Addressing a question from the press regarding Japan's new government, Defense Department spokesman Geoff Morrell said Wednesday, "I think that with regards to the Indian Ocean refueling mission, we have greatly benefited from — as has the world, for that matter — from Japan's participation in those efforts, and we would very much encourage them to continue those efforts...."

A week after the Liberal Democratic Party suffered its first ever electoral defeat, a new party is already taking shape from the ashes...

Blogger Tobias Harris discusses the DPJ's administrative plans.

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...

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...

A political party that needs to be examined carefully