Japan An Affair to Remember

For months, members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party have plaintively referred to the problems besetting their organization as the "triple woes." The phrase refers to popular dissatisfaction over the Recruit stock-shares- for-influence scandal, a three-month-old 3% consumption tax, and a liberalization of agricultural imports that angers farmers, who traditionally support the L.D.P.

Now a fourth woe has descended: four weeks after he took office, the disrobing of Prime Minister Sousuke Uno's personal life has become a source of embarrassment. Last month the Sunday Mainichi magazine published memoirs of Mitsuko Nakanishi, a 40-year-old geisha, who claimed Uno paid her $21,000 during...