Word: koizumis
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Then came Kim's strange confessional meeting with Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in September. Although U.S. envoys by then had briefed Koizumi on the CIA discovery, it's unclear how hard he pressed Kim on the issue. The Korean leader one-upped his counterpart by apologizing for kidnapping 13 Japanese citizens decades ago to train North Korean spies. He perhaps hoped the startling act of contrition would open the way to more aid from Japan. Koizumi said last week he would keep working to normalize relations...
Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is used to making other politicians unhappy. But even he seemed shaken when his longtime supporter Mikio Aoki took the floor of the Diet last Tuesday and added his voice to the growing dissension over the Prime Minister's latest round of banking reform proposals. In a withering attack, he accused Koizumi's new finance chief Heizo Takenaka of being a loose cannon, an unelected and unaccountable radical operating outside the system. And he finished with a direct salvo against the man he used to defend, telling Koizumi, "What is lacking most is leadership...
...That was just the opening act of a contentious political drama still playing out on the floor of the Diet, one that may prove the most important showdown of Koizumi's career. The fate of Takenaka and his banking plans has become a critical test of the underwhelming Koizumi era. If Koizumi enacts the package without sacrificing all of its major planks, the path toward sweeping economic reform may have finally begun. If, however, the formidable phalanx of Koizumi's opponents blocks the proposals?or waters them down to the point of irrelevance?then the Prime Minister's credibility...
...Koizumi swept into office in April 2001 amid a wave of popular optimism. Eighteen months later, none of his mighty promises?such as privatizing bloated state-run companies and slashing wasteful public works projects?have come to pass. Relentless political opposition is partly to blame, as is capricious support from erstwhile allies in his own camp, who can't seem to decide if they need him more than he needs them or vice versa. In the meantime, nonperforming loans at the nation's banks have ballooned to between $420 billion and $1.05 trillion, the stock market flirts with 20-year...
...Though still extremely popular with the public?his approval rating hit 64% in early October?Koizumi's failure to follow through on his platform has left the silver-maned politician with a reputation for being all charisma, no clout. "He's always been a reformer at heart, but he wasted a lot of political capital by taking on secondary issues," says Steve Vogel, a professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley. That's why Koizumi's appointment of Takenaka last month to head the financial services agency surprised many, who took it as a demonstration of renewed...