Word: koizumi
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...that sponsors trips to the world's trouble spots, hoping to promote grassroots exchanges. The trip offered the largest contingent of Japanese to visit North Korea in modern times a rare glimpse of the cloistered Stalinist state. It also afforded ordinary Japanese citizens an opportunity to experience what Junichiro Koizumi, their Prime Minister, will undoubtedly face when he makes his highly publicized pilgrimage to North Korea on Sept. 17: myriad and pointed reminders from North Korean officials of Japan's wartime atrocities and the need to pay war reparations...
...much of his legitimacy from his role in the guerrilla struggle against Japanese colonial rule, so these are the kinds of stories North Koreans grow up with. They help to explain why Pyongyang will demand billions in reparations as part of any normalization of relations with Japan?and why Koizumi is likely to exit North Korea with little to show for the visit unless he signals Tokyo's willingness...
...football. Each time Lucy persuades Charlie Brown that she won't yank the ball away as he runs to kick it, but at the last minute she always does. Gullible Charlie once again falls in the mud. It's much the same with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who plays Lucy to the beleaguered country's Charlie Brown. Koizumi convinced everyone during his election campaign in April 2001 that he would embark on drastic reforms "with no sacred cows." But his reforms are now mired in compromise and dealmaking, and the old bureaucracies remain firmly in charge...
...observes Kitagawa, "but in the case of Chiba's Akiko Domoto, Nagano's Yasuo Tanaka, and myself as well, 'weirdos' became governor." Asano and Domoto both refused all party endorsements, yet won handily. Staying unattached and "weird" means freedom from the smoky backroom culture that is smothering Koizumi. Governor Asano wrote to candidate Domoto, "Please don't think of nonaffiliation as a means to gain advantage in the election. It's not a means; it's a policy...
...Liberal Democratic Party, the first in decades, was short-lived. Within nine months, Hosokawa was out and party stalwarts ruled as before. This time, however, the outspoken governors and their grassroots electorates?who are now rising in open rebellion against central authority?appear to be something truly new. While Koizumi and Tokyo's power brokers are sidelined, it is maverick local leaders who are running up to the ball. Let's just hope the ball is still there when they...