Seldom in politics has there been a revival of electoral fortunes as rapid and dramatic as that enjoyed yesterday by Japan’s Liberal Democratic party.
Just three years ago, the conservative LDP suffered a crushing general election defeat by the insurgent Democratic Party of Japan that seemed to spell an end to a domination of Japanese politics that had endured for more than half a century.
In an interview with the Financial Times in 2010, Sadakazu Tanigaki, the then LDP leader, even worried that if the party suffered another setback in Diet upper house voting later that year, then there was a “strong possibility” it could “fall apart”.