Just how little influential political or intellectual opposition in Japan is there to fundamentally conservative politics and economic theories touting the wisdom of the corporate mentality? Well consider this: Toru Hashimoto, the mayor of Osaka and co-founder of Nippon Ishin no Kai (Japan Restoration Party), may soon start to look like a rational moderate.
Yet that's the Alice in Wonderland world we're in, following Nippon Ishin's split between Hashimoto and 37 of his mostly Osaka, mostly younger followers, and Shintaro Ishihara and the 23 mostly Old Men of Tokyo (at least at the top), who are by and large conservative or ultraright-wing in their views and supported by the more extreme elements of Japan's electorate.
After the split, "rational" was the word Hashimoto used several times to describe the character of his Osaka supporters. They are, he suggested, men and women more interested in practical issues than in refighting World War II or nursing a grudge over the U.S.-led Occupation.
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