Word: koizumi
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...over trade, but in the past decade the two nations seemed to become closer than ever. Japan backed America's antiterror campaign, for example, by marshaling refueling missions in the Indian Ocean to support U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Japan was looking more American at home as well. Under Junichiro Koizumi, Prime Minister from 2001 to 2006, the government adopted several free-market reforms to try to restore growth to the perpetually sluggish economy...
...Hatoyama has thrown those policies in reverse. Critical of what he has called U.S.-led "market fundamentalism," Hatoyama has rejected Koizumi's now unpopular market reforms and is steering the economy toward something akin to a European-style welfare state with a wider government-funded social safety net. Though Hatoyama has continued to stress the crucial nature of the U.S.-Japan alliance and his friendly relationship with President Barack Obama - "We have come to call each other Barack and Yukio," he said during Obama's November visit to Tokyo - he has also backed away from policies that Washington views...
...control a three-party ruling coalition that is a grab bag of politicians with contradictory ideologies, from relative conservatives to outright socialists. Open disagreements have broken out between Cabinet members, especially over the controversial privatization of Japan's postal system - a free-market initiative begun, not incidentally, during Koizumi's term as Prime Minister. "Whenever you try to get down to reforms you're bound to face difficulties," Hatoyama says, but he insists he has the support of the DPJ and is working cooperatively with his coalition partners. (See the new activism of Japan's youth...
...most of the past 20 years, Japan has been in a state of political and economic paralysis. Ever since its property-and-stock-price bubble collapsed in the early 1990s, the economy has teetered on the edge of recession, occasionally tumbling into one. With one exception (Junichiro Koizumi), the country has been captained by a series of leaders who seemed content to reluctantly repair the economy so that it doesn't outright sink, but not enough for it to return to the high-flying days of yesteryear. What I find most baffling about Japan is how a nation...
...Koizumi retired on July 23, ending his 37-year career as a Representative of the Diet, but he missed the last day of the Lower House session because of a traffic...