Leadership contest for Japan's next prime minister heads to run-off

A leadership contest in Japan's ruling party to determine who will take over as prime minister headed to a run-off on Friday, putting a candidate seeking to become Japan's first female premier against a veteran making his fifth leadership bid.
 

The scramble to replace current premier Fumio Kishida was sparked in August when he announced his intention to step down over a series of scandals that plunged the Liberal Democratic Party's (LDP) ratings to record lows.
 

Out of a record nine-strong field, economic security minister Sanae Takaichi, 63, and former defence minister Shigeru Ishiba, amassed the most votes and qualified for the second round expected to conclude at 1530 JST (0630 GMT).
 

Whoever is chosen must quell anger at home over rising living costs and navigate a volatile security environment in East Asia fuelled by an increasingly assertive China and nuclear-armed North Korea.
 

The LDP, which has ruled Japan for almost all of the post-war era and has a majority in parliament, must hold a general election by October 2025.
 

"It would be great to vote for someone who has policies that are broadly supported by LDP members and is popular enough to lead the LDP in a general election, but there may be circumstances when these things contradict each other," said Yu Uchiyama, a professor of politics at Tokyo University.
 

Ishiba has courted controversy with his peers for going against the grain and challenging previous leaders, and has failed in four previous leadership bids. He has said he will not run again after this contest.
 

Takaichi, a hardline nationalist and advocate of deceased former premier Shinzo Abe's "Abenomics" stimulus policies, could be the most consequential pick - not least because she would be the first female prime minister in a male-dominated society.
 

She has been a vocal critic of the Bank of Japan's efforts to raise interest rates further away from historic lows, and her election could spur a yen sell-off, market strategists say.
 

Her promise to reverse a trend of leaders avoiding the controversial Yasukuni war shrine if elected, could also sour relations with China, South Korea and others that view the site as a symbol of Japan's wartime aggression.
 

The last Japanese leader to visit the shrine, which commemorates war dead including those convicted by an Allied tribunal of war crimes after World War II, was Abe in 2013.

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