Political Upheaval in Japan

A political tsunami has just slammed home in Japan. For only the second time since World War ii, Japanese voters cast out the long-governing Liberal Democratic Party in elections on Sunday. The landslide victory for the opposition could have major ramifications for the island nation as well as for America.

“We have been trying to outgrow this old one-party system ever since the collapse of the Berlin Wall,” said Takeshi Sasaki, a political expert and former president of the University of Tokyo. “It took two decades, but we finally made it.”

However, the election looks like it could be such a landslide that the old dominant party may simply be swapped for a new dominant party—only the new rulers appear to be much more radical. TheLedger.com reports:

The Democratic leader, Yukio Hatoyama, tried to allay such concerns by saying that his party would avoid the heavy-handed tactics abhorred in Japan’s consensus-driven political culture.”If the Democratic Party becomes too big, they will become a new dictatorship,” said Miwako Sato, a 41-year-old homemaker at a polling station in Yokohama [a city near Tokyo]. She said for that reason she had split her vote between the Democrats and a smaller party.

The New York Times reports that the main opposition Democratic Party campaigned with promises to revive the economy and change the way the country is governed.

On the economic front, Japan is becoming increasingly desperate to jumpstart growth, pledging to get more money directly to the people.

The party has pledged to change Japan’s postwar paradigm … by handing more money and social benefits directly to consumers, and not to industry or other interest groups.It has promised to strengthen the social safety net and raise graying Japan’s low birthrate by giving families cash handouts of $270 per month per child.

But some of the biggest changes in Japan may come in the geopolitical arena. The opposition party has vowed to distance itself from America. The Democratic Party’s chief finance spokesman said in April that if the party were elected it would not lend America any more money unless the U.S. promised to repay the loans in yen, as opposed to dollars, which are in danger of devaluing.

Additionally, the Democrats have indicated they would like to reduce their reliance on the U.S. military. Most recently, they have warned that they intend to revisit certain elements of Japan’s nuclear treaty with the U.S.

For an in-depth picture of the direction Japan is heading, read Russia and China in Prophecy.