As forecasted, the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) got a landslide win over the ruling Liberal Democrats (LDP) in yesterday's Lower House election. DPJ's final score in the 480 seat Lower House is 308 seats, a huge rise from 112 seats it ended up in the 2005 election when people went in a big way for the LDP headed by the popular PM Koizumi. In a complete reversal of the two parties' positions, LDP ended up with only 119 seats from their earlier 296 seats with a number of high profile party veterans - including ex ministers, even prime ministers - losing their seats to new young and often female candidates set up by DPJ to challenge them. People turned up in voting places around the country in bigger numbers than before to give their verdict against LDP - the voting rate went just over 70 pct.

LDP president Aso "accepted humbly the people's voice" and announced defeat and retirement. There could be further ramifications within LDP who now looks listless and leaderless - analysts expect some individuals jumping over to DPJ or other parties, even a complete restructure of Japan's party field. "This is not about ruling party with unpopular prime minister and bad economy, but the end of the post-war party system in Japan", one leading analyst said this morning.

That might come in long term, but in short term DPJ and its new government will face big challenges to put things in better way: global economy remain poor and full of new threats, business is bad, unemployment highest level ever and people concerned about their future. Even swine flu is spreading now quickly and urgent counter measures must be adopted. It doesn't help DPJ in facing these challenges that its small party allies - Social Democrats and Japan New Party - won only 10 seats and this leaves the future government crucial 3 seats short of 2/3 majority that would have helped it to quickly smash through any new laws it wants like LDP managed to do recently thanks to bigger support from its partner Komeito, the Buddhist party with 31 seats (now down to 21 seats). So governing Japan's 5 trillion dollar economy will be again a game of skilful negotiations based on numbers and relations. If DPJ could rely on Japan Communist Party (9 seats), it would reach over the magical 321 seat threshold but this party has never agreed to side with any other before.

The negotiations will start with setting up the next government - the open questions are how the minority partners will be represented in the minister line up and how their policies, partly different from DPJ's declared manifesto, will show in the future directions to be adopted. So far, the only clear matter is that the next Prime Minister will be DPJ leader Yukio Hatoyama. He is another "political prince" coming from a family with minister level leaders the two generations, rich mother who was married to a famous industrialist (Bridgestone founder) and a brother who is one the top names in LDP. Hatoyama's personal political philosophy is based on "yuai" or brotherly love and he has been preaching not only for more equality and better livelihood for Japanese people but also for closer relations with Asian neighbours - free trade agreements, monetary alliance etc in business and economy - and some distance from the close alliance with USA that has been the basis of Japan's foreign policy past 50 years under LDP. In many ways he is more idealistic, even pacifist, than some of his more practical colleagues and past LDP leaders.

Maybe his name is already symbolic. "Hatoyama" translates as "Pidgeon Mountain" in English. Make that "Paaminsteri Puluvuori" in Finnish !