Japanese voters on Sunday took a big step toward creating a two-party political system, but history shows that Japan still has a long way to go before it becomes a country in which changes of government occur periodically.
An election for the Lower House of Parliament undermined the dominance of the Liberal Democrats and heightened their reliance upon the followers of the Soka Gakkai who provide the bulk of support for the Komei Party, but fell short of giving the Democratic Part of Japan a foothold big enough to reach out for a majority in the next election.
The DPJ wound up with the highest percentage of seats any opposition party has won in the Lower House since a hodgepodge of post-World War II parties amalgamated into the Liberal Democrat Party and the Japan Socialist Party in 1955. The Democrats' 177 winners, however, amounted to 36.66 percent of the seats, only a hair's breadth larger than the previous opposition record -- a holding of 35.76 percent of the seats won in 1958 by the JSP.