Japan General Discussion

[Famous Mortimer]

I can't believe Abe is still in office.

[Famous Mortimer]

I'm surprised he hasn't resigned for no reason like the 17 guys who came before him.

[Famous Mortimer]

I'm surprised he's not been implicated in a minor scandal or had his popularity decline due to global economic factors out of his control.

[Famous Mortimer]

Oh my God. What happened to the Green Breeze Party?

[Famous Mortimer]

What party is she a member of now? What parties did all their upper house members go to? Shizuka Kamei?

[Famous Mortimer]

Apparently Ichiro Ozawa's People's Life Party is still around, surprisingly.

Not really surprising. They've been around in one form or another for like 2 decades.

[Famous Mortimer]

The DPJ and Your Party might merge. If this happened though, a significant number of Your Party members, including party founder Yoshimi Watanabe, would leave and probably join the fascist Party for Future Generations.

There was also some talk of the DPJ and Japan Innovation Party merging but that fell through because it was just ridiculous.

Japan Innovation Party leader Hashimoto has instead called on right leaning members of the DPJ to join with him in creating a whole new party.

[Famous Mortimer]

Oddly, as of right now, it looks like the People's Life Party is the most left-wing party, as it's the only one that opposes nuclear power and the only one against the TPP.

Besides the Communists of course.

[Famous Mortimer]

Is he a hawk or a dove?

[Famous Mortimer]

Actually turns out he was former LDP backed by the SDP and the JCP.

[Famous Mortimer]

Even if one thinks population decline is a good thing, Japan's population is shrinking too rapidly.  The fertility rate is a miserable 1.4 births per woman.

How is that miserable? It's not even shrinking.

[Famous Mortimer]

Eh, I still think it's cool.

[Famous Mortimer]

Just now catching up on all of this.

So is it correct to say that what is left of the JIP is mostly the Unity Party and the Unity Party is mostly former members of Your Party who favored an alliance with the far right. Only now the far right has abandoned them to reform the ORA so now they might join an alliance with the DPJ.

Meanwhile, the original members of Your Party who favored the DPJ have mostly just disappeared? Or merged into the DPJ wholesale?

and the Your Party members who wanted to keep being the Your Party are now Assembly to Energize Japan or whatever?

[Famous Mortimer]

It's just funny how the Unity Party represented the farthest right faction of Your Party (the others being the ones that favored being an independent party, and the ones who favored merging with the DPJ) and now they're aligned with the DPJ, taking the opposite position of what they used to.

Also, what happened to the Your Party founder guy. Did he just retire?

and what does AEJ stand for?

[Famous Mortimer]

Oops. Knew that. Meant ARG.

[Famous Mortimer]

ARG stands for 改革結集の会 which translates into Association of Reform Grouping.  I am making this up for now since there is no official name for ARG.

As for YP founder Yoshimi Watanabe, he still dealing with the on again and off again investigations and prosecution for a funding scandal which led to him being forced out of YP leadership back in early 2014. His own nephew is a ex-YP Upper House MP who is an independent as he choose not to join AEJ.  With the recent chaos and proliferation of splinter parties and defections on the non-LDP right there has been talk of  Watanabe making a political comeback to organize a larger Rightest bloc.  But that will have to wait until Watanabe's legal troubles are over.

In other news, as soon as Hashimoto stepped down as mayor of Osaka and officially "leaves politics" he meets with PM Abe at a Tokyo hotel.  Also attending the meeting will be Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga and Osaka Gov and ORA leader Matsui.  It is clear they are working on ORA being part of the 2/3 majority in the Upper House after 2016 elections to push through constitutional changes as well as Hashimoto's return to politics mostly at the national level either in the LDP or an LDP ally.

So Hashimoto is flip flopping too. Didn't he used to be opposed to working with the LDP? Wasn't that one of the issues that caused tension between him and Ishihara? Because Ishihara was pro-LDP since all his kids are in the LDP.

[Famous Mortimer]

GP and NSP are?

[Famous Mortimer]

If you're a Japanese politics watcher, watch the new Godzilla movie, Shin Godzilla. Really great satire.