Word: koizumi
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...about Abe, Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary, and the man who will almost certainly win the contest to become the president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) on Sept. 20?and therefore the next Prime Minister of Japan? Try both. Even more so than his popular boss Junichiro Koizumi, who steps down at the end of the month after more than five years in power, Abe is an unabashed conservative, eager to strengthen the U.S. alliance and promote a more assertive role for Japan abroad?despite the risk of further antagonizing neighbors like China and South Korea. At home...
...Kent Calder, director of the Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies at Johns Hopkins University. "But that will narrow over time." What's certain is that Abe's agenda will be as long as his track record is short: repairing relations with Japan's Asian neighbors, continuing Koizumi's uneven economic reforms, fending off a resurgent political opposition. To succeed, Abe must be as strong as his supporters hope and his critics fear, but use a lighter touch than his predecessor. "Koizumi destroyed the LDP, but he hasn't rebuilt it," says former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone...
...Kiko, the second princess, had produced only daughters as well, and the Japanese royal family seemed in real danger of dying out. With that in mind, last November Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi backed an initiative that would change Japanese law to allow a female - 4-year-old Princess Aiko - to become Empress. Most Japanese were in favor of the new law, thinking that the time had come when a woman could sit on the throne. (In fact, Japan has had several reigning empresses in the past, though none were allowed to pass the throne onto their children.) But the imperial...
...their side. With both princesses pushing middle age, where was a new prince going to come from? But then, as the debate heated up, the IHA made the surprise announcement iin February that 39-year-old Kiko was pregnant and was due to give birth in September, just when Koizumi was scheduled to step down. "I feel God really exists," said the conservative former justice minister Hiroshi Nakai on hearing the news. Though the Internet burned with speculation over the suspicious timing of Kiko's pregnancy, the news immediately put Koizumi's initiative on the back burner. Now, with...
...revise the country's pacifist constitution to allow Japan's self-defense forces greater participation in allied military operations?a signal that he's eager for Japan to become a more assertive player on the world stage. If so, Beijing and Seoul may have second thoughts about celebrating Koizumi's departure...