Japanese Election

The Japanese have elected a new party to power for the first time in about 50 years and it looks like the most striking difference is their foreign policy. The New York Times says that the party sees a "need to reorient Japan toward Asia" and that they may even come to terms with Japanese history. A significant obstacle to closer relations with China is Japan's long-standing refusal to make any satisfactory apologies for war crimes committed during their occupation of mainland Asia during WWII. This new party "seeks to reverse Japan’s growing isolation in the region under decades of right-wing Liberal Democratic rule."

Another trend that has stood since the end of the war is Japan's near total reliance on the US for its security. At first this was because the Japanese constitution forbids them to have a military, but after a while the US realized that in order for Japan to be an effective ally, they needed to have some kind of defense forces at least, so that's all they've had (although they were deployed in the Iraq War for a time, pushing the concept of self-defense). This is supposedly a more left wing party, so it's hard to imagine that they would expand their military in order to be more self-reliant, so that may mean they have to get closer to China. The obvious advantage to this is there may be a significant thaw in Sino-Japanese relations. On the downside, this may come at price of further marginalization of Taiwan.