Word: koizumi
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...That question can be posed another way: Why on Earth does Koizumi stubbornly keep doing something so unpopular? He himself has never fully explained his motivations, except to say things such as: "I visit Yasukuni Shrine to pledge to the soldiers who were made to fight and to die that the future will hold no wars." Granted, Koizumi did make annual visits to the shrine a campaign promise in 2001, and some speculate that he fears the wrath of the Japan Association of War Bereaved Families if he stops. But Koizumi is a lame duck?he has repeatedly said...
...that end, Koizumi has developed a bolder, if not outright confrontational, position with his Asian neighbors. At the same time, he has made a strategic decision to tie his country more tightly than ever to the U.S. as a buffer against the seemingly inexorable rise of China. In February, the Japanese government joined the U.S. in declaring peace in the Taiwan Strait a "common strategic objective"?a move highly provocative to China that would have been unfathomable even five years ago. After a postelection cabinet reshuffle in November, Koizumi's newly appointed Foreign Affairs Minister, Taro Aso, said "Japan should...
...Yasukuni?not Japan's longstanding ties to the U.S.?that is straining relations within Asia to a breaking point. The leaders of South Korea and China refused to have formal bilateral meetings with Koizumi at December's East Asian summit in Kuala Lumpur. At the APEC summit in November, South Korea's President Roh Moo Hyun told Koizumi the visits to Yasukuni were "totally unacceptable." Tang Jiaxuan, a Chinese State Council member in charge of diplomacy, said that the issue has made Sino-Japanese relations "the most difficult" since the two nations normalized diplomatic ties in 1972. And Wang...
...just in China and South Korea that the visits are controversial. In June, five former Japanese Prime Ministers asked Koizumi to stop going to the shrine. Only the most conservative of Japan's five major newspapers have run editorials in favor of the visits. And there is evidence that Koizumi's stubbornness is now threatening to do irreparable harm to Japan's long-term interests. "Japan pays nearly 20% of the U.N.'s budget, which [it says] argues strongly for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council," says Jeff Kingston, a professor of Japanese history at Temple University...
...That confidence in his own judgment has made Koizumi a different kind of Japanese politician. With an unparalleled combination of charisma, media savvy, and the right message for an edgy population concerned about Japan's diminishing stature in the world, he has driven the political debate into uncharted territory. Something?or somebody?bold was needed to lift the Japanese economy out of its lost decade and recapture the spark that had once lit the most sustained economic miracle the modern world has seen. But Koizumi's legacy now hangs in the balance. If the same self-confidence, the same belief...