"The nonsense of public opinion that hopes for Pitcher Koizumi, ringleader in making an unequal society, to take the mound again."So reads the headline of an opinion piece at JanJan by Sato Shuichi, a journalist and activist.Sato uses an extended — and I mean extended — baseball metaphor to discuss the transfer of power from …
Tag: Japanese politics
Counting down to X-Day
With less than a week until 30 April — "X-Day" — when the government intends to bring the tax bill to a vote in the HR again, the DPJ is apparently stepping away from threats to censure the government in response to the revote.Kan Naoto indicated at a press conference Thursday that the party has …
The race for defense ministry reform
Back in February, when Defense Minister Ishiba Shigeru was threatened with censure for his ministry's dilatory response to the Atago incident, Prime Minister Fukuda gave Mr. Ishiba a firm vote of confidence, calling upon the defense minister to "review the organization from its very foundation."It appears that Mr. Fukuda's support for comprehensive defense ministry reform …
Koike fever?
Within days of Mori Yoshiro's calling the prospect of Korike Yuriko, former defense minister, a "joke," Sankei writes that "Koike fever" is taking hold — even though Ms. Koike claims to share Mr. Mori's assessment of a Koike candidacy.The basis for this "fever" is unclear to me.The examples cited by Sankei? A long speech to …
Koizumi goes to work for the government?
The Fukuda government has announced that it will definitely proceed with plans to submit the tax bill to the HR for a second vote on 30 April, the day after the expiration of the sixty-day Article 59 window. No word from Asahi or Mainichi about whether the LDP and Komeito will face defections when the …
DPJ cruising to victory in Yamaguchi-2
As expected, the DPJ's Hiraoka Hideo is in a strong position with less than a week before the by-election in Yamaguchi's second district.A poll conducted by Mainichi over the weekend reveals that voters' concerns favor the DPJ. Health and welfare policy are the top priority (22%), followed by the pensions problem (20%), administrative reform (14%), …
The LDP and DPJ talk past each other
A six-party conference of government and opposition parties met Friday to negotiate a compromise on the future of the special fund for road construction. Debate will begin in earnest on Wednesday, a week before the governing coalition is expected to use its HR supermajority to reimpose the temporary gasoline tax.According to Mainichi, at the initial …
Nearing a climax?
Japan's political air is once again full of election talk as the end of April approaches, bringing the first by-election of the Fukuda era and the end of the sixty-day period after which the HR can vote again on the tax bill containing the temporary gasoline tax.Ibuki Bunmei, LDP secretary-general, hinted in remarks in Nara-ken …
The LDP looks to its past
By the late 1960s, just over a decade into LDP rule, the LDP was governing an increasingly wealthy but increasingly polluted Japan. This was bad enough for Japanese citizens forced to breathe polluted air, but it quickly became a political problem for the LDP.Dismayed by the lack of progress in the central government in addressing …
The domestic constraints on Japanese foreign policy
Prime Minister Fukuda, originally scheduled to visit Germany, Britain, and France as well as Russia during the Japanese political world's Golden Week holiday in early May, has changed his plans, announcing that he will be restricting his travels to a trip to Russia 25-27 April to meet with Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev. The reason …
Continue reading The domestic constraints on Japanese foreign policy
Tobias S. Harris 