With the government still defiantly rejecting suggestions that Prime Minister Abe should take responsibility for a major defeat in Sunday's election — a debate that is about as clear as a sign one can get of the LDP giving up and perhaps praying for rain (or a heat wave) — I cannot help but wonder …
Tag: LDP
Democracy is the issue
The DPJ appears to be advancing on all fronts, pushing hard even in "conservative kingdoms" like Kagoshima Prefecture in Kyushu, the surprisingly competitive election in Kagoshima being the subject of an article in today's Yomiuri (surprise! not online).If the campaign continues this way until Sunday, even my worst-case scenario prediction will likely miss high.Not surprisingly, …
More bad news for the LDP?
The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications has issued statistics regarding early voting for Sunday's Upper House elections.The ministry's report found that early voting is up more than 50% from 2004, rising from approximately 260,000 votes to nearly 400,00 votes, with higher tallies recorded in every prefecture except Miyazaki and Kochi.Mainichi concludes that the increase …
Thinking about Japanese democracy
With the Upper House elections now a week away, it is worthwhile to step back and think about Japan's political system. At least that's what I did recently, reading Bradley Richardson's Japanese Democracy: Power, Coordination, and Performance — this month's recommended book.Published in 1997, Richardson's book is obviously not the place to go for analysis …
Viva the lifestyle restoration!
Jun Okumura gives a thorough fisking to a BBC article that completely misses what's actually going on in this election campaign. In fact, the article seems to be little more than a bundle of cliches strung together with, as Jun notes, a few illustrative anecdotes.All the BBC had to do to get this story right …
Who misses Koizumi more, the Japanese people or the foreign press?
This week's Economist and today's FT both carry articles discussing the shadow cast by former Prime Minister Koizumi over the Upper House elections — and over his hapless and, according to Mr. Koizumi, kawaiso successor.I have no doubt that there are segments of public opinion and sections of the LDP that would be glad to …
Continue reading Who misses Koizumi more, the Japanese people or the foreign press?
Rural Japan, elections, and political change
Over at the Social Science Japan forum maintained by the Institute of Social Science at the University of Tokyo — the subdued, scholarly alternative to NBR's US-Japan forum — Paul Midford of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology has sparked an interesting discussion, subsequently contributed to by Ethan Scheiner of UC-Davis (and author of …
Continue reading Rural Japan, elections, and political change
What does beautiful country mean anyway?
Writing about the LDP's keys to victory on Monday, I suggested that LDP candidates might benefit from Prime Minister Abe's leaving the campaign trail to go to Niigata, and that in any case one might expect to see candidates try to distance themselves from the prime minister and his deeply unpopular cabinet (and that the …
Keys to victory
With less than two weeks to election day, the campaign is beginning to take shape. Allow me to play John Madden (substitute a TV sports analyst of your choice) for a moment and give you what I think are the LDP's and the DPJ's Keys to Victory.Insert flashy opening montage + brassy theme music here.For …
Looking at the 2007 single-seat districts
Over at Liberal Japan, Matt points to an article in the Yomiuri Shimbun pointing to a poll that shows DPJ support rising in both major cities and smaller cities and towns in rural areas. Based on this, he concludes — emphatically, by way of music videos — that the election is bound to be a …
Tobias S. Harris 