Jason Miks wonders if we are experiencing the beginning of the end for one-party rule in Japan…

Although Japan isn’t officially a one-party state, it has certainly seemed that way for more than half a century, with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party of Japan (LDP) having been in power virtually uninterrupted since the so-called 1955 system was established.

But after another local election thumping for his party, this time in bellwether Tokyo, Prime Minister Taro Aso is set to announce that the House of Representatives will be dissolved later this month for a general election on August 30.

It’s about time. Since the still popular Junichiro Koizumi stepped down in 2006, Japan has had three prime ministers – the youthful, nationalist and still hungry for power Shinzo Abe, the dour but supposedly safe Yasuo Fukuda and incumbent Taro Aso, whom the LDP hoped would woo voters with his earthy humour.

But with the economy still in the doldrums, 50 million lost pension records, a string of ministerial resignations and the prime minister’s foot taking up permanent residence in his mouth, Japanese have apparently had enough.

And rightly so. Handing over the reins of power once without consulting the electorate is, arguably, acceptable – especially given how convincing the LDP’s general election win was the previous year.

But doing so twice more is no way to run a democracy.

Of course it’s not altogether clear how much will change should the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) manage to seize power, with even seasoned political observers here struggling sometimes to discern the genuine policy differences between the two (perhaps not all that surprising, then, to know that DPJ heavyweight and former leader Ichiro Ozawa was once a member of the LDP). And many Japanese I speak to already seem resigned to the idea that a DPJ administration won’t be a whole lot different from an LDP one.

But it is a start. And in this case, for now at least, the very fact that there will probably be change at all is as important as what that change actually turns out to be.

When, nearly 10 years ago, on the suggestion of a tech-savvy friend, I switched my Internet searching to the newly fledged Google, I was astounded at its superiority over its rivals. Not astounded enough to guess that Larry Page and Sergey Brin would each be worth US$18 billion today, and (sadly) slightly insufficiently impressed to buy Google shares.

The world has watched the rise of this corporation with amazement, and the show is not over yet. At the Googleplex in Mountain View, California, they are working on applications that Google is gambling will change the face of messaging and social networking on the Net.

Foremost among these is Google Wave, scheduled to be launched within the next six months or so. The video of the developer preview of Wave is one of the hottest views on the Net, and the anticipated merging of email, instant messaging and social networking holds great promise.

However, no one, least of all even the seemingly omniscient Google, can be sure that Wave will succeed. It’s still a gamble. Not every pundit is even confident that the 2009 launch target will be met: Taylor Wimberly of Android and Me writes: "In the current form, I would not expect to see it before 2010."

Furthermore, Google Wave makes Sun Microsystems director and Web guru Tim Bray nervous, and Bill Gates's replacement as Microsoft Chief Software Architect skittish because he says it's "anti-web". And Eweek’s Google Watch is wary that it might enslave users.

Whether it will make a dent in Twitter, Facebook and traditional instant messaging and emails remains to be seen, but it is an impressive achievement in coding.

It’s hard to deny that Google has been remarkably successful over the years in having the last laugh over its critics, rivals and opponents in general. Gmail – which has just gone out of beta in order to attract more commercial users, is still steaming ahead as the webmail of choice. Even a longterm Gmail skeptic such as I has switched, no longer seriously concerned about privacy issues with the app’s contextual ads. Privacy? We haven’t had it for years. I got over it.

Meanwhile, Microsoft’s Bing is making a slight ding in Google’s share of the search market, and is now the Net’s 13^th most-visited site. Can’t decide which to use? Try http://bing-vs-google.com/ – and happy googlebinging, surfers.