There were no Revolutionary Guards on the streets of Chiba, east of Tokyo, this week. Unlike Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, Taro Aso, Japan’s gravelly voiced prime minister, did not seek to stuff ballot boxes or intimidate the opposition. Yet in Japan, as in Iran, voters this week signalled their dislike of a reactionary old party and declared their willingness to gamble on something new.

Events in Chiba, a rather nondescript part of the commuter belt on the way to Tokyo’s Narita airport, admittedly lacked the drama – and bloodshed – of those that have shaken Tehran. But the victory of Toshihito Kumagai, 31, candidate for the opposition Democratic party of Japan in the city’s mayoral election, nevertheless signals the probable end of the Liberal Democratic party’s 50 nearly unbroken years in power.