There is an irrational exuberance about Prime Minister Shinzo Abe evident in his 70 percent public-approval rating, a soaring Nikkei stock average and the Japanese media cheerleading the same man it hounded out of office in September 2007.
The polite, face-saving fiction that Abe stepped down because of ill health after nearly 12 months in the top job ignores just how unpopular he was.
Actually, party elders ousted Abe — then widely known by the sobriquet "KY" (kūki yomenai; "clueless") — because he had become a political liability. His emphasis on constitutional reform, patriotic education and rewriting history alienated voters looking for economic improvement. As a result, he was blamed for his Liberal Democratic Party losing control of the Upper House of the Diet in that July's election.