Japan's long-running governing party loses majority, raising uncertainty over next government
www.abc.net.au
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba's Liberal Democratic Party has ruled for almost all of Japan's postwar period. But it lost its parliamentary majority at Sunday's national election. Could smaller parties be key for Japan's future government?

Voters angry with political-funding scandal

The party promised to clean up its finances ahead of the election but allowed most of more than 40 members who failed to record political donations to stand for the party.

  • Cyrus DraegurEnglish
    9•29 days ago

    Rot In Piss, Conservatives. My only reservation at hearing this news is that the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, which is the second-biggest plurality after the so-called “Liberal” Democratic Party of Japan, is against nuclear energy. They seem to be on the rise rapidly since their reorganization in 2017. It would be nice to see Japan finally start moving at least a LITTLE more in a less authoritarian, less traditionalist, less STAGNANT direction.

    • @Arbiter
      9•28 days ago

      To be fair, Japan has some historical precedence for nuclear energy causing problems.

      • Cyrus DraegurEnglish
        3•28 days ago

        Fukushima, yes, which was actually a tsunami problem and an “insufficient preparation” problem (the plant’s sea wall was built too low)

        Arguably more hardship has been caused by the extended evacuation than whatever the radiation would have caused.

        Then there is the horrific, grisly, and heartwrenchingly tragic demise of the two unfortunate nuclear plant workers who were haplessly involved in a criticality incident at the Joyo Fast Reactor in Tokai, September 1999 where a uranyl nitrate solution was poured into a precipitation tank of the wrong material…

        …

        (One could also, if one is crass, make a reference to nuclear weaponry issues, but that is pointedly a different technological exploration than energy in the same way that gasoline for internal combustion engines is a fundamentally different application than napalm or a fuel-air thermobaric munition even if they both rely on the inherent properties of the principal material involved)

        • @Arbiter
          1•28 days ago

          Fukushima is still recent enough to shape public opinion, however.

      • Cyrus DraegurEnglish
        2•28 days ago

        CDP is a move in that direction relative to the faltering LDP. Japan seems less caught in the 2-party trap than some electoral systems, and generally speaking an anti-conservative coalition would move the needle where it desperately needs to go.

    • NoneOfUrBusiness
      1•28 days ago

      Unfortunately only the lower house was subject to this election so they’re not rotting anywhere.