In his first two weeks as prime minister, Hatoyama Yukio ought to have learned an important lesson about governing: if you do not set the agenda, someone else will. With the LDP focused on electing a new leader, the policy agenda was clearly set by Kamei Shizuka, trying to make the best of the poor …
Continue reading Hatoyama stays above the fray, but his government resists Kamei
The Asahi Shimbun's Globe section last week published a piece I wrote explaining how I came to be explaining Japanese politics on TV by the age of 26 and offering some ideas for how the DPJ can explain itself to the foreign media.You can find it online here (in Japanese).
Readers in New Zealand can catch me on Radio New Zealand's "Saturday Morning with Kim Hill" from 8:15am on — you guessed it — Saturday morning in New Zealand. Oddly enough, I will be followed not long thereafter by British author Nick Hornby.
The LDP's presidential race is in full swing, and Tanigaki Sadakazu appears to be in command of the race against Kono Taro and Nishimura Yasutoshi. Polls of LDP Diet members suggest that Tanigaki enjoys the support of roughly a majority of the party's 199 Diet members; Yomiuri has Tanigaki with 102 votes, Nishimura with 30, …
Continue reading Practical politics, symbolic conservatism, and the decline of the LDP
While Okada Katsuya was securing his position as the undisputed leader in foreign policy making, Kamei Shizuka has made immediately clear that he was going to be a source of trouble for the Hatoyama government as minister of postal reform and financial services.I already noted Friday that Kamei had used a press conference following a …
On Friday the Hatoyama cabinet met and continued its work of reforming Japan's policymaking system.The cabinet decided to create the national strategy office under the leadership of Kan Naoto, pending legislation to elevate the office to a full bureau attached to the cabinet. Another cabinet decision created the Administrative Renovation Council (ARC), which will nominally …
Continue reading The Hatoyama government fills more positions and gets to work
The race to succeed Aso Taro as LDP president begins today, with three candidates vying for the unenviable task of fixing a broken Liberal Democratic Party.Surprisingly the race includes none of the candidates who Aso defeated to win the job last year: Ishiba Shigeru, despite being perhaps the most enthusiastic of the potential candidates, backed …
The votes are being counted in the House of Representatives, after which the House of Councillors will vote for the new prime minister. Hatoyama Yukio's election as the next prime minister is assured.On the eve of his election by the Diet, Hatoyama decided the presumptive lineup of his cabinet — but he did not share …
After meeting with Ozawa Ichiro Monday, it appears that Hatoyama Yukio will get Fujii Hirohisa as his finance minister after all. The party's executive board — comprised of the inner circle of party leaders, including Hatoyama, Ozawa, Kan Naoto, and Okada Katsuya — has approved the roster, which will now go before the party's board …
Continue reading The strengths and weakness of Mr. Hatoyama’s government
For the second time in three months, an effort by younger LDP members to lead the party in a different direction has run out of steam not long after getting started.Ishihara Nobuteru (52), the last hope of the LDP's younger members, bowed out of the upcoming LDP presidential election on Saturday, clearing the way for …
Tobias S. Harris 