By Misa Murohashi, translated by Bruce Rutledge

In late August, the main opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), scored an impressive victory over the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in the lower house election. On September 16, the DPJ ushered in political change in the form of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and his new Cabinet. According to several newspaper polls, the new Cabinet’s approval rating was more than 70%, the second highest such rating, topped only by the Koizumi Cabinet of 2001, which ranked in the 80% range. The Hatoyama Cabinet even outpaced the Cabinet of Morihiro Hosokawa, which ended 38 consecutive years of LDP rule in 1993.