Thursday, January 17, 2008

Right-wing fantasies in Japan

Tobias Harris (Observing Japan) has written an interesting piece on the mindset of some of the "conservatives" in the LDP.

Based on his reading of an interview with three right-wing LDP members in the Japanese magazine Voice, he notes:
  • This group believes that there was nothing wrong with Abe and that his attempt to move the country much further to the right.*
  • Fukuda is making a big mistake by not pressing on with Abe's constitutional reforms.
  • And of course the Chinese influence on the US government.
There is much more to read here.

I don't know to what extent the Japanese public agrees or disagrees with Abe's and his fellow nutjobs' basic views. It seems more of a case of them finding those views to be at the bottom of their list of priorities. The test, in my opinion, is who is consistently elected and re-elected.

*The "right" or "conservatism" in Japan is much different than conservative politics in the US. Perhaps as different as the American left and Castro's "left," though I suppose in the polarized US political debate, the left would be more than happy to claim that both country's conservatives are the same.

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