Courtesy of Japan Probe, I came across this summary of Abe's interview with the Wall Street Journal, which seems to have focused more on defense matters than the Washington Post/Newsweek interview.Abe apparently told the WSJ that Japan does not plan to raise its defense spending to match China's growing defense expenditures, which, the article reports, …
Tag: Japanese politics
Abe a success?
Over at Ampotan, I found this post that attempts to question the perception of the Abe Cabinet's having been a failure thought provoking, but ultimately wrong.The mistake is equating legislative victories with success. Given the size of the LDP's majority in the Lower House, Abe hardly deserves credit for doing what a government supported by …
Demographics and political change
The Japan Times has a brief article about the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications' latest survey of Japan's population, conducted in October of last year.The survey found that Japan's population held steady at roughly 127 million people, but there was considerable change in the populations of Japan's prefectures, a continuation of the shift of …
Japan’s campaign trucks
Over at Japan Probe, James writes about Japan's ubiquitous -- during election season -- campaign sound trucks, about which I have a certain appreciation, having been on the working side of several election campaigns now. (See this post, for example.)As annoying as noise pollution is at 8:30am, foreigners resident in Japan must realize the severe …
Friction in the coalition?
The Mainichi Shimbun reports in a brief article that the New Komeito Party, the LDP's coalition partner, wants to maintain clauses one and two of Article 9 and does not seek the ability to exercise the right of collective self-defense.Surely a disagreement within the LDP-Komeito coalition on constitution revision and the related question of collective …
Legislative happenings
In the shadow of the passage of the national referendum bill by the Lower House, the Abe Cabinet managed to push another bill through the Lower House, over active DPJ opposition: the bill supporting the advance of the realignment of US forces in Japan, which calls for increasing responsibility for realignment to local communities and …
Ozawa Ichiro, Japan’s Gingrich?
Alex Pappas at Japundit calls attention to this recent Asahi article on DPJ President Ozawa Ichiro.When the political history of Japan during the two decades following the breakdown of the 1955 system is written -- although in The Logic of Japanese Politics, Gerald Curtis has already provided a fantastic account of change (or the lack …
LDP gloom in Kanagawa
In an article in yesterday's Shonan edition of the Yomiuri Shimbun -- as usual, not online -- entitled "The governor's expanding clout," LDP members of the Kanagawa prefectural assembly sound despondent in the face of Governor Matsuzawa's landslide victory Sunday, and, more significantly, the victory of DPJ and independent allies in campaigns for prefectural assembly …
Tobias S. Harris 