WHEN Japan's outgoing prime minister announced his resignation this week, Tokyo's financial markets barely budged, underscoring the depressing regularity with which the country's leaders have come and gone in recent years. However the election by Japan's Diet (parliament) of Naoto Kan as prime minister on June 4th may represent a change. The past four prime ministers hailed from wealthy political dynasties, among which the premiership was almost a filial rite of passage. Mr Kan is a self-made man, ascending into politics after years toiling in citizen movements.
Yet his job is made all the harder after the botched performance of his predecessor's nine months in office. Yukio Hatoyama, the outgoing prime minister, had led the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) to a crushing victory over the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) last August, thus ending more than 50 years of nearly uninterrupted rule by the LDP. But he was always the accidental prime minister, having been named as head of the DPJ only a few months before the election, when the party’s boss, Ichiro Ozawa, resigned the post following a fundraising scandal.
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