T he credit rating company Standard & Poor's downgraded Japanese sovereign debt late last month. With an AA- rating, we are now a notch below Spain, whose possibly looming debt crisis has been unnerving EU financial authorities for some time.
Remarks on the part of Prime Minister Naoto Kan to the effect that he really didn't know much about that kind of thing drew sharp criticism from the opposition, as well as the media. A prime ministerial comment of this sort could well have earned Japanese government bonds a further downgrade on the rating scales. The fact that it did not is probably attributable to the ambiguity of Kan's statement.
Did anyone really understand the "that kind of thing" the prime minister was professing his ignorance about? It's just the kind of thing that really makes Japanese politics so tragicomic.