For anyone living in Japan and fascinated by Japanese politics, it is a good thing to step back occasionally from the surprises and the deja vu repetitions of today's headlines and reflect on how Japan got to where it is today. No better way of doing so than to read this collection of newspaper columns by the chairman of the editorial board of the Asahi Shimbun.
They are collected here in both the Japanese original and in the accomplished translations that appeared as "Japan Notebook" in the International Herald Tribune/Asahi Shimbun English paper. (No translation, though, for "fukokei," the punning Japanese title of these columns. "The Thinking Man's weather vane"?)
Written monthly, they extend over the last four years, but the history they evoke stretches much further back. Wakamiya started as a political reporter nearly 40 years ago, and his shrewd reflections on the events of the day are interlaced with illuminating reminiscence of some of the formative incidents and the ironies that have shaped the Liberal Democratic Party and its stance toward the outside world. And he can do that in a way possible only for someone who has been on casual-chat terms with some of the leading personalities of Japanese politics.