世論 What Japan Thinks

On television last night I watched my favourite program, “If I were Prime Minister”, which instead of the usual format of debating a political topic of the day, decided to run a vote by the public of the top ten people who have ruined the Japan of today (the translation of the key term is rendered by one online dictionary as buggered up). They also did a more positive who has made the Japan of today better survey, so I will present the results of both surveys here.

Q1: Who has made the Japan of today better?

Rank	Person	Who?
10	“Beat” Takeshi Kitano	The director, slapstick comedian, and all-round genius
9	Keizo Obuchi	Prime Minister of Japan at the turn of the century
8	Hidetoshi Nakata	Ex-footballer, the first Japanese player to make it big in Europe
7	Hayao Miyazaki	The co-founder of Studio Ghibli, responsible for many wonderful animations
6	Yukio Hatoyama	The new Prime Minister who promised a change
5	Toru Hashimoto	Osaka prefectural governer and ex-TV personality, a new broom in the political world
4	Ryu Ishikawa	A young golfer. He gets middle-aged ladies excited, I suppose
3	Hideo Higashikokubaru	Another prefectural governer, this time of Miyazaki, and an ex-comedian
2	Ichiro Suzuki	A baseball player, the first Japanese to make it big in the Major League
1	Junichiro Koizumi	The Richard Gere lookalike Elvis fan, and some time Prime Minister

Q2: Who has ruined the Japan of today?

Rank	Person	Who?
10	Takafumi Horie	Ex-livedoor CEO who got put away for securities fraud
9	Shintaro Ishihara	We all know why foreigners hate the Tokyo governer, but in this survey it was him wasting money on vanity projects like a bank and an Olympic bid that saw him pick up the votes
8	Yoshiro Mori	Ex-Prime Minister, famous for many, many gaffes including (or not? this one
7	Shinzo Abe	Another ex-Prime Minister who had wonderful (perhaps) ideas but made no effort to realise them
6	Yukio Hatoyama	The man who makes Charlie Brown look decisive
5	Taro Aso	Yet another ex-Prime Minister; this one couldn’t read kanji and enjoyed the high life
4	Junichiro Koizumi	You can’t make an omlette without breaking a few eggs, which explains his appearance in this list too
3	Noriko Sakai	She got busted for speed and crucified by the press
2	Asashoryu	The only foreigner to appear on the list – the Mongolian sumo wrestler who failed to live up to the expectations of a grand champion of the sacred sport
1	Ichiro Ozawa	The puppet-master behind Yukio Hatoyama; three aides arrested for fiddling the books, 400,000,000 yen (about 4 million dollars) cash purchases of land, his wife dodging taxes for share dividends in construction companies implicated in said book fiddling, contempt for police and political process, and…