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In America, former Vice President Dick Cheney is likened to Darth Vader, the menacing Sith lord of Star Wars able to crush his enemies with little more than a hard stare. But beyond the Cheney gaze there isn't much else in Washington politics that resembles the sci-fi classic. If you want to find the kind of twists, turns and intrigue spanning three generations that George Lucas delivers in his space epic, then Japan is the place to look.

The vortex of politics in Tokyo currently swirls around two men. The first, Aso Taro, is Japan's prime minister and leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which has dominated power with death star efficiency for almost all of the past half century. The other, Yukio Hatoyama, is leader of a ragtag group of rebels, many of whom, himself...