Word: abely
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...Still, Abe remains such an unknown quantity that others believe he may prove surprisingly pragmatic in his foreign policy. Last week he told reporters that Japan had "caused great sufferings and left scars on the peoples of many countries," and he has made clear his desire to resume high-level meetings with China and South Korea, most likely at the APEC summit in Hanoi this November. Most significantly, he has refused to say whether he'll go to Yasukuni as Prime Minister?unlike Koizumi, who made a campaign pledge to visit the shrine. For their part, the leaders in Beijing...
...Abe's stance on foreign affairs that is responsible for such heat as the LDP race has generated. But Japanese voters care more about their pocketbooks than they do about Yasukuni. The recovering economy is about to record its longest expansion of the postwar era, but poll after poll shows ordinary Japanese are concerned about a growing income disparity that threatens to divide the country into haves and have-nots. Abe's policies to address the issue are vague, amounting to little more than a plan to provide financial aid for failed entrepreneurs to start up new businesses, or help...
...essentials, he seems as committed as Koizumi to more economic reform. In one of the few meaningful sections of his campaign book, Towards a Beautiful Country, Abe emphasizes his belief in providing an equality of opportunity, not one of outcome. "A society with no income differential," he writes, "would have no vitality." Abe has little direct economic experience, but that may not matter, says Robert Feldman, Morgan Stanley's co-director for Japan research, if he builds a strong cabinet. "Will he do things the bureaucrats tell him, because he appoints ministers who are docile?" asks Feldman, who hopes Abe...
...Inevitably, Abe will be compared with his predecessor. Koizumi was happy to smash the old, sclerotic power structure of the LDP and appeal directly to the public. Abe seems more bound to his party; he is not the natural loner that Koizumi was. That makes him well-liked?even Morita calls him "a very kind, gentle young man." But it may also make him less willing to challenge the party, which Koizumi argued is an obstacle to reform. "He's very uncertain politically," says Iio. "He's not as confident in himself as Koizumi...
...Soon, Abe will need to find some steel. The opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) is now led by Ichiro Ozawa, an ex-LDP leader and veteran of the long campaign to shake up Japanese politics. There will be elections for the Diet's upper house next summer, and Ozawa has few equals as a campaigner. He has been courting politicians in the countryside, where the LDP's stranglehold on power has been eroded by Koizumi's reforms. "We have a great chance to challenge the LDP, especially in the rural areas," says Takeaki Matsumoto, the DPJ's policy chair...