TOKYO (AFP) - – Japan's centre-left Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama told party officials he would resign, less than nine months after taking power following a landslide election win, media reports said Wednesday.
He planned to appear at a special parliamentary meeting of lawmakers from his Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) from 0100 GMT, the reports said.
Hatoyama, who took power in September, has seen his poll ratings plummet from more than 70 percent to below 20 percent amid a row over an unpopular US army base on the southern island of Okinawa.
Hatoyama initially promised to move the base off the island but backtracked and decided to keep it there, caving in to Washington but enraging Okinawans and his pacifist coalition partners the Social Democrats.
The left-leaning group quit his three-party coalition on Sunday, while Hatoyama's poll ratings plunged to a new low of below 20 percent.
Speculation that Hatoyama, 63, would quit has dominated newspapers this week, and calls for him to resign have grown within the DPJ.
Hatoyama met Tuesday with party secretary general Ichiro Ozawa, the chief election strategist often dubbed the "Shadow Shogun" and the power behind the premier's throne, and his party's upper house caucus leader Azuma Koshiishi.
They had been due to meet again Wednesday as media speculation grew that Hatoyama's days in office were numbered.
Public broadcaster NHK and other media then reported that Hatoyama had told party sources he would quit, without specifying when he would go.