Omake Chapter: Goodbye, PM.
0900hrs, 31 December 2013, Tokyo, Japan
"Hey, hey LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?" 1960s anti-war protest chant.
The Mainichi Shimbun
Prime Minister Kenji Hasegawa voted out
In a snap vote of no confidence by the Diet today, PM Kenji Hasegawa was voted out of office by an unsurprising, but overwhelming vote of 480 to 0. No abstentions, an unusual situation, and unison voting make this event an unique one in Japanese history. As per the vote, a new government was formed at the request of the Diet.
"I am truly sorry for what I have done," Kenji Hasegawa said at a press conference. "The world has suffered needlessly through part of my actions." He then bowed deeply toward the reporters and the cameras, indicating his extreme apologies toward those who had lost loved ones during the 16 December attacks.
When pressed further by reporters, Mr. Hasegawa said that, "Mistakes were made, and I allowed for a company to rule over Japan with absolute tyranny and control. For that, I subverted a free and democratic system, and I endangered millions of people around the world for no good reason other than the sake of profit."
Kenji Hasegawa was selected as Prime Minister after frontrunner Takashi Hino was disgraced after a series of sex scandals erupted in early 2012. He resigned his post from the DPJ and went into isolation. Hasegawa, then a vice president of the party, was suddenly thrust onto the scene in 2012 during the succession crisis, and was judged to be the least politically unstable of the candidates.
Hasegawa and his wife Miko, were also victims of the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami, where they lost their only daughter, Yuna, aged fifteen, when she was swept away on a field trip in Miyagi Prefecture, and was presumed dead.
Sources from inside the LDP and the DPJ have stated that Takashi Hino, the disgraced frontrunner for the DPJ, is being courted by both sides due to his experience, but also his self-imposed isolation from politics for the last two years. The reasoning behind the LDP courting such favor with a politician form the other side of the isle is unknown, presumably to gain insights to the DPJ, to which the LDP has lost many of its seats in the Diet.
"We can neither confirm nor deny that we are in negotiations with Mr. Hino," said a spokesman for the DPJ. "However, we can say that he is planning to make a return to politics." The LDP had no comment to offer to the Mainichi Shimbun.