When did Koizumi dissolve the House of Representatives?

As many predicted, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi dissolved Japan’s House of Representatives after the House of Councillors defeated the postal reform bill by 17 votes. A general election is now scheduled for September 11. While it is risky to predict the outcome of the vote, the dissolution of the Lower House has profound implications for Japanese politics and for the US-Japan alliance. The rejection of the postal bill, the cornerstone of Koizumi’s reform initiatives, indicates that the traditional consensus-based, decision-making mechanism within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has almost completely broken down. Although criticized as opaque and driven by-parochial-factional — rather than national — interests, this unofficial coordination mechanism allowed factions to broker deals behind the scenes. As unseemly as this process is, it works. While Koizumi appeared to take the initiative on a range of issues, he in fact relied a great deal on such coordination processes within the LDP to work out details. Without them, no one knows how the LDP or the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) will be able to move policy initiatives forward at the political level.