On the face of it, the much-touted drive for political reform in Japan appears to be going almost nowhere. On Monday, a Liberal Democratic Party legislator was arrested on charges of violating the Public Offices Election Law. Indeed, Japanese politics is locked in a never-ending cycle of corruption.
Mr. Masanori Arai, who was elected from Saitama Prefecture for the first time in November's Lower House election, is charged with giving his campaign manager several million yen to buy votes. Earlier last month, another LDP member of the Lower House, Mr. Hiroshi Kondo, had been arrested on similar charges.
Vote-buying scandals are nothing new, yet it is extremely unusual that two legislators from the same party were arrested in less than a month after a national election. The irony is that the Nov. 9 general election, conducted for the first time under so-called manifestos, was supposed to be relatively "clean," as candidates tried to win votes on the merits of their policy promises.