Shoichi Nakagawa, formerly Finance Minister under the previous administration, was found dead in his Tokyo residence yesterday. While no official cause has been announced, police suspect suicide due to the absence of external wounds on his body and the presence of sleeping pills nearby. Nakagawa was defeated, along with much of the LDP in August's election.

The former minister became infamous thanks to apparently drunken behavior exhibited at  February's G7 meeting in Rome, delivering a slurred speech at a press conference, and setting off alarms during a tour of the Vatican Museum. He resigned as Finance Minister a few days later.

I doubt that I'm qualified to say much about the incident, though I do remember some of the furor surrounding his resignation, and the fact that his alcoholism had been for sometime considered a sort of open secret. That's a shame in a country that doesn't quite treat the disease as more than a "personal problem." RIP.