Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Goodbye To All That?

An image is worth 1,000 words. An image that will make Tobias Harris, who has written so much on the Democratic Party of Japan's promise to Westministerise Japanese governance, howl.

Finance Minister Azumi Jun (right), minister of the most powerful ministry in the government, handing the two temporary reconstruction tax increase proposals drafted by the National Tax Commission to Maehara Seiji (left), the chairman of the DPJ Policy Research Council.

Aaaarrrggghhhhh!

Image courtesy: Tokyo Shimbun

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

They don't even have the sempai/kohai defense. Wikipedia tells me that Azumi Jun is actually a few months older than Maehara, despite the image's projection.

Anonymous said...

Just another silly pantomime for the cameras. These set pieces are awkward and full of unintended inferences but continue despite the stupidity because they want to show something on TV.
Some people have lower koshi than others, but that really means nothing as one is witnessing reflexive behavior and not one of substance.

YY

MTC said...

YY -

Finance Minister Azumi is handing of the Goverment of Japan's two plans (it could not come to an internal agreement upon just one) to the DPJ's PRC chairman. These two plans will then put before the DPJ's Tax Commission, chaired by Fujii Yasuhisa. The DPJ's tax commission is not required to accept either plan, indeed according to yesterday's Nikkei, it is considering alternative plans.

That the result of the DPJ's Tax Commission's deliberations will be passed on to the PRC chairman's office, then to the Government and DPJ Executive Commission before finally being dictated to the Cabinet, and may be nothing at all like what the National Tax Commission, which Azumi chairs, has drafted, is very much in tune with the positions taken by the two main actors in the photograph.