Shigeru Yoshida’s second premiership from 1948-1954 was one of the most transformative in Japanese history, taking the nation from its progressive, unstable early postwar era into a long period of entrenched conservative rule, ostensibly exercising independence but in reality functioning as a client state absorbed into the informal American empire.
English-speaking diplomat Kijuro Shidehara served as prime minister in 1945-1946, corresponding with the most progressive phase of a US military occupation which was initially guided by the principles of the New Deal and the American concern that Japan never again pose a military challenge to US hegemony in the Pacific.
It was exactly a month ago today that Shinzo Abe was assassinated in Nara by 41-year-old Tetsuya Yamagami. As the passions of that event begin to settle, this is an opportune occasion to reconsider both the benefits and the costs of an administration which lasted longer than any other in Japanese history.
When former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi formed a bond in the mid-1960s with Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon over their shared anti-communist views, little did he know that he was sowing the seeds that would eventually take the life of his beloved grandson, Shinzo Abe.
On June 15, Defense Minister Taro Kono announced a suspension of the deployment of the Aegis Ashore missile interception system—a suspension that ten days later became a cancellation. The progression from deciding to deploy Aegis Ashore, to cancelling it, to considering alternatives, reveals policy formation fraught with dysfunction.
A roundup of the most significant news stories from Japan reported in the last half of June 2020.
A roundup of the most significant news stories from Japan reported in the first half of May 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 first half of February 2020.
Whereas most Japanese political parties, whether the ruling conservatives or the mainstream opposition, effectively have little in the way of fixed party policies, the Japan Communist Party, the nation’s oldest political party, is very different, taking its own platforms very seriously.
