Is This Anything New?

NOTE 1: The two parties shown in red font have formed the ruling coalition.
NOTE 2: Komeito is a legitimized cult which was a minor coalition partner of
the Liberal Democratic Party until August last year.

I was not really interested in knowing the results of the Upper House election. Neither did I think the outcome would be report-worthy at all

On second thought, however, I felt an urge to post a flash report because so many self-styled Japan experts in the West have been misleading their audiences to believe the resignations of the former prime minister Hatoyama and the "former" Shadow Shogun Ozawa have paved the way to the rebirth of Japan as a sound and viable country. For an obvious reason these guys are determined to defy the fact that the misogi ritual can't have changed anything about the corrupt and disoriented regime.

Let me repeat one last time that no matter how often the Japanese replace their leader, their nation remains unchanged as long as they refuse to change themselves as they have done in the last 13 centuries.

As of writing this piece, yet another allnight dibeto ritual is going on on TV Asahi with media mogul Soichiro Tahara acting as the priest. As usual the debaters go in circles around the "issues" with the U.S.-Japanese alliance, widespread corruption, impediments to sustainable economic growth, ballooning sovereign debt and the bankrupt welfare programs. It's as though they are addressing different issues than those facing them before the election. They are getting nowhere before the daybreak because the priest is skillful enough at getting around the real issues.

The ruling coalition acquired only 44 out of the 121 seats contested in the Sunday poll where the voter turnout was as low as 58.55%.

But the "stunning" setback the DPJ and the PNP suffered this time would mean nothing but one little thing; Ozawa will make a comeback, in one way or the other, in the DPJ presidential election scheduled for September.

You can't still rule out the possibility of his arrest in the meantime. The prosecutors office is not allowed to turn it down if and when the "Committee for Inquest of Prosecution" calls for Ozawa's indictment for the second time. The second verdict is due by the end of July.

But even if the supposedly independent Committee finds the thief indictable once again, that will not mean he is finished because the prosecutors can sabotage the verdict in many ways. For one thing, the Justice Minister will certainly tip them off about the most effective way to do so. The broad also lost her Diet seat last night, but Kan can't ask her to leave the post without doing the same himself.

When succeeding Hatoyama as prime minister, Kan asked the former secretary general of the party to sit out for a while. By the exquisite phrase "for a while" Kan actually meant "until the dust settles."

And now the dust has settled overnight.

I am afraid Obama and other summiteers will certainly be missing Kan in the next G8 Summit to be hosted by the city of Nice. ·