Politics of Japan

Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe recently had an unpleasant shock at the polls. He has made history by leading his political party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) into a crushing defeat at the recent Upper House Polls. In one fell swoop, the opposition party, the Democratic Party, seized control of the upper house for the first time in its history. The poll outcome was a historic one because it could mean that Japan will truly have a two-party system for the first time. For the uninitiated, the LDP has enjoyed an almost uninterrupted period of power as the ruling party of Japan since 1955. It lost power momentarily from 1993 to 1996.

Japan’s government is a Parliamentary representative democratic monarchy. It sounds like a mouthful, but it is not too far from Singapore’s own political system, just replace the monarchy with the President. Of course, there are slight distinctions since Singapore’s President enjoys more powers than the monarchy, at least on paper. However, unlike Singapore, Japan’s Parliament has two houses, the lower house and the upper house. The upper house, which Abe lost, can block, direct and delay legislation. The lower house is elected by the people and considered to be more powerful than the upper house because it can override some of the latter’s veto decisions with a large enough majority.

Abe is a third generation politician. His grandfather and great uncle were both Prime Ministers of Japan, so he is considered by some to be of political ‘blue blood’. However, his policies to make Japan into a beautiful country and to revise the constitution and education system of Japan was seen as out of touch with the common man, leading to the disastrous outcome at the polls. The middle class of Japan was up in a furore when they realized that the LDP government had misplaced more than 50 million pension records. He also attracted attention from the international press when he said that Japan will not issue another apology for its World War II military brothels. He commented that none of the testimony in the court hearings showed solid proof that prostitutes were abused.

All this is not good news for Abe and may mark a period of political change in Japan. To quote one of the voters, Yoshihiko Seki, a 40-year-old businessman, who voted for the opposition party: “The LDP has sat on the top of politics too long,” he said, “I just want politics to change.”

References

1. Norimitsu Onishi, “Japanese prime minister resists calls to resign” International Herald Tribune, July 30, 2007

2. Chris Hogg, “Japan’s political ‘blue blood’” BBC News, Tokyo, Sept 26, 2006

3. “Japan refuses sex slave apology” BBC News, March 5, 2007

4. Geoffrey York, “Japan’s Abe loses control of upper house” Globe and Mail, July 30,2007.

The good and the bad, the happy and the sad

Why do people bother with formal dinners? Especially dinners where you sit at a table with people that you don’t know from adam all around you. It makes for a claustrophobic effect. What with the closed doors and high ceilings, one feels that one cannot escape from this pretty and grand enclosed cage.

Dressed up to the nines, making small talk. It shouldn’t be that painful, but it is. It is painful. Especially when you’d rather be doing something else, anything else on a Friday night. Anything but listening to people who love the sound of their own voices, who have an opinion about everything under the sun. Forced to be civil and to smile, we continue to talk shop. News that have a bearing on all our lives, news about the profession. The comings and goings, the salary, the bonuses, the comparison of various firms.

It all struck me as incredibly false. The fact that we had to socialise did not make this any better. The fact that our seats were fixed was another thing altogether. Now you really admire wedding planners and how they come up with seating arrangements. Tough job, that.

A long two hours past, the food and its taste doesn’t seem to have meaning in these contrived surroundings. You noticed that they’ve polished the cutlery.

Human relations reduced to a word: networking.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

As an anime fan/addict, I was really excited to watch The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. It’s this Japanese anime film that has won many accolades. My fixation with anime is something that is not within the scope of this blog post, lol. The movie was really good. It was about a girl who obtained the ability to (you guessed it) travel in time accidentally. Sounds cliche and overdone but the whole plot was quite credible and endearing. Makoto is a high school girl and her two closest friends are Kousuke and Chiaki, one a pre-med student, the other a happy-go-lucky guy.

Time waits for no one. These words were scrawled on the board of the science laboratory. And this sets the stage for the beginning of time travel for the heroin. Makoto, as a high school girl, only uses her ability of ‘time leap-ing’ for trivial things. It clearly wasn’t in her head to change history and kill Hitler or something. It makes the film quite lighthearted for such a heavy topic. But things start to go wrong. As she changes events in the past to her liking, there were more and more consequences in the future. A student becomes injured, another loses his head in a nervous breakdown. And Makoto looks on, helpless. She tries to change the present by changing the past, but things don’t turn out the way she wants to most of the time. She rushes through time and space, and is left exhausted and anguished.

I don’t want to kill the ending for whoever reads this. So I just want to say that I really like the ending. It was oddly sweet and heartwrenching. Not a definite happy ending but with an optimistic outlook. There were scenes that were simple but moving. I like the one where time was frozen and the two main characters were talking through the frozen crowds at the pedestrian crossing.

Chiaki: I’ll be waiting in the future.

Makoto: I’ll be right there. I’ll run there.

Convocation

Convocation. Also known as Commencement because graduation is not to mark an end but to celebrate a new beginning. Or something like that. Woke up for the 9am picture, bleary eyed and in a semi-conscious mode. It was fun putting on those huge, slightly ridiculous robes, with that ‘hood’. Well, I guess it’s called ceremonial robes for a reason. But it was nonetheless something I’ve looked forward to since I collected the gown and I was kinda excited about the whole thing. So excited that I actually bought the NUS stuffed lion, quaintly called ‘LiNUS’. It’s only slightly cheaper than my gown and hat, so it’s a severely over-priced lion. It looks like a bear though. It’s too smiley and happy to look like a lion.

The whole ceremony was over in a couple of hours. There were the usual powerpoint presentations advertising NUS and its oh-so-globalised and well-rounded education system, together with the singing of the National Anthem. That’s a song I haven’t heard in a while (unless you count those late nights when I stare at the television screen till the song plays at 12mn on arts central). I get to shake hands with President Nathan! Hahaha, that gave me a kick and I was quite happy about it. It made me feel slightly important. =)

But I was thinking, it must be tough for him, to be shaking hands with at least 300 – 400 people and smiling for at least 2 hours. You have to remember, this guy is in his 80s. So like what the Ah Beng says, ‘this kind of thing, I respect.’ Lol. I wonder whether the President of Singapore is automatically the Chancellor of NUS. He was wearing some academic robe with a long train. There was a small boy to carry the train. It was quite amusing seeing that for the first time.

Sporadic clapping, camera flashes, a quick walk past the stage, collect the scroll (holder), smile. And finito. One has graduated. I have graduated. It’s been a fun four years. Rather uneventful except for the student exchange in Canada. But still, it was 4 whole years of my life. Longer than JC but shorter or similar to secondary school. This was as good as closure gets. =D

The valedictorian for our class was Aik Hin. I was very touched by his speech. His voice caught while he was thanking each of his family members individually. His speech sounds just like him, sincere and humble. I think he is one that has truly done his family proud. I also think he is the only one which all the class of 2007 really listened to intently. I guess we had more in common with him than with the rest of the other professors dishing out advice and congratulations. All in all, it made the commencement a memorable one instead of being just a silly ceremony that we are all going through for the sake of our parents.

After the ceremony, it was back to taking pictures again. For memory’s sake.