Yomiuri reports that the prime minister's Advisory Group on Comprehensive Reform of the Public Service System, chaired by Okamura Tadashi of Toshiba, has issued its final report containing recommendations for reforming the Japanese bureaucracy.The report, available for download here, contains a number of good suggestions, in pursuit of seven goals: (1) outlining the appropriate role …
Month: January 2008
Dear Japanese MSM: Free your information!
I have to second W. David Marx's gripe at META no TAME about the lack of free access to the content of Japanese dailies. I would also add that the Japanese MSM should be embarrassed by the shallowness of their online archives and the skimpiness of their RSS feeds. (On this latter point Yomiuri should …
Discarding the old mantras
After winning the Florida Republican primary on Tuesday, Arizona Senator John McCain has more or less solidified his position as the likely Republican presidential candidate. Sankei's Komori Yoshihisa was quick to praise Senator McCain today for his unstinting support for the US-Japan alliance, pointing to lines from Senator McCain's essay in the November/December issue of …
In the Japan Times
The Japan Times has published an op-ed of mine on DPJ strategy.You can find it here.
The special tax war heats up
As noted by Jun Okumura, the Fukuda government has thrown down the gauntlet in the debate over the extension of the temporary gasoline tax. The LDP and Komeito agreed Monday to submit a bill to the HR Tuesday (and pass by Wednesday) that will extend the tax for two months, giving the government time to …
To a second-rate Japan
Continuing the theme of Japan's vanishing global presence discussed in this post (and this post by Gen Kanai last week), it's worth looking at what may be this year's hot foreign policy article-turned-book (cf. Paul Kennedy, Francis Fukuyama, Samuel Huntington, Robert Kagan), "Waving Goodbye to Hegemony" by Parag Khanna, a fellow at the New America …
The weakness of Fukuda’s (and Japan’s) carbon campaign
As the Fukuda government has insisted at every chance it has to remind Japanese citizens and foreign governments that the focus of this summer's G8 summit in Hokkaido will be climate change policy. Tokyo is eager to be at the forefront of the quest for a post-Kyoto climate change pact.This weekend Mr. Fukuda took this …
Continue reading The weakness of Fukuda’s (and Japan’s) carbon campaign
Recommended Book: The Coldest Winter, David Halberstam
As the six-party talks continue to dance around the question of the future of the Korean peninsula — and the major powers plan for the collapse of the DPRK — it is worthwhile to look back to the (unresolved) conflict that cemented the division of the peninsula and had untold consequences for US Asia policy.In …
Continue reading Recommended Book: The Coldest Winter, David Halberstam
The Machimura faction tries to untwist the Diet
The Machimura faction, which just gained a new member to solidify its position as the LDP's largest, has delivered a proposal to Prime Minister Fukuda that calls for the drafting of new rules for Diet management in light of the divided Diet. The proposal, according to Asahi, points to a "structural deficiency in the constitution," …
Continue reading The Machimura faction tries to untwist the Diet
The enduring weakness of the parties
Over at Shisaku, MTC writes about l'affaire Ōe — Ōe being Ōe Yasuhiro, one of the three DPJ HC members who attended the gathering of prefectural assembly members mentioned in this post.Kan Naoto has called for Mr. Ōe to resign his seat. That is unlikely to happen: MTC notes that since Mr. Ōe was elected …
Tobias S. Harris 