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 […]
Japanese leadership, it’s often said, is a revolving door, one that spits out a new prime minsterevery 12 months or so. You know something’s wrong, though, when it’s spun so far around that it begins churning out yesterday’s castaways. Such is the case with Shinzo Abe, the man poised to replace Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, who will […]
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 […]
Yoshihiko Noda will doubtless win his party’s leadership race this week. There’s little certainty, though, that Japan’s prime minister is up to putting his country, the world’s No. 3 economy, on stronger footing. For starters, Noda’s victory may be Pyrrhic. He is under pressure to dissolve parliament and hold national elections, perhaps as soon as November. […]
looking beyond borders 