Word: ldp
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...overhauling the judicial system. He wants to eradicate bad bank debts in under three years and create 5 million jobs in five years. Some economists accuse him being vague on specifics but credit him for having the right ideas. His fiercest opposition comes from within his own party. LDP bureaucrats fear losing access to government funds from which they've long doled out political patronage. Koizumi needs a big election victory to quiet his critics...
...prefecture's gubernatorial election, the newspaper diarist and award-winning novelist announced he was taking on the hand-picked successor of the Liberal Democratic Party stalwart who had held the office captive for two decades. He ran a campaign of outrage against waste, fraud, the status quo, and the ldp's fruitless effort to end Japan's 10-year-long economic slump. The message was just right, and if nothing else, serial playboy Tanaka wasn't a bore. He won easily...
...public is still going well: housewives continue to adore him and young people think his brashness is kakkoii, or cool. His guri-guri-ing of the political establishment, however, is proving to be a more strenuous task than an assignation with Mrs. U at the Hyatt. The ldp hacks in Nagano have overruled his plan to stop dam construction and rammed through their own budget. (Even though Tanaka is Governor, they still hold the majority power in the prefectural legislature.) That's a lesson Prime Minister Koizumi in Tokyo might learn when his honeymoon ends. Promising change in Japan...
...simply saying outrageous things. This career puts him in a newly popular club of politicians with a single platform: to rock Japan's long-coddled boat. Koizumi and his feisty Foreign Minister, Makiko Tanaka (no relation to the Nagano Governor), are the most visible examples from within the ldp. But outsiders are making inroads too. In March, an independent woman defeated candidates representing Japan's two major parties to become Governor of Chiba prefecture. Last fall, in a special election to fill a seat in the Lower House of the Diet, Japan's parliament, outsider Etsuko Kawada defeated the major...
...There is a lot of talk about destroying things in Japan these days. The ldp. The bureaucracy. The outdated banking system. So Tanaka's experience in Nagano is an instructive parable for the rest of Japan, and in particular, for rebel Prime Minister Koizumi. Can Tanaka show the way in Nagano? Or will he prove to be a flash in the pan, a trifling, inconsequential political buffoon? Sure, he is clever enough to feed the public what it wants to hear. In Nagano, they'd had their fill of pricey public-works projects, so they applauded Tanaka's decision...