ABSTRACT
From the early 1960s to 1973, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) could claim as one of its prime accomplishments the ever-rapid increase in the gross national product. Bringing a true one-man, one-vote system to Japan will take time and would probably weaken the LDP to some degree, since any system of realignment would take seats from party strongholds in rural areas and give them to urban areas where other parties are strong contenders. The Japanese will also be faced with increasing reluctance on the part of the world economic powers to permit unrestricted import of Japanese products into the European Common Market and the United States. Japan’s closest neighbors are Korea, the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, and the United States. The USSR’s capture of the South Sakhalin peninsula and the islands of Etorofu, Shikotan, Kunashiri, and the Habomais in the twilight of World War II has plagued Japanese-Soviet relations ever since.
