Less than a week after the Fukuda government announced a new approach to the North Korea problem, Abe Shinzo, self-appointed defender of the abductees, has charged into the fray to criticize Yamasaki Taku, head of a Diet members' group advocating a normalized relations with North Korea. Mr. Abe claimed that Mr. Yamasaki's comments have diluted …
Tag: MOFA
Forging a Fukuda consensus
Following his first salvo in the creation of a new Fukuda Doctrine, Sankei reports that Prime Minister Fukuda is preparing to launch the next salvo, which will be aimed at remaking Japan's foreign and defense policymaking process, namely by intensifying the Kantei's leadership in foreign policy.Mr. Fukuda's approach is markedly different from Abe Shinzo's, the …
Japan just as invisible as always
MOFA has released its latest Gallup-conducted poll of American public and elite attitudes concerning Japan. (English summary here; more detailed Japanese documents available for download here.)Gallup conducted a telephone poll of 1500 Americans over age 18 in February and March of 2008, and telephone interviews with 250 "opinion leaders" in "the fields of government, business, …
Violence at the Gaimusho
A twenty-two-year-old suspect, reportedly the member of a right-wing organization, has been arrested after hurling a Molotov cocktail at the front entrance to the Foreign Ministry. No one was harmed but the suspect, who stabbed himself with a kitchen knife after hurling the explosive.He was reportedly demonstrating against the Foreign Ministry's failure to complain to …
Tobias S. Harris 