Typhoons hit Japan in each August generally and inflict upon a huge damage to men and materials. This time it was a political typhoon on August 30 that devastated the 54-year longest serving Jiminto, Liberal-Democratic Party (LDP), and brought in the leading opposition, Minshuto, Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), into the power corridor. It was a crushing defeat for the former and an unprecedented landslide victory for the latter. The shift has heralded a new revolutionary-like change in Japan after a long time. Ever since the formation of the LDP in 1954, the party ruled Japan for most of its time except for a few years in the 1990s. The Communist Party of Japan (CPJ) and Japan New Party took the resign of the government for a short while in the 1990s. The winner, DPJ, won 308 out of House of 480 seats in the general elections held for the Lower House of the Japanese Diet, exceeding the 241 seats needed for a simple majority to form the government, a 75 percent increase from its previous standing. The victory is almost two-thirds in the Lower House. DPJ will not need to form a coalition to govern but the party tends to align with the Social Democratic Party (SDP), 7 seats, and People's New Party (PNP), 3 seats as these parties cooperated with the DPJ during the election campaign to defeat the LDP. This will jump the combined seats to 318, increasing their strength to 66.2 percent in the Lower House, an addition to 2.1 percent. The position of other parties is as follows: New Komeito Party as the third largest runner after the LDP with 21 seats, Japan Communist Party (JCP), as the fourth largest winner with 9 seats, Your Party 5 seats, and 8 seats were captured by others. This is a resounding victory for a political party in Japan's current politics. LDP in its last landslide victory in 2005 could capture 296 seats. This time, LDP humiliated to such an extent that it could reduce to 119 seats, 60 percent lower than the previous win. The crushing defeat led the incumbent Prime Minister, Taro Aso, to resign from the presidentship of the LDP on the very day of elections. Several of LDP stalwarts including the former Prime Minister, Toshiki Kaifu, Taro Nakayama, former Foreign Minister, Shoichi Nakagawa, former Finance Minister, and Taku Yamasaki, former LDP Vice-President, and former Defence Minister, faced a devastating defeat. Voters turn out was 69.2 percent, which was supposed to be much exceeded but typhoon, heavy rains, and strong wind dashed the voters. These elections have shown that Japan is becoming much more centralised as the major contest was held between the two major ruling and opposition parties whose collective strength reached around 88.8 percent, while a number of other parties reduced to only 11 percent mandate of the voters. A new two-party system has virtually emerged in Japanese politics. This has also weaned the politics of coalition in Japan after a long time. For LDP, sitting in the opposition camp with a new experience as the party never experienced the role of the opposition party ever since coming into power in 1954. DPJ has short but an extremely vibrant history. The party, which was established in 1996, came through on its fifth attempt to snare the rein of government from the LDP. Ichiro Ozawa is the mentor of the DPJ and he provided the leadership to the party. In the new political set up, his role will be that of a Shadow Shogun. Analyst says that he has emerged as the most powerful political man in the Heisei period (1989 onward) of Japanese calendar. He has downplayed the influence of Junichiro Koizumi who vigorously ruled the country from 2000-2006. Even the resignation of Ozawa on May 11, on flimsy small money scandal, did not change the mood of the voters against him and the DPJ. Ozawa is a living legend and his legacy prevails, no matter how hard and harsh he is in his domestic issues and foreign policy matters particularly toward the United States. Hailed from Japan's northernmost cold prefecture of Hokkaido, Yukio Hatoyama, 62, a graduate of the University of Tokyo, and PhD from Stanford University in Managerial Engineering in 1976, and a former academician, will be the 93rd Prime Minister of Japan when the Diet will convene its session on September 14. Hatoyama family has a chequered political history. Hatoyama's paternal grandfather, Ichiro Hatoyama, was the 52nd, 53rd, and 54th prime minister, serving three short-terms from 1954-56, and the founder of the DPJ, and party's first president. He opened dialogue with the former Soviet Union to normalise Japan's relations with that country soured by World War II and former's taking over Japan's northern territorial islands. Hatoyama's son is working as a researcher at the Moscow State University. With background of an educational and political family, hopefully Hatoyama would inculcate new democratic values in Japanese politics. The winning opposition DPJ campaigned long to redefine Tokyo's relationship with Washington by making a major shift in security relations with the US. Ever since the military alignment with the US in 1952, Japan hosts over 50,000 American troops on its soil. The Operation Enduring Freedom-Maritime Interdiction Operation (OEF-MIO) and US policy toward Afghanistan and Iraq irked the DPJ a lot. A major part of DPJ's victory is rotated on its stand against the OEF-MIO. It was this premise which made the party a popular voice in Japanese politics ever since the happening of the 9/11. DPJ spoke against the end of American-dominated globalised world. Although Japan would remain a strong US ally, the fabric of relations would drastically be altered between the two allies. DPJ leaders wish to re-orientalise Japan's relations with Asia particularly with China and South Korea and to lower bashing of these countries. Analysts in Japan believe that the formation of a new government under DPJ would be having positive impacts on Japan's relations with the Muslim world, as put by Michael Penn, Executive Director of the Kita-Kyushu-based Shingetsu Institute. This change would be almost similar to the change brought in by the victory of Barack Obama as US president. Hatoyama would be the Japanese version of Obama. Forging an equal relationship and less dependency on US foreign policy dictates, would further converge viewpoint between Japan, Islam, and the Muslim world. DPJ has been in teeth and nail opposition to nuclearisation. LDP allowed Japan to change the basic cover of the anti-nuclearisation vis--vis the US-India nuclear deal last August during the 46-member Nuclear Supply Group (NSG) meeting at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, which gave a one-time waiver to its rules and values to help materialise the so-called US-India nuclear deal. After this anti-nuclear hypocritical role, second failure of LDP was the forging of an 'arc of democracy and prosperity' in cooperation with Australia, India, and USA to 'inculcate the feelings of human rights, freedom, and democracy's across Asia. The idea was strongly endorsed by the then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the then foreign minister, Aso. Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda was not an exception too. To follow the so-called doctrine of arc of democracy and freedom, Abe undertook an official visit to India in August 2007 by bypassing Pakistan and other South Asian countries, a shit in Japan's neutrality toward South Asia. The visit no doubt backfired and 'Indian fever' led Abe to submit his resignation on September 12, 2007, within 21 days of his Indian yatra. In short, LDP foreign policy toward Asia, especially toward the two Koreas, China, and South Asia, after 2000, was a failure together with global anti-nuclearisation and call for democracy and human rights. DPJ has to look into these serious issues to mend fences with Asia in the larger context. For Pakistan, DPJ has to see how to divert the tilt which Abe shifted in favour of India with particular reference to the Indo-US nuclear deal, change of the rules of the game at the IAEA, which were completed during the Fukuda time with Aso as foreign minister, and bracketing Pakistan, along with host of other Asian countries, in preaching the sermons of democracy, freedom, and human rights. The upcoming Hatoyama regime is expected to address these issues. The writer is a research fellow (East Asia) at the Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI).