By some yardsticks, Japan's electorate has delivered the biggest shock to the political system since the end of the American occupation. Voters have shattered, at a stroke, what came to be known as the “1955 system” – five decades of political stability administered by a Liberal Democratic party whose conservative, but egalitarian, instincts have suited the postwar temperament.
First through a period of transformational growth and, latterly through years in which the economy has been treading water, the LDP has time and again been entrusted with the keys of office.
Now Japan's electorate has changed the locks. Despite the drizzle, voters yesterday flocked to polling stations to register their dissatisfaction with politics as usual and their willingness to gamble on something new.