Domestic media and some analysts are making much of Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan's call to debate a rise in the 5 percent sales tax to rein in public debt. Support for the government has dropped about 20 points to below 50 percent since the premier floated the idea. Some experts, though, point to a fundamentally different problem: Kan's party is losing its luster as an agent of change. "They haven't done anything to convince voters that they are a party of change they can believe in," said Jeffrey Kingston, director of Asia studies at Temple University, Japan Campus. "The drop of 20 points is not an indication that people are against raising taxes per se ... It's his waffling on the issue."