The DPJ, now calling the shots on the administration of the Upper House, has announced the distribution of the chairmanships of Upper House committees, and in a gesture that strikes me as magnanimous, has given the chairmanship of the Budget Committee to the LDP. The LDP has named Konoike Yoshitada to fill the post.While the …
Tag: political reform
The frog and the scorpion?
From August 3rd to 6th, Jiji asked voters what kind of government they would prefer. The top? An LDP-DPJ grand coalition, with 27.5% of respondents supporting it. Only 11.9% wanted the LDP-Komeito coalition to continue, while only 10.8% wanted a solely LDP government. Respondents seemed indifferent to which party was at the center of the …
Abe after the election
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 …
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 …
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Buying the hype?
Michael Auslin, a history professor at Yale and soon to be scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, has a somewhat challenging survey of contemporary Japan at American.com, AEI's online magazine.As the article's title — "A Beautiful Country" — suggests, Auslin buys into the confident rhetoric that has emanated from Tokyo in recent years, but at …
Atlas shrugs in Japan?
This afternoon one of the local DPJ politicians supported by my boss was in the office, resting, and he asked whether I have read "Einrando." After some initial confusion, I finally figured out that he was asking about Ayn Rand — because he's in the process of reading Atlas Shrugged in Japanese (there are few …
Meet the new daijin, same as the old daijin
On Friday morning, Prime Minister Abe summoned forty-eight-year-old Akagi Norihiko to Kantei and requested that Akagi serve as Matsuoka Toshikatsu's successor at the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries (MAFF). Akagi, a Tokyo University graduate, MAFF old boy (OB), and grandson of an agriculture minister in the cabinet of Abe's grandfather Kishi, was first elected …
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Change the LDP, change Japan — now more than ever
David Pilling, the FT's Japan correspondent, indirectly responds to a point I made earlier this week when discussing Matsuoka's suicide in an op-ed entitled "No way back to old Japan" (subscription required).As the title suggests, he argues that Matsuoka's suicide actually marks the death throes of the old political system:The postwar system that is now …
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Matsuoka Toshikatsu, RIP
Beleaguered Agriculture Minister Matsuoka Toshikatsu was found dead by his own hand this afternoon.I am somewhat hesitant to comment on the political ramifications, seeing as how this is a grim end to a sordid affair (and career); but it demands some response. Obviously I mean no disrespect to those grieving. This is a terrible end, …
Tobias S. Harris 