Little to celebrate

There was little good news for the dominant Liberal Democratic Party in Sunday's Japanese election results and not much for anyone else either. The party slipped into minority status and will form the next government only with the help of two smaller parties, both of which also lost seats.

The most obvious conclusion is that Japan will have one more cautious, faceless administration, without the courage and imagination needed to do something serious about its decade-old economic slump.

This is bad news for the rest of Asia and the world. Japan still exports vast quantities of goods and services; it ran up a trade surplus of nearly US$127 billion (HK$990 billion) during the most recent 12 months reported and has reserves (minus gold) which exceed those of the 11 "Euroland" nations and the U.S. combined.

But slow growth, consumer pessimism and de facto protectionism continue to prolong a recession and keep Japan from importing what it should to help other economies stay buoyant.

The main opposition, the Democratic Party, did grow from 95 seats in the former Diet to 127 in the new and smaller one, causing some analysts to claim a real two-party system is emerging. If so, that still seems years away the opposition's programs have not captured the public imagination.

To a large degree, all this is Japan's own problem. Yet other nations do have a legitimate interest in what happens because they need a prosperous and briskly trading Japan for their own well-being. To face yet another Tokyo government which spends borrowed money rather than addressing structural issues is not in their interest.

-- The South China Morning Post, Hong Kong