Word: okada
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...JAPAN: Katsuya Okada emerges as the man Koizumi needs to watch...
...Okada-a former bureaucrat and five-term Diet member-stepped into his new role with unexpected brio. He quickly brought his party back on message and waged a confident campaign. Capitalizing on an unexpected drop in Koizumi's popularity, Okada stoked the fires of outrage over the Prime Minister's two biggest recent missteps: his perceived mishandling of a major pension-reform bill, and his unpopular decision to keep troops in Iraq beyond Japan's original commitment date...
...With 80% of the contested seats going to two parties for the first time in 33 years, the DPJ's gains have revived talk that after several misstarts, an era of true multiparty politics is at hand in Japan-and Okada is the country's new political It Boy. In an interview with TIME two days after the election, a beaming Okada said, "I think the public is beginning to be comfortable with the idea of a two-party system." But in a wide-ranging conversation on topics such as North Korea, the U.S.-Japan security alliance, and relations with...
...Okada has a difficult task ahead of him. Many critics say the DPJ has not distinguished itself from the LDP on many key issues. And they say that the DPJ, an alliance of several previously feuding parties, is divided by ideological differences and factional infighting and could break apart as easily as it came together...
...others increasingly believe that Okada-the scion of a Japanese retailing dynasty and a Harvard graduate-is the party's best long-term hope of presenting a unified front against the LDP. His reputation as a serious policy wonk-particularly on Japan's hot-button pension-reform issue-and his history as a committed consensus-builder, they say, have made him a potent contrast to Koizumi, whom voters have begun to think of as imperious and impulsive. "Okada is a leader for the times," says Etsushi Tanifuji, a political-science professor at Waseda University in Tokyo. "After 9/11, politics...