The next election for the lower house is not due until August 2013, and speculation about the possibility of a poll in the next few months has been silenced by the earthquake and its aftermath. If it is to respond effectively to the earthquake, the ruling DPJ will need to end its internal feuding and forge consensus in the upper house. The LDP, which ran Japan almost without interruption from 1955 until 2009, is unlikely to persist with its strategy of non-cooperation with the DPJ at this time of great national distress, and has already indicated that it is prepared to countenance a rise in taxes to pay for the rescue and reconstruction programme following the earthquake-an idea that has been floated by the government.

If the DPJ is successful in overcoming the multiple crises facing Japan, this will demonstrate that it really is a viable alternative to the LDP and could make two-party politics in Japan a long-term reality. This would be a difficult process, however, as both the DPJ and the LDP consist of ideologically disparate, or even incompatible, factions. The tendency towards factionalism and ideological incoherence within the major parties has remained strong for so long that Japan could still find itself heading for an indefinite period of political uncertainty, and could end up with a sequence of evanescent parties and governments that are incapable of providing effective leadership. It is also possible that, if the DPJ fails to tackle the daunting challenges created by the earthquake and its aftermath, the electorate could return to the LDP. This, in turn, risks reviving the old, LDP model of governance that had so clearly outlasted its usefulness by the 1990s.