Last fall, bakeries did a brisk business selling biscuits stamped on top with a picture of Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and his wavy locks. Shops couldn't keep the Koizumi snacks in stock. Then customers stopped gazing at Koizumi's pastry image long enough to take a bite out of them. And what did they discover? As one Tokyo shopkeeper said last week: "They taste the same as all the other cakes." A lot of Japanese now think Koizumi is like those cakes—good looking on the outside; bland and predictable on the inside.

Ten months ago, the country put an extraordinary amount of hope in the belief that this quirky, outspoken and handsome politician could somehow save Japan. Koizumi's popularity was unprecedented, his approval ratings consistently hovering at about 80%. If anyone had a mandate to take on the nexus of vested interests and intransigent politicians who had derailed reform throughout the '90s, it was he. But he almost immediately went off track, agreeing to supplementary budgets, endorsing costly bailouts and waffling on banking reform. Then, last month, he dumped his Foreign Minister, Makiko Tanaka, whose bellicose banter and tough stand against prickly bureaucrats made her a popular icon among Japanese housewives. (Her cakes sold even better than Koizumi's.) Within a week, his adoring fans turned on him, and his approval ratings plummeted by 20%.

Even worse than losing that okusan (housewife) support is the perception that Koizumi caved in to the very forces he was elected to oppose. Liberal Democratic Party (ldp) bosses and bureaucrats had been scheming for months to get rid of Tanaka; Koizumi's backpedaling makes him look like a wimp—and a carbon copy of all the losers who preceded him in office. Even more dispiriting is his most recent choice of confidant, none other than his hapless predecessor, the most unpopular Prime Minister Japan has ever had, Yoshiro Mori. "This is the beginning of the betrayal to the nation by Koizumi," declared veteran political writer Makoto Sataka. "The secret of his popularity was based on the fact that he doesn't make conventional judgments. Now he has adopted the conventional way."

The stock market plunged after Tanaka's firing, not so much because investors care about her, but because they doubted Koizumi's resolve. "They were both seen as destroyers of vested interests, but now if he won't support her, it's unlikely he'll make any other bold moves," says Masatoshi Sato, a senior strategist at Mizuho Investors Securities in Tokyo.

On the domestic economic policy front, he faces a bureaucracy as stubborn as that which opposed Tanaka. The aggressive head of the inspection division of the Financial Services Agency, Hirofumi Gomi, has been tenaciously reviewing the loan portfolios of Japan's leading banks and the balance sheets of debtor companies. The verdict: more bad debt than was previously estimated. But plans to take the results of Gomi's audits and crack down on corporate slackers is being stymied by higher-ups within his own agency. "Koizumi needs to make a decision and fire some people," says an analyst who has advised the Prime Minister. "So far, he won't do it." He had better take action soon to convince people there's more to him than bold words and a pretty face. Those Koizumi cakes were already being discounted 50% last week. And nobody was buying any.