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 …
Continue reading The real meaning of Fukuda’s New Year’s message
It has become increasingly clear that Prime Minister Fukuda will play the cabinet reshuffle card in response to sagging poll numbers, as early as mid-January, right around the time the House of Representatives will likely be voting a second time on the anti-terror law.He will have an extremely short window with which to launch a …
Fukuda Yasuo is in China, and the contrasts, both with his earlier trip to Washington and Ozawa Ichiro's trip to China, are stunning, if not surprising.Recall how earlier this month I criticized Mr. Ozawa for his over-the-top visit to Beijing, when he traveled with an entourage of hundreds and spoke in effusive terms about the …
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 …
Continue reading 2007: The Year That Was In Japanese Politics
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. …
Mainichi reports that pressure within the LDP for a cabinet reshuffle is building, as Prime Minister Fukuda and his lieutenants search for ways to reverse the drastic decline in support for the government (the latest sign being a poll that shows more support for a grand coalition or a DPJ-centered coalition than for the current …
In the midst of new polls showing that support for his government is waning, Prime Minister Fukuda has announced his plans for traveling to Beijing.The prime minister will leave for China on Thursday, 27 December, meet with President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao on 28 December, and return to Japan on 30 December. …
The big news of the day is the sharp decline in the Fukuda cabinet's popularity, as found in a Kyodo poll (see articles in the Sankei Shimbun and the Tokyo Shimbun).The poll found an 11.7% drop in the cabinet's favorable rating, to 35.3%. The unfavorable rating experienced a corresponding 11% rise to 47.6%. The overwhelming …
In recent days, the message from the LDP's leaders has been that the government is considering calling a general election later in 2008, following the G8 summit to be held in Hokkaido in July.Nikai Toshihiro, chairman of the LDP's executive council, argued in a speech in Osaka on Saturday for a post-summit election, suggesting that …
Hokkaido University's Yamaguchi Jiro — an acknowledged supporter of the DPJ — wrote a post at his blog earlier this week in which he discussed the emergence of new axes of confrontation in the political system.Looking at political systems in other developed countries, in which "on the right, conservative parties that respect the liberty of …
Continue reading Can the DPJ become a social democratic party?
Tobias S. Harris 