◎ A contemporary dilemma haunted by history (Financial Times) http://news.ft.com/cms/s/ae844de4-0834-11da-97a6-00000e2511c8.html
By Ronald Dore
Junichiro Koizumi, Japan’s prime minister, has lost the vote on his grand scheme to privatise the country’s post office with its vast savings pool and will go to the polls. For now, the village-pump communitarian face of Japanese conservatism has won out over anti-bureaucratic, privatising radicalism. The global finance industry will have to wait a little longer to get its hands on that $3,000bn of Japanese savings.
But the snap election next month is likely to focus as much on the dire state of Japan’s relations with China and Korea as on privatisation. Here at issue is the other face of Japanese conservatism: the reluctance to feel guilty about the war. The key symbol of that reluctance has been Mr Koizumi’s visits to the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo to pay respects to Japan’s war dead. There is speculation he might open his election campaign with such a visit on the 60th anniversary of the war’s end next Monday. Opinion polls show a bare majority think it “wiser” not to go. Mr Koizumi may think bravado and talking tough to the Chinese will win more votes than wisdom. http://soba.txt-nifty.com/zatudan/2005/08/post_922a.html