The Tohoku regional block is comprised of Aomori, Miyagi, Akita, Yamagata, Fukushima — and Iwate, Ozawa Ichiro's "fiefdom." These six prefectures combine to elect thirty-nine Diet members, twenty-five from single-member districts and fourteen from proportional representation...

With eight days until the campaign officially begins, the DPJ continues to hold a commanding position in public opinion polls...

In 2007, I reviewed the twenty-nine single-seat upper house races and offered a prediction (or, rather, a range) that actually proved too optimistic as far as the LDP was concerned...

In 2005, the DPJ managed to win eight of twelve single-member districts in Hokkaido, while equaling the LDP with three of the block's eight proportional representation seats...

With less than a month to the general election, Taro Aso and the LDP continue to face what looks like certain defeat...

After weeks of signs that the DPJ might wholly embrace the foreign policy status quo, Yukio Hatoyama announced on Wednesday that, when the current special measures law for the deployment of Maritime Self-Defense Forces (MSDF) refueling ships in the Indian Ocean in support of coalition activities in Afghanistan expires in January, a DPJ-led government would not extend the mission or draft a new law...

At a poorly organized press conference at LDP headquarters Friday evening, the LDP released its manifesto for the 2009 general election...

One policy area that could see cooperation between a DPJ-led government and the JCP (and the SDPJ) is the treatment of non-regular workers (mentioned here)...

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...

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...