Watching the shambles that the Hatoyama government has become, I went back into the archives and found the post I wrote on the occasion of Hatoyama Yukio's being selected as DPJ president in May 2009.Called "The DPJ bets on Hatoyama," I stressed the risk associated with choosing Hatoyama to succeed Ozawa Ichiro, noting in particular …
Tag: leadership
On Japan’s leadership problem
My latest contribution to the Far Eastern Economic Review Online looks at Japan's leadership deficit.It's available here.
"It’s the institutions" (Noah Smith)
Hi! First, of course, to introduce myself. My name is Noah Smith, and I'm an economics PhD student at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor (specialty: urban economics and macroeconomics). Between college and graduate school I lived in Osaka, Japan for 2.5 years, from 2003-2006, where I worked as an editor and also a …
Waiting for Obama
A new LDP club has formed that some have described as "capable of inciting the overthrow of the government." The group, known as the "Association for the implementation of a new presidential election [for the LDP]," was instigated by Yamamoto Ichita and is a response to the freefall in the LDP's public approval. They will …
Abe’s better half in the FT
David Pilling talks with Abe Akie in this weekend's Lunch with the FT, an exchange that apparently took place back in April before the Abes traveled to Washington, DC.The interesting thing I find in Pilling's article is the little glimmers of a genuine personality that appear. While that is basically the point of Pilling's interview …
Constructing modern Japan
Every social scientist must struggle with the question of human agency. Are human societies the product of grand social forces or are they the product of the decisions of individuals — Carlyle's heroes?The question is particularly important for Japan, which was pushed on to a drastically different path in the late nineteenth century when confronted …
Tobias S. Harris 