Wednesday, April 07, 2010

The Imperative Case in Japanese Party Names

"Stand Up Japan!" (Tachiagare Nippon). That is the proposed name of the new Yosano-Hiranuma party.

"Tokyo Governor Ishihara Shintaro thought of the name," Hiranuma says.

Why am I not the least bit surprised by this revelation?

Today, the nascent conservative-conservative party lured House of Councillors member Nakagawa Yoshio, the uncle of the late Nakagawa Sho'ichi, into submitting his resignation from the LDP. Together with former Minister of Transportation Fujii Takao, who is widely expected to be announcing his departure from the LDP soon, the new party will be starting out with the statutory minimum of 5 sitting Diet members necessary to be eligible for public elections funds.

The recruitment drive seems far from over. House of Councillors member, former Finance Ministry bureaucrat and former State Minister for Abductee Issues Nakayama Kyoko (a triple play!) is reportedly being courted, as is her currently out-of-office and notorious spouse Nakayama Nariaki.

From the looks of it, the Hiranuma-led party will be packed with hardliners.

Why does that not surprise me?

Meanwhile, sitting LDP House of Councillors member and potential recruit to the Hiranuma cause Konoike Yoshitada, whose homepage absolutely has to be seen to be believed, has seemingly gotten a sudden case of cold feet.

The new party is scheduled to open for business starting on April 10.

I cannot wait.

Later - The Mainichi Online has just put up an English language write-up of the story.

6 comments:

Unknown said...
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Matt Holland said...

Normally, whenever I see a small party borne from larger ones to pursue slightly more focused and specific goals (or for god-knows-whatever purpose really), I typically take it at face value, and think "good for them, perhaps they'll carve out their own small niche segment of the voting population," and leave it there. The Japanese voters are not foolish, but when I go to open the paper every evening, I continue to observe a tremendous amount of indecisiveness. My point in mentioning this is I'm actually quite interested to see how the next couple weeks go, in terms of this new party's ability to gain support and momentum, and with that - press. They could end up a niche party, or end up a fairly key component of a less-polarized political party landscape of Japan, which will is bound to be shifting soon, I feel.

By the way, I'm sure you've seen in before, but as far as Japanese politicians' homepages go, it's tough to top Kamei Shizuka's splash page/video.

Anonymous said...

After reading this tweet from Adamu, every time I hear something about the new party I shall refer to it as "Tachiagare Ippon". Though judging by the average age of the party members I doubt they could get ippon among them to tachiagare.

Bryce said...

"Tachiagatte" is a fairly standard revisionist (post)war-cry. It's what Mishima implored the SDF to do before he topped himself.

Anonymous said...

You know your party is a bit to the ah, "Right" when Ishihara is the one making the sensible, more appropriate decisions.

http://bit.ly/cPYlAe

I think a party named "Samurai" would appeal to non-Japanese more than the average citizen...if they were able to vote (and were not the exact opposite of the constituency TA Japan was going for)

That said, not sure anyone really thinks they are going after the mainstream vote now! (What is Yosano doing? Some sneaky hidden agenda?)

MTC said...

Mr. Holland -

From a cached copy of FEER's old site:
http://tinyurl.com/y3e7uhf


sigma1 -

How about the "Hai Karate Aftershave Party"? For if one is going to set off down the twisted path of appropriated and distorted images of things Japanese (Okinawan, but getting stuff wrong is of course half the fun) in search of a fitting moniker for an offkey quintet of senior citizens, one might as well have a defunct 1960s product promotion tie-in as well.

From the commercials archived on You Tube, there may indeed be extraordinary benefits to be gained as regards attracting women voters.

Yes, it is Friday. Why do you ask?