I cannot help but suspect that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and the members of his Cabinet feel beset with troubles both at home and abroad as the current session of the Diet enters the homestretch.
Japanese dissatisfaction with politics and the Liberal Democratic Party has reached a new high following a series of scandals involving powerful LDP lawmakers. Muneo Suzuki has quit the LDP, while Koichi Kato and Upper House President Yutaka Inoue have given up their parliamentary seats.
Popular reaction was evidenced most vividly in the resounding defeat suffered by an LDP candidate in the Lower House by-election late in April in Niigata Prefecture, historically a stronghold of the conservative forces.