The votes have been counted, and unsurprisingly the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) has emerged victorious, becoming the first party other than the LDP to wield a majority in Japan's House of Representatives since the LDP was created in 1955...

Despite a truly historic victory by the DPJ, the first time since the LDP was created that it has been defeated in a general election (and oh how it was defeated!), there is remarkably little to say...

In the current issue of the Economist, the news magazine calls particular attention to comments by Hatoyama Yukio in an article in the September issue of Voice called "My Political Philosophy...

The general election is still six days away, but despite pernicious negative campaigning across Japan, the LDP seems to be incapable of reversing what the DPJ has taken to calling — switching from a meteorological metaphor to a geological metaphor — a "change in the earth's crust."

The Kyushu regional bloc contains thirty-eight single-member districts spread over eight prefectures: Fukuoka, Saga, Nagasaki, Kumamoto, Oita, Miyazaki, Kagoshima, and Okinawa...

Having tabulated the predictions made over the course of my election handbook, I think it's appropriate that I return and answer my initial question...

As the DPJ was finalizing its proportional representation lists for the 30 August general election, one name was inserted at the last moment onto the party list in the South Kanto block: seventy-seven-year-old Hirohisa Fujii...

The Kinki regional block, which includes Shiga prefecture, Kyoto, Osaka, and Hyogo, Nara, and Wakayama prefectures, elects forty-eight representatives from single-member districts and twenty-nine more through proportional representation, for a total of seventy-seven representatives...

The Tokai block, comprised of Gifu, Shizuoka, Aichi, and Mie prefectures, is Japan's industrial heartland...

At a press conference over the weekend, Katsuya Okada, the DPJ's secretary-general stressed that because Hatoyama will be winning the mandate for the party, Hatoyama should serve a full four-year term (which, Okada stated, a DPJ government will serve so that it is able to accomplish its goals)...