I spent a few minutes this evening looking for news of how Japanese markets might be faring overnight in response to US weakness late last week, and was embarrassed to discover that I hadn't known that there was an election in Japan on Sunday.
Japan's election on Sunday was for seats in the upper house of the Japanese Parliament. It appears that for the first time in half a century, Japan's Liberal Democratic Party no longer controls that house. The relatively new Democratic Party of Japan dominated the election results.
The lower house of Parliament chooses Japan's Prime Minister, so it's not automatic that the incumbent, Shinzuo Abe, will lose his post. Mr Abe, in fact, has said that he won't resign.
Press reports cite a variety of very familiar-sounding issues as reasons for the defeat Mr Abe's party has suffered. Here's part of the analysis:
The main opposition Democratic Party seized control of the upper house by a landslide, capturing seats not only in cities but also in rural districts that had long been strongholds of the Liberal Democratic Party. The rout was widespread, with household names in the governing party falling one after another before opposition newcomers. It could also stall Tokyo's moves toward a more assertive foreign policy and active military.
In a devastating rebuke to Abe, angry voters punished him for his mishandling of bread-and-butter issues and for a series of scandals in a government seemingly in disarray.
Mr Abe's party, the LDP, still controls the lower house, but the DPJ now has a great deal of leverage to stall or alter Mr Abe's agenda.
Military buildup? Corruption and cronyism? Incomptence? Economic worries?
In his quest for a third term in the upper house of Parliament, Kohei Tamura has been crisscrossing the verdant mountains of his district, hugging its dark blue coastline and running all the while against a member of his own party - the deeply unpopular Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
"I don't get what 'a beautiful country' means," Tamura said in a speech here, singling out the defining, though vague, campaign slogan used by Abe.
"Here in Kochi, we've been reduced to worrying about our next meal," Tamura said of his economically depressed district in western Japan. "So when he comes to support us with this pie-in-the-sky 'Japan, a beautiful country' and says nothing but random things, I feel he's making fools of us."
But wait -- there's a bonus. Sunday's election also featured the spectacle of Alberto Fujimori -- yes, that Alberto Fujimori, former President of Peru, now under house arrest in Chile and fighting extradition to Peru -- running for a seat. He lost in his bid, suggesting that Japanese voters weren't interested in importing his style of government, either.
Twenty years ago, many in the US felt the Japanese were far ahead of us in a variety of ways. Now, perhaps, they're ahead of us politically.