After weeks of signs that the DPJ might wholly embrace the foreign policy status quo, Hatoyama Yukio announced on Wednesday that, when the current special measures law for the deployment of Maritime Self-Defense Forces (MSDF) refueling ships in the Indian Ocean in support of coalition activities in Afghanistan expires in January, a DPJ-led government would …
Continue reading The DPJ will bring the ships home — and open Japan’s economy to the US?
This post continues the analysis of the DPJ's 2009 general election manifesto, which I began in this post.Child care and education: The centerpiece of the DPJ's child care program is obviously its child allowance plan, amounting to 26,000 yen per month per child until the end of middle school. The party plans to provide half …
Not surprisingly, the LDP has greeted the DPJ's "realism" with severe criticism.Prime Minister Aso Taro suggested that the DPJ has become "blurred" by softening or reversing the positions it had taken on LDP foreign policy initiatives in recent years. Amari Akira, Aso's minister responsible for adminstrative reform, also used the word "blurred" and suggested that …
Watanabe Yoshimi, the onetime cabinet minister who left the LDP earlier this year to form a reformist "third force" with independent Eda Kenji, is still preparing to launch a new party before next month's general election. But while the prospects for his incipient (and still nameless) party looked bright as the reformist rebellion against Prime …
The emerging realism in the DPJ observed last week has grown in recent days, especially on foreign policy.The party's manifesto for next month's election, due to be released to the public any day now, considerably softens the language on a number of foreign policy issues on which the DPJ had previously taken controversial positions."Soften" is …
A week after Nagasaki Kotaro — and his 3600 supporters in Yamanashi's second district — left the LDP, another Koizumi child has bolted the party.Yamauchi Koichi, a first termer representing Kanagawa's ninth district, had, as discussed in this post, come to recognize the unpleasant situation for reformists in the post-Koizumi LDP. As he said in …
As planned, Prime Minister Aso Taro dissolved Japan's House of Representatives Tuesday afternoon.Despite criticism from members of the cabinet last week, all signed the cabinet decision for dissolution. Before dissolving, Aso attended a meeting with LDP Diet members, humbly accepted their criticism, and then proceeded to dissolve the lower house.The campaign will officially begin in …
In response to the LDP's decision to convene a closed-door gathering Tuesday that will enable LDP members to "exchange opinions" with Prime Minister Aso Taro, Nakagawa Hidenao demanded that the party open the event to the media.The LDP executive dismissed his request, frankly arguing that airing the party's dirty laundry — more than it has …
The anti-Asō rebellion was over before it even began.Instead of a meeting of LDP Diet members that would meet today and debate whether to hold a party presidential election before a general election — thereby undoing the prime minister's plan for a 21 July dissolution — the LDP executive agreed to an informal, closed gathering …
Is the Nakagawa rebellion fizzling out already?After loudly proclaiming that he had received enough signatures to force a meeting of LDP Diet members within in the next week, it turns out that Nakagawa Hidenao's campaign to unseat Asō Tarō is falling victim to the pusillanimity of his "supporters."Some of the 133 signatories have claimed that …
Tobias S. Harris 