Choshu Rules, Again

The donjon of Hagi Castle, prior to its destruction in 1874

Kawamura Takeo is a seven-term House of Representatives member from Hagi, Yamaguchi Prefecture. If news reports are accurate, he is the number one candidate to replace Ishiba Shigeru as Secretary-General of the Liberal Democratic Party. (Link - J)

If Kawamura is appointed Secretary-General, Yamaguchi Prefecture, with its 1.4 million inhabitants and 4 House of Representatives members, will be providing the nation with:

President of the LDP and Prime Minister: Abe Shinzo

Vice president of the LDP: Komura Masahiko
(also Japan's top China hand and leader of the government's side in the battle over the exercise of the right of collective self-defense)

Secretary-General of the LDP: Kawamura Takeo

The rest of Yamaguchi's Diet delegation does none too shabbily, posting-wise. The final member of the House of Representatives delegation, Kishi Nobuo, the prime minister's younger brother, is Parliamentary Senior Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs. House of Councillors member Hayashi Yoshimasa competed with Abe for the post of party president in September 2012 and is the current Minister for Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.

[So what is wrong with Eguchi Kiyoshi, the final member of Yamaguchi's Diet delegation? Nothing. He is just new on the job, having taken over remaining House of Councillors seat when Kishi Nobuo moved to the House of Representatives in 2012.]

For those keeping score, this means the han of Choshu (castle town: Hagi) which with the han of Satsuma (modern day Kagoshima Prefecture) and Tosa (Kochi Prefecture) overthrew the Tokugawa bakufu establishing a new political order that became so thoroughly monopolized by Satsuma and Choshu leaders the period is called "the era of Satcho dominance," is in pretty much in charge of Japan 146 years after the Meiji Restoration.

Bring's to mind William Faulkner's observation that the past's not only not dead, it's not even past.