Ruling party picks new leader to be Japanese prime minister

Hours before he would become Japan’s latest prime minister, Naoto Kan received a memo from his predecessor, Yukio Hatoyama, that offered some advice that Hatoyama himself couldn’t follow.

“Please take care of Japan-U.S., Japan-China and Japan-South Korean relations,” wrote Hatoyama, who never managed in his short stint as premier to balance the needs of his own citizens and his closest ally.

Now Kan, Japan’s fifth leader in four years, will inherit the problems that those before him struggled to solve — a nagging debt, a history of fiscal scandals and lingering questions about the fate of a U.S. Marine base on Okinawa.

The Democratic Party of Japan overwhelmingly elected Kan, the country’s finance minister, as its leader on Friday morning. Because the DPJ holds a majority in parliament, the vote all but secured Kan’s position as the next prime minister. He will formally take the position after the parliament votes later Friday.

Analysts in Japan said Kan would have to act quickly. He must select a new cabinet. Within weeks, ahead of a critical July election, he needs to stabilize his reeling party. And during the next months, he must articulate his position on the long-standing dispute over the Marine base — an issue that has dominated Japanese politics and U.S.-Japan relations for months.

In a speech to party members Friday, Kan said he will emphasize a “Japan-U.S. relationship at its core while contributing for forward development in Asia.”

Kan draws on a background that contrasts with those of other recent Japanese prime ministers. He has a humble background and a history as an outspoken populist. He is the first premier since 1996 whose family didn’t make politics part of the family trade.

In the mid-1990s, he rose to prominence when, as health minister, he conducted a bold investigation that revealed how his own ministry had promoted the use of HIV-tainted blood for transfusions.

Recently, he broke from Hatoyama to call for Japan to explore a consumption-tax increase as protection against its debt.

“Kan is Mr. Clean. Kan is the citizen-activist — he’s come to politics in that route,” Sheila Smith, a senior fellow for Japan at the Council on Foreign Relations, said in a telephone interview.

“He took on the bureaucrats in the mid-’90s,” she said. “And I think, frankly, he’s proven himself to be a thoughtful policy guy. And Kan, in the last six months or so in the Cabinet, has looked very thoughtful and very steady.”

When Hatoyama and No. 2 leader Ichiro Ozawa resigned Wednesday, they departed a party — elected only eight months earlier with unprecedented popularity — with an approval rating in the teens. A Friday poll conducted by the Yomiuri newspaper indicated that Kan (38 percent) was the most popular choice as successor. The other two leading replacements for Hatoyama, Seiji Maehara and Katsuya Okada, threw their support behind Kan on Thursday.

Hatoyama’s resignation provided the DPJ a chance to regain popularity before the July 11 election for the upper house of parliament, where the party will try to maintain its commanding majority.

“First thing we must do is to gain trust from the public,” Kan said.

“Our society and economy are deadlocked,” he added, referencing problems in social welfare and the job market. “These are not natural phenomena. These are results of poor policies.”

Shinji Tarutoko, 50, who chairs the party’s environmental panel, also expressed interest in the prime minister’s job, but he received 129 party votes to Kan’s 291.