Having successfully fended off Ozawa Ichirō's challenge to his leadership of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan — indeed, having defeated Ozawa by an unexpectedly large margin, not only winning the vote among Diet members but also receiving the support of 249 of 300 district-level party chapters and sixty percent of the vote among local …
Tag: DPJ government
Ozawa’s last stand?
"All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs." — Enoch PowellReturning to his familiar role as Ozawa Ichirō's trusty factotum, former Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio announced Thursday that he will be supporting Ozawa in a …
The meaning of the Upper House election
On Thursday campaigning for the House of Councillors election scheduled for 11 July begins, as 440 candidates vie for 121 seats. (Michael Cucek has the breakdown here.)The significance of this election has been thrown into clear relief since Kan Naoto took over from Hatoyama Yukio as prime minister and head of the DPJ. What once …
Mr. Kan’s Third Way
The Third Way has, belatedly, arrived in Japan.The style of politics popular in advanced industrial democracies during the 1990s among center-left leaders keen to reconcile their left-wing parties to the rise of neo-liberalism and the onset of austerity after the 1970s had heretofore failed to surface in Tokyo. But with the ascendancy of Kan Naoto, …
The Kan system
The Kan government has formed, having retained eleven ministers from the Hatoyama government (as expected). Among the new faces in Kan's cabinet of "irregular forces" are Noda Yoshihko (finance), Yamada Masahiko (agriculture), Arai Satoshi (national strategy), Genba Kōichirō (administrative reform), and, perhaps most prominently, Renhō (government revitalization).Looking at the transition from the Hatoyama-Ozawa regime to …
It’s Kan!
Kan Naoto has been elected head of the DPJ and is line to become Japan's ninety-fourth prime minister this afternoon. He received 291 votes to Tarutoko Shinji's 129.(Image by Kenji-Baptiste OIKAWA and used under a Creative Commons license)
Meet the new cabinet, (mostly the) same as the old cabinet?
As Japan waits for the DPJ's Diet members to choose a new party leader and then for the Diet to confirm the new prime minister, the media is speculating about the new lineup for the cabinet and the party leadership.Among other items of speculation, Sengoku Yoshito is supposedly the front runner to succeed Ozawa as …
Continue reading Meet the new cabinet, (mostly the) same as the old cabinet?
Regime change?
It seems that in addition to Hatoyama's resigning from the premiership, Ozawa Ichirō will resign as secretary-general of the DPJ.If Ozawa does resign — together with his lieutenants in various leadership positions within the DPJ with him — and actually manages to retire from politics and not try to run the party from the shadows, …
Hatoyama departs
It appears that the inevitable has happened: NHK reports that Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio has informed the DPJ leadership that he intends to step down. Hatoyama, of course, has no one to blame but himself. In the nine months since he took office, he has failed as a manager of his cabinet, as the head …
Hatoyama accommodates the US on Futenma
It may have taken a few months longer than I expected, but it appears that the Hatoyama government may have finally accommodated itself to the 2006 agreement on the realignment of US forces. The US and Japanese governments have reached an understanding regarding the future of Futenma following Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit to …
Tobias S. Harris 