Word: japanized
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...relatively easy call for Abe, who has profited by using Pyongyang as a punching bag before. The Prime Minister might still be an ordinary Diet member if he hadn't raised his profile by becoming a vocal advocate for Japanese abducted by Pyongyang?an emotive issue in Japan after North Korea admitted to the kidnappings in 2002. Kim's bomb test was another political gift of sorts. "We are convinced that Kim could be a supporter of Abe," says a half-joking Tsuyoshi Yamaguchi, the shadow foreign minister for the opposition Democratic Party of Japan...
...three nations and the need to coordinate regional responses to future diplomatic crises. That Abe managed to schedule the meetings at all was an impressive achievement, requiring the blue-blooded conservative to dodge toward the ideological center. China and South Korea had cut off most high-level contacts with Japan to protest former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to the Yasukuni Shrine war memorial, which they view as a monument to Japanese imperialism. Abe was thought to be even more unrepentant than Koizumi on the issue. Yet he recently told the Diet that his government accepted previous official Japanese...
...cabinet with close associates, expanded the number of prime-ministerial advisers from two to five and began forming a Japanese equivalent of the U.S. National Security Council, reporting directly to the Prime Minister. The creation of Team Abe is an attempt to shift political power away from Kasumigaseki, where Japan's formidable bureaucrats toil. "There's always been a struggle between the LDP and the ministries," says Tomoaki Iwai, a professor of political science at Nihon University. "Abe came through with a White House-style system of strong leadership that Koizumi couldn't quite achieve...
...that will likely push foreign policy off the front pages long before next July's critical upper-house elections. Many analysts are doubtful, not least because Abe has yet to set out his domestic agenda. His maiden Diet speech contained a lot of rhetoric about the need to make Japan a "beautiful country" without mentioning specific, results-oriented policy initiatives that were a hallmark of Koizumi's administration. "He talks about economic revitalization and closing the gap between urban and rural regions, but he insists on cutting public spending," says Nihon University's Iwai. "There are certain inherent contradictions...
...Jong Il's track record, Abe can probably count on him to create trouble down the road, giving another boost to the Japanese leader's image as a "fighting politician," as his advisers put it. But Abe, like Koizumi, will ultimately be defined by how well he can manage Japan's recovering economy, solve the government's fiscal woes and ensure LDP dominance at the polls. Dealing with a nuclear crisis may be the easy part...