JAPAN: The frontrunner to become Japan's next leader, Shinzo Abe, formally launched his election campaign yesterday with a controversial pledge to revise the country's pacifist constitution and beef up defence.
The hawkish, 51-year-old chief cabinet secretary is the runaway favourite to replace current prime minister Junichiro Koizumi when he steps down at the end of this month after five eventful years in office.
The election on September 20th will decide the future president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which carries with it the post of prime minister.
"The day has finally come," a smiling Mr Abe said yesterday before outlining a right-leaning policy agenda that will please his conservative base but trouble China and South Korea, which are hoping for a more constructive relationship with Mr Koizumi's successor.
Diplomatic relations between the three Asian powerhouses have been frozen for much of Mr Koizumi's term over disputes about history and territory.
Beijing and Seoul reacted with fury last month after Mr Koizumi made his sixth visit while in office to the Yasukuni Shrine war memorial.
In a speech yesterday in Hiroshima, Mr Abe promised to rewrite the 60-year-old, US-drafted constitution "by our own hands", strengthen prime ministerial powers and introduce "drastic education reform".
All three policy initiatives have long been on the wish-list of the conservative ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). In a nod to the business sector, which has watched in alarm as Japan's foreign relations under Mr Koizumi have plummeted, Mr Abe also pledged to mend ties with Asian neighbours.
But his programme, and his refusal to explicitly state his position on visits to Yasukuni, means he is in for a bumpy ride to diplomatic harmony.
He consistently avoids questions on Yasukuni and the issue of the guilt of the 14 convicted second World War leaders enshrined inside, saying it is "up to historians to make such judgments". Newspapers revealed last month that he had visited the shrine, in secret, in April.
Earlier this year, Mr Abe told parliament that Japan had never declared the 14 men were war criminals, a statement that suggests "he basically does not accept the legitimacy of the Tokyo war tribunal" (the postwar Allied court that convicted the men), said former LDP secretary general Koichi Kato recently.
Mr Abe is a member of a political dynasty; son of the late foreign minister Shintaro Abe and grandson of former prime minister and suspected war criminal Nobusuke Nishi.
Although apparently anointed from birth for political office, he has built his political career with a sometimes sabre-rattling performance against North Korea, which in 2002 revealed a bizarre programme to kidnap Japanese citizens.
Earlier this summer, he badly rattled both sides of the Korean peninsula when he appeared to suggest that Tokyo had the right pre-emptively to strike North Korea after Pyongyang launched a series of missiles. Japan's constitution currently bars the use of force, but conservatives in the LDP have been demanding change for years.
His opponents in the election are finance minister Sadakazu Tanigaki, a former bureaucrat who opposes Yasukuni visits, and foreign minister Taro Aso, a politician cut from the same conservative political stripe as Mr Abe.
But with a huge lead in the polls and the very public backing of the popular outgoing prime minister, the two are unlikely to trouble Mr Abe.
With his likely election, the world can expect radical changes to Japan's postwar orientation in the coming years, and a reaction in kind from Japan's wary Asian neighbours.