As expected, the DPJ's Hiraoka Hideo is in a strong position with less than a week before the by-election in Yamaguchi's second district.A poll conducted by Mainichi over the weekend reveals that voters' concerns favor the DPJ. Health and welfare policy are the top priority (22%), followed by the pensions problem (20%), administrative reform (14%), …
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 world’s top public intellectual
Voting is open in Foreign Policy magazine and Prospect magazine's contest to choose the world's top public intellectual.The magazines chose a list of the top 100, available here, on the basis of the following criteria: "Although the men and women on this list are some of the world’s most sophisticated thinkers, the criteria to make …
Mori discusses the post-Fukuda era
Mori Yoshiro, the man who probably has as good a claim as anyone to the title of LDP kingmaker, appeared on The Sunday Project yesterday.He treated viewers to his assessments of potential successors for Mr. Fukuda, although he made clear that he still stands behind the prime minister (although who knows how much longer that …
The LDP and DPJ talk past each other
A six-party conference of government and opposition parties met Friday to negotiate a compromise on the future of the special fund for road construction. Debate will begin in earnest on Wednesday, a week before the governing coalition is expected to use its HR supermajority to reimpose the temporary gasoline tax.According to Mainichi, at the initial …
Nearing a climax?
Japan's political air is once again full of election talk as the end of April approaches, bringing the first by-election of the Fukuda era and the end of the sixty-day period after which the HR can vote again on the tax bill containing the temporary gasoline tax.Ibuki Bunmei, LDP secretary-general, hinted in remarks in Nara-ken …
Miscellenia
Following the example of Arthur Goldhammer of the blog French Politics, I have decided to set up a Google Reader shared page, which you can access here.Thanks to Google Reader I read far more articles daily than I have time to write about; I will use this page to share articles (often on topics other …
Ashamed
I am back in Chicago for a bit, and have managed to make it out to Wrigley Field twice to see Fukudome Kosuke, the first Japanese addition to the Chicago Cubs roster. Readers will recall that I was quite pleased about this, and so far I haven't been disappointed. With a .317 batting average and …
The LDP looks to its past
By the late 1960s, just over a decade into LDP rule, the LDP was governing an increasingly wealthy but increasingly polluted Japan. This was bad enough for Japanese citizens forced to breathe polluted air, but it quickly became a political problem for the LDP.Dismayed by the lack of progress in the central government in addressing …
The domestic constraints on Japanese foreign policy
Prime Minister Fukuda, originally scheduled to visit Germany, Britain, and France as well as Russia during the Japanese political world's Golden Week holiday in early May, has changed his plans, announcing that he will be restricting his travels to a trip to Russia 25-27 April to meet with Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev. The reason …
Continue reading The domestic constraints on Japanese foreign policy
Komori on US China policy
Komori Yoshihisa, veteran correspondent and Washington-based editor of the Sankei Shimbun, was invited to speak to Nakagawa Shoichi's "True Conservative Policy Study Group" last Friday, where he explained the reality of US China policy and contemporary attitudes in Washington towards the US-Japan alliance.He provides a summary of his remarks at his blog.For the most part, …
Tobias S. Harris 