In the wake of Koizumi Junichiro's landslide election victory in 2005, the Economist published a survey on Japan under the headline "The Sun Also Rises," complete with a cover photo over the sun shining over Mt. Fuji.The Economist was hardly alone in proclaiming that the Koizumi era marked the beginning of a new, optimistic era …
Category: Observing Japan Blog
The DPJ’s unheralded realism
In the latest stop in his regional tour, Foreign Minister Okada Katsuya visited Australia for talks with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Foreign Minister Stephen Smith.Most of the headlines have focused on the exchange of words over whaling — the polite phrasing seems to be that Okada and Rudd had a "frank discussion", and Rudd …
A terrible idea from DPJ backbenchers, quickly nixed
On Wednesday Ubukata Yukio, the deputy secretary-general, Tanaka Makiko, Koizumi Junichiro's controversial foreign minister who joined the DPJ last year, and other DPJ Diet members proposed to Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio and DPJ secretary-general Ozawa Ichiro that the party establish a new policy research arm to replace the policy research council that closed shop when …
Continue reading A terrible idea from DPJ backbenchers, quickly nixed
Credit where credit is due
Another poll, more bad news for the Hatoyama government.In Jiji Press's February public opinion poll, the Hatoyama government's disapproval rating surpassed its approval rating for the first time, with the former rising twelve points to nearly 45% and the latter falling eleven to nearly 36%. Disapproval among self-described independents rose thirteen points to roughly 46%. …
Okada acknowledges past wrongs in Seoul
The Hatoyama government's campaign to revitalize Japan's bilateral relationships in Asia continues, with Foreign Okada Katsuya's visiting South Korea for the first time as foreign minister for meetings with President Lee and other senior officials.While Americans are focused on celebrating what is being called the fiftieth anniversary of the US-Japan alliance this year, a more …
Edano joins the cabinet
Edano Yukio, one of the few DPJ politicians who was expected to receive a cabinet appointment last year but didn't, will no longer be outside of the government. He will take over responsibility for the Government Revitalization Unit (GRU), which was previously headed by Sengoku Yoshito, who since Kan Naoto moved to the finance ministry …
Ozawa diplomacy
As Ozawa Ichiro waited for the Tokyo Public Prosecutors Office to decide whether it would indict him along with his former secretaries, the DPJ secretary-general was busy meeting with Kurt Campbell, US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, who stopped in Japan last week along with Wallace "Chip" Gregson, assistant secretary …
With Ozawa, there’s no easy option
Ozawa Ichiro has escaped indictment by the Tokyo Public Prosecutors Office again. Once again, his former secretaries were not quite so lucky, with three, including sitting Diet member Ishikawa Tomohiro, being indicted for political funds violations.Michael Cucek rightly points to the gross misconduct of the PPO in its Ahab-like pursuit of Ozawa — and perhaps …
"Our Far East Partner"
The title of this post is the name of a propaganda film produced by the US Army sometime after the end of the occupation that I found at the Internet Archive. Makes for interesting viewing as we mark the alliance's fiftieth anniversary.http://www.archive.org/flow/flowplayer.commercial-3.0.5.swf
Professor Hatoyama holds forth
Before entering politics — the family business — Hatoyama Yukio was a fledging academic, a Stanford-educated engineer. His background as an academic is often on display when he delivers set piece addresses. He has a penchant for abstraction, for drawing upon broad principles and shying away from the nitty gritty details of policy. This tendency …
Tobias S. Harris 