With the world's oldest population, rapidly declining births, gargantuan public debt and increasingly damaging natural disasters fuelled by climate change, Japan faces deep-rooted challenges that the long-standing governing party has failed to tackle.

Yet in choosing a new prime minister on Wednesday, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) elected the candidate least likely to offer bold solutions. The party's elite power brokers chose Mr Fumio Kishida, 64, a stalwart moderate, in a run-off election for the leadership, seeming to disregard the public's preference for a maverick challenger.