Word: koizumi
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Japanese political life is usually as exciting as a Noh play. But the events leading up to September's Diet election had all the thrills of a sumo smackdown. In August, the Diet had voted down one of the most cherished reform projects of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi?a plan to privatize the government postal system, which, among other things, is the world's largest savings bank. Koizumi then made good on a threat many had considered a bluff. He dissolved the Diet's lower house and called a snap election, positioning the vote as a referendum on whether...
...Seeking revenge like so many warlords of Japanese myth and history, Koizumi reserved particular wrath for the 37 lawmakers from his own Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) who had opposed the postal-system bill. He ordered LDP headquarters to withdraw support from those rebels running in the election and personally dispatched a coterie of handpicked, telegenic lieutenants?many of them women, and collectively nicknamed "the assassins" by the media?to take on the rebels. The Japanese media may have derisively coined such stunts Koizumi gekijo (Koizumi theater), but the electorate, usually apathetic, was enthralled. By casting the whole election...
...surprising that this nationalist animosity reaches the highest levels of government. The Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao, recently created shockwaves by saying he would refuse to meet with Japan's prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, at a ground-breaking summit of East Asian nations that begins Monday. Reasons include rising Japanese nationalism and a recent visit by the Japanese Premier to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, which commemorates Japan's war dead, including some war criminals from the time of Japan's invasion of China in the 1930s. But underneath that diplomatic spat over history is a struggle for power and influence...
President Bush had a tough message to deliver on the first working day of a weeklong swing through Asia, but first he had some fun. The President eschewed the high-priced bric-a-brac that usually passes for host gifts between world leaders, and startled Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on Wednesday by cruising up to the bamboo-fenced Kyoto State Guest House on a Segway-the two-wheeled upright self-propelled scooter of the future that is a popular rental for tourists. Witnesses said Koizumi looked taken aback, but accepted Bush's suggestion that he go for a spin...
...Koizumi is still basking in his party's landslide election victory last September, and he is one of Bush's few solid-gold allies. So the overnight stay in the former imperial capital of Kyoto-one of the few cities left where geishas, ancient temples and rickshaws abound-was a way for Bush to draft off of Koizumi's triumph. It was also an opportunity to touch down on friendly turf before plunging into the chaos of an international economic summit in Busan, South Korea, a honeymooners' paradise now on lockdown by police massing on every downtown corner with riot...