Japan's Rising Sun Sets

The landslide victory on Sunday of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) over the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) - which has ruled Japan almost without interruption for the past six decades - is the latest signal of a momentous transformation in Asia.

The past many decades, marked by Japan's political primacy and power in the area, have really ended; and the more distant past, signified by China's regional dominance, has returned.

In a way, history is repeating itself. Taro Aso, the LDP's outgoing premier, who was crushingly defeated in Sunday's vote, is the great-great-grandson of Toshimichi Okubo, one of the three men who led the Meiji Reformation in the mid-1800s and who is widely regarded as a founding father of modern Japan.