Writing in the Financial Times, Columbia's Gerald Curtis laments the impotence of politicians from both the LDP and the DPJ in the midst of a historic economic crisis.The LDP, he writes, is "like the proverbial deer staring into the headlights...paralysed by fear rather than energized by it." But the DPJ is little better, as he …
Tag: Gerald Curtis
The emerging contours of post-7/29 politics
I am back from the lunchtime session with Professor Curtis, who gave a thorough and pessimistic account of the era in Japanese politics coming into being.I do not think it inappropriate to speak of a new era in Japanese politics; Professor Curtis is certainly convinced that Sunday's catastrophic electoral defeat for the LDP marks the …
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Elections as beauty contests
With two weeks left in the "non-campaign" season, before candidates officially file, which marks the official campaign season during which candidates can actually ask for votes, I thought it would be worthwhile to share a passage from Gerald Curtis's Election Campaigning Japanese Style. For those not familiar with the book, in 1966-1967 Curtis lived and …
Gauging Japan’s normalization
Two articles provide a solid, realistic look at the process of Japan's normalizing its security policy and possibly reducing its dependence on the alliance with the US in its grand strategy.The first, by David Pilling in the FT, provides a belated report on Prime Minister Abe's speech to graduates of the National Defense Academy. (I …
Tobias S. Harris 