For Japan’s Abe, Economic Reforms are Tricky Politics

Just two days after U.S. President George W. Bush delivered his State of the Union address, it was the turn of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to lay out his government’s agenda. Abe’s policy speech to the Diet last Friday touched on similar themes — the need for stability in the Middle East, the character of the country’s children — and all against the back drop of troubling poll numbers. The key difference is that while Bush was making his speech after heavy losses in midterm elections, Abe is trying to avoid a similar routing in his country’s upper house […]