Word: obuchi
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...identified himself as a burakumin has ever risen as high in the political world as Nonaka, who was chief cabinet secretary under the late Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi. Before resigning in December, Nonaka served current Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori in the same job. Having distanced himself from the beleaguered Mori, who is expected to be replaced as chief of the ruling LDP?and thus, as Prime Minister?next month, Nonaka has positioned himself to replace his former boss. "I can't think of anyone else but Nonaka who can be the next Prime Minister," says political analyst Minoru Morita. Party...
...Tokyo, he enhanced his reputation as a calculating dealmaker. His critics describe him as Machiavellian, willing to break bread with anyone if it furthers his cause. In 1998, when Obuchi was having trouble holding together a fragile multi-party coalition, Nonaka approached an arch-enemy, Ichiro Ozawa, whose defection from the LDP in 1993 ushered the party out of power for the only time since its inception in 1955. Nonaka had called Ozawa a "devil" for that insult. But he went to Ozawa, hat in hand, and persuaded him to rejoin Obuchi's coalition. Once the relationship was cemented...
...short term after succeeding stroke-felled Keizo Obuchi, Mori has been a spectacularly tone-deaf politician even for Japan's doddering ruling elite. This is a man who decided to finish his round of golf after being told of the Greeneville sub disaster - and no one was particularly surprised. For the past decade, Japan's slow slide and slower internal response have been marginally better cause in the U.S. for schadenfreude than sympathy. But feeling superior is one thing; getting dragged into the tar pit of global depression by the industrialized world's most stubbornly ineffectual government is quite another...
...KEIZO OBUCHI July 30, 1998?April 4, 2000 Lowest approval rating: 21% Memorable achievement: Upon hearing of Japan's first fatal subway accident, proceeded to salon for emergency hair...
...mistake. Mori, a hulking ex-rugby player who shows evidence of having spent too much time at the bottom of scrums, has been a disaster since taking center stage. He has committed blunder after blunder, starting with his inability to perform the proper deep bow at Obuchi's funeral. Later Mori spoke favorably of Japan as a "divine nation," an unappreciated and embarrassing nod to the nation's militaristic past. And then there are those envelopes stuffed with 10,000-yen notes that keep turning up?or going missing. At the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for example, the travel office...