It appears all but certain that the Japanese political landscape will undergo a drastic change this year as a result of general elections following the dissolution of the House of Representatives by Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda.
In the previous election three years ago, the LDP headed by the then Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi scored a resounding victory as a number of new faces won on the coattails of his pet theme of privatizing the postal services. This time, however, many of those so-called "Koizumi children" are bound to lose and it is certain that the lineup of political forces will undergo a drastic change.
A major question is whether the idea of forming a "grand coalition" between the LDP and the Democratic Party of Japan, the top opposition party, will resurface in the aftermath of the election. Such a scheme was agreed upon in principle between Fukuda and the DPJ leader Ichiro Ozawa at their "summit meeting" last fall, but came to naught after Ozawa's lieutenants surprised him by rejecting it outright.