The public-approval ratings of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's new Cabinet skyrocketed to unprecedented levels of more than 80 percent. Koizumi pledged that his Cabinet would spare no effort in implementing his drastic reform plans.
Koizumi seeks to end factional politics, introduce governance under political leadership, expedite writeoffs of banks' bad loans, and pave the way for fiscal reform. The new Cabinet's challenge is to implement these reforms in a visible way as soon as possible. Failure to realize these goals in the face of resistance in the governing Liberal Democratic Party would lead to a serious erosion of public support for the administration.
In its final days, the Cabinet of Yoshiro Mori, Koizumi's predecessor, saw its public-support ratings plunge to single-digit levels. In contrast, the support ratings for the Koizumi administration broke records set by the non-LDP government of Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa, which was inaugurated in 1993. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said the high ratings reflected the public's strong expectations of the new prime minister. In my view, they also reflected strong public disappointment with Japan's "lost decade," a period of economic stagnation that followed the bursting of the bubble.
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