Japan's election: Go on Mr Abe, surprise us THE general election on December 16th witnessed one of the biggest landslides in the history of modern Japan. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), with its New Komeito ally, has swept to power with control of 325 of the 480 seats in the lower house of the Diet. After years of gridlock and drift, during which Japan has stumbled from one recession to the next, a government now suddenly has the chance to lead. That ought to come as a relief. Instead, there are groans, and a sense of foreboding. The LDP that has returned to power is the very same outfit - cynical, chauvinist, in parts corrupt and beholden to special interests - that was deservedly kicked out of office in 2009. It won not because it was wildly popular - indeed, it got only a slightly bigger share of the popular vote than during its thumping defeat of 2009 by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) - but because the DPJ imploded. Its tally of seats in the lower house has dropped from 230 to 57. In terms of leadership and ideas, the LDP appears to have done little to renew itself. The new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, a hawk with distorted views of history, has already led Japan once. His year in office in 2006-07 was a shambles, and ended with him suffering from ulcerative colitis, a stress-induced illness. Questions remain about his health, about which he has not always been frank. Mr Abe's condition would knock the stuffing out of anyone, let alone a man with a job as stressful as his. Nor does his agenda offer much cause for comfort. During this election campaign, he did little except bash the Bank of Japan for failing to give the economy a monetary boost and promise to spend money on public works. He offered no new or bold ideas for modernising the economy. That is not good enough. If he is not to fail again, Mr Abe needs to set his party and country in a new direction. The most encouraging sign is that Mr Abe says he has learnt from his last spell in office. That time round, his energies were diverted by ministerial blunders and a needless controversy over Japan's wartime guilt. This time, he says, the priority is the economy, especially ending deflation. That is as it should be. Japan's economy remains moribund. It has recently fallen back into recession, for the fifth time in 15 years. Government debt is well over 200% of GDP. Consumer prices are below where they were two decades ago, depressing consumption, confidence and corporate investment. A strong yen adds to the woes. Mr Abe wants the Bank of Japan to adopt a formal inflation target of 2% and to buy bonds in unlimited quantities until it gets there. He is right about introducing a formal inflation target. Japan would be better off if its central bank were given a clearer, bolder goal, and politicians are the right people to set it. But he is wrong to want to meddle in how the Bank of Japan achieves that goal. Financial markets will become alarmed if the BoJ starts to lose its independence. That could raise the cost of servicing Japan's huge national debt. At present, financial markets are behind Mr Abe. Yet pushing the central bank around hardly adds up to an economic policy. Mr Abe needs a much broader to-do list. He should get more women into the workforce, radically deregulate the economy and follow the lead of the outgoing prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, by committing Japan to membership of the market-opening Trans-Pacific Partnership. If he does all this, Mr Abe could just become the man who pulled Japan out of its long economic funk. Meanwhile, on the foreign front... Like much of Japan's governing class, Mr Abe emerged from a political dynasty that shaped his views. His grandfather was Nobusuke Kishi, a war racketeer and later prime minister, whose goal was to rewrite the American-imposed constitution forbidding Japan to wage war or keep a fully fledged army. Japan has swung to the right in recent years, as Chinese sea and air incursions challenge its control of a group of islands in the East China Sea; and Mr Abe has threatened to visit the Yasukuni shrine, where the war dead (including war criminals) are honoured. China has long made it clear that such a provocation would be unacceptable. But Mr Abe's instincts need not lead him in that direction. His one decent accomplishment in his first term, when he did not visit Yasukuni, was to rebuild bridges with China and South Korea. This time round, he should drop the unconvincing claim that Japan has no territorial dispute with China, build trade ties with its neighbours, and foster student exchanges. That would underscore how much the countries of a prickly region have in common. Politicians rarely get a second chance. Mr Abe should not waste his.