Japan's gossipy media kingmakers have finally gone too far. Not content with creating Japan's system of revolving-door prime ministers, they now want to dump a creature of their own creation, Junichiro Koizumi, only a year after he took office. They want Tokyo governor, Shintaro Ishihara, as his successor.
Readers of this column know I am no great admirer of Koizumi. He knows little about economics, and has left the handling of an already badly damaged economy to academic theorists caught up in U.S. and British supply-side dogmas -- almost 100 percent contrary to the demand-side policies Japan needs.
In foreign policy he has been a disaster, wandering the Asian scene with vague plans for future economic cooperation and claiming to want to be friends with everyone while antagonizing neighbors with visits to that symbol of former Japanese militarism, Yasukuni Shrine, and remaining deaf to their complaints about Japanese school textbooks whitewashing that militarism.