Following in the wake of last month's APEC summit in Hanoi, Asian leaders are gathering in Manila for the second annual East Asian Summit.Prime Minister Abe has departed, but he leaves behind a sticky political situation at home. He is facing declining popularity (his cabinet is polling below fifty percent for the first time since …
Tag: Abe Shinzo
Japan considers its own NSC
This past weekend saw Prime Minister Abe move into the Kantei, meaning that he will now be on the job twenty-four hours a day. It is hard to believe that the head of government of a major developed democracy could spend the first month of his term living away from the Official Residence.Abe's move comes …
Asia changes — will Japan change with it?
Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to India this week supposedly signifies a shift in Asia, as Hu's visit indicates that the region's two emerging giants are drawing closer to one another. This conventional wisdom perhaps contains not a small amount of wishful thinking, because, as this article in the FT suggests, major differences remain between …
Summiting in Hanoi
So President Bush and Prime Minister Abe have had their first meeting, in the wake of the APEC summit in Hanoi.As the recap provided by the White House indicates, the agenda of their conversation was not particularly surprising and the meeting provided no major changes in US-Japan alliance policy. (Although, as this Yomiuri summary indicates, …
Ozawa v. Abe, round two
DPJ President Ozawa Ichiro and Prime Minister Abe Shinzo had their second sparring match in the Diet yesterday, much of which was spent discussing the ongoing 『核保有』 問題 (the possession of nuclear weapons problem). The FT provides a good summary of the debate up until now here.The Mainichi Shimbun reports that Ozawa spent fifteen of his …
The perils of being noncommittal
As I discussed here and here, Abe Shinzo has been extremely reluctant to present anything that resembles a detailed agenda for his cabinet.During his first month, it seemed that the Japanese people were prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt that sooner or later he would present a detailed program that they could …
Abe reviews the fleet
On the 29th of October, Prime Minister Abe reviewed the Japanese fleet at Sagami Bay in Kanagawa. In this week's issue of his email magazine, Abe poetically recounts the review, speaking of clouds giving way to an autumnal blue sky, of the deep azure of the sea, and of the majesty and magnificence of the …
Tobias S. Harris 