For a government that has at various times tried to distinguish itself as putting policy before politics, the Asō government now closely resembles an immunocompromised patient desperately trying to fend off opportunistic infections, with the infections being political disorder within the LDP. It bears noting that the DPJ has played little or no role in …
Tag: Aso Taro
Protesting too much?
In a short span of time, Prime Minister Asō Tarō, Chief Cabinet Secretary Kawamura Takeo, and LDP Secretary-General Hosoda Hiroyuki rejected the attempt by Asō's opponents to link the LDP's performance in the July 12 Tokyo assembly election to Asō's future as LDP leader.At a press conference Wednesday, Kawamura echoed Hosoda in insisting that there …
Time for a mercy killing
After a brief period of buoyancy, the bottom has finally fallen out of the Asō government.In addition to the drops below twenty percent approval in the Mainichi and Kyodo polls, the government's approval rating dropped 8.7% to 17.5% in the Sankei poll, with its disapproval rating rising ten points to 70.6%, a poll in which …
These are the hollow men
"Shape without form, shade without colour,/Paralysed force, gesture without motion" — T.S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men"The belabored departure of Hatoyama Kunio — captured well with a quote from a more contemporary poet at Shisaku — and now the third straight defeat of an LDP candidate in a prominent mayoral election suggest that what little remained …
Pushback on preemption
Prime Minister Asō Tarō and a group of national security hawks in the LDP may be pushing hard for the inclusion of preemptive capabilities in this year's National Defense Program Guidelines (NDPG), but it appears that while there is little opposition from within the LDP, the Aso government may yet have some difficulty getting its …
The battle for "reform"
In remarkably little time, the LDP has swung from doomed to ebullient and now once again is showing its age and fragility. And all it took was a nominal change in leadership in the DPJ.Suga Yoshihide and Nakagawa Hidenao's campaign to ban hereditary politics from the LDP has proved to be immensely detrimental for Aso …
Playing games
After consultations among the governing parties, the Aso government has extended the current session of the Diet for fifty-five days, with 28 July the final day of the marathon session.Ostensibly, the government wants time to pass the supplementary budget-related bills and the anti-piracy bill. But, as Asahi reports, the government only needs to wait until …
The DPJ bets on Hatoyama
As became clear in the days before the DPJ's Diet members met Saturday to elect a party leader to replace Ozawa Ichiro, Hatoyama Yukio, one of the founders of the Democratic Party of Japan, has once again been selected to serve as party president. He received 124 votes to Okada Katsuya's 95 votes, with, as …
How severe is the fallout from Ozawa’s fall?
Despite widespread expectations that he would not survive to lead the DPJ into this year's general election, Ozawa Ichiro's resignation is reverberating around the Japanese political system.Aso Taro, commenting on the Ozawa's resignation, claimed that he could not understand why Ozawa would resign now, two days before the debate scheduled between the party leaders. It …
Continue reading How severe is the fallout from Ozawa’s fall?
Combating Botchan rule
The Japanese political establishment is debating how to combat an infestation that has penetrated Nagata-cho and is allegedly gnawing away at the foundations of Japanese democracy.I'm speaking, of course, of Japan's hereditary politicians, who constitute roughly a quarter of the members of the two houses of the Diet.The debate has grown out of an internal …
Tobias S. Harris 