The press is filled with important numbers for the seventeen days of official campaigning. These are a few that caught my eye.28%, 27% — 21%, 22%: These are the DPJ's and the LDP's poll numbers in proportional representation voting and electoral district respectively, as found in Yomiuri's latest poll. I should also add 33%, 34%, …
Category: Observing Japan Blog
The official campaign begins
Today is kôji, the day when candidates officially register with the Central Election Management Commission and prefectural commissions. It also means that campaigning can officially begin — candidates can actually ask voters for their voters.Yomiuri reports that the total number of registered candidates is 376 377, 121 of whom are incumbents.Feel free to post your …
Komori rages at Asahi
Don't you hate when journalists — especially those who make no secret of where they stand — criticize other journalists and media outlets for their biases?And yet Komori Yoshihisa has thrown down the gauntlet, charging the Asahi Shimbun with waging a political campaign against Mr. Abe and his cabinet. He hurls a litany of charges …
Murakami Haruki and Sino-Japanese relations
Joel Martinsen at Danwei posted a translation of an interview in the Southern Metropolis Weekly with Lin Shaohua, Murakami Haruki's Chinese translator.It is a bizarre interview, to say the least, starting with the unironic use of the word "bourgeois" to describe novels like Norwegian Wood. Bourgeois? I guess. And then there's a statement like, "his …
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No taxation without representation
Asahi published a poll today addressing the consumption tax issue, and found that 72% of respondents want it to be a point of contention in the Upper House election.This, remember, is the issue that Mr. Abe insisted, early in his cabinet, would not be discussed until autumn 2007, safely after the Upper House elections (safely …
The trouble with collective self-defense
Yomiuri ran an editorial on reviewing the prohibition on the right of collective self-defense today, arguing that debate "ought to deepen."The occasion for this editorial is the government panel's recommendation that MSDF vessels be permitted to counterattack if, when sailing with US warships, the US vessels come under attack. In this case and the case …
China gazes into an American mirror
A commentator on my recent post on the China threat spoke of the "deliberate contamination of pet food," suggesting some kind of plot hatched in Beijing to flood the world market with dangerous goods. In other words, China's liberalization is a kind of trojan horse project by which China will undermine the global order and …
Is the government trying to lose the election?
Facing criticism about his government's decision to postpone discussion about the consumption tax to the autumn, Prime Minister Abe has decided that instead of doing his best George H.W. Bush impersonation — "read my lips" — he has decided to be ambivalent: "I will not say that we will not raise the consumption tax rate."Meanwhile, …
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Combating the China threat thesis
Japan's Ministry of Defense has issued its first white paper as the Ministry of Defense, and it seems that this year's edition is unique in its focus on China as a threat to Japan.And it seems that the Yomiuri Shimbun is quite pleased by this, according to its editorial today. Citing America's debate on the …
Campaigning starts in earnest
With the campaign (unofficially) underway — thank you, public elections law — we are now in for a month of maneuvering and campaigning as government and opposition camps push for the seats necessary for an Upper House majority. Yomiuri's latest poll showed the DPJ enjoying a three-point edge over the LDP in proportional representation (25% …
Tobias S. Harris 