Word: nagano
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...into a peculiarly Japanese breed of writer-pundit-celebrity famous for 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...
...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 The outdated banking system.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...
...genius at getting attention," says Takao Toshikawa, editor of a political newsletter. "But the attention on himself is all he cares about." Minoru Chino, president of a Nagano bank and a Tanaka campaign booster, recently told a national news magazine: "I've got the impression Tanaka is now becoming the Emperor who has no clothes." Even some loyalists are turning heel. "Governor Tanaka is like Mount Fuji," says Yoshitaka Sugihara, an aide who recently quit. "If you see it from a long distance it's very beautiful, but once you climb it, there are lots of rocks and rubbish...
...Takato, a town in the Japan Alps of 7,300, to see him. "They say I'm a dictator," he said, drawing laughter and applause from the adoring crowd, which listened for three hours as he railed against the prefectural legislators, the $13 million of debt the Nagano government has piled up, the dam projects and his attempts to hire more teachers and provide more services for the handicapped. Then he told a story about a bakery run by mentally disabled entrepreneurs. The story provoked tears?though a whole lot were from Tanaka himself...
...Tanaka loses the battle over the dams and the budget, but he wins the p.r. war for the hearts and minds of the people. Tanaka figured out his first week in office how to turn an insult to his advantage. During one of his first meetings with bureaucrats in Nagano, an official took Tanaka's name card, and folded it with a sharp crease. In Japan, that's a way of reminding yourself to toss the card in the trash when you get home?an open gesture of disrespect. Tanaka now carries a fat wad of business cards with...