{"id":12,"date":"2002-08-30T12:11:40","date_gmt":"2002-08-30T12:11:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/?p=12"},"modified":"2016-01-13T18:18:05","modified_gmt":"2016-01-14T02:18:05","slug":"dam-issues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/2002\/08\/30\/dam-issues\/","title":{"rendered":"Dam Issues"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/blog\/archives\/blogpics\/tanaka.jpg?resize=165%2C180\" alt=\"Campaign poster for Nagano Governor Yasuo Tanaka\" width=\"165\" height=\"180\" align=\"left\" border=\"0\" \/>A special election is scheduled for Sept. 1 in Nagano Prefecture (Nagano city is the seat of the regional government). Voters will elect a governor, and the likely winner will be the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fpcj.jp\/e\/shiryo\/jb\/0225.html\">man who resigned<\/a> just last month. The election is drawing interest from all over Japan, and is seen as a harbinger of the battle between reformers and the entrenched political establishment in this country.<\/p>\n<p>The picture here is of Yasuo Tanaka, the reform governor who resigned last month after a no-confidence vote by the prefectural assembly. One of the main points of conflict between the governor and the assembly was whether a new dam should be built near Nagano city. The dam seems to have been one of the many pork-barrel construction projects for which Japan is infamous, and Tanaka angered many entrenched interests by blocking construction of the dam.<\/p>\n<p>Tanaka was a famous writer in Japan before entering politics, and is something of a maverick. He is expected to be re-elected next week, thus gaining more leverage against his opponents in the assembly.<\/p>\n<p>As the campaign draws to a close, the candidates and their supporters rely on bullhorns to help get their messages out. I&#8217;m woken up each morning by political speeches which sound like they&#8217;re coming from a loudspeaker right outside my window. In the evenings, during the after-work rush, I often have to speak louder in my classes to be heard above the noise.<\/p>\n<p>Update (Sept. 04) \u2014 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.japantimes.com\/cgi-bin\/getarticle.pl5?nn20020903a3.htm\">Tanaka won<\/a> the election by a large margin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A special election is scheduled for Sept. 1 in Nagano Prefecture (Nagano city is the seat of the regional government). Voters will elect a governor, and the likely winner will be the man who resigned just last month. The election is drawing interest from all over Japan, and is seen as a harbinger of the&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/2002\/08\/30\/dam-issues\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Dam Issues<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\" aria-hidden=\"true\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,3,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entries-with-images","category-life-in-japan","category-politics-policy-culture"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5heLP-c","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":811,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions\/811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mikegerhardt.com\/mg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}