ABSTRACT
Since the resignation of Prime Minister Abe Shinzo after one disastrous year, and the appointment of Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo and, subsequently, Aso Taro, a unified direction in terms of continuing economic structural reform, the IP drive and boosting foreign investors’ confidence to promote globalization has waxed and waned. The unification of purpose that Japan required so desperately to pull itself out of the economic morass of the 1990s has become divided and weakened. Japanese people are once again losing trust and confidence in the economy and are not spending as freely as before. This and other events, to be described below, are giving foreign investors the jitters, which is having a knockon effect throughout the economy. There are bright spots and continued support for a free market economy in the form of the new Governor of the BOJ, but different factions in Japan are now pulling in disparate directions. The last Prime Minister, Fukuda Yasuo, who was from the old school of politics, held steady but was unable to direct the turbulence into a more positive direction. Appealing directly to the populace did not seem to be Mr Fukuda’s mode of operation, nor did ‘swimming around’ the entrenched bureaucrats and special interest groups. The performance of the new Prime Minister, Aso Taro, will be discussed later.
