Glamorous romantic life aside, I find the parallels between former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo and French President Nicolas Sarkozy intriguing. (I previously explored this theme in this post from last July.)The parallel came to mind once again when I read this post by Arthur Goldhammer.Commenting on a recent Sarkozy press conference, Goldhammer wrote:...The "politics of …
Tag: Abe Shinzo
The real meaning of Fukuda’s New Year’s message
Much has been made among English-language bloggers about Mr. Fukuda's delivering a version of his New Year's message in English at the LDP's YouTube channel, the launch of which I discussed in this post. (Asia Exile; TPR; Japundit)Steven Clemons at The Washington Note took one of his occasional forays into matters Japanese to comment on …
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2007: The Year That Was In Japanese Politics
A recent article in the Yomiuri Shimbun surveying the Japanese political situation as 2007 gives way to 2008 included a sidebar that compared the present day with the bakumatsu, the last days of the Tokugawa.Looking back over the events in political Japan over 2007, that comparison does not seem inappropriate. The picture that emerges is …
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The problem with Fukuda
The DPJ's Nagashima Akihisa, writing at his blog, cites Max Weber's "Politics as a vocation" to criticize not just Mr. Fukuda but his predecessors and express his hope for a different style of politics under DPJ rule.Mr. Nagashima quotes from the concluding paragraph of the essay:Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards. …
The post-Koizumi LDP and the search for a new Japanese model
Yamaguchi Jiro, a specialist in Japanese and British politics at Hokkaido University, had an article in the November Ronza that has been published in translation at Japan Focus.Yamaguchi competently explains the reasons for Mr. Abe's demise, and in the final portions of the essay, places Mr. Abe's decline and fall squarely in the larger narrative …
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The right is alive, if not kicking (yet)
As planned, onetime Abe wingman Nakagawa Shoichi has formed a conservative study group within the LDP that will keep the flame of the Abe revolution burning.At the opening meeting, Mr. Nakagawa said, "The things which everyone said 'we must do' until a few months ago must not be forgotten." By which he means those things …
The foreseeable crisis erupts
Ambassador Schieffer has, according to the Washington Post, sent a cable directly to the president (an unusual step) warning Mr. Bush of serious consequences to the US-Japan alliance should the US remove North Korea from the state sponsors of terrorism list without progress being made on the abductions issue. The ambassador also complained about being …
The last days of Abe Shinzo
For a look at how illusory the LDP's purported post-Fukuda unity is, Bungei Shunju has an article called "Shinzo Abe: The truth of the last three days." (It's published in four parts at Yahoo's Minna no seiji site: one, two, three, and four.)There aren't too many surprises in the article: Aso Taro laughed in Fukuda …
Who’s in control here?
Prime Minister Abe has been bizarrely hospitalized, and Chief Cabinet Secretary Yosano admits that Mr. Abe did not name someone to serve as the acting prime minister in his absence.I guess Aso Taro is too busy getting ready to win the job legally to do his best imitation of Alexander Haig.Mr. Aso, while still probably …
The man to beat
From Kishi scion to Yoshida scion: with less than a week until the LDP presidential election, it seems hard to conceive at this point how anyone will be able to stop Aso Taro, professed manga lover and friend of otaku (oh, and longtime foreign minister and current LDP secretary-general).With Mr. Koizumi declaring that he will …
Tobias S. Harris 