One can gauge the emotions now churning through certain portions of the Liberal Democratic Party by a tearful comment made by a member of the Hashimoto faction following the unveiling of a memorial statue of the late Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi in Okinawa last week. The politician was not crying over the loss of a comrade but rather over the mess that his death has caused. If Obuchi hadn't died, "he'd still be prime minister" and we wouldn't have that spoilsport Junichiro Koizumi in the driver's seat right now.

The enmity expressed by this frustrated pol is, on one hand, the source of Koizumi's victory and, on the other, the reason veteran reporter Patrick Smith, in the Asian edition of Newsweek, predicted that his administration is "doomed."

As the instrument of Koizumi's triumph, the Japanese media don't seem to fully comprehend Smith's dire projection. They don't think it's weird that, in the blink of an eye, public support for the administration went from less than 20 percent to anywhere between 65 and 78 percent. The citizens simply hate Mori and like Koizumi, and are willing to ignore the fact that the political makeup of the Cabinet hasn't changed substantially.