Translated material
Hereditary Prime Minister
Japan will be led by a moderate politician
Tomorrow, the lower house of Japan's parliament will hold elections for a new prime minister, who will replace Shinzo Abe, who announced his resignation on September 12 . The candidate for the vacant seat is 71-year-old Yasuo Fukuda (pictured) , who was elected yesterday as leader of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Since more than two-thirds of the seats in the lower house belong to the ruling LDP, the election of a new party leader as prime minister can be considered a foregone conclusion. He is given a very troublesome position - his predecessor Abe experienced such severe stress at the time of his resignation that he is still in the hospital.Yesterday, Mr. Fukuda won an election in which parliamentarians from the LDP and representatives of the party's regional branches took part. His only rival was the party secretary general, former Foreign Minister Taro Aso. Fukuda won with a significant margin, gaining 330 votes, his opponent - 197. Although both politicians belong to the same party, they have different views: the moderate Yasuo Fukuda is committed to rapprochement with China and Korea, while Taro Aso declared himself as a conservative and "hawk".
Viktor Pavlyatenko, head of the Center for Japanese Studies at the Institute of Far Eastern Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told Vremya Novostey that traditionalist conservatives of the LDP supported Fukuda as “the most balanced and moderate candidate” in order to “smoothly and calmly overcome the defeat in the upper house.” The elections to the upper house of the Japanese Diet on July 29 resulted in a victory for the opposition.
Yasuo Fukuda will become the first hereditary prime minister in the history of the Land of the Rising Sun. His father took over the government when he was also 71 years old. Takeo Fukuda was prime minister from 1976 to 1978; in 1978, he signed a historic treaty of peace and friendship with the PRC. His son Yasuo entered politics in 1977 as his father's personal secretary.
In 1990, Fukuda Jr., a graduate of the Faculty of Political Science and Economics at Tokyo's prestigious Waseda University with 17 years of experience working for the large oil company Maruzan Petroleum, became a member of the lower house of the Japanese Diet, a position he has held until the present day. Yasuo Fukuda was the Secretary General of the Cabinet of Ministers under Prime Ministers Yoshiro Mori and Junichiro Koizumi. He has a reputation as a politician who knows how to negotiate and find balance in relations with his colleagues. Fukuda was chairman of the parliamentary committee on financial affairs and held positions in the LDP related to foreign policy, he was even nicknamed the “shadow foreign minister.” In 2006, Fukuda was one of the contenders for the post of LDP chairman, but that time, shortly before the elections, he abandoned the fight. Yasuo Fukuda is married and has two sons and a daughter.
In foreign policy, Yasuo Fukuda seeks to overcome the negative legacy of the Second World War in relations with neighbors and create the country's image as a bastion of peace in Asia. He opposes Japanese politicians visiting the “militaristic” Yasukuni Shrine, which greatly irritates the Chinese and Korean leadership. The new leader intends to resolve the problem of Japanese citizens abducted in the 1970s and 1980s with North Korea exclusively through diplomatic means. He is also determined to negotiate with the opposition to extend the Japanese Navy's mission in the Indian Ocean, where the Japanese refuel American ships participating in the anti-terrorist operation in Afghanistan. Mr. Pavlyatenko is convinced that he will succeed - for the Japanese, “security is important, and from the United States they are acquiring a fundamentally new missile defense system.” Fukuda is also ready to abandon plans to change the Japanese constitution, which prohibits the participation of national armed forces in military missions abroad.