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In what would be a historic defeat for the ruling Liberal Democratic party, the poll suggested that the DPJ was likely to secure more than 300 of the 480 seats in the lower house election on August 30. The LDP’s presence could shrink to a little more than 100 seats in the house, compared with its 300 seats now, the poll suggested.

The Democratic Party of Japan will pledge a 25 percent cut in Japan's greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 from 1990 levels in its manifesto for the upcoming national campaign, party officials said Sunday. Bidding to wrest power from the Liberal Democratic Party-led ruling coalition, the DPJ has decided to set a more ambitious emissions goal than the 8 percent target set last month by Prime Minister Taro Aso. The DPJ's target, however, is the same as that pledged by the LDP's coalition partner, New Komeito. The DPJ's strategy would entail the adoption of a cap-and-trade system under which each company's...

Ruling party leader Taro Aso was elected Japan's next prime minister Wednesday. Aso, who was chosen president of the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party on Monday, had already begun piecing together a Cabinet expected to include a fellow outspoken hawk as finance chief. The opposition-controlled upper house voted for Ichiro Ozawa, head of the Democratic Party of Japan, as prime minister. But the more powerful lower chamber voted to override that ballot in favor of Aso. The right-leaning former foreign minister will confront a country wracked by political divisions and concerns over the economy, which has stalled in recent months amid...

Taro Aso, Japan’s former foreign minister, was on Monday night poised to become the country’s fourth prime minister in just over two years after easily winning an election to head the ruling Liberal Democratic party. Mr Aso, 68, beat Kaoru Yosano, the fiscally conservative economics minister, by 351 votes to 66, while Yuriko Koike, the first woman to compete for the job, was a distant third with 46. As leader of the biggest party, Mr Aso will be named prime minister in an extraordinary Diet session on Wednesday. He will succeed Yasuo Fukuda, who abruptly resigned after less than a...

SHINZO Abe is planning a revolution in Japan which will see the return of a full-strength imperial army for the first time since the Second World War.After securing the Liberal Democratic Party's presidency last week, he is now certain to succeed Junichiro Koizumi as prime minister, and he clearly has an eye on re-examining the post-war era. In a race that was his to lose, Abe - who will be Japan's first prime minister born after the Second World War - avoided specific comments about how he would pursue economic changes or how he would repair Japan's strained relations with...

ALARM - Shinzo Abe will become the new Prime Minister of Japan TOKYO (Japan) - the conservative Shinzo Abe was elected Wednesday chair of the democratic Party-liberal (PLD), to the capacity in Tokyo, and thus will become the new Prime Minister of Japan, one learned at the PLD.

WASHINGTON - The State Department on Sunday congratulated Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party on its apparent landslide victory in elections for the lower house of Parliament. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's party, which was seeking a mandate for sweeping government reforms, strengthened its majority in the powerful lower house, Japanese media exit polls showed. The State Department looks forward to continuing to work closely with the Japanese government, said spokeswoman Darla Jordan, and "to move ahead in our close cooperation on a broad range of global, regional and bilateral issues."

Early TV exit polls suggest Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is headed for an overwhelming victory in Japan's general election. Mr Koizumi called the snap ballot after parliament blocked plans to privatise Japan's post office - the centrepiece of his economic reform proposals. Exit polls suggest his party may be set to rule without a coalition partner for the first time in 15 years. Turnout is expected to surpass the 60% of the last general elections in 2003. 'Assassins' deployed An exit poll for public broadcaster NHK predicted Mr Koizumi's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) could win somewhere between 285 and 325...

By strange coincidence, the leaders of both Japan and Germany have been moved by separate crises to face the judgment of voters next month. If opinion polls are a reliable indicator, Junichiro Koizumi will win his Sept. 11 gamble and Gerhard Schröder will lose a week later. Both events would be cause for celebration. Japan and Germany have the second- and third-largest economies in the world so there's a great deal riding on whether the elections bear out the opinion polls. Both countries badly need economic reform. Sixty years after their utter defeat in World War II, they should be...

TOKYO (Reuters) - In a bid to paint itself as the true party of reform, Japan's main opposition unveiled a plan on Saturday to cut down the influence of powerful bureaucrats if it took power following next month's general election. Japan's bureaucracy has been credited for putting the country back on its feet from the ashes of World War Two, but it has also been blamed for representing vested interests and stalling structural reforms. In its 500-day plan for transfer of power, the Democratic Party said it would only appoint bureaucrats who pledge to follow the party's policy agenda to...

Japan's Gaffe-Prone PoliticiansFormer Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori (LDP) frequently had his foot in his mouth A Japanese minister has sparked controversy by saying the parents of a boy suspected of killing a small child should be beheaded. Yoshitada Konoike, state minister in charge of deregulation zones and disaster management, said that this would serve as a warning to parents who do not control their children effectively. "The parents (of the 12-year-old boy) should be pulled through the streets and their heads should be chopped off," Mr Konoike (LDP) told a news conference on Friday. "Gang rape shows the people who...