Memories are short. In 1998, most foreign media poured scorn on the choice of Keizo Obuchi to replace former Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, who had been forced to resign because of the weak economy and an election setback.
Obuchi was a nonentity, we were told, a machine politician and about as exciting as "cold pizza." He would also be bad for the economy: He could not handle Japan's alleged need for radical, Reaganite/Thatcherite economic reforms, the critics warned.
The foreign favorite was a Junichiro Koizumi, who had allied with the inefficient and often corrupt banking industry to push for privatization of Japan's very efficient Post Office system. Today, we hear very little about either Koizumi or Post Office privatization. One reason could be the sight of those once eager-to-privatize banks now desperately seeking public funds to rescue themselves from bankruptcy.