Last night the collective schoolteachers of Japan breathed a sigh of resignation upon learning that "Abe chan," an even-more-conservative politician than his predecessor, will replace Junichiro Koizumi as Prime Minister. I know very very little about politics in Japan, but the impression I get at least from my own co-workers is that "Abe is not a friend of teachers."
Apparently he isn't a friend of peace either, with one of his major pledges being to revise the pacifist Japanese constitution to include the ability to maintain an army apart from the purposes of self-defense. Awesome! Now Japan wants to wage preemptive war too! I fail to see how he can have any platform whatsoever for "improving diplomatic ties with China and Korea" when basically he wants to throw them a huge "fuck you."
I said above and will say again, I know pretty much nothing about Japanese politics and won't ever pretend to. It does make me wonder about the state of the world when boobs like Abe and GW Bush can lead nations.
One thing it does, however, is make for interesting staffroom conversation (and Japanese practice!).