Headless In Tokyo

It's hard not to pity Shoichi Nakagawa. By now it seems the whole world has heard about the shame of Japan's former finance minister, who turned up apparently drunk at a G7 conference in Rome on Feb. 14. Nakagawa, who slurred his words and seemed to nod off during a press conference, resigned in disgrace soon after.

The real scandal, though, may be the guy who stayed.

Prime Minister Taro Aso, the man responsible for appointing Nakagawa, is still on the job—despite approval ratings in the single digits and an apparent lack of any coherent plan for rescuing the world's second-largest economy from what may become its steepest slump since World War II. Aso's propensity for gaffes—he once said he wanted to turn Japan into a country "where the richest Jews would want to live"—and his failure to find a modus vivendi with the emboldened opposition have condemned Japan to paralysis at just the moment when it's in dire need of strong leadership.

Yet Aso's agony—and that of his party, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)—has even deeper significance. His failings at this crucial moment underscore the country's dramatic leadership deficit. Never, it seems, have the Japanese felt the absence of credible politicians quite so acutely. On Feb. 27 the mainstream Asahi Shimbun newspaper captured the mood in an op-ed when it pleaded, "Enough with the political void." As that line suggested, what's most striking about Aso's shortcomings is how normal they are. Modern-day Japan is a major force in global business, culture and technology—yet in some ways it is governed like a banana republic. Which raises a key question: why?

The current prime minister's failings shouldn't come as a complete surprise. There were always reasons to have low expectations of Aso, who took the job without ever receiving a mandate from the electorate; he was picked by fellow members of the ruling LDP following the resignation of two similarly feckless LDP prime ministers in as many years. His immediate predecessor, Yasuo Fukuda, shocked the nation by almost casually throwing in the towel after just a year on the job, at a surprise press conference on Sept. 1, 2008. And his predecessor, Shinzo Abe, almost wept as he cited unspecified "health reasons" when announcing his decision to step down—also after just 12 months in office.

Yet Aso's performance has been lame even by these low standards. His brief term has been marred by crippling legislative gridlock and an ill-conceived (and unpopular) scheme to stimulate the economy by sending the equivalent of $120 to every taxpayer in the country. Even before he became prime minister, his career had been marred by epic gaffes. He once accused the opposition party of acting like Nazis when they blocked legislation he favored, praised Japan's harsh colonial rule in Korea and Taiwan, and cracked insensitive jokes about Alzheimer's patients.