TOKYO: Junichiro Koizumi set out to destroy his own party. Shinzo Abe vowed to open a new era. But now Japan’s ruling party is turning to a party stalwart with old-style tactics who is seen as a safe pair of hands to lead it out of its current crisis.

Abe, at 52 Japan’s first premier born after the war, was seen as the face of a new Japan, one less apologetic about its past and ready to play a greater role on the world stage.

But after a one-year tenure plagued by scandal and plunging approval ratings, Japan’s ruling party is now turning to a 71-year-old stalwart, Yasuo Fukuda, who is seen as a safe pair of hands to lead it out of its crisis.

The former chief cabinet secretary has emerged as the favourite within the Liberal Democratic Party to replace Abe, running against Taro Aso, the 66-year-old former foreign minister who shares many of Abe’s hawkish views.

Fukuda is an old-school politician, adept in the country’s traditional closed-door consensus building between the ruling party’s various factions.

He is also seen as less eager to try to roll back the legacies of Japan’s World War II defeat.

Fukuda is “much more part of the mainstream conservative right wing (of the LDP) than the revisionist right wing that Abe and Aso come from,” said Professor Phil Deans at Tokyo’s Temple University.

“He would be much more of a business-as-usual LDP player in diplomatic terms and also in the terms of the economy,” he said.

Both candidates are seen as likely to take a middle-of-the-road approach on the economy and foreign policy, although Fukuda emphasises the need for a pro-Asia diplomacy while Aso seems to be more closely aligned with the US.

Fukuda, the son of a former prime minister, stresses the importance of good relations with Asian neighbours and is seen likely to maintain warm ties with rivals such as China.

“In contrast, Mr Aso, who was a foreign minister under Koizumi and Abe, is likely to focus on the Japan-US relationship,” said Yoshinobu Yamamoto, professor of international politics at Aoyama Gakuin University.

Fukuda has criticised Abe’s predecessor Koizumi for visiting the Yasukuni Shrine which China and the two Koreas see as a symbol of Japan’s militarism. On Saturday he vowed not to visit the shrine if he becomes prime minister.

Maverick Koizumi vowed to destroy the ruling LDP in order to save it after coming to power in 2001. He won a landslide election victory in 2005 by casting opponents of free-market reforms within the party as the enemy.

With a slogan of building a ‘beautiful country’ proud of its past, his successor Abe quickly got to work on conservative causes such as rewriting the pacifist constitution imposed by Washington after the war.

He angered other Asian nations earlier this year when he said there was no evidence that Japan’s imperial army directly forced comfort women into wartime brothels.Polls meanwhile showed that voters were more concerned about day-to-day issues such as jobs and pensions, and his party lost control of the upper house of parliament for the first time in its history in July.

“You would have thought that given the unpopularity of the LDP that Abe’s successor would reorient the party to focus back on bread and butter issues such as the economy, the pensions crisis and the ageing population,” said Deans.

“The trouble is that solving those problems is very, very difficult,” he added.

For investors, Fukuda seems to be a slightly more attractive candidate, although he is unlikely to pursue such a bold economic policy agenda as Koizumi, said Credit Suisse analyst Shinichi Ichikawa.

“Mr Fukuda has emphasised fiscal restructuring and a flexible approach to foreign and defence policy that stresses balance in Japan’s relations with China and the US,” he noted.

“Taro Aso, in contrast, is an advocate of more aggressive fiscal policy and close to Mr Abe in his support for an assertive approach to international relations,” added Ichikawa.—AFP