Aso Taro has apparently made it through his reading from last month and so took another trip to a bookstore with an aide this weekend.Once again he reportedly passed up manga for more serious reading.This time it appears that he's thinking hard about Japan's international role. He purchased Mindset for a strong Japan, a discussion …
Tag: Japanese politics
The LDP will lose the next general election
A mere two months into Aso Taro's premiership, some LDP members are already looking for a way to throw him overboard.Mainichi reports that the most vigorous criticism is from the party's young reformists — not surprisingly, as they fear for their political lives — but the Mainichi article goes on to quote various senior LDP …
Continue reading The LDP will lose the next general election
Aso in a tailspin
Prime Minister Aso Taro is in Peru for this year's APEC summit, a summit that will undoubtedly be an even greater exercise in futility than usual.At home, his administration is faltering.He is under fire from within the LDP for recent gaffes. (It was only a matter of time before Mr. Aso talked without thinking.) The …
The DPJ gambles
Prime Minister Aso Taro returned from the G20 meeting in Washington and immediately met with Ozawa Ichiro to discuss the conclusion of the extraordinary session of the Diet.The LDP and the DPJ are set for another showdown over the MSDF refueling mission in the Indian Ocean, as the DPJ has announced that it will boycott …
Two crises
In the comments section of this recent post, I have been accused of overstating Japanese decline and understating the US decline.I have actually said very little about the economic crisis in the US — and what I have said about Japan is not particularly new. For the most part I have simply updated an argument …
Japan sinks?
Aso Taro has arrived in Washington for the G20 summit on the global economic crisis.He leaves behind a country tottering on the brink of ruin. The OECD has announced that, like the reappearance of cancer after remission, Japan may once again experience deflation in 2009. Consumer confidence is at a record low. The question on …
General Tamogami refuses to fade away
Is Tamogami Toshio a millstone around Aso Taro's neck?The now former chief of staff of the Air Self-Defense Forces (ASDF) appeared before the House of Councillors foreign and defense affairs committee and continued his determined campaign to dispel the postwar consensus on Japan's wartime past.In his remarks, General Tamogami appeared to play dumb. Asked about …
Plus ça change…
There appears to be little doubt that on Thursday Aso Taro will announce a new set of economic measures — and will also announce that he will not schedule an election for the later part of November. Yomiuri reports that Oshima Tadanori, the LDP's parliamentary affairs chairman, has voiced his disagreement with the prime minister's …
Aso pushes back
Prime Minister Aso, holding a press conference in Beijing where he is attending the annual Asia-Europe meeting (ASEM), suggested that in the midst of the current crisis, he will be prioritizing Japan's international role over the "domestic political situation."The press interpretation of this remark is that Mr. Aso was signaling that he will not call …
Pushing on a string
During its long "lost decade," Japan became painfully acquainted with the concept of pushing on a string.In monetary policy, pushing on a string is when a central bank finds itself unable to reverse an economic downturn with customary monetary policy tools; famously, the Bank of Japan slashed nominal interest rates to zero without success in …
Tobias S. Harris 