Word: koizumis
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...ended 56 years ago, and?despite its continuing cultural resonance?it's fair to wonder how much longer its shadow will shape our world. Already, the grip is loosening. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi seems more prepared than any of his recent predecessors to assert Japan's national interests; if, as planned, he visits the Yasukuni shrine, a memorial to Japanese war dead, he would be the first Premier to do so in an official capacity. Gerhard SchrOder's government is explicitly committed to the idea that Germany can and should be a "normal" country, not one whose every move...
...Last August a 15-year-old newspaper delivery boy stabbed six sleeping neighbors, killing three of them. Last December a 17-year-old boy went berserk in Tokyo's Shibuya district, assaulting seven strangers with a baseball bat. "These children are at their cutest, sweetest age," Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said after Friday's massacre. "How can we deal with the fact that our safe society is beginning to collapse...
...administration. The Prime Minister who seems energetic and bright may be just a prop for the conservatives in his party. The latest Japanese government has its share of opacity too. It arrived in office four weeks ago to the highest hopes of any government in the past decade. Koizumi is a charismatic reformer who speaks his mind and has a plastic, Clintonian charm. His arrival represented a victory over the old-line politicos who have run Japan for decades. And in an early sign of his thinking, he has turned over economic-policy management not to the Ministry of Finance...
...three years, but we need to accelerate." The reason for the haste is simple: the reforms are likely to cause unemployment. That puts the reform package into a race with electoral confidence. If voters get fed up before the reforms have time to finish, they may throw Koizumi and Takenaka...
...enough. If reform is really going to work, Takenaka and his planners need to build out Japan's social safety net, providing economic padding--and a political bulwark--for the inevitable layoffs and business collapses. Koizumi and Takenaka also need to go into sales mode, a Japanese version of the Bush road show on taxes. And, on a technical note, Japan needs to let its currency slide. A weaker yen--say, 135 to the dollar--would strengthen corporate profits. The danger is that a sliding yen could set off a round of devaluations, as neighboring economies rush to slash their...