Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama of Japan is the fourth Japanese prime minister to resign in four years.

From The New York Times:

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama of Japan . . . is the fourth Japanese prime minister to resign in four years, which is likely to renew soul-searching about Japan’s inability to produce an effective leader and to feed concerns that political paralysis is preventing Japan from reversing a nearly two-decade-long economic decline.