, Columnist
How Japan’s Leader Got Stuck in the Revolving Door
Despite reports of his resignation, Shigeru Ishiba is clinging onto power. He should let go, before he takes his party down with him.
On borrowed time?
Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images
The idea of the “revolving door” at the Kantei, the offices of Japan’s prime minister, is a long-standing trope of English-language coverage of politics here.
It became part of the parlance in the 1990s, amid US impatience at how frequently things changed at the top while the country suffered successive financial crises. The phrase carries an unpleasant colonial snootiness, a sense that the leader of one of the world’s biggest economies doesn’t matter, that they’ll be gone so soon we don’t need to bother remembering their name.