The King is Dead. Love Live the King!
Farewell and Godspeed to Thabo Mbeki, President of the Republic of South Africa; Ehud Olmert, Prime Minister of the State of Israel; and, belatedly, Yasuo Fukuda, Prime Minister of Japan.

Curiously, the nation-state of Japan has had no formal name since the defeat of the Empire of Japan in the Second World War. Though still ruled by the Emperor, the last throned emperor in the world, it is for the best that Japan no longer styles itself an empire. By contrast, the formal name of Canada remains the Dominion of Canada, though our friends and neighbors in the Great White North dislike being reminded of this and prefer the simple but meaningless "Canada." (The prevalence of the Chinese-derived proper noun "Japan" over the native Japanese name "Nihon," and the adjective form Japanese instead of Nihonese, is a topic for another day.)