By Miwa Suzuki (AFP) – Sep 1, 2009

TOKYO — Japan's incoming leaders met the outgoing government Wednesday to start a power transition after their landslide election win, as a poll showed three-quarters of people have high expectations of them.

The centre-left Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) scored a historic win in Sunday's election, ousting Prime Minister Taro Aso's conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) after decades of almost continuous one-party dominance.

DPJ leader Yukio Hatoyama is set to become premier on September 16 and has promised to name his cabinet within a day. Not long after, he is due to jet off to meet world leaders at the United Nations general assembly.

To pave the way for a smooth change of government -- Japan's first since the early 1990s -- outgoing Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura, a close aide to Aso, met DPJ secretary general Katsuya Okada on Wednesday.

"I asked the chief cabinet secretary to tell ministries and agencies to provide us with information and broad cooperation" on issues from the economy to tackling swine flu, Okada told reporters after meeting Kawamura.

Kawamura, the top government spokesman, said the current rulers would meet their responsibility and ensure a smooth transition of power.

"Since Japan does not have rules on government transitions, unlike the United States or Britain, we think this is the first step to make them," Kawamura said before the meeting.

"We will of course cooperate on a new government for the sake of the country and in the national interest."

Premier-in-waiting Hatoyama, 62, plans to shape the next government in a coalition with two smaller parties -- the Social Democrats and a tiny group of LDP defectors known as the People's New Party.

The three groups held working-level talks to coordinate policies.

"Naturally, the key is how well we can coordinate our policies," Hatoyama told a gathering of his supporters.

"I expect a coalition among the three parties will be finalised in due time," he said.

Hatoyama also met representatives on Wednesday from the Japanese Trade Union Confederation, or Rengo, a national umbrella organisation of labour unions which has been a strong support base for the DPJ.

The DPJ and Rengo in July made a policy deal in which the party promised to seek a more equitable society and to reduce the wealth gap in Japan in return for the labour unions' support in the election.

The DPJ also stated the goal of creating 1.8 million new jobs, strengthening regulation and surveillance of international financial markets, and improving conditions for casual workers, dubbed the "working poor" by media.

Meanwhile, the nation's biggest business lobby Nippon Keidanren remained cautious over the incoming government, including its ambitious targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Chairman Fujio Mitarai told Japanese reporters the DPJ must consider fairness and the burden to the people as the party aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2020, compared with the LDP's eight-percent cut.

Japan faces a real power shift for the first time since the LDP was founded in 1955. Since then, the conservative party maintained its iron grip on power with only one break, a 10-month hiatus in 1993-1994.

"This was an election in which people for the first time in the nation's post-war history opted for a big change," DPJ secretary general Okada told a Tokyo symposium.

"While feeling the grave responsibility of power, we will try to avoid mistakes in administrative management."

On foreign policy, he said the DPJ government would promote strong diplomatic ties with China, adding that the party hoped to establish what he called win-win relations with the giant neighbour.

Media surveys, meanwhile, showed the electorate expects the incoming government to deliver. A telephone poll by the mass-circulation Asahi Shimbun found 74 percent of respondents had high expectations of their new leaders.

Only 17 percent said they had no hope at all for the next government, according to the survey of 1,104 adults nationwide, which was carried out immediately after the DPJ's overwhelming victory.

But only 32 percent said they thought the DPJ-led government would be able to change Japanese politics drastically, against 46 percent who believed it could not, the Asahi said.

"Voters welcome the government change generally, but a not insignificant number of them have doubt about the DPJ's politics and capabilities," it said.

The daily also quoted an unnamed DPJ official saying: "If we cannot live up to expectations, the disappointment will be big."

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