Was it a bird? Was it a plane? No, that grey smudge streaking into the abyss was just another Japanese prime minister. PM Number 11* – I’m counting from 1990 and don’t want to bore you with the names – quit on Monday less than a year into office. PM Number 10**, toting grand ambition to restore national pride, held on for 12 months to the day.

Since 1990, only PM Number 9 – let’s call him Junichiro Koizumi – lasted much over two years. Wildly popular, he actually stayed for nearly six. Mr Koizumi, if you recall, was the tousle-haired maverick who was supposed to have transformed Japan by wresting power from the bureaucrats and pushing a radical free-market agenda. Now, politics has reverted to its faceless norm. Reform is a bad word. (It was always a misleading one.) And almost everyone in the frame these days, including PMs Number 10 and 11, as well as Taro Aso, the likely Number 12, are the sons or grandsons of previous incumbents.