The LDP’s first steps towards a new party

A week after the Liberal Democratic Party suffered its first ever electoral defeat, a new party is already taking shape from the ashes.The biggest change, of course, is the final demise of the factions as a force within the party. As Koike Yuriko said earlier this week upon announcing her departure from the Machimura faction, …

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Murky outlook for the general election

There is no question now that the outlook for the next general election — which a growing number of LDP officials are reportedly arguing should be held after dissolving the Diet in May — is muddier than before. The scandal in Ozawa Ichiro's political organization has overshadowed all else, including the re-passage this week of …

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Nakagawa Shoichi is now Aso’s problem

As the above video illustrates, Nakagawa Shoichi, finance minister, financial services minister, and Aso ally appeared at the G7 meeting in Rome, where he stumbled and slurred his way through his remarks to the press and fell asleep during the plenary session.Hatoyama Yukio, DPJ secretary-general, has already called for Mr. Nakagawa to be fired for …

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Political Japan awaits a black swan

"SOCIAL ENTROPY: A measure of the natural decay of the structure or of the disappearance of distinctions within a social system. Much of the energy consumed by a social organization is spent to maintain its structure, counteracting social entropy, e.g., through legal institutions, education, the normative consequences or television." – Krippendorff's Dictionary of CyberneticsThe LDP …

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