Word: kaifu
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What a difference a year makes. In March 1990 Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu came away all aglow from a meeting with President Bush in California. The two leaders claimed to have forged the basis for a new "global partnership," and Japan seemed ready to play a role in world politics corresponding to its ever expanding economic power. Kaifu affirmed his commitment: "I am determined that Japan must be one of the countries to bear the responsibility for maintaining and strengthening international order...
...conflicting demands that have swept the country since the gulf crisis began. Japanese leaders have been torn between a constitutional ban against military action and allied insistence that the economic superpower contribute massive financial support, if not troops, to the war effort. Under these pressures, | Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu has pledged a total of $13 billion to the U.S.-led allied campaign...
Japanese Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu evidently believes in the concept of self-sacrifice. While briefing his Cabinet on how Japan would pay for its $9 billion contribution to the allied war effort, Kaifu outlined a list of revenue sources, including temporary taxes and budget cuts. Then Kaifu asked, in truly democratic fashion, for a show of hands in support of a 10% across- the-board pay cut for all Cabinet members. Up went every hand in the room. "In a situation like that," said a minister who was part of the unanimous vote, "you can't do anything...
Iraq's invasion of Kuwait last August knocked this comfortable quietism sideways. Kohl and Kaifu struggled to live up to allied expectations, but each soon found himself in a political minefield. Kohl had to back off from a suggestion that German soldiers might legally go to the gulf. Kaifu proposed to dispatch troops to noncombat support roles well behind the lines; Japan erupted like a reactivated Mount Fuji...
...Kaifu's proposal, the Japanese decided, went beyond all bounds of the taboo on military missions abroad, and the proposal was stillborn. His new idea, of rescuing refugees with C-130s, may also get shot down -- though he insists that he is legally free to send them without Diet approval...