Word: ldp
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...Korea's nuclear shocker posed a difficult trial by fire. But Abe?at 52, Japan's youngest postwar Prime Minister?has aced his debut on the world stage, showing decisiveness and deft diplomacy that have heartened his supporters and confounded his critics. Not only has the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) leader demonstrated his willingness to play hardball with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, he has also displayed a conciliatory side during fence-mending visits to China and South Korea aimed at easing strained relations between Japan and its neighbors. Abe's approval ratings hover at 70%. "I think...
...TIME's cover asked, "Who is Shinzo Abe?" [Sept. 18]. The answer was beside the point, for all the difference that would make. Since Japan's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is an unopposable force, the prime ministerial race was virtually uncontested. After perusing a menu of populist issues, Abe championed the Japanese abductees of North Korea very late in the day. The LDP has chosen to turn a blind eye to so many other problems that nobody could pretend that he and his fellow parliamentarians are not completely calculating in what causes they address. If that were not so, real...
...Inevitably, Abe will be compared with his predecessor. Koizumi was happy to smash the old, sclerotic power structure of the LDP and appeal directly to the public. Abe seems more bound to his party; he is not the natural loner that Koizumi was. That makes him well-liked?even Morita calls him "a very kind, gentle young man." But it may also make him less willing to challenge the party, which Koizumi argued is an obstacle to reform. "He's very uncertain politically," says Iio. "He's not as confident in himself as Koizumi...
...Soon, Abe will need to find some steel. The opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) is now led by Ichiro Ozawa, an ex-LDP leader and veteran of the long campaign to shake up Japanese politics. There will be elections for the Diet's upper house next summer, and Ozawa has few equals as a campaigner. He has been courting politicians in the countryside, where the LDP's stranglehold on power has been eroded by Koizumi's reforms. "We have a great chance to challenge the LDP, especially in the rural areas," says Takeaki Matsumoto, the DPJ's policy chair...
...Even if next year's elections go well, Abe will still, to an extent, be surveying a landscape not of his making. The fractured LDP, the half-finished economic reforms, the deep divisions over Yasukuni, the uncertainty over the military's role?all these flow from the Koizumi years. But there is a role to play for the person who makes sense of what a predecessor started. Junji Higashi, a legislator with the New Komeito party who is close to Koizumi, says the outgoing Prime Minister loves to compare himself to Nobunaga Oda, the revolutionary warlord who all but conquered...