For the world is hollow...

...and I have seen the stars.

Kaboom! Support for the Cabinet drops into the low thirties.

Courtesy: Mainichi Shimbun

The previous ruling coalition leadership group lied when it promised to account for every yen of every individual's pension by March 2008. Clearly, trying to fudge this fact is wounding the present ruling coalition leadership.

Unpopular also is the extension of the Diet session in order to pass the Indian Ocean dispatch reauthorization. That the members of the House of Representatives would go way out of their way for this marginal contribution to Japan's international standing when the economy is heading for a brick wall, the social order is disturbed and people are freezing their butts off in Hokkaidō due to colder-than-usual weather and high kerosene prices is simply rubbing folks the wrong way.

It is becoming impossible to ignore the signs that the job of Prime Minister is devouring Fukuda Yasuo, making him appear ever smaller with each passing week. He is falling prey to the false certainties of the party hacks, the relationship handlers, the op-ed artists and timid bureaucrats--much like the parade of little-remembered men who sat at the prime minister's desk in the late 1980s and the 1990s.

For more detailed analyses of earlier public opinion surveys, see Okumura Jun and Tobias Harris.