KEY POINTS:
Why are we asking this now?
Japan's Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, has just led his party, the conservative Liberal Democrats (LDP), to one of its worst results in half a century.
The party lost 27 seats in Sunday's national upper house elections, narrowly avoiding its poorest upper house result in 1989. Even with coalition partner New Komeito, the bloc fell well short of the 64 seats needed to hold the chamber, which is controlled for the first time by the main opposition, Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ).
In the 10 months since Abe took office, three Cabinet ministers have resigned and the 52-year-old leader has presided over corruption scandals and ministerial gaffes.
His biggest political mistake, however, in a country with the fastest ageing population in the world, was failing to deal quickly enough with a public pensions fiasco in which government offices lost millions of records.
Why was Abe's defeat so significant?
He was born to rule; heir to a political dynasty that includes his grandfather, ex-Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, a founder of the LDP. Abe was handpicked to take over the top job by his predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi. Party elders thought the LDP, which has ruled Japan almost continually since the mid-1950s, was in safe hands, and have been stunned to learn many voters consider him dithering, weak and arrogant.
What does Abe stand for?
The Prime Minister may be Japan's most ideologically driven post-war leader, a radical conservative with two policy obsessions: rewriting Japan's record in the Second World War, renouncing its constitution and reforming the education system. These issues have been on the LDP wish-list since 1955 and, indeed, were among the key reasons for its foundation.
He was at the centre of a censorship scandal when he admitted leaning on Japan's state broadcaster, NHK, to change a 2001 documentary on wartime "comfort women" - sex slaves abducted by the military.
What do his critics and supporters say?
Under pressure from the LDP and hawks in the US Administration who want Japan to play a larger military role in Asia, the PM has laid the groundwork for a constitutional referendum on Article Nine, which allows Japan to maintain "Self-Defence Forces" but not an "army".
The document, which Abe calls a degrading "signed deed of apology", has always sat uneasily with Japanese conservatives. His supporters say that whatever his failings, he has finally dragged Japan out of its Cold War bubble and into the 21st century; his critics accuse him of laying the groundwork for the re-emergence of Japan as a major military power.
What does the party do now?
The drubbing has wrecked Abe's dream of amending the constitution, which needs both houses of Parliament onside, and could stall the government's entire agenda. But the ruling coalition still has a comfortable majority in the more powerful lower house and does not have to call a general election until 2009. Party elders must decide if they can wait until then to see whether Abe can turn the fortunes of his government around with a promised Cabinet reshuffle.
The odds are against it: his predecessors Sosuke Uno and Ryutaro Hashimoto both resigned after similar electoral beatings in 1989 and 1998.
The problem for the LDP is: who will take over? A couple of men have been tipped to take Abe's place, including Foreign Minister Taro Aso and Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki. But after that, the party leadership well starts to run dry.
So is this the end of an era in Japanese politics?
Perhaps. Eleven years after it was set up, the DPJ has emerged as a force to be reckoned with, although nobody knows how it will perform in power. The party is a motley crew of Liberal Democrat discontents, conservatives and independents and is unlikely to prove a radical break with the past, while the left-wing parties (socialists and communists) fared badly.
The LDP has been on the ropes before and always managed to survive, but there are signs in this election that the opposition made serious inroads into the LDP's rural base. The DPJ will try its best to build on that support and force the government from power in a lower house general election. That would be a major change.
Why should these events matter to the rest of the world?
An end to LDP rule in Japan would be a major breath of fresh air, shaking up the so-called iron-triangle of politicians, business and bureaucracy. The change could signal a power shift from the conservative rural to urban areas. In the short term, Abe's defeat has dashed his dream of deepening collective defence with the US military.
- INDEPENDENT
