As noted by MTC in this post, Hashimoto Daijiro, who served as governor of Kochi prefecture for sixteen years (1991-2007), has announced that before the next general election he will create a new party dedicated to radical decentralization that will give prefectural and local governments the tools with which to tackle socio-economic problems that have …
Continue reading Hashimoto Daijiro: key to a DPJ government?
Bad news for Aso Taro: progress towards substantial decentralization may be impossible to realize.So says the government's Prefectural Integration Vision consultation group, which released an interim report on Monday. The whole report is available for download here, in PDF format.According to Mainichi, the group — which was formed in January 2007 under Mr. Abe — …
Continue reading Regional decentralization is out of reach, for now
Aso Taro, looking hungrily to his next bid for the LDP presidency, has continued his campaign to remake his image with an article in Voice in which he discusses the need for a radical reorganization of how Japan is governed, including both a consolidation of prefectures into larger "states" and a transfer of authority, including …
"First-rate economics, third-rate politics."This phrase has long been shorthand for the LDP's half-century of nearly uninterrupted rule, despite corruption and high levels of unpopularity among the Japanese people (although of late there might be some convergence between economics and politics).Japanese and non-Japanese scholars have concocted numerous explanations for the LDP's enduring hold on power. Some …
Continue reading Recommended Book: Democracy Without Competition in Japan, Ethan Scheiner
On Friday, the National Governors Association held its second meeting in Nagata-cho in as many months, an emergency meeting to protest plans to end the special fund for road construction by redirecting gasoline tax revenue into the general fund. Higashikokubaru Hideo, popular comedian-cum-governor of Miyazaki prefecture, evoked the name of bankrupt Yubari City in calling …
Over at Shisaku, MTC writes about l'affaire Ōe — Ōe being Ōe Yasuhiro, one of the three DPJ HC members who attended the gathering of prefectural assembly members mentioned in this post.Kan Naoto has called for Mr. Ōe to resign his seat. That is unlikely to happen: MTC notes that since Mr. Ōe was elected …
The government has submitted its bill extending the temporary gasoline tax for ten years as part of its bill related to the revision of the tax system. It is not clear, however, whether the government will give up on finding a compromise with the opposition and push for passage before the end of the month, …
MTC makes the bold prediction that the LDP "faces annihilation" in the next general election.I'm inclined to agree, simply because it seems that the LDP has finally exhausted the patience of the Japanese people — and the members of the LDP seem more interested in dividing into warring ideological camps than in making good policy …
Yamaguchi Jiro, a specialist in Japanese and British politics at Hokkaido University, had an article in the November Ronza that has been published in translation at Japan Focus.Yamaguchi competently explains the reasons for Mr. Abe's demise, and in the final portions of the essay, places Mr. Abe's decline and fall squarely in the larger narrative …
Continue reading The post-Koizumi LDP and the search for a new Japanese model
Working out in Kanagawa-ken , I had the opportunity to become familiar with Matsuzawa Shigefumi, Kanagawa's reformist DPJ-backed governor. Mr. Matsuzawa, who worked for former Congresswoman Beverly Byron (D-MD-6) when he was younger and won three elections to the House of Representatives before being elected governor of Kanagawa in 2003, is one of those Japanese …
Tobias S. Harris 