After Mori: Japan requires a leader

The long-awaited resignation of Japan's amazingly unpopular prime minister, Yoshiro Mori, is yet another opportunity for that country to break with the past and invite real progress.

Mori epitomized the tendency of Japan's leading party to pick its dullest, most loyal and most timid member to lead.

Japan's yen is falling, its banks are sinking under bad debt, its economy has scarcely grown in a decade and its stock market is at a 16-year low.

What Japan needs is a leader with credibility, bold ideas and dynamism. What Japan will probably get, however, is former Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, who helped push Japan into recession.