Elections on the radar screen.(International Politics)

Japan Heads for a Two-Party System?

For the better part of the last 50 years, one party dominated Japanese politics. In the last decade, that gave way to a multiplicity of parties briefly. Then, last autumn's election may have given the country what some observers have long sought: A two-party system.

In the four decades that followed World War II, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) ruled, even though it was so riddled with factions that the prime minister changed often. Each faction, it seemed, had to have a turn at the top job.

All that changed