After an abbreviated recess, the Diet will reconvene today for its 2009 ordinary session.The situation facing Aso Taro, his party, and his country is dire, and growing darker by the day. The latest development is the tent village — is it appropriate to call it an Asoville or Aso-mura? — that has been growing in …
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.
Mr. Aso’s unbearable optimism
In his book Totetsumonai Nihon (2007), Aso Taro outlined an approach to governing Japan that amounts to a pep talk for the dispirited Japanese people.Time and time again, Mr. Aso suggests that the key to saving Japan is for its people to rediscover and celebrate their "latent power," to look cheerfully to the future, and …
Japan blogger fest
A gathering for bloggers and blog enthusiasts is being planned in Tokyo for the evening of January 17, and we would like to extend the invitation to any and all visitors who may wish to come. I will be in attendance, along with bloggers from Shisaku, Global Talk 21, Mutant Frog, Coming Anarchy and Trans-Pacific …
The lessons of 2008
I have already written one retrospective essay on 2008 in Japanese politics, but I wanted to look back in more detail at this year's events and crystallize the year into a handful of lessons.As 2008 enters its final days, what have we learned about the state of the Japanese political system?First, and most importantly, the …
Mr. Watanabe’s rebellion
On Wednesday the House of Representatives voted on a DPJ-backed resolution calling for an immediate dissolution of the lower house followed by a general election.Watanabe Yoshimi broke with the LDP and voted for the resolution, backing his words with action. He stated that he was prepared for whatever punishment the LDP intends to mete out …
Endgame
As 2008 enters its final week, the LDP and Aso Taro, its beleaguered head, are being written off as doomed in the year to come.No one, it seems, is willing to offer an explanation for how the LDP can save itself in a general election. The LDP may yet win the general election, but its …
Alliance addenda
After seeing the response to my recent post on the US-Japan alliance, I find it necessary to develop a few ideas further.First, MTC rightly points out that an alliance based on the partnership of Japanese conservatives and their counterparts in Washington is by no means doomed, because the organizations pushing this line "deal death as …
The alliance is dead, long live the alliance
Barack Obama's inauguration is just about a month away. His transition team is gradually filling in cabinet-level positions. His Asia and Japan policy teams are as of yet unknown, however, leaving Japanese elites to continue to fret about Japan's place on the Obama administration's agenda.They have good reason to worry.The reasons to worry have nothing …
Continue reading The alliance is dead, long live the alliance
2008 in review
I have contributed a review of 2008 in Japanese politics to Néojaponisme. Check it out here.I'll be writing a more comprehensive review — like last year's — soon.
Political Japan awaits a black swan
"SOCIAL ENTROPY: A measure of the natural decay of the structure or of the disappearance of distinctions within a social system. Much of the energy consumed by a social organization is spent to maintain its structure, counteracting social entropy, e.g., through legal institutions, education, the normative consequences or television." – Krippendorff's Dictionary of CyberneticsThe LDP …
Tobias S. Harris 