In september 1998 the cover of The Economist carried the headline "Japan's amazing ability to disappoint", commenting on the government's bungling of yet another bank-rescue plan. It attracted a petulant protest from the Japanese embassy in London. Motoo Shiina, a veteran Diet member, offered a more thoughtful dissent: the correct headline, he said, would have been "The Japanese people's amazing ability not to be disappointed". Not so snappy, perhaps, but he had a point: surely in no other democracy would the same party that had been running the country continuously since 1955—the Liberal Democrats-have been left in government following a financial crash and an economic slump to which they had found no solution. They did lose power for all of ten months in 1993-94, but then returned to government, albeit leading a series of coalitions. And they have just been returned to power once again in a landslide, giving them their biggest parliamentary majority since 1986, despite having presided over 15 years of stagnation.
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