OK, so since Junichiro Koizumi left office there hasn’t been a really great record of keeping prime ministers in Japan. But today, with an overwhelming Liberal Democratic Party vote in the lower house that overrode the uppoer house pick of opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa, Taro Aso became Japan’s first Roman Catholic prime minister. More from the AP:

“Aso … will soon have to decide whether to call early elections for the lower house to prove his party — which has governed for nearly all the past 53 years — still has a mandate to rule.


Such an election would be a major gamble for the party, which is bleeding public support and suffering widespread anger over mismanagement of pension funds and a general dissatisfaction with the status quo.


Elections can be called by the prime minister at any time, but must be held by next September.


Aso has also said that he will continue to place relations with Washington as Japan’s top diplomatic priority, while trying to improve ties with neighboring China, whose growing economic and military clout Aso once described as a ‘major threat.’”

Aso, a onetime Olympic sharpshooter know for his “acerbic wisecracks,” was foreign affairs minister under Koizumi and Shinzo Abe.