News from Around the World

Politically, Japan has become more conservative. Its Left has effectively collapsed. The Socialist party was never serious about governing, but existed as an obstructionist force in parliament (sound familiar?). After electoral reform in the early 1990s, it all but evaporated. Japanese politics has become more populist, and Japanese society more open and less risk-averse. A new generation of politicians both in the ruling Liberal Democratic party and in the opposition Democratic party is not so wedded to the old pieties. "Japan is tired of constantly apologizing, and it wants a place in the sun more than in a pure economic sense," says former State Department official Jim Kelly.