Foreign Minister Michio Watanabe opined three years ago that the United States has a personal debt problem because black Americans “overuse their credit cards and don’t care if they go bankrupt.” Tokuo Yamashita is back, too: in 1989 he had to quit his cabinet job after two weeks when an extramarital affair was revealed. Yet LDP pols insist the new cabinet lineup signals the end of the scandals, not their perpetuation. According to the circular norms of Japanese politics, you remove the effects of a scandal by naming ministers who were allegedly part of it; their re-election to the Diet in February was a ritual purge.
