Ampontan on Koizumi Revisionism

[Mulboyne]

I can't wholeheartedly recommend blogger Ampontan. I generally don't agree with his worldview and he frequently comes across as overly pedantic and unnecessarily aggressive. Nevertheless, he is extremely prolific and takes the time to bring a number of Japanese sources, many of them not available anywhere online, to the English speaking world which is a valuable service.

I enjoyed his most recent post. He cites two sources which question whether Koizumi's reform agenda was really so unpopular with the public that politicians had to abandon it.

I think Ampontan is wrong that "left-of-center thinking" in the Japanese media led to this revisionism. Plenty of right-of-centre magazines and newspapers also opposed reform because it threatened so many vested interests.

There is a tendency to overstate Koizumi's policies. In reality, he didn't get around to changing a great deal but he did represent a strong image of reform and leadership. It's interesting to read an account which points to the idea that the public would favour such an approach again and that both major parties appear to have drawn the wrong conclusions from his administration.