TOKYO - The latest risk assessment from the Eurasia Group, a prominent international risk assessment consultancy, places Japan under its new government as No. 5 on its Top 10 global risks for 2010, just behind financial deregulation in the United States and ahead of the collapse of global warming talks in Copenhagen late last year.

The group postulates what it calls "a continuation of the post-[ex-premier Junichiro] Koizumi era succession of weak governments, but this time without the benefit of a strong unified bureaucracy to guide policy and with a much more worrisome economic situation. ... Some pundits worry that the United States will replicate Japan's lost decade. For 2010, the greater risk is that Japan might be starting another one."

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