Japan's Kaieda ahead in PM race but run-off likely - AngolaPress

Tpkyo - Trade minister Banri Kaieda has the lead in a ruling party race to pick Japan's latest prime minister, but a bruising run-off looks likely as chances look dim for winning a majority in a first round vote, media surveys showed on Sunday.

Japan's next leader -- the country's sixth in five years -- faces huge challenges including a resurgent yen that threatens exports, forging a new energy policy while ending the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl, and finding funds to rebuild from a devastating March tsunami
as well as to pay for the ballooning social welfare costs of a fast-aging society.

The obstacles to governing, including a divided parliament and internal party bickering, have raised concerns that the next premier, to be selected in a Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) vote on Monday, will end up being another short-lived leader.

"Unfortunately, chances are that whoever wins, we'll be going through the same debate in 12 months," said Jesper Koll, director of equities research at JP Morgan in Tokyo.

Despite differences over policies such as whether to raise taxes to pay for rebuilding and how to win opposition help in a divided parliament, none of the five candidates has presented a detailed vision of how to end Japan's decades of stagnation and revitalize the world's third-biggest economy.

"Their positions already seem to have been watered down," Koll said.

The party leadership race has become a battle between allies and critics of party powerbroker Ichiro Ozawa, a 69-year-old political mastermind who heads the DPJ's biggest group despite facing trial on charges of misreporting political donations.

The 62-year-old Kaieda, who has secured powerbroker Ozawa's backing, had support from about 115 of the 398 Democratic lawmakers eligible to vote in Monday's party election, a survey by the Mainichi newspaper showed.

Former foreign minister Seiji Maehara, 49, who says beating deflation is a top priority and wants the Bank of Japan to do more, was jostling with fiscal hawk Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda, 54, and little-known farm minister Michihiko Kano, 69, for second place,
the Mainichi and other Japanese newspapers said.

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Five face off over policies ahead of poll

Five face off over policies ahead of poll Campaigning for the Democratic Party of Japan's presidential election officially kicked off Saturday, with five candidates vying to succeed Prime Minister Naoto Kan. Former Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara, ex-transport minister Sumio Mabuchi, trade minister Banri Kaieda, Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda and farm minister Michihiko Kano have just two days to win over the party's 398 Diet members, who will vote Monday morning. Because Kan's two-year term as party president is not slated to end until September 2012, the party's local assembly members and registered supporters are not allowed to participate in the vote.
28 Aug The Japanese, once one of the most TV-addicted people on the planet, are drifting away from the tube -- forcing networks to scramble for other sources of revenue, from pic production, satellite services, Internet streaming sites and other new technologies. Daily TV viewing time, which averaged more than five hours in the 1970s, shrank to 3 hours and 28 minutes by 2010, according to figures compiled by the NHK Broadcasting Culture Research Institute. Males aged 10 to 20 are watching less than two hours a day. Meanwhile, program ratings have been trending downward for terrestrial networks, pubcaster NHK and commercial rivals TV Asahi, NTV, TBS, Fuji TV and TV Tokyo, despite spikes for major sport events and other special programming. (Variety)
28 Aug A local train in Iwate Prefecture collided with a bear Saturday morning and, after restarting, ploughed into a serow goat, East Japan Railway Co.'s Morioka office said. No passengers were injured, but the accidents proved fatal for the two animals, the JR East office said. The disruption to services caused two rapid trains on the line to be canceled, affecting about 220 passengers, it said. (Japan Times)
27 Aug ON a chilly night last November on the tiny island of Naoshima in the Seto Inland Sea of southern Japan, I found myself alone in a dark concrete gallery, a sweater pulled over my pajamas. I was staying at the Benesse House Museum, a 10-room hotel set inside a contemporary art museum, on the island's craggy southern coast, and still battling jet lag. So instead of tossing in bed, I visited the deserted galleries of the museum - guests of the hotel are permitted to wander beyond closing time. Before long, I was transfixed by Bruce Nauman's art installation, "100 Live and Die," a neon billboard of flashing phrases. (New York Times)
27 Aug Since reopening just three and a half weeks after the March 11 tsunami, the Tsuru no Yu bathhouse in northeast Japan's Kamaishi city has been doing a brisk business, belying the general decline of once-popular public baths throughout the country. Most Japanese still cling to their custom of soaking in a steaming hot bath before bed, but as homes are increasingly equipped with their own heated tubs, the tradition of bathing with neighbors and catching up on gossip at the local bathhouse has faded. But in Kamaishi, hit hard by the quake and tsunami that left roughly 20,400 dead or missing across Japan, the bathhouse in the tsunami-hit town center has briefly returned to its former glory, providing comfort for many who lost their homes. (Reuters)
27 Aug A "reptile cafe" allowing customers to observe exotic creatures while sipping Chinese tea has opened in Yokohama, the latest among a growing number of such establishments featuring animals. At the Reptile Cafe/Yokohama Subtropical Teahouse, located in Naka Ward, customers are able to observe 40 different reptiles from around a dozen different species kept in tanks and cages, including a 1-meter-long lizard and a 1.7-meter-long snake. The establishment has given a new twist to the trend of cafes showcasing animals, though they are usually more cuddly, like cats or rabbits. (Japan Times)

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Japan's Kaieda ahead in PM race but run-off likely (Reuters)

TOKYO (Reuters) – Trade minister Banri Kaieda has the lead in a ruling party race to pick Japan's latest prime minister, but a bruising run-off looks likely as chances look dim for winning a majority in a first round vote, media surveys showed on Sunday.

Japan's next leader -- the country's sixth in five years -- faces huge challenges including a resurgent yen that threatens exports, forging a new energy policy while ending the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl, and finding funds to rebuild from a devastating March tsunami as well as to pay for the ballooning social welfare costs of a fast-aging society.

The obstacles to governing, including a divided parliament and internal party bickering, have raised concerns that the next premier, to be selected in a Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) vote on Monday, will end up being another short-lived leader.

"Unfortunately, chances are that whoever wins, we'll be going through the same debate in 12 months," said Jesper Koll, director of equities research at JP Morgan in Tokyo.

Despite differences over policies such as whether to raise taxes to pay for rebuilding and how to win opposition help in a divided parliament, none of the five candidates has presented a detailed vision of how to end Japan's decades of stagnation and revitalize the world's third-biggest economy.

"Their positions already seem to have been watered down," Koll said.

The party leadership race has become a battle between allies and critics of party powerbroker Ichiro Ozawa, a 69-year-old political mastermind who heads the DPJ's biggest group despite facing trial on charges of misreporting political donations.

The 62-year-old Kaieda, who has secured powerbroker Ozawa's backing, had support from about 115 of the 398 Democratic lawmakers eligible to vote in Monday's party election, a survey by the Mainichi newspaper showed.

Former foreign minister Seiji Maehara, 49, who says beating deflation is a top priority and wants the Bank of Japan to do more, was jostling with fiscal hawk Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda, 54, and little-known farm minister Michihiko Kano, 69, for second place, the Mainichi and other Japanese newspapers said.

A fifth candidate, former transport minister Sumio Mabuchi, 51, was lagging well behind.

RUN-OFF VOTE LIKELY

If no candidate wins a majority in an initial vote, a run-off will immediately be held between the two top candidates.

The winner of the DPJ election will become prime minister by virtue of the party's majority in parliament's lower house.

"In the current situation, it will be tough to win a majority in the first round vote," the Nikkei business daily quoted an Ozawa aide as saying.

Maehara, a security hawk, ranks highest of the candidates with ordinary voters, but his chances have been undercut by rivalry with Noda, who shares a similar support base inside the DPJ, as well as by concern about a donations scandal.

Maehara -- who would become Japan's youngest post-World War Two premier if he wins -- resigned as foreign minister in March after admitting he had accepted donations from a Korean resident of Japan. That would be illegal had he done so knowingly.

On Saturday, he told a news conference he had received more than $7,000 in donations from four foreigners and one firm headed by a foreigner between 2005 and 2010, but had not been aware of the donations, Japanese media reported.

Whoever takes over from outgoing Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who resigned as party head on Friday after months of criticism for his handling of the nuclear crisis, faces a struggle to implement policies in a "twisted" parliament where opposition parties control the upper house and can block bills.

Maehara and Noda on Sunday reiterated their calls for a "grand coalition" with the main opposition parties. Kaieda rejected the idea, to which opposition rivals have anyway been cool. "In a democratic parliamentary system, a grand coalition is not preferable," he said in a debate on NHK public TV.

Feuds over the role of Ozawa, a one-time heavyweight in the conservative Liberal Democratic Party who bolted and helped briefly oust the long-dominant party in 1993, have rattled the Democrats since his Liberal Party merged with the DPJ in 2003.

Some credit his political skills with engineering the Democrats' leap to power in an August 2009 election. Others say his scandal-tainted image is damaging the party, which has seen its support sink among voters disillusioned with its failure to deliver on promises of bold changes in how Japan is governed.

Ozawa, who lost a tough leadership race to Kan last year, cannot vote in Monday's party poll since his DPJ membership was suspended following his indictment over the funding scandal.

(Additional reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka; Editing by Ed Lane)

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An economic dark cloud ahead?

An Aug. 15 preliminary report by the Cabinet Office shows that Japan's gross domestic product (GDP) in real terms in the second quarter of 2011 dropped 0.3 percent or an annualized 1.3 percent from the previous quarter — for the third straight quarter of minus growth.

But the margin of the drop is much smaller than the previous drop of an annualized 3.5 percent.

Economic and fiscal policy minister Kaoru Yosano said that the minus growth is a temporary phenomenon due to the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, and that high growth can be expected in the last half of fiscal 2011.

Supply chains for parts and components devastated by the March 11 disasters are recovering quickly.

Although personal spending dipped 0.1 percent, a drop for three consecutive quarters, public works investment increased 3 percent, the first rise in six quarters, due to construction of fabricated houses in the disaster-hit areas.

The mining and industrial production index for June increased 3.8 percent from the previous month and the manufacturing industry operation rate index for the same month rose 5.2 percent from the previous month.

But the government must pay attention to a view, especially among private-sector economists, that the strong yen and the low stock prices in Japan will put a brake on the nation's economic recovery. In addition, sluggish economic conditions in the United States and Europe are likely to negatively affect the Japanese economy.

According to a Kyodo News survey of 105 major enterprises, many mentioned the strong yen as a factor that makes future prospects cloudy. A majority of the enterprises surveyed said moving operation bases abroad will be accelerated as a means of strengthening their business.

This could result in hollowing out of Japanese industry, impacting the performance of subcontracting firms and causing the employment situation to deteriorate.

The power shortage caused by the severe accidents at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant is also hampering economic activities of enterprises. Many of them cannot make dependable production plans because of uncertainty over future power supplies.

The government and the Bank of Japan must flexibly take necessary measures to help underpin economic activities.

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