The Shogunate was really paranoid about the spread of Christianity, which they viewed as a threat to their political dominance. The Shogunate only allowed trade with the Dutch (who never proselytized) and Chinese, and only at the Port of Nagasaki. When Perry came, everyone in the government was shocked to learn that Dutch was not the main language in the West.
Needless to say, the Shogunate didn’t last long after Perry.
Perhaps because of
It’s kind of similar to the German (or New Zeeland or Scotland) system, but the directly elected local seats don’t count against the total when allocating the list seats, which makes the result a lot less proportional than the German system.
Of course, this system ends up favouring the largest party, which just happens to be the LDP (which is neither).
Holy Überhangmandat, Batman!
Yeah, that’s the weird part. The candidates standing as individuals are not on the list for proportional seats, and a lot of parties aren’t even fielding individual candidates, at least not in Chiba District 13.
[Commonwealth summit agreement raises slavery reparations after row with UK – POLITICO]
[What form could reparations for slavery take?]
[King says ‘none of us can change wrongs of past’ in careful speech as world leaders debate slavery reparations | UK News | Sky News]
Center-left parties, in particular the Social Democrats (LSDP), won a big victory against the incumbent center-right Conservative and Liberal coalition. Given what I’ve previously noted about the peculiarities of “left” and “right” in the post-communist space, this represents a significant shift towards social conservatism. LSDP themselves are not too bad - they do have socially liberal items in their party program, but they’re unlikely to push them. (They refused to back a Liberal initiative for gender-neutral civil unions, even though that’s supposed to be part of their party program.) Likely coalition partners Farmers (LVŽS), on the other hand, are all about “traditional families”, against “gender ideology” and “tough on crime”. “Nemunas Dawn” (NA), another center-left party which also holds all these “traditional values” in addition to blatant anti-Semitism, has the third largest number of seats, though luckily it seems that nobody wants their help in forming the government. It remains to be seen what the coalition will look like.
Previous LSDP led governments were infamous for letting the country run on auto-pilot, and they seem keen to uphold that reputation:
That’s a quote from the leader of a party that just had a historic victory to replace their main political rivals:
I suppose doing nothing is less bad than actively doing harm. But I fear the next few years will be too tough and too important to be left without credible leadership.
Goddammit, the Liberal Democratic Party and the People’s Democratic Party (neither party lives up to its name) are making a deal that will keep the LDP in power after they failed to win a majority of seats in last Sunday’s election!
