For Morita Minoru, a longtime political commentator, something is rotten in the state of Japan."Japanese politicians," he writes, "have made serving the American government a priority when they should be focused on serving the Japanese people. Japan has lost its sovereignty to the United States. Our nation has been invaded and occupied by invisible forces."The …
Continue reading Recommended book: Curing Japan’s America Addiction, Morita Minoru
Japan's pensions and health care systems may be the rocks against which the LDP smashes to pieces.Last year, Abe Shinzo's failure to respond quickly and decisively to reports of missing pensions records doomed his faltering government. Now, under Fukuda Yasuo, the government is still struggling to account for missing pensions records and is reeling from …
Continue reading Recommended book: Race for The Exits, Leonard Schoppa
With the prime ministers of Japan and Australia, the US secretary of defense (and other defense ministers in the region), and the Republican presidential candidate issuing statements on the future of Asia over the past month, it has been a fascinating time to ponder the shape of the region over the coming years, especially as …
I will be the first to admit that I haven't been easy on Ozawa Ichiro in the months since the DPJ won the HC election, not least in published articles.But I just read Mr. Ozawa's poorly titled Ozawashugi — kokorozashi wo motte, nihonjin (Ozawaism: Have ambition, Japanese), in which Mr. Ozawa presents himself as the …
In the year since Funabashi Yoichi, editor-in-chief of the Asahi Shimbun, finished The Peninsula Question, the US and North Korea made an agreement that restarted the Six-Party talks, overcame the Banco Delta Asia obstacle, and issued a joint statement with the other parties that included a promise by North Korea to account for its nuclear …
Continue reading Recommended Book: The Peninsula Question, Yoichi Funabashi
"First-rate economics, third-rate politics."This phrase has long been shorthand for the LDP's half-century of nearly uninterrupted rule, despite corruption and high levels of unpopularity among the Japanese people (although of late there might be some convergence between economics and politics).Japanese and non-Japanese scholars have concocted numerous explanations for the LDP's enduring hold on power. Some …
Continue reading Recommended Book: Democracy Without Competition in Japan, Ethan Scheiner
As the six-party talks continue to dance around the question of the future of the Korean peninsula — and the major powers plan for the collapse of the DPRK — it is worthwhile to look back to the (unresolved) conflict that cemented the division of the peninsula and had untold consequences for US Asia policy.In …
Continue reading Recommended Book: The Coldest Winter, David Halberstam
In the aftermath of Japan's first successful test of its ballistic missile defense systems, the "Japan Rising" meme will undoubtedly be on the lips of foreign commentators. Expect more articles like the NYT article by Norimitsu Onishi discussed in this post in July.Fortunately MIT's Richard Samuels, in his latest book Securing Japan, provides a more …
Continue reading Recommended Book: Securing Japan, Richard Samuels
My apologies for not recommending a new book sooner, but blame it on a hectic few weeks in Japanese politics.This book, though, is well worth reading. A sequel of sorts to Eagle Against the Sun, his account of the Pacific War, Ronald Spector outdoes his earlier effort in providing a comprehensive record of the bloody …
Continue reading Recommended Book: In The Ruins of Empire, Ronald Spector
Speaking of rural troubles, I have just finished reading Chen Guidi's and Wu Chuntao's Will The Boat Sink The Water?, which documents the poverty of rural China and the hardships imposed on peasants by a bloated bureaucracy. (This book was briefly available in China, but has since been blacklisted.)The first half of the book is …
Continue reading Recommended book: Will The Boat Sink The Water?, Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao
Tobias S. Harris 