Sayonara, Naoto Kan

Japan will choose its sixth prime minister in five years on Monday.

No, this isn’t an archived news piece, it really has happened again. Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan has officially resigned after 15 months in office, meaning Japan will soon see its sixth prime minister since September 2006. The leader of the Democratic Party of Japan faced heavy criticism for his response to Japan’s recent nuclear disaster and won a no-confidence vote early in June. In Japan, 15 months is a lifetime for a prime minister to stay in office – the previous four (Yukio Hatoyama, Taro Aso, Yasuo Fukuda, and Shinzo Abe) each lasted about as long as a marriage to Elizabeth Taylor (less than a year). That's right, the country with the biggest national debt in the industrialized world, whose radiation is still leaking, is now without a leader.