Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio has returned to Japan after what appears to have been a successful introduction to the world in New York and Pittsburgh last week...

With less than ten days until the start of the campaign for the LDP's presidency, the field is shrinking, not growing...

The work of picking a cabinet is done, said Hatoyama Yukio Sunday. He is scheduled to meet with Ozawa Ichiro Monday to finalize the lineup...

For the second time in three months, an effort by younger LDP members to lead the party in a different direction has run out of steam not long after getting started...

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...."

Following the discussion on Fuji TV's Shin Hodo 2001 that I referenced yesterday, Yomiuri today has three articles addressing the flaws in the Westminster model, suggesting that the conservative approach to attacking the DPJ's administrative reforms will be to warn of the dangers of too much power concentrated in the cabinet...

After appointing Ichiro Ozawa as the DPJ's secretary-general and Hirofumi Hirano as chief cabinet secretary, Yukio Hatoyama has announced his intended choices for other senior posts, none of which comes as a surprise...

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

In the transition plan released by the DPJ's committee to prepare for government in September 2003, the party stressed that in the first five days after winning a general election, the victorious DPJ would convene a transition team that would quickly put into place the rudiments of a new system for governing...

Blogger Tobias Harris discusses the DPJ's administrative plans.