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BaldrSkies on 07 February 2013
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Mr Khan said:
BaldrSkies said:
The DPJ was the worst thing to ever happen to Japan. It's nice to see the LDP pressuring the BoJ to finally start easing their monetary policies and get the currency under control. Hopefully corporations will have enough income to increase hiring and kick off this recession for good. As an example I know Nintendo was planning to decrease projected hiring by around 50% this year, bad news for new university grads, but maybe they will rethink this if the finances turn out better than expected due to increased overseas income.

The LDP were the ones who got Japan into the mess its in. They *have* to be the ones responsible, because they were in charge from 1955 to 2008. No possible way any blame could be affixed on the DPJ.

And that's not me saying this as a liberal, it's just stone cold logic. It astounds me that the Japanese people could be forgetful enough to vote the party that got their country into the mess it's in back into power after only 4.5 years of letting the other guys try (since the LDP got 53 years to try)

Yes the LDP was in power almost constantly for 50 years prior, and yes their handling of the country's finances since the 90's was sub-par, but part of the Japanese recession was also to blame on global trends and especially growing competition from other developing Asian nations with cheaper labor and products.

So under a similar "hope and change" rhetoric that swept Obama into power, the DPJ promised radical changes to the Japanese economy. Unlike the Democrats in the US, however, there was little meaning behind these words. In fact there was a much deeper and darker secret that most Japanese do not speak of that aided to the DPJ's march to power, and that was backing of the Yakuza (Japanese mafia), who became quite upset when the LDP decided to start pushing anti-mafia legislation through the Diet. You see, in Japan, there is no law that makes it illegal to be a member of the criminal underworld, and the LDP decided to betray their past allies and crack down. The Yakuza responded with massive public campaigns pushing the underclasses to switch support to the DPJ, pulling strings in the media and corporations, and backing DPJ candidates financially. The result was a landslide victory for the DPJ, and the anti-mafia legislation the LDP was pushing vanished from the Diet completely.

Fast forward to the present, and with the economy worse off than it had been under the LDP, a currency spiraling out of control, the shuffling of three prime ministers, numerous financial scandals by DPJ members coming to light, poor handling of foreign affairs especially territorial disputes with China and Korea, and the poor handling of the Tohoku earthquake and Fukushima disaster, the public was fed up with the DPJ, and with no other real party alternatives (much like the US) they voted en masse for the LDP once again. Is the LDP perfect? Hell no. But they are better than the provenly incompetent and totally corrupt DPJ. By the way, the ultra-nationalist Restoration party came in third place right behind the DPJ. Now THAT is the scary part.