The purge of over a dozen Cabinet ministers, vice ministers and party executives has begun.
That Prime Minister Fumio Kishida decided to clean house is unsurprising considering there is an ongoing criminal investigation involving kickbacks in excess of ¥100 million to ruling party politicians. But just because it was the practical thing to do does not make it any less dramatic.
When the dust finally settles, this will be the largest culling of senior political appointees in recent memory, and it will have second- and third-order consequences that will continue to reverberate inside the Liberal Democratic Party for the foreseeable future. A political event of this magnitude bears close observation of what happened, why and what comes next.