On June 8, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Kan Naoto assumed the office of prime minister and appointed a cabinet, becoming Japan’s sixth prime minister in five years. In the following, we will explore some of the reasons for this extraordinary rate of turnover, review Kan’s career and qualifications, and discuss the policy and political challenges that confront the new prime minister. The Roots of Failure A look back over the brief tenures of Japan’s four previous prime ministers–Abe Shinzō, Fukuda Yasuo, Asō Tarō, and Hatoyama Yukio–reveals a fairly consistent pattern. In each case the cabinet started out with high approval ratings but very soon fell from public favor, and in each case this loss of public support made it difficult or impossible for the prime minister to stay in office. Abe made the decision to resign, partly for health reasons, when ... ... [Read more]

At a meeting of the House of Representatives Committee on Financial Affairs on the morning of April 6, 2010, Liberal Democratic Party legislator Koizumi Shinjirō addressed Kamei Shizuka, minister of state for postal reform and head of the tiny People’s New Party, and he did not mince words. According to an opinion poll recently published by the daily Sankei Shimbun, public support for the PNP stood at 0.0%. It fared only marginally better–0.7%–in a Kyodo News survey. In effect, Koizumi said, a party with virtually no voter support was ramming through an overhaul of one of the nation’s key institutions. And the main ruling party, the Democratic Party of Japan, was allowing itself to be pushed around by this political nonentity. It was the DPJ, not the PNP, that the people had voted into power with a resounding 300-seat lower house majority. The young ... ... [Read more]