In the last analysis a healthy state can exist only when the men and women who make it up lead clean, vigorous, healthy lives; when the children are so trained that they shall endeavor, not to shirk difficulties, but to overcome them; not to seek ease, but to know how to wrest triumph from toil and risk...

Moribund conditions persist

Yoshimi Watanabe, the onetime cabinet minister who left the LDP earlier this year to form a reformist "third force" with independent Kenji Eda, is still preparing to launch a new party before next month's general election...

Not surprisingly, the LDP has greeted the DPJ's "realism" with severe criticism...