Can A Popular Prime Minister Fix What Ails Japan?
On today’s podcast, we’re taking a break from American politics and diving into the seemingly consensus-driven — but in reality quite messy — politics of Japan.
I spoke with Kenneth Mori McElwain, a professor of comparative politics at the University of Tokyo, on the final day of my two-week trip to Japan. It was a welcome chance to step off the American news-cycle hamster wheel and use the time to get a sense Japanese politics.
The stereotype of Japanese politics is that it is staid and steady, conservative in both the capital-“C” and lowercase-“c” meanings of the word. The conservative…
The skinny
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