木村：細川内閣、この後どうなるんでしょうね。
佐々木：良いものになるといいですね。私はこの内閣に夢を託したいと思いますよ。
Yume wo takushite
Kimura: Hosokawa-naikaku, kono ato doo naru'n deshoo ne.
Sasaki: Yoi "mono ni naru to ii desu ne. Watashi wa kono naikaku ni yume wo takushitai to omoimasu yo.
Kimura: I wonder what the new Hosokawa Cabinet will turn out like.
Sasaki: I hope it turns out to be a good one. I'm pinning my hopes on them.
The expression yume wo takusu conveys the idea that you are pinning your hopes on someone, relying on that person to carry out something you would like to see done.
At the moment I'm staying at Gonville and Caius College in Cambridge. It seems as if almost every day local newspapers reported the political situations in Japan. I've never seen so much news aboutJapan here before. In particular, there's a lot of news about Takako Doi, the first woman speaker of the Lower House.
Also, the fact that Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa is an 18th-generation descendant of the Hosokawa samurai aristocracy seems to be of interest to the English: the word "aristocracy" keeps cropping up over and over again in the news.
Nihon no kokumin wa, atarashii naikaku ni yume wo takushite iru (The Japanese people are pinning their hopes on the new Cabinet).
The pervasiveness of the political corruption of the Liberal Democratic Party, which has been tainted with a series of financial scandals, finally brought an end to its 38-year-old grip on power. Nevertheless, it still has the trust of older people who believe that the LDP is the party that put Japan in the economically dominant position in the world. Karera wa mada, Jimintoo ni yume wo takushitai yoo da (It seems as if they'd like to think they can still count on the LDP).
While I was sitting having lunch in the university canteen, a young Singaporean man came over and started talking to me. He told me that the Japanese government finally apologized that Japan forced foreign women into serving as sex slaves during World War II. "It's just a beginning," he added. If it wants to regain respect from neighboring countries as the leading power in Asia, Japan has to properly resolve issues of compensation. He also said that Japanese students he had spoken to had no idea about what Japan did in the war - the fact of atrocious acts cannot just be buried in the past.
Watashi wa atarashii nihon no seiji ni yume wo takushite imasu (I have big hopes for the new style of politics in Japan), said the Asian youth.
What he said was right. I hope Hosokawa and his col- leagues don't let us down.