Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has just announced his resignation.

Hatoyama managed to hang on for only a little over eight months in the top job following his DPJ’s landslide victory in last summer’s general election, less even than his ill-fated predecessor, the last LDP PM, Taro Aso.

Hatoyama cited concerns about the upcoming election and acknowledged dwindling support for his Cabinet, which dropped below the fatal 20% mark, long the mark of doom for LDP PMs.

DPJ Secretary General said the Party would form a new Cabinet on Monday.

NHK is making unflattering comparisons, pointing out that Hatoyama’s tenure in the Kantei is 95 days longer than astronaut Soichi Noguchi’s stay on the International Space Station.

Former Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa, who lost his Hokkaido Diet seat on August 30th, after his drunken appearance at a Rome G8 conference in February led to his resignation from the Cabinet, was found dead in his Setagaya home by his wife at about 8:15 this morning.So far, Tokyo police say suicide is unlikely, but are conducting an autopsy to determine the cause of death, which they believe may be related to prescription a sleeping medication he was taking.

Foul play has been ruled out.

The Kyodo report contains one interesting line:

When Nakagawa’s 50-year-old wife came home at around 9 p.m. Saturday, she saw him sleeping with his upper body leaning against the bed, his face down, but did not sense anything was wrong, they said.

The way that’s phrased makes it sound like an unusual posture, but perhaps not that unusual considering the number of even more unusual sleeping positions in which Mrs. Nakagawa must have seen her husband over the years. (Read on …)

The day has come. Tomorrow, the International Olympic committee will meet in Copenhagen to decide which of the four finalist cities - Chicago, Rio de Janeiro, Madrid, or Tokyo - will get the dubious honor of hosting the Games of the XXXI Summer Olympiad, better known as the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Obviously, each candidate city has spent years and millions of dollars already in an attempt to snag the Games, in the process making more and more promises that are almost certainly unachievable. (Tokyo budgeted $48 million for bidding alone, with $27 million of that explicitly coming from the metropolitan government.)

In this respect, the competition to get the Olympics is quite a bit like a political campaign: even if one of the candidates wanted to be up front about it and make a case, the process drags everyone involved down into the muck of disingenuous myopia. Once the bids begin, candidates go for the gold no matter what the costs - appealing in a sprinter, less so in a government. After all, the whole point of hosting the Olympics is to benefit the host city and environs in one way or another, right?

On Friday, the contenders are pulling out all the stops. In addition to the wining, dining, and wooing of the IOC that has already taken place, big names will be on hand to pitch for their respective cities. For Chicago, President Obama announced last week that he would join his wife, Michelle, in Copenhagen to make the case, even as protests heat up in the Chicago itself and fewer and fewer respondents to polls say they really want to see the Olympics in their town. For our own Tokyo, new Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama will make the case in what the media here have been entertainingly, but ridiculously calling “Hatoyama vs. Obama.”

First, let’s set aside some of the hogwash about what the Olympics actually represents. (Read on …)

September 19th marked the tenth anniversary of human rights activist Debito Arudou’s first visit to the Yu-no-Hana Onsen in Otaru, Hokkaido and the first of three times he and some of his companions were turned away due to an explicit “Japanese Only” policy that turned out to be, according to the explanation offered by the management of the onsen, a “Japanese-looking” Only policy.

As most TPR readers or listeners know, after trying many other avenues of reconciliation, Arudou and two other plaintiffs filed and won a civil suit against Yu-no-Hana, as well as two appeals. The first and only decision against the plaintiffs was in a civil suit before the Supreme Court against the City of Otaru for negligence.

The case generated more publicity and hardship than Arudou or his co-plaintiffs had anticipated and wound up launching Arudou down a new path of human rights advocacy, on which he continues to this day. (Read on …)

As expected, Yukio Hatoyama officially became Japan’s 93rd Prime Minister yesterday and just the second since the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party was founded not to belong to it. Just as importantly, after roughly two weeks of managing to keep the press at bay and leaking little, if anything about the make-up of the new Cabinet, the new Prime Minister formed the first Cabinet since 1955 to contain no LDP members.

In fact, as promised, the new Cabinet is made up entirely of elected representatives. Every portfolio went to a DPJ member, with only two positions going to the DPJ’s partners: State Minister in Charge of Consumer Affairs and the Declining Birthrate to SDP head Mizuho Fukushima and State Minister in Charge of Financial and Postal Issues to People’s New Party chief Shizuka Kamei.

So, without further ado, the Cabinet: (Read on …)

While the counting is far from over, returns for the Tokyo Metrpolitan elections are coming in and it looks like a landslide for the DPJ.

Polls closed at 8:00 p.m. As of 10:00 p.m., according to NHK:
- The DPJ has won 41 seats and an unaffiliated candidate won, giving the opposition camp 42 seats so far
- The LDP is on pace to do much worse than the 48 seats it held, having won only 7 so far. It’s coalition partner New Komeito has 4.
- No other party has won a seat.
- The opposition leads 42 - 11 with 74 districts not yet reporting.

- The bizarre Happiness Realization Party (幸福実現党) got zero votes (so far) in Suginami, which is only slightly more than I would have predicted.
- Here in Nakano, DPJ first-timers swept, with former secretary to Lower House member Akira Nagatsuma, Nishizawa finishing first and Yoshida finishing second. An LDP candidate finished last here.
- An energetic 26 year-old, Kurishita, beat LDP oldie and local Secretary General Uchida in an apparently close one, despite Kunio Hatoyama speaking on behalf of Uchida.
- Former gravure model Mai Goto lost in Shinjuku.
- Ishihara (Nobuteru, not the Gov.) speaking for LDP. I don’t know why, but he reminds me of a reject from a Monty Python revival. LDP is the only party that does not have its logo and slogan behind its speaker, instead having the old school candidate list - they might not want people to see that tonight.

- Apparently 44% of the vote has gone to the DPJ as of 10:00. (Read on …)

The Japanese media is reporting that Democratic Party of Japan leader Ichiro Ozawa is set to resign at a press conference scheduled for 5:00 this afternoon.

Although details are still sketchy, Ozawa must be feeling the pressure of public opinion, which has indicated that his party’s chances will be hurt with him at the helm in the upcoming Lower House election.

More to come on this breaking story.

Post-Press Conference Update: (Read on …)

Opposition Democratic Party of Japan leader Ichiro Ozawa recently put himself into hot water by claiming that the presence of the U.S. Navy 7th Fleet would be sufficient in terms of US military presence in Japan. Ozawa seems to have forgotten about the significant role that the Marines and Air Force, as well as US Army intelligence stationed at Camp Zama play in Japan. (Editorial aside: Given Ozawa’s recent meeting with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, one has to wonder if Ozawa is somewhat out of touch with reality as he makes such comments. Then again, given his seeming reluctance to meet with Secretary Clinton, one has to assume that Ozawa is completely out of touch with reality.)

At this point, Ozawa’s comments seem irrelevant, as the DPJ leader’s top aide has been arrested by the Tokyo Public Prosecutors Office on charges of violating the Political Finance Regulation Act. Apparently, construction firm Nishimatsu Kensetsu has contributed about 21 million yen to Ozawa’s political finances from 2003 to 2007. Two exeutives of Nishimatsu Kensetsu were also arrested. (Read on …)

Amid speculation of his having been drunk at a G7 press conference in Rome and the resulting DPJ move for a censure motion, Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa announced today that he would resign after the fiscal 2009 budget bills were passed, causing further damage to the already poor image of Prime Minister Aso’s Cabinet.

While Nakagawa had claimed he’d merely consumed too much cold medicine on the flight over, the defense met with little but incredulity and even ridicule from press outlets and other observers around the world. (Read on …)

This has nothing really to do with Japan, but is closely related to an issue on which I editorialized a little over a year and a half ago.

Reports came out this past weekend that a graduate student, recently arrived at Virginia Tech, was murdered and decapitated by an acquaintance in a cafeteria on the campus. Police apprehended the sole suspect immediately as he was still with the woman’s body when officers arrived.

Most reports are saying the victim was Chinese, although there have been reports that she was Japanese as well. Should the latter be true, we’ll see wall-to-wall coverage within hours, to be sure.

Whatever the nationality of the victim or her murderer, our sympathies go out to Virginia Tech, which has seen a worse two years than any other university in North America in recent memory. Clearly there’s a problem - here’s hoping they can find out what it is and address it.