Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori's departure is inevitable, although he insists he has no intention of resigning. The questions are no longer if but when he will step down, and who will replace him.
Earlier this year, the Mori administration was jolted by two major scandals -- the KSD affair and the alleged embezzlement of secret government funds by a Foreign Ministry official. To make matters worse, it was shaken by signs of U.S. and Japanese economic slowdown. Last month, public-approval ratings for the Mori administration plunged to unprecedented lows of less than 20 percent.
Mori got into even deeper trouble when a Japanese fisheries training ship sank off Honolulu Feb. 10 after a collision with a U.S. nuclear submarine. Mori, who was playing golf in a Tokyo suburb at the time, continued to play after he was informed of the disaster, and did not return to the prime minister's official residence for four hours. This stirred extreme public anger, and public-approval ratings for the Mori administration in mid-February fell to less than 10 percent.