Not for nothing is Ichiro Ozawa known as “the destroyer”. The man who engineered the electoral destruction of the Liberal Democratic party, something he had been plotting for nearly 20 years, could easily end up performing the same service for his own Democratic Party of Japan.
The so-called “God of Elections”, now secretary-general of the party he steered to victory in last August’s lower house elections, has become a liability. The DPJ’s popularity has slumped in just a few months from a 70 per cent approval rating to 45 per cent. That is in large measure because of the whiff of scandal surrounding Mr Ozawa and the perception that the 67-year-old political warhorse is secretly running the DPJ from behind the scenes.