Unsurprising lack of shake-up in the Diet
The morning edition of the Nikkei says the LDP + Komei Party coalition won 59 seats, eight more than it was shooting for. There were still, when the dead-tree version was going to press, two seats that hadn’t been decided. The chief opposition group (the Democratic, Communist, and Social Democratic Parties of Japan–no jokes from the peanut gallery, okay?) won 55 seats, so the result is, not surprisingly, an uneasy split. Voter turnout seems not to have been all that high, considering how it was hammered into us that this was a referendum on social welfare policy and the Iraq occupation.