Shortly after the election of Hatoyama Yukio as Prime Minister in August of last year, I reported here on the rise of obscure comedian Hatoyama Kuruo, who had a striking resemblance to the Prime Minister. After 17 years in the wilderness, he gained some popularity after being encouraged by Beat Takeshi to put on [...]

Masuzoe Yoichi spoke at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan yesterday, where he again highlighted the LDP’s need for reform. With the DPJ government’s approval ratings falling with every passing month, the LDP should theoretically be well placed to perform well at the Upper House elections scheduled for later this year. But they have [...]

Michael Cucek at his Shisaku blog had a great post a few days ago about how “Media Shifts Make Japan a Harder Read”. He cites some anecdotes from his own consumption of the media in recent times, and discusses some of the biases that exist in the various media organizations in Japan, and [...]

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 – [...]

The government is deep in debate over when (and not if) to introduce the so-called ‘green tax’, aimed at reducing ‘greenhouse gas emissions’. But it seems clear that the debate is really about whether or not they will try to fool the public.

Early next year, a provisional tax surcharge (more wonderful political-speak) on gasoline and [...]

A new Yomiuri poll conducted over the weekend had support for the Hatoyama Cabinet down 4 points in the last month, to 59%. This is still a relatively high level of support for a Japanese Prime Minister and his Cabinet, but support has been falling steadily since the election a few [...]

An Asahi Shimbun poll released today showed that government support remains steady at around 62%, with voters generally happy with the efforts of the new government so far. Perhaps the most startling result of the November 14 and 15 poll was that only 16% of respondents said that the Cabinet should [...]

Kyodo news carried out a telephone poll of 1,025 registered voters over the weekend, and found that support for the Hatoyama Cabinet had fallen 10.2% since a similar poll a few weeks after the election. In spite of the fall, support is still relatively high, at 61.8%.

On a party basis, 43.2% of [...]

This is the final part of my discussion of Prime Minister Hatoyama’s speech to the Diet last week. In the final part of his speech, Hatoyama discussed Japan’s role in the international community, touching on each of the major issues facing Japan including those that he discussed at the United Nations recently. The main topics [...]

While the first two parts of Prime Minister Hatoyama’s speech (see Part 1 & Part 2) were mostly uplifting and aspirational, I found much of the more meaty areas of economics and foreign policy in his speech to be full of plattitudes and naive rhetoric. This article will focus on economics, and while Hatoyama named [...]