Yes, that’s right, the Japanese word for “two” is “ni.” Now you know what those annoying knights were saying in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Sadly, their next phrase, “Icky, Icky, Icky Icky Kapang Zoop-Boing!” is not Japanese. Sorry if I crushed a few dreams there. And if I got that second one wrong and you want to correct me, by all means leave a comment. Not to mention two entries in two days! Woah! All at the expense of my laundry (don’t worry, it’ll be fine). Moving on…
As you all know (or maybe not, depending on how new you are to this blog), Prime Minister Shinzo Abe resigned two weeks ago, and promptly entered the hospital to avoid media scrutiny. My Japanese Foreign Policy professor (who is American, interestingly enough–then again, I don’t want to think about Foreign Policy in Japanese) says this is a regular move for politicians who are about to get roasted by the media. In fact, the first day of class our room was locked because CJS students are on a slightly different schedule than the rest of Nanzan (it’s now PACKED here every day). He said “Alright, well we’re in a country without a leader, so for the first few weeks we’ll meet informally under bridges and trees, and hopefully by then we’ll have a new leader and we can have a room. Or, I can go get the key.” Yeah, I think Foreign Policy will actually be interesting and fun.
Anyway, Shinzo Abe resigned after a term that, quite frankly, was kicking his butt. Ministers resigned, ministers committed suicide, and Abe just didn’t have the experience or support to get what he wanted done. So pending a special session of the Diet (Parliament) in which he would be grilled for A) Calling a special session and B) Wanting to extend Japan’s naval support to U.S. operations in Afghanistan, which is a tricky thing to do considering that whole Article 9 business renouncing military action and nuclear weapons, etc. he resigned. Japan wasn’t without a leader (Abe was still the figurehead), but as Professor Potter said “You wouldn’t know the difference, and that’s the beauty of a Parliamentary system.”
SO: dou suru? (What do you do?)
Well, you have to elect a new party leader, because Abe, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party (Which by American standards is neither liberal–it’s conservative–nor particularly Democratic, because it’s been in power since the majority of the post-WWII period) is no longer around. This person will then become the de facto Prime Minister until the next general election must be held. So let’s meet the candidates!
First up is Yasuo Fukuda, who as Professor Potter put it, “looks like your uncle.” He’s 71 (!), and favors strong ties with Asia, particularly China, with whom Japan regularly fights. Remember what I said about history not going away, and that being a problem? Yeah, well a lot of Japan’s foreign policy time is spent fighting with its neighbors like Korea and China over small island territories, as well as that whole invading Nanjing, China and basically blowing it to hell thing (Google “Rape of Nanjing” if you need a refresher or introductory course on that). And then there’s the whole enslaving Korean women to work in sex parlors called “Comfort Stations” with “Comfort Women” working there. Japan doesn’t usually like to admit that. In fact, Junichiro Koizumi as well as Shinzo Abe often did things in a direct attempt to piss off China or Korea. Koizumi visited the Yasukuni Shrine, which is where the souls of Japan’s wartime criminals are enshrined. It also enshrines the war dead, meaning that people involved in the “Nanjing Incident,” as hardcore nationalists in Japan kindly refer to it, are enshrined there as well. It doesn’t make China warm and fuzzy inside when Japanese Prime Ministers visit it. Fukuda’s not like that. He wants to build a strong relationship with Japan’s neighbors, or at least not provoke any new conflicts. He “looks like your uncle, and that should tell you something about his governing style; when’s the last time your uncle tried to radically change Japanese foreign policy?” as Professor Potter (quite nicely) summed it up. He’s a moderate, and Koizumi and Abe were pretty hardcore nationalists who liked to piss off China and deny historical events. He’s pretty popular among the party members as a reaction to the incessant flag-waving that people are tired of with Abe and his ilk.
Next up is Taro Aso, whose upper lip looks a little bit like the creepy surgeon’s from that Twilight Zone episode “The Eye of the Beholder.” Tell me I’m wrong:
Aso sits squarely in the Koizumi/Abe nationalist camp, the really hardcore right-wingers, who love to piss off the rest of Asia and stick out their tongue to top it all off. Aso is popular with younger people for two reasons: 1) He reads manga, which are the Japanese equivalent of comic books in the States, and 2) The younger generation is beginning to wonder what they have to apologize for; to them WWII is ancient history, and they don’t understand what their grandparents may or may not have done (remember, the government will tell them nothing happened) let alone why it warrants an apology. It’s an interesting wrinkle in the political setup in Japan. In the States, I imagine most young people are looking for something other than the flag-waving right-wing set we’ve had for the past seven years, whereas in Japan most of the youth finds itself in that camp based on sheer reaction.
Well, the party elections were held last week, and Fukuda won by a fairly large margin. He’ll become the next PM, and people seem to think this will bring greater stability to Japan because Abe was so troublesome. It’s also making headlines in China, where they’re looking forward to a quieter time with friendlier ties to Japan. According to Professor Potter, it may be a quieter semester than it looked to be with Abe in charge, and maybe with Fukuda in office “We won’t have to hold class meetings under our chairs” like we would if Aso had won. With any luck, Fukuda won’t be as big a failure as Abe, who came out of hiding two days ago to hold a press conference. All the news shows were showing side-by-side shots of Abe at his last conference and then at his conference today…he looked like death. Pale, sometimes stumbling over sentences, etc. The media’s all over it. “He licked his lips 42 times! It’s a brain disorder!” one of the news shows said (Professor Potter translated that; my Japanese is NOT that good yet). At any rate, Japan has a leader once again, and it should be a nice, easy semester politically. Haha I can’t believe I just wrote that. This is Japan! Like anywhere else, I’m sure something will come up, and I’ll let you know about it when it happens (and not a week after the fact like I did this time–oops!)
Jaa, Mata!
Jeff
