Much has been made among English-language bloggers about Mr. Fukuda's delivering a version of his New Year's message in English at the LDP's YouTube channel, the launch of which I discussed in this post. (Asia Exile; TPR; Japundit)Steven Clemons at The Washington Note took one of his occasional forays into matters Japanese to comment on …
Continue reading The real meaning of Fukuda’s New Year’s message
Prime Minister Fukuda delivered his maiden speech to the Diet this afternoon, reopening legislative business after an unscheduled three-week abeyance.If Mr. Fukuda was trying to differentiate himself from his successor, he succeeded admirably. Mr. Abe's way of politics was not just ideological, but inflexibly ideological. For Mr. Abe, it was always "my way or the …
In a year that has been nothing but hurricane-strength headwinds for the LDP, the party has for the first time in months a wind at its back.The talk of the day is, of course, the first opinion polls on the Fukuda cabinet, which show, across the board, a considerable boost for Mr. Fukuda and the …
On the brink of today's LDP election, the government dissolved the "Building a beautiful country" planning group that was to be the vanguard of Mr. Abe's campaign to leave the "postwar regime" behind. The Abe revolution is over.But what will replace it?As LDP members vote today, I think that my assessment is correct: an Aso …
The campaign is well under way, and Fukuda Yasuo is starting to sound like, well, the DPJ just a few short months ago in its campaign for the Upper House.He has emphasized the need for a "self-reliant and harmonious" society and talked of fixing broken institutions and ease the insecurity of dispossessed portions of the …
Fukuda Yasuo was asked whether he would visit Yasukuni Shrine as prime minister. His answer: "Perhaps not."It's certainly better than committing to visit, and considering that China was content with Mr. Abe's "neither confirm nor deny" approach to the Yasukuni problem, undoubtedly Beijing is preparing a little party to celebrate if and when Mr. Fukuda …
In an essay in the forthcoming issue of the Far Eastern Economic Review that I co-authored with Doug Turner, we discuss that the challenge for the LDP going forward is reconfiguring the party's identity for the post-Koizumi era. Reform or reaction? Urban or rural? These are the questions that the party has to answer.And yet …
Asahi published the results of a survey conducted with Tokyo University that looks at the policy positions of victorious LDP and DPJ candidates in the House of Councillors election. (The detailed study will be published in the October issue of Ronza.)Accompanied by one of those marvelously convoluted charts that Japanese newspapers seem to revel in …
Since election night, there has been a conspicuous absence from the pronouncements of the Abe government: we no longer hear Mr. Abe speaking of building a "beautiful country."Mainichi suggests that the Abe camp has been reflecting on the meaning of the slogan, despite Abe's assertion that he doesn't think the election results repudiated his "course …
Jiji and Mainichi report today on the creation of an anti-Abe "study group" composed of eight members from the Yamasaki, Tanigaki, and Tsushima factions, some of whom have already gone public with criticism of the prime minister.The ringleader is former Education Minister Kosaka Kenji of the Tsushima faction, who was education minister in the final …
Tobias S. Harris 