Japan’s next government—part two

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party suffered a massive defeat in Japanese elections today. The opposition Democratic Party of Japan is expected to win 300 out of 480 seats in the lower house of Japan’s parliament, according to projections based on exit polls.

The election will mark a shift in Japan’s relationship with America and Asia. For 53 of the past 54 years, the Liberal Democrats have ruled. Now the Democratic Party will set a different agenda.

Yukio Hatoyama, Japan’s next leader, wants to move away from the U.S. and closer to China. “[A]s a result of the failure of the Iraq war and the financial crisis,” he wrote earlier this month, “the era of the U.S.-led globalism is coming to an end, and we are moving away from a unipolar world led by the U.S. towards an era of multipolarity.”

In February he said, “Japan now needs to make a clear shift from diplomacy that follows the U.S. lead to diplomacy based on multilateral cooperation. We must view the Asia-Pacific region, where we have increasingly close ties with other countries, as the place where Japan will live as a nation.”

Ichiro Ozawa, former Democratic Party leader, also sees his country moving away from the U.S. In his book Blueprint for a New Japan, he says that Japan must stop relying on the U.S. and become an independent military power. In 2003 he stated, “We have plenty of plutonium in our nuclear power plants, so it is possible for us to produce 3,000 to 4,000 nuclear warheads. If we get serious, we will never be beaten in terms of military power.”

The Trumpet has long predicted that Japan would move away from the U.S. and toward Asia, remilitarizing in the process. This prophecy is being fulfilled before your eyes. For more information, see our booklet Russia and China in Prophecy.