Today is the second anniversary of Ozawa Ichiro's election as head of the DPJ.Mr. Ozawa marked the occasion with appearances on several Sunday political talk shows, on which he assessed the political situation and issued his latest call for a hasty general election. He said that an election should be held in advance of the …
Tag: 2008 regular Diet session
Three weeks and counting
Aso Taro continues to position himself as the LDP's savior in a rapidly approaching post-Fukuda period — in MTC's extended (and excellent) Fukuda-as-currency analogy, Mr. Aso is hoping that he is the best store of value in a chaotic environment.His latest move is to come out on behalf of the restoration of the temporary tax …
The government serves up a weak adminstrative reform bill
On Thursday morning the LDP's headquarters for the promotion of administrative reform approved an administrative reform plan and passed it along to the cabinet. The cabinet approved it Friday morning and will submit it to the Diet later today.The plan still calls for a new cabinet personnel agency and restrictions on direct contact between politicians …
Continue reading The government serves up a weak adminstrative reform bill
The imperial guard coalesces
It's been less than a week since Prime Minister Fukuda made his eleventh hour appeal to the DPJ to cooperate in the gasoline tax/road construction dispute, discarding much of the road tribe's program in the process and leading Kono Taro to remark (noted here) that the young reformers had gone "from opposition forces to imperial …
How "sympathetic" should Japan be?
As expected, the governing coalition passed a three-year extension of the sympathy budget in the House of Representatives Wednesday. The House of Councillors now has one month to deliberate on it before it comes into law automatically.And deliberate it will. In the lower house, the DPJ already questioned the use of the sympathy budget to …
April fools?
Today, April 1, the Japanese people have received an April Fool's Day gift in the form of a potentially temporary tax cut on gasoline and automobile purchases. There is, reports the media, chaos at the car dealerships and chaos at the petrol pumps. There is uncertainty regarding current road construction projects. And in a press …
Cry havoc
Painted into a corner over the gasoline tax issue, Prime Minister Fukuda attempted to undercut Ozawa Ichiro in an interview on NHK Sunday, suggesting that the impetus for a grand coalition came from Mr. Ozawa. The facts of the negotiations surrounding an LDP-DPJ grand coalition — especially Watanabe Tsuneo's role in it — may never …
Accountability comes to the alliance?
Chalk up another first for the Japanese political system.For the first time since it was created in 1978, the "sympathy budget" by which Japan subsidizes the presence of US forces in Japan will not be passed before the end of the fiscal year, due to demands from the DPJ for more thorough deliberation. The bill, …
Fukuda resignation watch?
(Readers looking for my response to Fukuda Yasuo's resignation, see this post.)In a handful of days, Prime Minister Fukuda has gone from cool and collected, to angry, to shaken and desperate.On Friday, Mr. Fukuda called an emergency press conference to make one final plea to the DPJ to compromise on the gasoline tax, agreeing to …
Low posture to blame for Fukuda’s problems?
In Japanese postwar political history, the phrase "low posture" — 低姿勢, teishisei — is most associated with Prime Minister Ikeda Hayato (1960-1964). No mere slogan, the phrase signaled an end to the Kishi era, which ended in violence in the streets of Tokyo.The Ikeda era would be one of "tolerance and patience," of working with …
Continue reading Low posture to blame for Fukuda’s problems?
Tobias S. Harris 