from Japanese "conservatives" to US "conservatives"

It is comparing apples and seagulls.

Japanese mainstream conservatives bear no resemblance to the Tea Party or the Religious Right or any of the other nutcases we have here.

I'm not so sure about that Hashimoto guy from Osaka, though. He sounds like the Michelle Bachmann of Japan.

"He also offered to boost spending on infrastructure at a time when much of the tsunami-wrecked northeast remains a shell of its former self."

Those conservatives don't look the same con-self-servatives...

It will be Abe again as he was president awhile back.

They believe in racial purity which means denial that their ancestors came from Korea, among other things.

Scientific and genetic evidence indicates that the Asiatic Japanese primarily came from Korea and pushed out the Ainu, Japan's indigenous people. The Ainu look more like Slavic Russians than Asian and now live in small colonies in Hokkaido.

My wife is Japanese and was fascinated with how the right denied all kinds of evidence that clashed with their preferred ideological views.

So the specifics are different from American conservatives but the mindset is identical.

Not so much recently.
She kind of shifted her interests to the North Korean insanity.

Though the right wing was responsible for WWII I accept that it wasn't appropriate to attribute today's right wing to those in charge back then.

I also know you live in Japan today so I will defer to your opinions as being more relevant than mine.

'conservative' pretty much anywhere else in the world bears no relationship whatsoever to the swivel-eyed loon-spuddery that Americans call 'conservative'.

in western Europe, Barak Obama (who i like...) would be on the right-centre wing of most of the centre-right parties, none of whom would be gun nuts, all would be pro-choice (to differing extents, but in philosphical terms they'd be pro-choice), pretty much all of them are pro Gay marriage, and pretty much all have some some form of taxpayer funded healthcare.

the politcal labels used in America have no revelence to what happens in the rest of the world, and Americans' (of all political flavours) assumption that the terms and ideologies they use are the same the world over is an unfortunate indication of how US centric, and to be frank, ignorant, many Americans are even when they are looking at the outside world.

its the serious version of 'the world series' - in which only American teams compete, but Americans haven't noticed that they are the only people who compete in'the world series'...

for the next 5 years. My wife says that the liberal candidate will win (which I hope happens), but I have a unsettling feeling the conservative candidate might win. I'm going to be pissed if it happens. Tomorrow is the last day of campaigning and it didn't drive me nuts like it did 5 years ago with the huge trucks blaring music outside my apartment building.

I'm crossing my fingers and toes.

(the current president is a conservative)