Hello, the episode you're about to listen to is part of a multi-part series introducing an overview

of Japanese history.

This is a repeat of one of the original projects the History of Japan podcast was built on,

and is intended to serve as an update and supplement to these original works.

After 10 years, my hope is to return to this approach and to do it a little bit better,

given the skills that I have improved in the intervening years.

If you haven't been doing so already, you should listen to these episodes sequentially,

starting with episode 501.

Without any further ado, enjoy the beginning.

In a moment of financial crisis, what a country needs is strong, stable, and functional leadership.

That's what we all hope for, after all, that when things get rough, there will be someone to turn

to with some idea of what to do. And so when the economic situation began to get, let's call it,

messy early in 1990, it was only natural that the people of Japan looked for leadership,

and of course the first place to turn was the Liberal Democratic Party,

the party of Ikeda Hayato, the architect of the post-war consensus,

one of the pillars of the post-war iron upon which the Reborn Japan had been built.

Surely the LDP had a plan, right?

Well, not really.

In fact, the LDP utterly failed to rise to the challenge of the moment for two primary reasons.

First, the party had a real vacuum of leadership at the top.

Generally speaking, LDP leadership had been fairly stable during the post-war period,

with the vast majority of prime ministers serving at least two years in office.

...