ISDP Voices

    Tokyo Elections: implications for Abe

    On June 23, election campaigns started for the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly – the city’s local legislature. The elections, which take place on July 2, are seen as a referendum on Governor Yuriko Koike’s mandate to “clean up Tokyo’s politics”, but also, as a test for Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) which has experienced declining […]

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    Article 9- Ending Japanese Exceptionalism

    Over recent years, Japan’s constitution has been hotly debated. In large part dictated by the allied authorities at the end of World War Two, it is sometimes called the “Peace Constitution,” since its Article 9 stipulates that, “the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of […]

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