Election victory celebrations in Japan are usually sober affairs: no booze, the obligatory "Banzai!", and the endearing habit of holding aloft a fresh sea bream, which is a good-luck charm and a tasty ingredient for soup to ladle out to supporters. Not so on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Jubilation at the landslide win of Shinzo Abe's Liberal Democratic Party (ldp) on December 16th raised share prices to the rafters. The markets were celebrating a slide in the yen, which may make ailing Japanese exporters such as Sharp, an electronics firm, more competitive. Sotto voce, there was also joy that Japan's "nuclear village" appears to be back in business. During earlier decades in power, ldp governments backed nuclear energy to the hilt, brushing aside worries about safety.
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