And again Japan has a new Prime Minister

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Last year I examined the length that Japanese Prime Ministers have remained in office.

On Sunday December 17th, Japan replaced Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and the lower house of the government with members of the Liberal Democratic Party which is not really Liberal but ultra nationalistic and conservative.

What does this mean? At the end of my last post on Japanese prime Ministers, I wished Noda good luck at lasting longer than one year. Well he did make it past 1 year in the number sense. The Noda government lasted 475 days.

So now Japan will have a new Prime Minister...but wait we have had this guy before. Welcome back Shinzo Abe.

Abe has, before even moving back into the Prime Minister's residence, pissed off China and Korea by claiming he wants to change the constitution so that Japan can have a standing army instead of a purely defensive one. Members of his party want to deny the atrocities Japan committed in WWII.

But Japan is facing an economic crisis. The credit is not very good. We have a debt that makes the American one look like peanuts compared to the GDP.

I don't want to get too political so where do we stand on days in office?

Prime Minister DaysParty
Shinzo Abe* 6Liberal Democratic Party
Yoshihiko Noda 475Democratic party of Japan
Nato Kan 448Democratic party of Japan
Yukio Hatayama 265Democratic party of Japan
Taro Aso 357Liberal Democratic Party
Yasuo Fukuda 2792Liberal Democratic Party
Shinzo Abe 365Liberal Democratic Party
* Elected December 16th, 2012

Since 1945, the LDP has held the Prime Ministers office 25 times for a total of 21,366. The downside is that their policies are very similar to the ones the party held in the 1950s through the 1990s but now have elements of history revisionists and extreme right wing factions.

The DPJ is actually fairly new as it is a merger of several different parties. It has held the office 5 times for a total of 1514 days. It is a more progressive party with labor backing but policies, though agressive and supported by many economists, are not popular with the people.

But "the people" is not a representation of a majority of population as most voting age people are apolitical. They look at government as a bunch of old guys only interested in themselves.

Why does Japan change prime ministers so often? Maybe the answer is hope that someone will actually take meaningful action based on what they see, hear and learn from the population.

Most Japanese deplore the ultra nationalists because of the effect their rhetoric has on Japan's largest trading partners; Korea and Japan.

I give Mr. Abe a year at best. See you all next year at the next lower house elections.

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