The Economist: Politics in Japan, the Kamikaze Election!

The prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, appears suddenly to have settled a question that has hung over Japanese politics since the summer. He all but promised to dissolve the lower house of the Diet, or parliament, within two days, to hold a general election by December 16th. The move was greeted with glee by Shinzo Abe, who believes he can lead the opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) back to the position of power it occupied for nearly all of the 55 years to 2009. It raises another big question for Mr Noda, though. Why is he willing to hold an election, so soon, that polls suggest he is bound to lose? The answer would seem to reveal a lot about the prime minister, a man who seems prepared to take his party down in flames, in order to do what he considers to be the right thing. Many within the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) have urged him to cling to power for as long as possible, hoping that Mr Abe, who fluffed the job of prime minister from 2006-07, will stumble again in the meantime. Yet Mr Noda overrode their objections and set only two conditions for dissolving parliament. First, he wants the LDP-led opposition to join the DPJ in voting in the Diet to issue bonds that would cover the budget deficit, and so avoid Japan's version of the "fiscal cliff". The opposition has already agreed to that. Secondly, he wants a commitment in the next parliament to reduce the number of MPs. Japan needs to redraw the electoral map after the election, in order to avoid a constitutional crisis related to voting disparities between heavily populated and depopulated areas. For Mr Abe, that appears a small price to pay for something the LDP craves, a return to power. Standing opposite Mr Abe in a face to face debate in the Diet, Mr Noda sought to justify the election timing by declaring that he was honest. He had made a promise in August to the LDP that he would dissolve parliament "soon", and he intended to stick to it.