It came out of the blue, but people walking the streets of Tokyo were not especially disappointed to hear Wednesday that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was resigning.
"It was a bit too late for him to resign," said a 26-year-old company employee outside JR Shinagawa Station. "Ministers were resigning one after the other, and his Cabinet was riddled with problems."
The man, from Kanagawa Prefecture, said he voted for the Democratic Party of Japan in the Upper House election July 29. Until then, he said, he had always voted for the Liberal Democratic Party.
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