OSAKA — Sunday's landslide general-election victory by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) terminated the one-party- dominated system that the catch-all Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has controlled almost without interruption since 1955.

For most of the last decade, the DPJ was not seen as a viable alternative to the LDP, although they appeared to form a pseudo-two-party system. Twenty years after the Cold War's end, Japan will at last have a post-Cold War system of government.

The Japanese public, even now, remains uncertain about the DPJ's ability to govern and is skeptical of its rosy plans for wealth redistribution, which lack solid funding. The public is also fully aware that the ideologically fragmented DPJ lacks a pragmatic, coherent foreign and security policy.