A government admission that it lost 50m records of contributors to Japan's public pensions system is threatening to become Shinzo Abe's Hurricane Katrina. The prime minister could not have prevented the pensions storm that is threatening to engulf his young administration, says Gerald Curtis, a Japan expert at Columbia university. But, as with President George W. Bush's handling of the response to the New Orleans deluge, Mr Abe "will be judged by his ability to deal with the disaster".

So far he is not doing well. "Abe is showing himself to be a lousy politician with lousy political instincts," says Mr Curtis of the 52-year-old prime minister's handling of several political crises leading up to the pensions fiasco. Partly as a result, support for his cabinet has slumped, according to most polls, from above 60 per cent when he took office in September to little more than 30 per cent.