I pointed out on September 4th that the WTO vote in Congress (which hasn’t happened yet) and the Japanese vote yesterday were important.

We now have the results of the Japanese national election and something about the future is foretold.

The slide in the LDP power was not surprisingly strong. It was merely a slide. Completely unlike the pacifist anti-LDP rout in 1992 that changed Japanese politics forever.

My interpretation, as a person who hasn’t been in Japan for three months and who has few Japanese political friends, is that the voting public was supporting the idea of a two-party state. This was the first time a genuine and consolidated opposition party has arisen. The Japanese seem to like the two-party (American) system better than the multi-party legislature with single-party domination they have had for fifty years.

Again based on 1992, the Japanese are tempering their pacifist alarm at sending Japanese troops to Iraq with their immediate anxiety over a nuclear North Korea. The Japanese can and do openly say: “We need our alliance with America in dealing with North Korea.” That reasoning kept the opposition party from getting more votes.