Word: mori
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...central role is being played by the Prime Minister of Japan. For now that's a politician named Yoshiro Mori who fell into the job when the previous Prime Minister, the good-natured Keizo Obuchi, unexpectedly suffered a stroke in April of last year. Five senior politicians of Obuchi's venerable Liberal Democratic Party met behind the ornate screens in Tokyo's Akasaka Prince Hotel to decide which of them would get the top job. The Gang of Five, as they are known, hurriedly picked Mori without consulting the rest of the party, much less the nation...
...mistake. Mori, a hulking ex-rugby player who shows evidence of having spent too much time at the bottom of scrums, has been a disaster since taking center stage. He has committed blunder after blunder, starting with his inability to perform the proper deep bow at Obuchi's funeral. Later Mori spoke favorably of Japan as a "divine nation," an unappreciated and embarrassing nod to the nation's militaristic past. And then there are those envelopes stuffed with 10,000-yen notes that keep turning up?or going missing. At the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for example, the travel office...
...Mori's most damaging bungle occurred Feb. 10 when he blithely continued his Saturday round of golf after being informed that nine people, including four teenage students, had been lost when an American submarine collided with a Japanese fishing boat off the coast of Hawaii. He still isn't repentant. "How can you consider it a situation requiring crisis management?" he says. "It was an accident. I feel I properly demonstrated the required leadership...
Nearly everyone else in Japan, including members of Mori's party, disagrees. An Asahi Shimbun poll shows his approval rating has plunged to a rock-bottom 9%. Comments Makoto Tanaka, a 49-year-old construction worker, "Mori needs to resign. Quit. Get out of there...
...even if Mori is somehow bundled off stage, there is still a problem with the last act. Who would succeed him? The LDP sorely lacks a powerful shogun like the late Noburu Takeshita who not only served as Prime Minister but was a master at misshitsu seiji, the behind-the-screen politics of grooming new leaders and smoothing over intra-party squabbles...