Forum - View topicNEWS: Tarō Asō to Step Down as Head of Defeated Ruling Party
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samuelp
Industry Insider
Posts: 2230 Location: San Antonio, USA |
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Here's an interesting tidbit that nobody seems to mention that I find interesting:
The lower house of Japan has 480 seats, but 180 of those are elected based on proportional assignment instead of a winner-take all vote in a particular district. I.e. the country is split up into something like 10 big regions and each of those regions has a certain number (10-30-ish based on population) of seats that are split up in proportion to the votes on a party basis. In otherwords, even if a small party only gets 5% of the vote in every district, they still get 1 or 2 of these proportional seats. What's intersting is that the blowout would have been far far more massive without these for the LDP: If you look at the numbers, of the 119 seats the LDP won, a full 55 of them were from the proportional assignment. I.e. in a simple winner-take all system like the US has, the DPJ would have won a even nuttier 360/480 seats or so. |
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Joe Mello
 Posts: 2253 Location: Online Terminal |
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So....it's a caucus-style election?
I think the mere fact that the party ran out of politicians means that the country is pissed at the direction things have gone, like the US seemed to have done last year. I wouldn't be surprised if similar "overthrows" happen in other modern countries. |
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samuelp
Industry Insider
Posts: 2230 Location: San Antonio, USA |
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Uh no. Let me try and explain better: In any given prefecture/region, take say "Tokyo", there are split up into districts where each district has 1 representative. The person who gets the most votes in each district wins. However, there are also an extra number of seats available for the entire region, and the overall vote over every district is tallied up and those extra seats are assigned proportionally (the party gets to pick who fills them... usually they chose people who lost their local races so it's like a consolation prize  ).
So if, over all of Tokyo, 75% of votes cast were for DPJ, 20% for LDP and 5% for others, and Tokyo had a total of 30 districts and 10 extra proportional seats, of those 10, 7 would go to the DPJ, 2 to the LDP and 1 to one of the other parties. EVEN IF the DPJ won every single one of the 30 local elections. |
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Colonel Wolfe
 Posts: 370 |
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Now, just what does this have to with with anime or manga?
ANN is now a website that reports on all things Japan? Seriously!!! The majority of Japanese in Japan are anime and manga or otaku fans. It feels like I'm visiting the Japan Times website. It's nice to see that ANN has degenerated from a website that "USED" to report on the world of anime and manga. |
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Egan Loo
Posts: 1318 |
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As stated in the news article, the DPJ has confirmed that it will stop funding the National Media Arts Center if it gains control of the Japanese government. Existence or non-existence of the center will affect the anime and manga industries — although the question of whether the effect will be positive or negative has divided professionals in both industries. The majority of Japanese citizens do not identify themselves as anime or manga otaku. Many do read manga, but do not consider themselves otaku. |
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dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 9902 Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC |
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I'll just use your avatar to reply your statement above. |
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Hon'ya-chan
 Posts: 973 |
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He's standing here. Not talking. Maybe waiting for you to take him home. Like one of those abandoned neko's in the orange boxes...... |
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GATSU
Posts: 15292 |
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Egan: I think Aso's still right about soft power, but perhaps how he wanted to apply it was the problem? Tourism only works if enough people are buying into it, and that's not likely in an economic global down-turn. That's partly what we're paying for in L.A. and Cali in general. If the majority of Californians are unemployed, homeless, and/or uninsured, all that tourist money ends up being used to pump up social services at the expense of the economy. At least the DJP is trying to address the problem directly, rather than indirectly, or not at all, like our legislators.
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pparker
 Posts: 1185 Location: Florida |
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I'm no expert, but it seems that overhead is intended to be balanced by the longer tenure of successful prime ministers (Margaret Thatcher, 11 years). Theoretically, that system gets rid of losers quicker and keeps winners longer. OTOH, countries like Italy get to experience only 1 prime minister who lasted 4 years since 1963, many of them one year or less. Though the complexity of that would naturally increase according to the number of political parties. Apparently that's part of Italy's problem. My intuition based on little data is that the DPJ's landslide is probably more a mandate against Aso than a fundamental shift in popular political beliefs. |
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kgw
 Posts: 1055 Location: Spain, EU |
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Well, I think that knowing what happens in Japan, about the "official" projection of manga and anime is interesting enough. I mean,if the DPJ thinks that there are more important things to spend the money in...
And knowing other countries' politics doesn't hurt, too. |
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vashfanatic
 Posts: 3489 Location: Back stateside |
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Yeah, I mean, how dare they expect otaku and fans to be informed about the country from which they get their anime and manga! I mean, it's not like social context has any impact on what artist produce! That would be silly. Besides, from the beginning Aso has tied himself to otaku culture and has made an idiot of himself as a result. As a fan, I always found his pandering to be embarrassing rather than inspiring, like the senators and congressmen on CSPAN who constantly making idiotic cultural references and analogies rather taking issues seriously. |
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Joe Mello
Posts: 2253 Location: Online Terminal |
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Lord, that sounds like a headache. I think the "2 'elections', 1 vote" idea is actually good and would typically prevent absolute domination by one party, but it makes the Electoral College look intuitive by comparison. |
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ReiClone88
 Posts: 187 Location: Inside a giant tank full of Tang |
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What if a Western comics obsessed guy became the President of the USA?
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vashfanatic
Posts: 3489 Location: Back stateside |
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We'd be cool with it so long as he didn't constantly talk about it...probably. I hope. |
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Ktimene's Lover
 Posts: 2242 Location: Glendale, AZ (Proudly living in the desert) |
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I find the concept of a politician who enjoys manga interesting. I wonder if his love for manga conflicted with putting attention to politics.
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