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Elections in Japan over the weekend broke a nearly 60 year stranglehold by the Liberal Democratic Party in what is being touted as a “quiet revolution.” The opposition party won a landslide victory on Sunday, primarily because of popular discontentment with the ruling conservative party. About 70% of eligible voters cast ballots to deliver 308 of 480 seats in the House of Representatives to the Democratic Party of Japan. Parallel to the US’s recession, Japan’s economy had crumbled over the last year, fueling a national wave of anger against the status-quo. The Liberal Democratic Party has upheld post-WWII US foreign policy objectives staunchly and reliably over the decades. Sunday’s election results have changed all of that. The Democratic Party’s pick for Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama, recently penned an op-ed in the New York Times that left little room for interpretation: he wants to “put an end to [American-style] unrestrained market fundamentalism and financial capitalism,” and to “American unilateralism.” To that end, Hatoyama’s campaign promises included ambitious welfare projects and re-negotiating Japan’s military relationship to the US. Meanwhile, President Barack Obama has called for a “strong alliance” with the new government.

GUESTS: Professor Daniel Sneider is an associate director for research at Stanford University’s Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, John Feffer is the co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies

Read John Feffer’s article here: http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/6390

Read Daniel Sneider’s Op-ed here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/30/AR2009083001623_pf.html