Big crises like the current recession change a lot of things that once seemed to be a permanent part of the landscape. In Japan the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has governed the country for all but nine months of the past half-century, is about to go over a cliff.
Prime Minister Taro Aso's approval rating has fallen to around 10 percent, but having changed leader three times in the past three years, the LDP cannot decently do it again without calling an election. The election must be held by October in any case — and it is hard to believe that the LDP can win it.
For over half a century, Japan has effectively been run by the "iron triangle" of conservative LDP politicians, bureaucrats who had spent their entire careers under LDP governments, and the big industrial companies. It was very successful in fostering rapid economic growth between 1955 and 1990, so much so that by the late 1980s the United States was rife with paranoid fantasies in which the Japanese took over the world economy.