TOKYO — Yoshihiko Noda’s greatest legislative victory could also become his last major move. The Japanese prime minister swore for months that he was willing to risk his job for a controversial plan to double the country’s sales tax to 10 percent. Now, political analysts in Tokyo and Washington say, Noda has won support for that increase, to be phased in by 2015, but he is nearly out of a job, having burned almost all of his political capital in order to push the bills through a notoriously inert parliament. Read full article >>