Japan is following the old Nissan ad---moving boldly forward into the future. Koizumi trashed a lot of the old-boy factions, the protectionism, the closed club of politics and business in Japan to some degree. Abe moved forward by ignoring the economy and allowing the old gummers to move back in: thus the return to cross-share holding of equity in Japanese companies and so on. He also decided that Japan did nothing really wrong in WW2 so he moved boldly into the future with hallucinations of a "beautiful country" based on revisionist/denial nonsense.
Will the next PM be the old school elitist (this alone would give Fujiwara Masahiko a boner) bigot Aso or the youthful 71-year old Yasuo Fukuda. As Japan's economy appears to be slowing and returning to the past, this old guy is sure to put things back on track. With either as PM, the old-boy club is sure to be gone as Japan rushes forward into the 1980s. Warning: sarcasm. (At least Fukuda appears not to be a member of the Yasukuni worshiper nutjob crowd.)
A Reuters article is at the NYT temporarily here.
Also see: The battle to become the next Prime Minister of Japan has narrowed into a confrontation between an unpredictable right-winger with a penchant for comic books and a colourless and austere moderate who admits the contest has left him “flustered”. From Times Online.
Friday, September 14, 2007
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