Ellis Krauss on the Policies of Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda
Noda’s Job In Jeopardy After Sales Tax To Reduce Debt
08/30/2012
Isabel Reynolds and Takashi Hirokawa,
Bloomberg
Yoshihiko Noda has accomplished more than Japan’s five previous prime ministers in his first year in office. He may still lose his job, after dividing his party, outraging anti-nuclear activists and raising taxes.
Noda split the ruling Democratic Party of Japan with legislation doubling the sales tax to address record debt, a measure policy makers had struggled to pass for a decade. Responding to power shortages that threatened economic recovery, he reactivated two atomic reactors, risking a backlash from a public still traumatized from last year’s Fukushima disaster.
Now, Noda must convince a weakened DPJ to keep him as its head in a party leadership contest next month. He also faces an emboldened opposition seeking elections as soon as October amid public sentiment toward both major parties that has soured and left voters looking for alternatives to change a system that has produced six premiers since 2006.
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Ellis Krauss is a leading expert on Japanese politics, U.S.-Japan relations, and Japan's political economy. In 2010 Cornell University Press will publish his latest book, co-authored with Robert Pekkanen of the University of Washington, The Rise and Fall of Japan's LDP: Political Party Organizations as Institutions.
He can provide commentary on domestic politics in Japan, the Japanese mass media, U.S.-Japan relations and Japan's foreign policy and role in Asia.
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