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Article: The return of the Fukuda doctrine; Japan's foreign policy.(The prime minister recasts foreign policy in his father's image)(Yasuo Fukuda)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- December 15, 2007
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Like father, like son
IN JAPAN'S dynastic politics, even foreign policy is a family business. The most recent prime minister, Shinzo Abe, was the grandson of one prime minister; the incumbent, Yasuo Fukuda, is the first prime minister to follow his father's footsteps into office.
The hawkish Mr Abe indulged in occasional revisionism over Japan's rapine wartime past and espoused a sweeping "arc of freedom and prosperity" that was supposed to anchor Japan in a Eurasian community of democratic nations but was in practice a not-particularly-subtle attempt to throw a cordon around a rising China. Though the arc languishes as official policy on the foreign ...