Michael Cucek has already pondered Yosano Kaoru's thinking behind his strange alliance with arch-revisionist Hiranuma Takeo — which has resulted in party that will supposedly be called Stand Up Japan! (the SUJ? As if Your Party wasn't bad enough) — but there's another factor beyond the electoral factors considered by Cucek.The alliance is a marriage …
Continue reading The Yosano-Hiranuma alliance of convenience
On Saturday, Yosano Kaoru, onetime contender for the LDP presidency and the Aso cabinet's second finance minister, met with LDP President Tanigaki Sadakazu and filed notice that he will leave the party from next week. Sonoda Hiroyuki, Yosano's ally who was forced to resign as a deputy secretary-general last month over criticism of Tanigaki, is …
This is the ninth installment in my general election guide. For an explanation of my purpose in making this guide, see here. For previous installments, see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.The Chugoku regional block, at the western end of the island of Honshu, is comprised of Tottori, Shimane, Okayama, Hiroshima, and …
Continue reading Chugoku, a conservative kingdom in decline?
Perhaps one of the positive consequences of Japan's economic crisis is that it has silenced Japan's conservatives.By silenced I do not mean literally silenced — they're still fulminating. What I mean is that they have been rendered irrelevant by events. Despite their media power, their ability to churn out a seemingly infinite amount of books, …
Prime Minister Fukuda held a press conference Tuesday with journalists from foreign wire services at which he said in response to a question about whether it is fun being prime minister, "It's not fun! It's like a painful lump." To deal with stress, he told the reporters that he sleeps and drinks wine.Little wonder that …
After months of talking about forming a new party, Hiranuma Takeo, a leading LDP postal rebel who spurned LDP efforts to bring him back into the party during the Abe era, may finally be taking steps to create a new conservative party that may yet be a fly in the LDP's ointment.Mr. Hiranuma has reportedly …
Convinced that a major electoral breakthrough is at hand following Hiraoka Hideo's impressive victory in Yamaguchi-2 Sunday, the DPJ leadership (a.ka., Ozawa Ichiro) has decided that it will continue to try to force the government to dissolve the HR and call a general election.To that end, Mr. Ozawa indicated yesterday that the DPJ will push …
Continue reading The DPJ’s way forward should not include Hiranuma
After nearly returning to the LDP in the waning days of the Abe cabinet, Hiranuma Takeo, holdout postal rebel and conservative stalwart, is not particularly popular among the LDP's elders.Recall, for example, that in January Mori Yoshiro scolded Nakagawa Shoichi for working with Mr. Hiranuma in their "True Conservative Policy Research Group," AKA the HANA …
For a glimpse into the twisted thinking of the Japanese right — the revisionist right — in the aftermath of the downfall of Abe Shinzo, there is no better place to look than the conversation between Sakurai Yoshiko and Hiranuma Takeo published in the January 2008 issue of Voice.The bizarre, distorted facts and outright fictions …
Nakagawa Shoichi, former LDP Policy Affairs Research Council chairman, was recently interviewed in the Kyodo Weekly on the subject of his new study group.Not surprisingly, the "True Conservative Policy Research Group" is, according to Mr. Nakagawa, dedicated to keeping the flame of the Abe revolution alive.In explaining what true conservatism is, he said, "Japan stands …
Tobias S. Harris 