Koizumi and Miyazaki in FT’S 50 Faces that Shaped the Decade
The Financial Times have released a list of the 50 faces that they consider shaped the last decade. The list includes former prime minister Koizumi Junichiro and animated film maker Miyazaki Hayao. According to FT, the list tries to ‘capture individuals who have had a powerful impact on the world or their region – for good or bad – in four areas: politics, business, economics and culture.
The list also people like George W. Bush, Tony Blair, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, Osama Bin Ladin, Al Gore, Barack Obama, Warren Buffet, Steve Jobs, JK Rowling, Oprah Winfrey, and Tiger Woods, among many others.
About Koizumi, the Times said:
As Japan’s most charismatic prime minister for decades, Junichiro Koizumi gave a new lease of life to the long-ruling Liberal Democratic party by acting as a rebel determined to force it to embrace market liberalising reform. His drive to privatise the post office system won emphatic backing from voters in 2005, while his dispatch of troops to Iraq raised hopes in the US that Japan was becoming a more active security ally. But liberlisation lost steam after Mr. Koizumi chose to leave the political scene in 2006. This year, the LDP suffered crushing defeat at the hands of the Democratic party, which has called a halt to the postal reforms he championed.
Koizumi was Prime Minister of Japan from April 2001 to September 2006, a relatively long time considering the terms of many other recent prime ministers in Japan. Indeed, no other primse minister had served as long since 1972, nor has since… As the FT mentions, he championed the privatisation of the postal system for many years, and served as Minister of Post and Communication for a brief period from 1992. His term as prime minister was also marked by the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and in addition to sending troops to Iraq, the Koizumi government extended the role of the Self Defense Forces, which eventually led to the Defense Agency being upgraded to the Ministry of Defense shortly after his resignation. One of the features of the Koizumi years was the man’s personal popularity, and his ability to excite the public. This year, Koizumi joined the ranks of seiyu (voice actors), working on the movie Mega Monster Battle: Ultra Galaxy Legend the Movie, at the urging of his son – although it is unknown whether this swayed the FT to add him to the list…..
The Times said the following about Miyazaki:
Hayao Miyazaki has revolutionised animated filmmaking, creating works of a depth and poignancy that have transcended Japanese culture to win worldwide recognition. His Spirited Away, a film about pollution and moral bankruptcy set in a hot-spring run by spirits, won the Oscar for best animated feature in 2002. Foreign studios, including Pixar, have acknowledged their debt to his works. From his early My Neighbour Totoro, his films – beautifully drawn and revelling in exquisite detail – have championed children and castigated the destructive nature of adults. Ecstatic flight, whether on the back of a flying cat bus, a broomstick or a rigged-up contraption, is a recurring motif.
Miyazaki has been an icon in Japan for many years, and his movies generally open to massive acclaim and box office. He has created at least 10 major films, including My Neighbour Totoro, Kiki’s delivery Service, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea. His 2001 film, Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi), broke the box office records set by Titanic, going on to make about $300 million. It not only won an Academy Award, but also won the Picture of the Year at the Japanese Academy Awards (only the second animated feature to do so, after Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke in 1997). Miyazaki is famous for using a high degree of traditional animation, rather than computer animation. His movies feauture progressive liberal themes such as feminism, environmentalism, pacifism, and the absence of traditional ‘baddies’. He also commonly features children, innocense, and flight in his films.
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Tags: Koizumi Junichiro, Miyazaki Hayao
The conspiracies of destroying the public business by the market fundamentalism were now over. Japanese postal services were on the brink of bankrupcy after the privatizaiton but now saved. Government introduced new bill to freeze the sales of the share of the privatized Japan Post.
Koizumi-Takenaka policies chasing after the new liberalism almost destroyed the politico-economic structure but again Kamikaze blew and the miserable situation is going to be rectified. The disaster capitalism is now over.
Villains in the financial castles should give up the conspiracies.
I can’t say I agree with you at all there ‘Orwell’. It wasn’t the policies of Koizumi that destroyed anything, so much as it was his inability to effectively implement them and complete them that caused bigger problems. He promised to destroy the LDP structure and the bureaucracy, but he found that a much more difficult job than his short term in office could accomplish. He made a start, to be sure, but wasn’t able to see his goals to fruition. I don’t buy into this ‘capitalism is the problem’ rhetoric either. Capitalism, after all, by another name is simply freedom. I’m a big fan of that concept. Regulation is fine, but too much of it only serves to restrict freedom, and that never helped anyone. Heavy handed government control has never created as much growth and prosperity as the free market, and never will. The Koizumi administration were not the cause of the current problems. The seeds of these problems have been sown for many years. And to the extent that corporate interests are to blame, a great portion of that is due to their very close ties with government, and the regulations that have been implemented on their behalf by government over the years. It is not the free market that is to blame, but the lack of a truly free market that has caused so much of the imbalance…