Yamamoto Ichita, who is a far more prolific blogger than I despite (because of?) his membership in the House of Councillors (I've just added his blog to the blogroll after linking to him for months), lays out the reasons why the government must use the HR supermajority to reintroduce the temporary tax.His four reasons are: …
Tag: Japanese politics
Two years of Ozawa’s leadership
Today is the second anniversary of Ozawa Ichiro's election as head of the DPJ.Mr. Ozawa marked the occasion with appearances on several Sunday political talk shows, on which he assessed the political situation and issued his latest call for a hasty general election. He said that an election should be held in advance of the …
Three weeks and counting
Aso Taro continues to position himself as the LDP's savior in a rapidly approaching post-Fukuda period — in MTC's extended (and excellent) Fukuda-as-currency analogy, Mr. Aso is hoping that he is the best store of value in a chaotic environment.His latest move is to come out on behalf of the restoration of the temporary tax …
The government serves up a weak adminstrative reform bill
On Thursday morning the LDP's headquarters for the promotion of administrative reform approved an administrative reform plan and passed it along to the cabinet. The cabinet approved it Friday morning and will submit it to the Diet later today.The plan still calls for a new cabinet personnel agency and restrictions on direct contact between politicians …
Continue reading The government serves up a weak adminstrative reform bill
Observing Japan in the Wall Street Journal Asia
My (optimistic) assessment of the current political situation is in today's issue of The Wall Street Journal Asia.You can read it here.
The imperial guard coalesces
It's been less than a week since Prime Minister Fukuda made his eleventh hour appeal to the DPJ to cooperate in the gasoline tax/road construction dispute, discarding much of the road tribe's program in the process and leading Kono Taro to remark (noted here) that the young reformers had gone "from opposition forces to imperial …
Will the real Ozawa please stand up?
I will be the first to admit that I haven't been easy on Ozawa Ichiro in the months since the DPJ won the HC election, not least in published articles.But I just read Mr. Ozawa's poorly titled Ozawashugi — kokorozashi wo motte, nihonjin (Ozawaism: Have ambition, Japanese), in which Mr. Ozawa presents himself as the …
April fools?
Today, April 1, the Japanese people have received an April Fool's Day gift in the form of a potentially temporary tax cut on gasoline and automobile purchases. There is, reports the media, chaos at the car dealerships and chaos at the petrol pumps. There is uncertainty regarding current road construction projects. And in a press …
Cry havoc
Painted into a corner over the gasoline tax issue, Prime Minister Fukuda attempted to undercut Ozawa Ichiro in an interview on NHK Sunday, suggesting that the impetus for a grand coalition came from Mr. Ozawa. The facts of the negotiations surrounding an LDP-DPJ grand coalition — especially Watanabe Tsuneo's role in it — may never …
Accountability comes to the alliance?
Chalk up another first for the Japanese political system.For the first time since it was created in 1978, the "sympathy budget" by which Japan subsidizes the presence of US forces in Japan will not be passed before the end of the fiscal year, due to demands from the DPJ for more thorough deliberation. The bill, …
Tobias S. Harris 