Japan saw a great shift in the political landscape in 2007 when the ruling coalition suffered a crushing defeat in the July 29 Upper House election. Throughout the new year, the government and political parties will continue to move under the shadow of this change. It may mean more confrontation or compromise between opposing political forces.
Since the the Upper House election demonstrated that people's votes can bring about great political change, it will be more and more difficult for the government and political parties to leave problems unsolved or half-solved. They now face an electorate who are more conscious of the effects of political decisions and more watchful than ever before.
Ahead of the Upper House election — in which people handed the control of the Upper House to the opposition forces led by the Democratic Party of Japan — the DPJ slogan "People's lives come first" pulled at voters' heartstrings while then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's call for revisions of the Constitution and a "departure from the postwar regime" failed to win people over.