The Economist explains

Who is Kono Taro, the man who wants to be Japan’s next prime minister?

His election would herald a new era for Japanese politics

FILE PHOTO: Taro Kono, Japan's vaccination programme chief and ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lawmaker, attends a news conference as he announces his candidacy for the party's presidential election in Tokyo, Japan, September 10, 2021. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo
|Tokyo

THE DOMINANCE of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in the Diet, Japan’s legislature, means that the party’s next president will become the country’s prime minister. On September 4th the incumbent, Suga Yoshihide, announced that he would not stand for re-election at the party’s conference on September 29th. Whoever is chosen to replace Mr Suga will lead the LDP into national parliamentary elections before late November. The are four contenders: Kishida Fumio, a former foreign minister; Takaichi Sanae, a former internal-affairs minister; Noda Seiko, the LD’s acting secretary-general; and Kono Taro, a former foreign and defence minister who is overseeing Japan’s covid-19 vaccine rollout.

Of those, Mr Kono is the public’s favourite. In some ways he is a conventional candidate. He is a blue-blood: his grandfather rose to become deputy prime minister; his father was speaker of Japan’s House of Representatives and president of the LDP. He has plenty of experience in government too. In other ways, Mr Kono is unusual. With 2.4m followers, he is the country’s most popular politician on Twitter. He speaks bluntly and engages directly with the public. He went to university in America and is fluent in English. At 58 he is, by the standards of Japanese politics, still sprightly. He has established a reputation as a maverick by taking heterodox stances, such as calling for an end to Japan’s reliance on nuclear energy long before the Fukushima disaster.

It is Mr Kono’s unconventional side that has made him the frontrunner. Unlike his main opponents he is an able communicator with genuine popular appeal. He tops polls asking voters whom they prefer for the next prime minister by a healthy margin. Many younger lawmakers see him as their best chance to keep their jobs in the upcoming elections and have thrown their weight behind him.

Unfortunately for Mr Kono, the outcome of the LDP election does not hinge on popularity alone. The initial ballot combines the party’s 383 members of the Diet and another 383 votes that reflect the choices of the party’s 1.1m members. If no candidate wins a majority, as is often the case, the top two move to a run-off in which Diet members’ votes have far more weight. They tend to vote in blocs along factional lines, but this year, facing pressure from younger members, faction bosses have promised to allow members to vote as they please.

Despite his popularity, many of Mr Kono’s colleagues are wary of him. Some on the party’s right suspect he is too liberal to be trusted. They fear he might take after his father, who in 1993 issued an unprecedented apology to the “comfort women” forced to work in Japanese wartime brothels across Asia. For many in the party’s old guard, Mr Kono also seems too uncontrollable. He has tried to quell those worries by softening some of his earlier stances, such as his opposition to nuclear power. To some, it is evidence of a politician with no core; to others, it reflects the pragmatism of one serious about winning power.

More from The Economist explains:
Who is Erin O’Toole, Canada’s would-be prime minister?
Who is Olaf Scholz, and what kind of Germany would he lead?

Discover more

Gaza could face a famine by May. What does that mean?

Some parts of the strip are already experiencing “catastrophic hunger”

What is the Islamic State Khorasan Province?

The group that claimed responsibility for the Crocus City Hall attack is a growing threat to Russia—and the West


Will Texas succeed in enforcing its own immigration law?

The state’s latest challenge to the federal government’s powers, SB4, is in limbo