Prime Minister Taro Aso and his Cabinet resigned to pave the way for parliament to elect Yukio Hatoyama as the country's next leader.
The resignations were a formality so that parliament's lower house, now controlled by Hatoyama's party following a landslide election victory last month, can vote him in as prime minister. Hatoyama's victory ends more than 50 years of nearly unbroken rule by Aso's Liberal Democratic Party.
