This is an interesting weekend to have returned to Taiwan from Japan. On Thursday, Nobushige Takamizawa, the head of the Ministry of Defense's Defense Policy Bureau, spoke more candidly than he was supposed to:

In a highly unusual remark for a Japanese official, Nobushige Takamizawa, director general of the Defense Ministry's defense policy bureau, said a contingency over Taiwan would be "a security matter for Japan."

"Because it would be a seriously significant matter for our country, the Self-Defense Forces would obviously step up their alert and surveillance activities before judging whether the contingency is happening in our so-called surrounding area," he told a gathering of ruling party lawmakers.

Of course, if you live in Asia, you get used to hearing over and over from Beijing that Taiwan is an internal matter internalmatterinternalmatterINTERNALmatter. That was the major reason that Minister of Defense Shigeru Ishiwa came before a press conference the next day to spray squid ink:

He apologized that, "If his words were taken at face value, there are parts that would not preclude the possibility of misunderstanding," he said by way of apology.

Taiwan is being watched especially because of the elections to take place this Saturday. I haven't followed politics here very closely--they're covered pretty well by the Japanese press, since Taiwan lies within the geographical area surrounding Japan (not that that makes them significant to Japan, according to Defense Minister Ishiwa, of course). The two countries also have close ties economically. Japan notices when big things happen here. (Besides, politics can be amusingly rambunctious in Taiwan. The most interesting thing Japanese politicians do is yell and pull each other's hair sometimes in the Diet.)

They're predicting a very high turnout for the election:

Hundreds of thousands of people have taken part in rival political rallies across Taiwan.

It was the last chance for big weekend rallies before the island votes for a new president on 22 March.

The events - organised by the two main political parties - were also aimed at expressing public opposition to China's anti-secession law.

...

In its carefully-choreographed event, the governing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) asked people to gather at designated points and to walk anti-clockwise, highlighting the party's campaign slogan to "Reverse the Tide" - to turn back their political fortunes and that of their candidate, who has been trailing in opinion polls.

The party's presidential candidate, Frank Hsieh, attacked his rival's plan to establish a cross-strait common market with China, saying it could lead to job losses and other social problems.

He said he and his party stood for the protection of Taiwan's core values - which was important if the island was to avoid the fate of Tibet, which had seen peaceful protests violently put down by the Chinese military in recent days.

I do my best not to take the word of my cab drivers as the voice of the representative citizen. But the consensus among both resident expats and Taiwanese friends I have is that, while Taiwanese voters are wary of handing the presidency to the DPP again, they're also wary of handing it to the KMT, given the broad majority of its coalition in the legislature. The DPP, which pushes officially declared independence from the PRC vocally, was supposedly handing out "I love my country" T-shirts. (The reference was pointedly to Taiwan, not to the whole of China including the mainland.) And the DPP has pushed on worries about a flood of workers from the PRC into Taiwan if strictures on economic exchanges are loosened. Less than a week to go now before voting.