A disastrous poll puts Japan politics on shaky path

IN US politics, a Scaramucci has come to mean a unit of time lasting around 10 days, the length of Anthony Scaramucci’s term as White House director of communications.

Perhaps Japan is about to coin an Ishiba? Shigeru Ishiba, the prime minister and leader of the Liberal Democratic Party that has dominated Japanese politics since the aftermath of World War II, might be counting his time in power in such limited terms.

Elected as leader just last month (September), Ishiba’s task was simple: use his purported popularity with the public to jazz up the LDP, which has been suffering from historic low ratings. Those were caused by a funding scandal, its ties to a cultish religion, and the impact on households of the return of inflation for the first time in a generation, as well as the dislike for Ishiba’s unpopular predecessor Fumio Kishida.