Visible Minorities: Yoshiro Mori’s Overdue Comeuppance
Former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori represents the worst of Japan’s politics, melding misogyny with racism.
Former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori represents the worst of Japan’s politics, melding misogyny with racism.
A roundup of the most significant news stories from Japan reported in the last half of September 2020.
A roundup of the most significant news stories from Japan reported in the last half of April 2020.
A roundup of the most significant news stories from Japan reported in the last half of March 2020.
A roundup of the most significant news stories from Japan reported in the last half of October 2019.
A roundup of the most significant news stories from Japan reported on April 22, 2019.
A roundup of the most significant news stories from Japan reported on April 3, 2018.
In advance of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s decision on July 17 to take the 2020 Olympics national stadium construction plans back to a “zero base,” matters had been creeping along quietly and largely outside of public notice. It is therefore of considerable value to look back at the development of this slow-burning scandal so as to understand how the situation arrived at the point where it stands now.
Female executives and government ministers in Japan probably always have a higher bar to cross to really be accepted in their positions. When she was Japan’s first foreign minister, the volatile and sharp-tongued Makiko Tanaka faced unprecedented open defiance from top bureaucrat Yoshiji Nogami. And if that seemed peculiar to the case of the changeable Tanaka, not many years later a quite similar thing happened to the first, and so far only, female defense minister, Yuriko Koike.