Though Japan's opposition has had to wait since 1955 to defeat the Liberal Democratic Party, the victory of the Democratic Party of Japan (DJP) last weekend should not be a surprise. It is, rather, the result of a long-term political shift that has gained momentum in recent months.
For weeks, the prospect of a DJP victory has prompted active and heated debate in the West, some of it neutral, some of it urging greater strategic dialogue and some openly alarmed at the end of a decades-long status quo. That debate, though, has been almost exclusively in the US; on this side of the Atlantic, Japan has barely featured as a topic of discussion, either at EU or, most particularly, at national level.
This reflects in part the US's leading role in Japan and its more acute sense of Japan's importance. It may also be an example of the maxim that he who has something to lose (the US) hollers louder and earlier than he who has something to gain (the EU, in this case).
That is not to suggest that when the US loses, Europe gains. DPJ politicians insist that the special relationship with the US will remain, but they add that the era of US-led globalism is coming to an end, to be replaced by an era of multipolarity. That creates additional space for the EU to move beyond the constraints of a relationship currently circumscribed almost entirely by trade and bilateral interests.
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