Word: kabuki
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...Mori started off the week in full-on kabuki mode, denying Monday that he'd told a weekend meeting of party elders that he'd resign. The denial, universally deemed mere lame-duck face-saving in advance of upcoming summits with George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin, tipped the Japanese markets over into panic mode and sent the Nikkei 500 plunging to lows not seen since 1985, the long-ago days when Japan was an economic juggernaut to be emulated...
...then there was hope, in the form of more kabuki: the lame-duck Mori urging his ministers to tackle the banking system's $600 billion bad-loan problem, and finance minister Kiichi Miyazawa promising fiscal guarantees for a bailout scheme that many wonder whether the government can afford. But the task forces are meeting and ministers are huddling, and in Japan, that constitutes dramatic action. In the financial markets there was hope that Mori's puppetmasters in the beleaguered Liberal Democratic Party might just be moved to vigor in the cause of self-preservation...
...attention now. This may be a little hard to follow. It might even sound like one of those confusing Kabuki plays?full of riddles, contradictions and vainglorious people doing despicable things behind decorative screens. But it's all about Japanese politics, which is arguably more important than Kabuki. Or maybe it's another form of Kabuki, with the actors in expensive Ginza-tailored gray and black suits instead of ornately stitched kimonos. And in lieu of the requisite, delicately painted hand fan, the preferred politico prop would be an envelope stuffed with cash...
...close attention to the chatter in the alleys off Showa road in Ginza, where the pols pay $650 a head for dinner (drinks are extra) at places like Kiccho, Mori's favorite, you'll discover just how much like Kabuki Japanese politics is these days. Word is that no senior LDP leader?not Aoki, not Nonaka, not Koizumi?wants to become Prime Minister just now. Forget about the jostling that appears to be going on. Sure, the party wants Mori out because he is such an embarrassment. But there is an election for the Upper House of the Diet scheduled...
...deposed. And a successor will be selected. But as usual the work will have been done in private, at expensive restaurants?behind those decorative screens. Says Kenji Gato, a senior political reporter in Tokyo: "When the curtain is raised on the LDP meeting, the play ends." That's not Kabuki we're talking about, but Japanese politics...