Popular Covid-19 vaccination minister Taro Kono enters race for Japan's next leader

TOKYO - Portraying himself as a reformer, popular vaccination minister Taro Kono promised to "move Japan forward" as he formally declared his candidacy on Friday (Sept 10) in the race to succeed Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga.

The 58-year-old political princeling, whose father Yohei is best known for delivering the 1993 Kono Statement that first acknowledged wartime "comfort women", sought to burnish his reputation as someone who can get things done by emphasising his accomplishments over the past year.

Among other things, he has abolished the need for hanko seals for 99 per cent of the almost 14,700 procedures that had hampered Japan's digitalisation drive. He was also responsible for speeding up Covid-19 vaccinations - nearly half of all residents have been immunised despite a slow start.

Mr Kono, who is also administrative reform minister, tried to show that he was the best person to lead Japan out of a decades-long funk that has left the country lagging behind in areas such as innovation.

"I want to build a country where, in the face of the impossible, people will be willing to give it a shot and do things step by step to turn their goals into reality," he said at a 75-minute press conference.

Mr Kono, who formerly served as defence and foreign minister, is the third politician to declare his candidacy for the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) presidential election. Nomination day is on Sept 17, while party members will vote on Sept 29.

As the LDP and its coalition partner Komeito have majorities in both the Lower and Upper Houses, whoever wins the LDP election will be virtually guaranteed to become Japan's 100th prime minister. The winner will also lead the LDP into a general election that must be held by November.

Two others have already entered the fray. Former foreign minister Fumio Kishida, 64, has vowed to roll out a massive economic stimulus package and to break away from the "neoliberal policies" of recent decades that he said has suppressed wages.

Former internal affairs minister Sanae Takaichi, a 60-year-old protege of former prime minister Shinzo Abe, is aiming to become Japan's first female premier.

She is the most hawkish of the trio, and has dismissed diplomatic opposition of visits to the war-linked Yasukuni Shrine as "foreign interference" and an "infringement of the freedom of religion".

Mr Kono, meanwhile, is close to Mr Suga. Both men not only belong to the same class of Lower House politicians who were first elected in 1996, but are also Members of Parliament for constituencies in Kanagawa prefecture, south of Tokyo.

He said that he supported Mr Suga for re-election, and decided to join the contest only after the Prime Minister said he was stepping aside in an abrupt announcement last Friday.

Mr Kono is one of the most social media savvy politicians in Japan, and the charismatic leader regularly tops media surveys as the public's preferred pick for their next prime minister, given his reform-minded maverick image.

He has won popular appeal through his candid tweets, professing a love for durian - likely an acquired taste when he lived in Singapore from 1991 to 1992 when he was working at Fuji Xerox's Asia-Pacific headquarters - though he courted controversy this week by blocking his critics on Twitter.

Yet he also appears to be the "continuity candidate" who is most aligned with the LDP's long-held policies on constitutional revision, as well as on issues such as North Korea abductions and a territorial dispute with Russia.

In what has been seen as a move to toe the LDP's policy line and not ruffle feathers, he made an abrupt policy U-turn this week on his long-held anti-nuclear platform.

He said that nuclear energy should be allowed insofar as the plants are certified safe, in the push for net-carbon zero by 2050.

"Nuclear power will be gone someday, but I would not tell them to stop tomorrow or next year," he said. "We need to first stop the use of fossil fuels and coal, and nuclear energy is needed to cover the shortfall as we ramp up renewable energy."