When the great recession began last year, the fate of Japan was often held up as an awful warning to the west. If the US and the European Union failed to adopt the right policies, it was said, they too might suffer a Japanese-style "lost decade", followed by years of feeble growth.

Now that the Japanese have used Sunday's election to elect the Democratic party - breaking with more than 50 years of rule by the Liberal Democratic party - a new western narrative is taking hold. This is a political revolution; it is Japan's big chance to break with the years of stagnation.