What panic? Markets hardly blinked on Wednesday when Shinzo Abe announced plans to stand down as prime minister of Japan after just a year in office. Japanese equities dipped 0.7 per cent; 10-year government bond yields lost all of two basis points on the day and the yen barely budged.

That partly reflects Mr Abe’s lame duck status. Voters, unimpressed by a string of gaffes, registered their disgust by delivering a resounding defeat to Mr Abe’s Liberal Democratic party in July’s upper house elections – in effect setting the stage for Wednesday’s resignation. Unlike his flamboyant predecessor Junichiro Koizumi, Mr Abe barely changed the Japan he inherited. His economic policy turned out to be a blank book and the lack of big-scale restructuring plans made for a dull backdrop for investors. The stock market closed on Wednesday only a tad higher than it was when Mr Abe was inaugurated last September.