According to the Yomiuri today, prosecutors have started an investigation into political donations to Prime Minister Hatoyama. This scandal originally reared its head in July, just months after Ozawa Ichiro had been forced to stand down when his aide was indicted for falsifying reports of political donations. The embarrasment continued for the [...]

Prime Minister Hatoyama is headed to Copenhagen today, to join the leaders of the other three nations in the running to host the 2016 Olympic Games. Tokyo is vying for the chance to host the games along with Chicago, Rio and Madrid. Tokyo last hosted the games in 1964, and [...]

On Thursday (US time), Prime Minister Hatoyama addressed the General Debate of the 64th Session of the United Nations General Assembly. The text and video links (great chance to see the Prime Minister speaking English…) are below:

Prime Minister Hatoyama’s Prepared Speech to the UN [...]

Here is a link to the prepared remarks of Prime Minister Hatoyama, which he delivered at the United Nations Summit on Climate Change:

Statement by Prime Minister Hatoyama

Occassionaly a world leader will stand up and make a speech which truly moves you. This was not such a speech… It is [...]

If I had a dollar for every time an English student has misused the word ‘expect’… Just the other day I heard it again – ‘I expect the new government very much’. ‘Expect them to do what?’ was my inner gut reaction. But I knew what they meant, and corrected them. They expect a lot [...]

The Hatoyama Cabinet has been announced, with Hatoyama Yukio to be installed as Prime Minister by around 3PM today. The following is a list of the new Cabinet, with almost 100 links to their Japanese and English home pages and profiles, as well as links to their Ministries.

Hatoyama Cabinet
Prime Minister

(首相官邸) http://www.kantei.go.jp/
ENG:

In the DPJ manifesto which was released prior to the election, in a section entitled ‘Policies to end Wasteful Spending’ there was a curious sentence which said simply:

We will ban “hereditary” Diet seats.

Apparently this doesn’t apply to the highest governmental post in the land, because tomorrow Hatoyama Yukio will become the fourth consecutive [...]