Mainichi has published an account of an interview with Alberto Fujimori, former president of Peru now under house arrest in Santiago, Chile and recently named to Kokumin Shinto's proportional representation list.In it, Fujimori promises to return to Peru, and notes that running for office in Japan does not mean the end of his political career …
Month: June 2007
Can anyone say straw man?
Komori Yoshihisa, defender of Japan's honor Sankei Shimbun's editor at large based in Washington, has "exposed" the alleged activities of Chinese-American groups in putting the screws on House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos (D-CA-12) and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA-8) to get them both to support rapid passage of the comfort women …
A cure for Japan’s fear of Democrats
While Asia has been largely absent from debates among Republican and Democratic candidates for their respective parties' presidential nominations — much to my chagrin — the Washington Post reports that John Hamre of CSIS organized a dinner for Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo to meet with the foreign policy advisers of a number of …
Learning to be self-reliant?
If I could draw, I would have drawn something exactly like this cartoon in today's Yomiuri:The caption on this cartoon reads, "Troubles at home, worries in America," Abe's dual American "worries" being the looming comfort women resolution and Christopher Hill's nuclear bargaining.It didn't need to be this way, did it? As I wrote last week, …
"No comment" — too little, too late?
The comfort women resolution has passed the House Committee on Foreign Affairs by a vote of 39 to 2. It now moves on to the full House, where Speaker Pelosi has suggested it will be considered in mid-July, conveniently before the Upper House elections.The Abe government's response: no comment. Adhering to the sensible position that …
Speaking of campaign advertisements…
The LDP has produced its campaign CM (easier than trying to say commercial, I guess).It is available here, at the LDP website.Abe Shinzo. Pomp and Circumstance. Economic growth.I really don't think further comment is necessary. At some point it just gets to be overkill.
For the DPJ, the worse the better
With the Upper House elections little over a month away and public outrage over the pensions scandal seemingly unassuaged, the DPJ has found another angle to emphasize the government's indifference to the plight of the average Japanese citizen.A comic strip, available online here, is being distributed to voters in a flier, the cover of which …
The Pyongyang visit
Peter Howard at Duck of Minerva greets Chris Hill's visit to Pyongyang with fairly effusive praise, arguing that the "reverse course" in North Korea policy undertaken by Hill with Condoleeza Rice's support has begun to yield some positive results. He points to the imminent closing of Yongbyon and the admission of IAEA inspectors as signs …
Is that a prediction or a threat?
For the second time in the past week, the Japanese media has noted concern that the comfort women resolution will worsen US-Japan relations.Last week, Kato Ryozo, Japan's ambassador to the US, warned, "This resolution, which is not grounded in objectivity, is not good for US-Japan relations."Now Mainichi reports that in New York on Monday, on …
Constitutions east and west
In his Sunday interview on NHK, Prime Minister Abe reiterated the importance of constitution revision as a point of contention in next month's Upper House election.Meanwhile, in Brussels this past weekend the European Union's member states concluded a treaty that wraps up the questions that were intended to be addressed by the nixed constitution. The …
Tobias S. Harris 