TOKYO: If you don’t have fashion sense, you can’t be prime minister. That was the advice Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi gave Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe, frontrunner in the race to become the nation’s next top leader, at a preview of designer fashion at the prime minister’s residence last week.
Koizumi may not be the nattiest of dressers, but the maverick leader with his trademark wavy silver locks has broken Japan’s political mould with his knack for snappy sound bites, chitchat with celebrities and penchant for picking high profile fights with those in his party opposed to his reform agenda.
That means ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) party members and lawmakers — who must appeal to Japan’s growing ranks of unaffiliated “floating voters” in next year’s election for parliament’s upper house — are certain to have popularity ratings in mind when they pick their next chief in September.
“The main factor (in picking a successor) will be who the party thinks is more exciting to the people and who LDP Diet (parliament) members think will help in the next election,” said Columbia University political science professor Gerald Curtis.
“The answer, unless he falls flat on his face, is Abe,” Curtis said. “He’s tall, he’s nice-looking, he’s young...He stands up for Japan and is tough on North Korea and China.”
Abe, 51, a soft-spoken political blueblood who is in fact known for his expensive suits, consistently leads the pack in surveys asking voters who they prefer to see succeed Koizumi.
In the latest poll by the daily Asahi newspaper published on Tuesday, 47 per cent of respondents backed Abe.
Number two contender Yasuo Fukuda garnered 20 per cent.
The gap was even wider among Liberal Democratic Party supporters, 61 per cent of whom preferred Abe against 15 per cent for Fukuda.
In a potential headache for Abe, though, the poll also showed 61 per cent want the next leader to improve ties with China, which have chilled markedly during Koizumi’s five years in office.
Koizumi’s annual visits to Tokyo’s Yasukuni shrine, seen by critics as a symbol of Japan’s past militarism, are one key reason for the diplomatic deep freeze, along with rivalry for regional dominance and mutual suspicion over military ambitions.
Fukuda, 69, has emerged as a critic of Koizumi’s Asian diplomacy, while Abe has defended the shrine visits and insisted Beijing is wrong to refuse to hold summits because of them.
The friction between the two Asian giants has worried Japanese business leaders as well as Tokyo’s close security ally, the United States — one reason Abe has toned down his remarks about China in recent months.
“For the ‘stop Abe movement’, Asian diplomacy is the most important issue,” said one Western diplomat.
“It’s one of his few Achilles heels.”
Foreign Minister Taro Aso, who is also aiming for the premiership, appears to be trying to soften his own image as a diplomatic hawk, even though he has riled China and South Korea with remarks about the wartime past in what some pundits see as an appeal to the LDP’s right wing.—Reuters
