Word: koizumis
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Just six months ago, it looked as if Japan's calcified political system had entered a new and enlightened age. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi was slowly dragging the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) into the future by racking up incremental but substantial reforms. Meanwhile, a merger between the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) and the Liberal Party last fall had created the nation's first credible opposition party of the postwar era. Led by veteran crusading outsider Naoto Kan, the new DPJ promised to enliven Japan's political stage. Vibrant and serious public debates about the nation's most pressing...
...RESIGNED. YASUO FUKUDA, 67, trusted adviser to Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and the government's top spokesman; from his position as Chief Cabinet Secretary after he admitted failing to pay his national pension premiums for 105 months from 1976 to 1995; in Tokyo. Fukuda's resignation came amid revelations that seven Cabinet members, and the head of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, have failed to meet their pension payments, despite a recent government campaign exhorting the public to do so. Announcing his resignation, Fukuda apologized for "intensifying people's distrust in politics...
...Tokyo, where thousands of antiwar demonstrators flooded onto the streets to amplify tearful pleas by the families of the three captives for immediate Japanese troop withdrawal. Just hours after news of the hostage crisis became public, the Japanese government vigorously rejected pulling out its soldiers. For Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, keeping the troops in Iraq is in part a matter of pride. The 550 members of the country's Ground Self-Defense Force in the southern Iraqi city of Samawah are the first Japanese soldiers to serve in a full-fledged combat zone since the end of World...
...Shunju ran an expos? of a bribery scandal that ultimately toppled Kakuei Tanaka, Makiko's father and one of the most influential Prime Ministers in Japanese history. And just two years ago, Shukan Bunshun's special report on alleged fraud by the then Foreign Minister Makiko drove PM Junichiro Koizumi to remove her. (A court threw out charges stemming from the story, which accused Makiko of pocketing her secretary's salary...
...premature end to Roh's political career. Meanwhile, South Korea's armed forces went on alert on the off chance that North Korea might try to exploit the political turmoil. The U.S. State Department would say only that it's watching developments "carefully," while Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi deflected questions from reporters by saying, "It's Korea's problem...