazine calls particular attention to comments by Hatoyama Yukio in an article in the September issue of Voice called "My Political Philosophy." (I've gotten so accustomed to Japanese magazines not putting content online that I did not even bother to check whether it was.) Hatoyama, the …
Tobias S. Harris 