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NEWS & LETTERS, October - November 2007
Our Life and Times
Japan resignation
The resignation of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his replacement by fellow Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) leader Yasuo Fukuda represents more than a changing of the guard, for Fukuda hails from a less reactionary wing of the LDP.
Abe had pursued a hard-right politics, whether on the death penalty, militarization, denial of World War II war crimes and sex slavery, or cooperation with the U.S. war machine in Afghanistan. Moreover, he lacked the populist touch of his equally right-wing predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi.
Japan now dominates global capitalist markets in robotics, flat screens, digital cameras, and microchips, with Toyota having displaced General Motors as the world’s largest automobile company. At the same time, Japan exhibits the most rapidly growing domestic economic disparities between citizens of any of the industrialized countries.
This has finally come back to haunt the LDP, resulting in their crushing defeat at the hands of the opposition Democratic Party (DP) in July elections for the upper house of parliament. The DP, itself fairly conservative, took advantage of government callousness toward pensioners and of a major accident at a nuclear power plant. The DP has also vowed to end the Japanese Navy’s involvement in logistical support for the war in Afghanistan.
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