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Japan Times (Free subscription) | yesterday
The prime minister's keynote policy address in the Diet affords the nation's leader an opportunity to present their overall thinking to the people — as its name in Japanese, shoshin hyomei (declaration of convictions), would indeed suggest. Shigeru Yoshida delivered the first of these "state of the nation" orations in 1953; Eisaku Sato made a whopping 13 between 1964 and 1971; while...
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Japan Times (Free subscription) | 04/11/2009
An office set up to control "amakudari," the notorious practice of setting up lucrative executive-level jobs for retiring bureaucrats in industries they once oversaw, was defanged before it even got off the ground, government sources said Tuesday. Set up last December under the administration of then Prime Minister Taro Aso, the Center for Personnel Interchanges Between the Government and...
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Japan Probe (Free subscription) | 27/10/2009
The LDP’s leader has borrowed a page from Taro Aso’s play book and compared the DPJ to Nazis: “I got the impression that the atmosphere in parliament was similar to the Hitler Youth agreeing to Hitler’s speech,” Liberal Democratic Party leader Sadakazu Tanigaki told reporters after Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s first policy speech since his [...]
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Japundit (Free subscription) | 27/10/2009
A collection of more than two million comic books will be housed in the new Tokyo International Manga Library which will open in 2015 on the grounds of Meiji University. Manga has long enjoyed a soaring popularity in Japan among salarymen, teenagers and even politicians – such as former prime minister Taro Aso – alike. read more
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The Soul of Japan (Free subscription) | 27/10/2009
With the departure of Taro Aso, the 59th Prime Minister of Japan, who had only proven to be just a "flash in the pan" and a major let down for many including his staunchest supporters, Yukio Hatoyama has now assumed the helm as The Boss. Japan is now faced once again with the same bleak prospects of having to choose which resource laden country it wants to foster relations with, along with...
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Japan Times (Free subscription) | 17/10/2009
Last November, two months after the inauguration of the Cabinet of Prime Minister Taro Aso, I predicted, in an opinion piece for the American magazine Science, that a sweeping change in Japanese government was imminent. I wrote, "Perhaps the public, sensing the need for change, is pessimistic about the possibilities (of change under the conservative government), given that Japan has been so resistant...
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Japan Times (Free subscription) | 16/10/2009
Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's Cabinet on Friday endorsed the suspension of steps worth ¥2.93 trillion allocated for the ¥14.7 trillion extra budget for fiscal 2009, crafted by the previous government, identifying the money as wasteful spending, a Cabinet minister said. The figure fell below the ¥3 trillion target set by Hatoyama's Democratic Party of Japan when it ousted Taro Aso's Liberal...
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FP Passport (Free subscription) | 09/10/2009
U.S. President Barack Obama was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize just 12 days into office. FP took a quick look back at what Obama did to improve world peace -- or, really, anything with foreign-policy relevance -- in those two weeks. Here's what we found: January 21: Obama met with the ambassador to Iraq, commander in Iraq, and regional commander to receive a complete briefing on the war. January...
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Japan Times (Free subscription) | 08/10/2009
A loan guarantee system for smaller firms devised by former Prime Minister Taro Aso helped reduce the number of corporate bankruptcies between April and September by 1.61 percent from a year earlier to 7,736, the first decrease in four years for a fiscal first-half, a credit research agency said Thursday. Tokyo Shoko Research said the debts left by the failed firms in the first half of fiscal 2009...
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The Observer (Free subscription) | 04/10/2009
Shoichi Nakagawa resigned in February after 'drunken' G7 appearance Shoichi Nakagawa, who resigned as Japan's finance minister after he appeared to be drunk at a G7 press conference earlier this year, was found dead at his home in Tokyo this morning. Police said it was unlikely that Nakagawa, who was found lying face down on his bed by his wife, had killed himself, but added that he had recently been...
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lancerlord (Free subscription) | 04/10/2009
Former Japanese finance minister Shoichi Nakagawa found dead : Japan's former finance minister Shoichi Nakagawa, who was forced to resign over his apparently drunken behaviour, was found dead at his home in Tokyo. The cause of death is unknown. Mr Shoichi Nakagawa, former Japanese Finance Minister Japan's former finance minister Shoichi Nakagawa, who was forced to resign over his apparently drunken...
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Mizozo (Free subscription) | 04/10/2009
Japan's former finance minister Shoichi Nakagawa , 56, who was recently forced to resign due his drunken behaviour at a G7 news conference in February, was found dead at his home in Tokyo's residential district of Setagaya . The cause of his death has not been revealed yet. At the G7 news conference in February in Rome, Italy, he was obviously drunk. He was drunk enough to be incoherent and slurred...
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The Composed Gentleman (Free subscription) | 04/10/2009
Shoichi Nakagawa is dead. The former Japanese finance minister Shoichi Nakagawa has died today in a bedroom in his house in Tokyo. Kyodo News Agency reported no external injuries were found on his body, while national broadcaster NHK said a will has not been found.The furor surrounding Nakagawa's resignation was a major embarrassment to ex-Prime Minister Taro Aso, whose Liberal Democratic Party
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LATICONOMICS (Free subscription) | 29/09/2009
Japan's feeble opposition Fixed on the past Japan's once-formidable Liberal Democrats pick yet another uninspiring leader ANYONE hoping for a new era of vigorous two-party politics in Japan will be disappointed by the choice of Sadakazu Tanigaki to head the vanquished Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). If anything, the 64-year-old former finance minister is even more mild-mannered than Yukio Hatoyama,...
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Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog (Free subscription) | 24/09/2009
Akihiro Sawa of the 21st Century Public Policy Institute , a think tank in Japan, has written an interesting paper on the new Japanese government's (the DPJ) proposed climate policies. The paper also has some interestingt views on how the United States is viewed in Japan. The paper has just been translated into English as is available here in PDF . Here is what Prof. Sawa says about Japan's policy,...
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