What are the biggest problems facing Japans next premier?
His first priority must be to show that he has his eye back on the ball. Mr Abe quickly earned a reputation as an ideologue driven by personal obsessions, chiefly revising the war-renouncing constitution and teaching patriotism in schools. While he fiddled with issues of little interest to most ordinary Japanese, problems piled up. The most serious was when bureaucrats lost 50 million pension records which he ignored for months. Meanwhile, a growing wealth gap meant that few people felt the benefits of Japan’s long-awaited economic recovery. The new PM must convince the electorate that Mr Abe’s failures are his alone and not – as many suspect – those of a sclerotic party thrashing about in the last hours of political life.
