This Week in Japan is your source for news and information about politics and other happenings in this East Asian island country. This episode covers the Top Five stories of the second week of September 2017.
The hope that Renho had inspired was all-too-quickly dashed by a do-nothing record of leadership.
Another prominent Democratic Party conservative offered a resignation today, and defections are ongoing among Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly members. In the near term, these are heavy blows to the party leadership of President Renho and Secretary-General Yoshihiko Noda which might bring them down in the late summer months.
While it is still not formally a political party, Governor Yuriko Koike’s “Tokyoites First” is gaining more definition and shape as it rapidly heads toward what is widely expected to be a command performance in the July 2 Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly elections.
One of the most prominent conservative lawmakers resigns from the leading opposition Democratic Party. He likely won’t be the last.
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.
Good news for the Tokyo governor in her struggle against the local chapter of the ruling party
There’s one thing that all of Japan’s significant, existing opposition parties seem to agree upon; and that’s that none of them have any hope of overthrowing Liberal Democratic Party rule on their own in the presumed double elections of July 2016. They must combine their forces in some new manner in order to present a credible alternative that people might actually vote for.
The comedy of errors that is today’s Democratic Party of Japan never fails to – or rather always does – disappoint. Even as we are entering the official campaigning period ahead of the House of Councillors elections that may quite possibly be the last national elections for the next three years, the DPJ demonstrates once again that if by some miracle they were to suddenly return to power, they would be no more united nor coherent than they were the first time around.
The fact that the Liberal Democratic Party avenged its defeat of four years ago and recaptured power in the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly was virtually a given in light of the Abe administration’s sky-high popularity and general momentum in the first half of 2013. But there were some notable subplots that revealed truths about the opposition parties, giving us a window into what to expect in next month’s House of Councillors elections.
