Japanese Election Results

Sorry for the bizarre characters in the text. The Gather Team has known of its bug with the Mac OS for quite some time now, but hasn't gotten around to fixing it yet. Be of good cheer, though, fellow Mac users, for the days of the Mac OS playing second-fiddle to Windows are surely numbered, and the last laugh will surely be ours.
-
-
Jim Swan's "None-Too-Great Hits" now on iTunes. Featuring the title song from his novel, "Dawn in Honolulu"

Wow -- sounds amazingly familiar and close to home! My little old iMac likes to put bizarre characters on things too. It used to always have this problem forwarding Hotmail e-mails -- it would always add "&" signs and such. I think I never updated from OS 9.1 to 9.2 -- so when I got new OS X software, it probably didn't know what to make of it! At least it usually works great. Hope they have some creative gridlock in your gov't so some bad things won't get done! Or at least that it works out for the best. Thanks for posting the update, and have a good week!!

Thanks for the comments, Vis.

Yes, "creative gridlock" -- a good concept. Up to now the past 60 years have been essentially the LDP doing whatever it wanted to. The genius of the LDP, though, was basically to stick to the middle of the road. Things started to unravel during the Reagan years and definitely picked up steam over the past decade, most notably with the immediately preceeding PM, Mr Koizumi. His great personal charisma allowed him to push the conservative envelope more than any of his own predecessors. Abe hasn't been so fortunate, and I saw yesterday that one of the old former PMs, Mr Mori (a terrible flop when it was his own turn, BTW) called Mr Abe too young and inexperienced for the job, having served only four terms before being chosen PM, ha ha!
-
-
Jim Swan's "None-Too-Great Hits" now on iTunes. Featuring the title song from his novel, "Dawn in Honolulu"

I lived in Japan for 15 years and my wife is Japanese. This is not the worst scandal to hit Japan, but as a 'bread & butter' issue it certainly touched a nerve with usually apathetic voters. The results were a slap in the face to the LDP, but in reality not much changed. The small towns and rural areas of Japan control roughly 65% of the Diet (Japanese Congress). The LDP, which has been in power since 1964, doles out huge amounts of pork projects to these areas and these areas are staunch LDP supporters.

Thanks for the comment William. I take it you're not in Japan any longer, as your icon says Detroit. I see in your profile that you are a guitarist/songwriter too. NAKAMA !

Where were you when you were here? I lived in Tokyo for my first six years, but I've been in Nara for the past 26 continuously.

What you say is true, Japan is no stranger to money politics, that's for sure, and nobody does it better than the LDP. The DSJ's standing will depend on what it does with the new-found power it has just been handed. Will they waste it, as the Democrats in the US seem to be doing? That's the main question now. And if they can follow this election up with a success in the next lower house election, they'll have no excuse for inaction; if they fail to do something constructive, they'll be back down to their old back-bencher position one election later.
-
-
Jim Swan's "None-Too-Great Hits" now on iTunes. Featuring the title song from his novel, "Dawn in Honolulu"

Hi, Vishenda. Yes, that's true. But it turns out in the newspaper follow up analyses, etc that the seats which changed hands from LDP to DSJ were almost all rural. What William said above got slightly dented in this election. Also, the fact that the former Agriculture Minister AND his immediate successor both had money scandals seems to have weighed quite heavily with the voters this time. Thanks for commenting.
-
-
Jim Swan's "None-Too-Great Hits" now on iTunes. Featuring the title song from his novel, "Dawn in Honolulu"

very interesting..hmmm..these politics have a familiar ring to the US...

Hi, Mary. Yes, it's the same thing everywhere you go, I bet.
-
-
Jim Swan's "None-Too-Great Hits" now on iTunes. Featuring the title song from his novel, "Dawn in Honolulu"