It's the sort of thing that almost makes you long for the days of the samurai. Those guys had swords, and strong beliefs, and, well, cojones. Certainly not like modern-day Japanese prime ministers. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe quit last year after less than a year on the job. And now his successor, Yasuo Fukuda,  announced his resignation last night here in Tokyo, also after a little less than a year.

It wasn't just that Fukuda left so quickly. Japan has gone through periods before when there was plenty of turnover among senior politicians, such as the 1990s, when no one had any bright ideas for pulling Japan out of its seemingly endless recession. Fukuda's departure was different. It was ignominious. Pitiful. Wimpy.

The reason I say that is because of the way he complained. (I am tempted to say "whined," but Fukuda's public manner has always been strikingly unemotional, if not downright robotic.) "The Democratic Party has tried to stall every bill so it has taken a long time to implement any policies," he said. "For the sake of the Japanese people, this should not be repeated." He had no choice to resign, he said, and if he didn't, the result would a "political vacuum."

Wait a minute--did Fukuda actually say, referring to himself, that there would be a political vacuum if he stayed in office? And what is this horrible opposition party that's so inconsiderate as to pursue its own agenda? Well, it's the Democratic Party of Japan, which won a landslide victory in elections to the Upper House of parliament a few years back. In other words, people voted for it. And the DPJ's hold on the upper house allows them to block legislation proposed by Fukuda's ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which controls the somewhat more important lower house.

In France, back when there was a socialist president and a conservative prime minister, this sort of thing was called "cohabitation." It wasn't always pretty to watch, but they worked it out. In the United States, where the electorate preferred for a time to have long presidents from one party and congresses from another, it was simply called "governing." Fukuda-san, no offense, but that's just how it works. It's called "democracy." Get over it, dude.

The deeper point here is that present-day Japan, for a variety of reasons, has a more open political system than it did for a good part of the postwar period. Fukuda, at age 72, is a product of the old days when his LDP basically ran everything on its own. Things got done through what was politely called "inner-party consensus"--meaning that the various groups within the LDP solved problems by doing backroom deals out of sight of the pesky public. For half a century the LDP ran Japan without having to worry about pesky "oppositions" and similar nuisances. Throughout Fukuda's brief reign as prime minister his distaste for the antagonist give-and-take of political dealing has shone through at pretty much every step of the way. At one point he and the opposition leader were caught flirting about some sort of "grand coalition"--even though Fukuda himself had never faced the public in a general election. (He was appointed to the job of PM by his party after Abe resigned.) Why worry about the public when there's important business to be done?

Abe, originally reputed to be a hardbitten Japanese neo-con, shocked everyone by suddenly announcing, with a tear in his eye, that he just felt like he ought to resign because nobody seemed to like him any more (though his aides suggested that health reasons played a part as well). These poor Japanese politicians just can't get a break.

For the record, a lot of the toughest Japanese politicians these days seem to be women--no wonder, considering the barriers a career woman faces in this country. Maybe the next Margaret Thatcher will crop up in Tokyo. Wouldn't surprise me, the way things are going with the males around here.