Japanese cabinet in reshuffle after series of embarrassing gaffes As part of the new reshuffle, Katsuya Okada, a former foreign minister and renowned fiscal hawk, was named as deputy prime minister responsible for leading tax and social security reform. Naoki Tanaka, an upper house politician for the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, was also selected by the prime minister to replace the outgoing defence minister. Japan has become increasingly renowned for its political instability and carousel-style leadership, causing a drop in public confidence and a new prime minister voted to power every year since 2006. The current reshuffle was widely regarded as not only an attempt to stem the slide in popularity for the current PM but also to create greater support to help push through his proposed sales tax hike. "From a global perspective, changing cabinet members regularly gives people reason to say Japanese politics is unstable," said Jun Azumi, the finance minister, shortly before the reshuffle. However, we need some rules to create consensus between the ruling and opposition parties. We have to strengthen our organisation and work hard to approve the sales tax hike in what is sure to be a difficult parliament session.