Sayonara to Japan Inc.?

The great wars of the 20th century were between corporatist politics (namely Fascism, communism as a clique running a country for their own benefit, and the Japanese zaibatsu) and democratic societies. Maybe that era is passing.

Here is a news report from the BBC on the Japanese election:

The opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) is set for a massive election victory, exit polls suggest.

The DPJ has won 300 seats in the 480-seat lower house, ending 50 years of almost unbroken rule by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), NHK TV says.

The DPJ says it will shift the focus of government from supporting corporations to helping consumers and workers. ...

The DPJ leader, Yukio Hatoyama, has promised to boost welfare, reform the bureaucracy, and seek a more balanced relationship with the United States.

Mr Hatoyama is the wealthy grandson of the founder of Bridgestone tyres, whose other grandfather was a former LDP prime minister. ...

Unemployment is at the highest level it ever has been and by the end of next year Japan will no longer be the second biggest economy in the world - that will be China.

Almost a third of the people here will be pensioners and therefore there will be fewer taxes coming in, more money going out.

This is long overdue. The strength of democracy is the ability to "throw the rascals out", i.e. not allow one clique to get too great a stranglehold on society. Turnover is good. Fresh blood. New ideas.

The future is not clear. China is rising and it is run by a "dictatorship of the proletariat" (nix the "proletariat", this is a dictatorship by a political class that has sandbagged itself into power, a lingering "corporatist" society).

Japan was a strategic chip nurtured by the US after WWII to "stabilize" Asia. Having a more democratic Japan is actually a plus, but this election symbolizes the exhaustion of Japan. Much like the US, Japan is a society that has not been able to face the future honestly and lives on the laurels of the past. Real change is needed.

Hopefully the DPJ is offering a "change" which is more genuine that the pretended "change" that Obama campaigned on but hasn't delivered.