The resignation this month of Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has thrown the government into a new round of turmoil—at a point when a chaotic global order needs a stable response from Tokyo.

Ishiba said he was stepping down to take responsibility for a dismal showing by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in July elections for the upper house of parliament. He was following in the footsteps of numerous previous leaders, including Prime Ministers Taro Aso, who stepped down after a parliamentary defeat in 2009, and Shinzo Abe, who resigned from his first term after similarly dismal election results. Such setbacks are not permanent in Japanese politics. Abe would return in 2012 to serve for nearly eight years, making him the longest-serving prime minister in the country’s history.

The resignation this month of Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has thrown the government into a new round of turmoil—at a point when a chaotic global order needs a stable response from Tokyo.

Ishiba said he was stepping down to take responsibility for a dismal showing by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in July elections for the upper house of parliament. He was following in the footsteps of numerous previous leaders, including Prime Ministers Taro Aso, who stepped down after a parliamentary defeat in 2009, and Shinzo Abe, who resigned from his first term after similarly dismal election results. Such setbacks are not permanent in Japanese politics. Abe would return in 2012 to serve for nearly eight years, making him the longest-serving prime minister in the country’s history.

Japanese leadership can seem like a revolving door, with most prime ministers out of office before other global leaders could even know who they were dealing with. But this is not a new phenomenon for Japan—and sometimes it can be a helpful one.

It has, for example, helped to ensure that the LDP has remained in power for roughly 64 of the past 70 years, since its founding in 1955, in what can be best described as consensual one-party rule. The party’s method has been to ruthlessly oust any leader who falls too sharply in opinion poll ratings. While there is no fixed number, any support level below 30 percent is considered a danger zone. Ishiba’s latest figures have ranged from 21 percent to 30 percent after the July polls.

The decision still leaves his LDP, which has dominated postwar Japanese politics, in something of a mess. The party will hold an internal vote on Oct. 3-4 with participation by LDP lawmakers, along with representation by individual party members in each region of the country. The front-runners represent the usual suspects, all of whom failed in their own bids to become leader in the 2024 elections.

Former Minister for Economic........

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