Hara-kiri is back in fashion in Japan. Less than a year after Shinzo Abe, the aristocratic nationalist prime minister, quit on the grounds of ill health, Yasuo Fukuda has become the second premier in year to commit political suicide.

Mr Fukuda, 72, is said to have sworn that he would beat Mr Abe’s year in office, if only by a day. That was not to be. In the end, after just over 11 months as prime minister, he was defeated by the impossible political situation he inherited in which, for the first time since the war, control of the upper house was seized by the opposition.