JAPAN ELECTIONS 2012: AN IDIOT'S GUIDE

This blog series

 is now a great

 book. Honest.

Cleaned up and

 all presentable,

Guts Pose: Diary of a

 Japanese election

 gone bad

features a previously

unpublished afterword

 by me and foreword

by Michael Cucek.

You can buy it here.

Oh dear what a mess. The Prime Minister of Japan (you mean a Prime Minister of Japan, there have been so many -- ed.) will dissolve the lower house on Friday which means there will be another election that Our Man can't vote in. But here at the bunker, he has carved a tiny niche of a smidgeon of a following by sticking his uninformed, disenfranchised nose in other people's business and he has no intention of stopping now. Here's an idiot's guide to the coming fun...

• There will be an election on Sunday, December 16th in Japan. Our Man can't vote and probably neither can you.
• Japan is a parliamentary democracy. That means you can't choose who the top guy is even if you could vote. That position is already taken by the national figurehead (Hello Kitty? -- ed.) -- the emperor. This is just about who gets to be the Newt Gingrich or Nancy Pelosi of Japan.
• The likely winner is Shinzoe Abe, 58, a former PM right-wing legacy pol with the Liberal Democratic Party who quit as PM after a year with a bad tummy ache in 2007. Really. Cue joke about whether he has the stomach to lead Japan again. But he is the best that the LDP have to offer. Sheesh.
• His presumed nearest rival is current PM Yoshihiko Noda, 55, head of the disintegrating left-leaning Democratic Party of Japan which was formed by "Shadow Shogun" Ichiro Ozawa, 72, no relation sadly to porn actress Maria Ozawa, 36-24-36*, who was booted out of his own party, but has started a new party (The Popular People's Front**) and presumably he will be still around drawing a pension and syphoning off non-LDP talent from the DPJ.
• Osaka firebrand, 43, Toru Hashimoto's Nippon Ishin no Kai or Japan Restoration Association is all grown up and a national party now, apparently.
• Shintaro Ishihara, 80, yes 80 years young, has just formed the Party of the Sun (or Sunrise, as he prefers it to be called in English because he's a loon) after jacking in his job as Tokyo governor. He is a loon.
• Various other old gits calling themselves parties who just do it as tax write-offs and because they can and the Communists who can tell the truth because they haven't got a hope in hell and New Komeito, the acceptable face of the loony religious.  

To summarise: You can't vote. If you could, you can't pick who rules you. But if you could vote for someone to pick who rules you, your choice is: a shambles at the head of the rightwingers, a leftwinger at the head of a shambles, a statesman with no state, a local pol with no national party, or an 80-year-old with no marbles.

For what it's worth, Our Man says never bet against the loon. It's Ishihara all the way.***

Good luck Japan.

Click here to go to Day 1 of the Japan Election 2012 Diary.

*That was a joke. And you'll have to google your own link.
**That was another joke. It's really called the People's Life First Party. Really. 
***That was not a joke.

Picture is of an idiot.