Word: diets
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...issue of poverty and social disparity more seriously than Koizumi did, appointing a special minister to take charge of a program designed to help the unemployed and underemployed refine their job skills. "We're hardly disregarding people's kitchens," says Nobutaka Machimura, a former Foreign Minister and influential LDP Diet member. But when Abe's feel-good rhetoric clashes with the economic realities of Japan today, he can look disingenuous or simply ineffective. At the LDP convention in January, Abe declared that "economic growth is not for business enterprises, it is for the public," and later called on Keidanren, Japan...
...Certainly the Japanese people have every right to put their own stamp on a constitution that was, after all, effectively written for them by an occupying power. But revision, which requires a two-thirds majority in the Diet, will take years to accomplish. Expending that kind of energy on a constitutional issue while the opposition DPJ focuses on bread-and-butter economic matters doesn't make a lot of political sense in an election year. "What should politicians do now?" DPJ head Ichiro Ozawa asked in the Diet last month. "Amend the constitution or improve people's lives...
...nothing is done to alter the equation, a shrinking supply of workers will struggle to support a growing number of retirees, while Japan's national debt means the government may be unable to provide a strong safety net. "People have lost confidence in the pension system," says Diet member Kono, who connects this fear to depressed consumer spending...
...minister quickly apologized, but Abe's critics seized on the incident-and on Abe's refusal to fire Yanagisawa-as evidence that the administration can't handle the demographic issue. "The Health Ministry deals with grave fundamental social issues like the decreasing population," says Yoshiaki Takaki, the DPJ's Diet policy chief. "We cannot accept that it is headed by someone who has demonstrated a complete lack of respect for people...
...innovation. Abe clearly recognizes that this has to be a priority. In his campaign book, Towards a Beautiful Country, he writes that Japan should be "seen by people around the world as a place where they want to come and work." In a Jan. 26 policy speech to the Diet, Abe announced that by May he would lay out "Innovation 25," a blueprint for Japanese R&D through 2025. But he has yet to unveil the concrete details that turn intentions into policy. "These are good ideas," says Takenaka, the former Koizumi minister. "But how is his agenda actually going...