The Liberal Democratic Party, which was badly defeated in the Lower House election in August 2009 and had to give up power to the Democratic Party of Japan after ruling the nation almost without interruption since 1955, made a comeback in Sunday’s general election. Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the current LDP chief, will regain […]
A FORMER prime minister, who resigned in 2007 after a shambolic first year in office, and his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which two years later was hounded out of the governing role that it had taken as its birthright, are both headed for a remarkable return to power. In the hours after midnight it became […]
Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party is on the verge of reclaiming power in Japan, giving him seven months to convince voters he can revive the economy before another round of elections in July. The LDP is forecast to crush Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s Democratic Party of Japan in the Dec. 16 election for the lower […]
For Shinzo Abe, it isn’t enough to see Sony Corp. and Panasonic Corp., two icons of industrialJapan, reduced to junk-debt status. The man who probably will become prime minister next month might do the same for the yen. That is the upshot of his desire to browbeat the Bank of Japan into unlimited easing. Granted, his Liberal Democratic […]
Japan ruling party lawmaker Mieko Nakabayashi isn’t just worried that her Democratic Party will lose power in next month’s election; she fears a comeback by rival conservative Liberal Democrats will spell a return to the prolonged one-party rule that critics blame for many of the country’s past policy ills. Three years after the Democratic Party of […]
In 2006 Abe Shinzo, appointed again last week as leader of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Japan’s main opposition party, wrote; “It will not be a surprise if in another decade, Japan-India relations overtake Japan-U.S. and Japan-China ties.” Such a prediction now, as it was then, is improbable, but the prospect of Abe assuming Japan’s top office […]
ONCE again, the Japanese public must be wondering whether politics only serves to inflict cruel jokes upon them. On September 26th the opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) chose Shinzo Abe, a nationalist former prime minister, to lead it into the next general election, even though he quit as leader after just a year in 2007 […]
looking beyond borders 