Japanese Prime Minister Resignation and Hospitalization
By Todd • Sep 13th, 2007 • Category: Japan, newsThe Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, just announced his plans to resign, with less than 1 year in office. 
He stated political reasons; however, Abe was hospitalized shortly afterwards. How much of it was based on his health vs his political career remains to be seen.
His popularity as of recent has taken a serious decline as some of his proposed reform policies didn’t work out quite as well as he had hoped.
Shinzo was a large proponent in the controversial “Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform” which had small changes and details omitted in order to make Japan look a little bit better throughout history. Considering that we (The US) have certainly made similar omissions in our history books, I don’t see this as a horrible thing, just weird that they have set up an organization in order to get this done.
Next week there will be an election as four members from the LDP (Liberal Democratic Party) are possible canidates to take over his position.
Yasuo Fukuda, Kaoru Yosano, Taro Aso and Sadakazu Tanigaki are the most likely canidates.
If you don’t know much about Shinzo, then take a look at his page on Wikipedia.
Todd is giving away puppies!
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Thanks for sharing your opinion on this pretty big news story Mr. Toad ^_^
I think shaping history is a big deal. Nationalism + misinformation/spinning the truth isn’t good. I mean, sure Japan is cool but there are some bad things from the past that the gov. has still gotta own up to. Acknowledgement is a step to learning from the past and further reconciliation, imo.
bye bye Abe-san
kinda-possible-update: I just read an AP article that’s headline read, “Japan race between Aso and Fukuda”.
poor guy, he had it really rough
USA Today had a good article on the men running: Aso, Fukuda in race for Japan prime minister