“Kan’s response to Japan’s earthquake and nuclear crisis may determine not only his future as prime minister but also his place in history. It is, of course, far too early to hand down a verdict. But some have an interim report card: adequate, not stellar.   There’s a growing feeling that — amid inevitable criticism — Kan deserves at least some credit for projecting the image of a functioning government amid a fast-moving crisis of near-unprecedented magnitude and complexity.  He has also, in a fundamental break from past administrations, shown a relatively high degree of transparency.    ’I’ll give him a passing grade’. said Koichi Nakano, a political science professor at Tokyo’s Sophia University.  ’Honestly, I don’t know whether this is currently a job that anyone can do to satisfy people’.   Set against some past disasters — such as Hurricane Katrina in the United States or Japan’s own Kobe earthquake in 1995 — Kan’s administration has so far at least had the merit of not coming across as catastrophically inept.    That may not sound like a ringing endorsement given what’s at stake, but people who study disasters say it may be the best that can be expected in dealing with the triple crisis of a magnitude-9.0 earthquake, a town-devouring tsunami and the ongoing threat of a nuclear plant meltdown”

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