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Japan's Prime Minister Takes On Cyberspace
Tokyo (AFP) June 27, 2000 - Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, who sent his first e-mail three weeks ago, plans to guide Japan into the Internet era with a new information technology minister. Mori, struggling back from his ruling party's debacle in Sunday's elections, said he planned to create a minister of information technology (IT) for his new cabinet, which is to be named July 4. "We still need to discuss the timing for the establishment of the post," he told reporters, explaining that some bureaucratic questions remained to be settled. "But there will be no change in our plan to give all we have to promote the IT revolution," he added. But he may need a lot of coaching. The 62-year-old leader has been ridiculed for saying IC (integrated circuit) when he meant IT. To demonstrate his part in the information revolution, Mori on June 6 sent his first-ever e-mail to a junior high school in Chiba, an industrial city by Tokyo Bay. "This old man cannot work a computer and is studying it now," Mori, a 62-year-old rugby enthusiast, said of himself when chatting with a class at Utase Junior High, famous for its use of computers. "This old man will do his best and wishes you will all do the same," he added. But on June 15, in the middle of the election campaign, Mori talked about "the so-called IC revolution" when he harangued voters about the need for the IT revolution in Ichikawa, one of Tokyo's satellite cities. On the same day, 150 kilometers (90 miles) to the west in Shizuoka, the head of the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan reminded voters that Mori was a stranger to the IT revolution. "He used to call it an 'itto (it) revolution' until recently," Yukio Hatoyama said. "This has probably been kept a state secret and not been made public much." The "digital divide," or the widening gap between Internet haves and have-nots, is set to figure prominently at the elite Group of Eight summit July 21-23 on the southern Japan island of Okinawa. Mori named his confidant LDP deputy secretary general Hidenao Nakagawa Tuesday as his chief cabinet secretary, and is expected to give him the new IT post. Community Email This Article Comment On This Article Related Links Space
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