OSAKA: Ever since the huge earthquake that hit Japan's Pacific coast at Tohoku on March 11, 2011, the country's mass media has obsessively focused on the magnitude of the physical damage and the loss of life. Repeated broadcasts of traumatic video (...)
OSAKA: Having seen a new prime minister every year for five consecutive years, Japan has just narrowly avoided having its third in 2010. Prime Minister Naoto Kan has been elected President of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), surviving a (...)
OSAKA: With the post-general election honeymoon over, the Japanese public has become increasingly aware that Ichiro Ozawa, Secretary-General of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), is the puppet-master behind Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's (...)
OSAKA: Yesterday's landslide general-election victory by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) terminated the one-party-dominated system that the catch-all Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has controlled almost without interruption since 1955. For most (...)
OSAKA: To lose one prime minister may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two in one year looks like carelessness. That paraphrase of Oscar Wilde aptly sums up the current state of Japanese politics, given the serial resignations of Prime Ministers (...)
Much has been made of the massive defeat Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Liberal Democratic Party suffered in the recent election to Japan's Upper House. But, as the smoke dissipates from that vote, it has become clear that the real victor is neither (...)