Word: hirasawa
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...This much is known about Abe. He is a born conservative?literally. As the grandson of Nobusuke Kishi and the grandnephew of Eisaku Sato?two of postwar Japan's most powerful and conservative Prime Ministers?Abe always knew which side he was on. Katsuei Hirasawa, now an LDP Diet member, tutored a young Abe for two years, and he recalls taking the primary-school student to his dorm at the University of Tokyo, at the heart of Japan's 1960s political tumult. "He would be right in the middle of pacifist, anti-Sato protests," Hirasawa recalls. "He wasn't angry...
...angry protests in 1960, for tying the Japanese military closer to that of the U.S. That's work that Abe, who has made the Japan-U.S. alliance the cornerstone of his foreign policy, will carry on. "Abe's beliefs and values are similar to Kishi's," says Hirasawa. "He's inherited his grandfather's political DNA." But Abe is operating in an environment where the political opposition to his views has greatly diminished. "The fact that the left has fallen out of Japanese politics is important," says Calder. "Inside the LDP the balance of power is moving...
...This is not news to Katsuei Hirasawa, an outspoken LDP Diet member from western Tokyo's 17th ward. He says many LDP members are as uncomfortable as he is about being associated with a party that has such explicit religious ties, but few speak out. "They keep their silence because they need the New Komeito," he says. The New Komeito, for its part, is in a position to speak loudly?and it will certainly be heard...
Without a clear kingmaker, the offstage plots, subplots and counterplots are so intricate that no one can be sure who's on top. Or even that some new actor isn't ready to steal the spotlight. "Anybody could be chosen," concludes LDP Diet member Katsuei Hirasawa. For example, Junichiro Koizumi, head of the Mori faction and radical reformer, could jump in once his boss fizzles out. Or Chikage Ogi, a former actress who is now head of the New Conservative Party, could emerge as a candidate...