It is not every election in Japan that raises questions about the direction of the nation and the identity of its people. It was natural that last week's poll was a polemical one. After a "lost decade" now well on the way to becoming a "lost double-decade," Japanese people have been asking themselves: Why are we like a ship at sea, lolling in the doldrums while the ships of state in East Asia and elsewhere are forging purposefully ahead?

Of course, no great answers came out of the election last week. To virtually all the politicians involved, what Prime Minister Juniciro Koizumi touted as a "referendum on reform" was actually about which faction shall have the right to arrange the chairs on the deck of the directionless -- if not gradually sinking -- ship.

Every year in mid-September, however, I recall a Japanese who may have had some of the answers to the question of national direction and identity. Kenji Miyazawa, author, poet, scientist and devout Buddhist, died 72 years ago on Sept. 21. He was 37 and achieved no recognition in his lifetime.