Word: ldp
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...election for the lower house of the Diet has to be called by Sept. 10, but the surmise in Tokyo is that it may come as early as May 24, which is, by coincidence, Ozawa's 67th birthday. If the DPJ does indeed supplant the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and form a government, the significance of its victory would be enormous. The LDP has held power continuously (save for a brief period in 1993) since the modern Japanese political system took root in 1955. And it would not just be any old opposition leader who would be taking over...
...needs fresh ideas. The global recession has hit Japan harder than any other developed nation. Exports are plummeting, Japan's economy is contracting at double-digit rates and the country's industrial giants are reeling. Rarely has "stay the course" seemed so grossly inadequate as a solution, yet the LDP seems unable to mount a credible recovery effort, and the public is fed up with the bumbling half measures of party hacks. (Read "Sony's Woes: Japan's Iconic Brands Under Fire...
...Ozawa said that he was "very surprised" by the arrest, and that the case involved merely "errors in the statement of political fundraising records" of the sort that in the past required only a "kind of correction." The investigation has since widened to include alleged donations from Nishimatsu to LDP politicians, but the main focus so far has been on the DPJ. Ozawa says he will not step down from the party chairmanship; nonetheless, a few days after the arrest was made public, three newspaper polls found a majority of respondents thinking that he should...
...view taken of his alleged role in the Nishimatsu scandal illuminates the paradox of Ozawa's place in Japanese politics. He is at one and the same time the single most radical critic of the Japanese postwar political establishment (it was his decision to bolt the LDP in 1993 that led to its only period out of office) and a supreme exemplar...
...traditional politician "focused on bringing home the bacon" to his constituency in Iwate prefecture in northeastern Honshu. His mentors include both Kakuei Tanaka, Prime Minister from 1972 to 1974, who treated Ozawa like a son and arranged his marriage, and Shin Kanemaru, who served as Deputy Prime Minister and LDP vice president. Both were legendary political fixers, as was Ozawa before he left the party; both were eventually mired in corruption scandals. When Japan was riding high in the 1980s, commentators liked to say that it had a "first-rate economy and third-rate politics." Like...