Ampontan — aka the yarase blogger — appears to have abandoned Abe Shinzo for...Foreign Minister Aso Taro.At least that's what I conclude from this love letter he wrote to Aso yesterday.Is there any serious likelihood of Aso ascending to the premiership in the wake of a disastrous LDP performance next month? A commentator ("AC") on …
Tag: Japanese politics
Reading the proverbial tea leaves
In light of the new Asahi poll showing that the DPJ has expanded its lead in the proportional representation races for the Upper House, 29% to 23%, it is interesting to consider Shisaku's discussion of whether a Lower House election is also possible this year.Now, I don't disagree with his conclusion: "damnably unlikely." With its …
Abe reverts
I have previously discussed how the Abe Cabinet has reverted to form in the cabinet's relationship with the LDP; I have also discussed how Abe has essentially put his predecessor's structural reform ideas on hold.Asahi picked up this narrative on Sunday, in an editorial on the government's recently issued fiscal policy draft proposal, asking whether …
Japan’s values void
Harold James, a remarkably erudite historian at Princeton and author of The End of Globalization: Lessons from the Great Depression, has a piece at Project Syndicate entitled "The Return of 'Asian' Values," in which he discusses Fujiwara Masahiko's The Dignity of the State (previously discussed here).While James raises interesting questions about the foundations of capitalism, …
Free fall
If there were any lingering doubts about the drop in the Abe Cabinet's popularity, the latest Yomiuri poll should dispel those — Yomiuri found that the government's popularity fell to 32.9%, and its unfavorable rating rose to 53.7%.It also confirmed the Asahi's finding that the LDP and DPJ are running even in electoral districts, and …
Not a thing to say?
Following yesterday's sharp discrepancies between Asahi and Yomiuri in coverage of alleged GSDF spying on Japanese anti-war activists, it is interesting to see how both have stuck (or not) with this story.In Asahi, there were two brief articles, one regarding JCP Chairman Shii Kazuo's response to Defense Minister Kyuma's reaction to the report, the other …
Into the realm of the symbolic
While I obviously recognize that Asahi and Yomiuri approach public affairs from drastically different perspectives, I have never thought that they were living in different worlds.Until today.In Asahi, prominently featured on the front page, was an article on a Japanese Communist Party report suggesting that a special Japanese Ground Self-Defense Forces (JGSDF) unit conducted surveillance …
How to make Japan more beautiful with just 155 promises
The LDP has released its platform for next month's Upper House elections, 155 promises to build a beautiful country, society, livelihood, and furusato (not to mention "beautifully vigorous regions living in symbiosis with nature" [no. 52]).As the puerile overuse of the word beautiful [Ed. — At least it's not kawaii (cute); hey, kawaii kuni e …
Continue reading How to make Japan more beautiful with just 155 promises
Reverting to form
The responses of both the LDP and the DPJ to the unfolding pensions scandal are illustrative, depressingly, of how little the Japanese political system has changed.The LDP's response has been nothing short of all-out panic. With Upper House elections little more than a month away, the LDP is trying to kill this issue as quickly …
Asking old questions anew
(This is the second post discussing George Packard's Protest in Tokyo; see the first here.)When I last discussed Packard, I spoke about how his exploration of Japanese thinking behind the first US-Japan security treaty revealed that independence was the dominant theme in Japanese foreign policy thinking throughout the 1950s. Independence has, of course, been a …
Tobias S. Harris 