The posters are beginning to appear on the city walls and the various parties are accelerating their preparations. The Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly elections are now only three months away, and analysts are wondering just how dominant Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike will become when the contest has concluded.
The unique history of the Izu Gakushu Kaikan
Host Michael Penn interviews Rob Fahey about the prospects for and the challenges ahead of the Japanese opposition parties, led by the Democratic Party.
The ruling party makes belated and unconvincing efforts to legislate against the rise of hate speech.
On July 1, a protest was held near the Diet Building that was jointly organized by the All-Japan League of Student Self-Government (Zengakuren) and the National Coordinating Center of Labor Unions, two organizations of the radical labor movement in Japan.
The issue of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s fringe views on wartime history has become a global topic whenever contemporary Japanese diplomacy is discussed, but the problem of selective, self-serving narratives of the past has also infected his coalition partner, Komeito.
Since Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took to power for the second time in December 2012, many of his bills have been met by skepticism from politicians and the public alike. One of Prime Minister Abe’s least controversial reforms, however, is the plan to lower the legal voting age from 20 to 18 years.
Today Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will form his third cabinet since his December 2012 return to power. It will look an awful lot like the second cabinet, the only difference being that underperforming Defense Minister Akinori Eto will be dropped in favor of veteran hand Gen Nakatani.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s rather bizarre decision to call an early general election at a juncture that is distinctly unfavorable to his personal interests has set analysts ablaze, wondering how many seats the LDP-Komeito coalition can lose before Abe’s gambit would be judged a political failure.
