Thirty years ago, while a program director at NHK, Nobuo Ikeda oversaw a panel discussion on the merits of adopting a federated political system. Among the panelists were several influential politicians, including Morihiro Hosokawa, then-governor of Kumamoto Prefecture and later prime minister, and Takahiro Yokomichi, then-governor of Hokkaido and presently a member of the House of Representatives.
"Everybody was in favor of such a system," Ikeda recalls to Shukan Bunshun (May 17). "But up to now, that debate has not progressed at all. Blame it on the bureaucrats in Kasumigaseki."
Voter frustration over Japan's political inertia is by no means new. At times when it boils over, it's become common for the media to fantasize about the emergence of a dynamic new individual who, they hope, will clear out the dead wood and set the nation on a new course.