Fukuda Yasuo, faced with growing complaints about his deficiencies as a leader, now has a new critic: Koizumi Junichiro.In a speech in Tokyo Thursday, the former prime minister asked the prime minister to make a decision about a cabinet reshuffle, saying that he will support the prime minister once he makes a decision – even …
Tag: Japanese politics
Bush tries to reassure Japan
US President George W. Bush spoke with Japanese journalists before heading to Japan for the Toyako summit, and while he spoke about the summit, it seems that his interlocutors were more interested in last week's announcement that the US will proceed in removing North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.In what Mainichi …
Hashimoto Daijiro: key to a DPJ government?
As noted by MTC in this post, Hashimoto Daijiro, who served as governor of Kochi prefecture for sixteen years (1991-2007), has announced that before the next general election he will create a new party dedicated to radical decentralization that will give prefectural and local governments the tools with which to tackle socio-economic problems that have …
Continue reading Hashimoto Daijiro: key to a DPJ government?
The LDP is shocked — shocked! — to find waste in the budget
I previously wrote that the LDP, in the midst of a debate over whether and when to raise the consumption tax to cover growing pensions liabilities, also organized a project team — headed by Sonoda Hiroyuki and staffed with fervent young reformists like Kono Taro and Yamamoto Ichita — with the purpose of identifying "waste" …
Continue reading The LDP is shocked — shocked! — to find waste in the budget
Sengoku steps forward?
Is this the next leader of the DPJ?That is Sengoku Yoshito, a five-term member of the House of Representatives from Tokushima's first district.When we last heard from him (on this blog), he was leading the fight against the nomination of Muto Toshiro to be the governor of the Bank of Japan from his position as …
Cracks in the Machimura faction?
Will the Machimura faction, the LDP's largest with eighty-eight members in the two houses of the Diet, be the victim of its own success?Mainichi reported over the weekend that the Machimura faction — still unclear on who it should support as Fukuda Yasuo's successor, may be on the brink of splitting. The reason? As a …
Yamasaki’s lonely fight
What a difference fifteen years make.In his memoir, Abe Shinzo wrote of his lonely fight — alongside Nakagawa Shoichi and a handful of other LDP conservatives — to oppose normalization with North Korea and place the abductions issue at the center of Japan's North Korea policy. They battled against the LDP, the media, academia, and …
No surprises
When is a shock not a shock?Sankei Shimbun's front cover this morning proclaimed, in large print, "Shock to the Japanese nation."The headline, of course, referred to President Bush's announcement Thursday that, in keeping with the principle of "action for action," the Bush administration will (1) lift "the provisions of the Trading with the Enemy Act …
Web developments
The Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan's largest daily by circulation, is finally entering the twenty-first century.Earlier this month it revamped its website, introducing an RSS feed and other web tools. It also created a clipping service, for which users must register.Meanwhile Japan's other political parties have followed the LDP and created YouTube channels of their own (DPJ; …
The DPJ debates its election
The DPJ is scheduled to hold a leadership election in September.There is some debate about the election. Should the party even bother with an election (see this article in Liberal Time), or should it just reaffirm Ozawa Ichiro as party president to minimize the risk of election-related instability? Should it wait until September, when the …
Tobias S. Harris 