Although Mr Suga at first seemed to be a caretaker candidate, he will try to stick around.
(Career politicians tend not to cede the top job willingly, even those like Mr Suga who
prefer to operate in the shadows.) Voters appear ready to give him a chance: though less
than 10% of Japanese named him as their preferred successor in polls taken before Mr
Abe’s resignation, support for his new administration began at nearly 70%.
Mr Suga will need to demonstrate quick results in difficult conditions. Covid-19 will
remain a drag on Japan’s economy, which had already fallen into recession before the
pandemic hit. In the second quarter of 2020, GDP contracted by 28.1% compared with
the previous year, the steepest drop on record. It will struggle to make up the lost
ground. Amid sluggish demand the old menace, deflation, will haunt it again in 2021.
The Olympic games could provide a boost—if the Japanese government and the
International Olympic Committee can work out how to hold them safely.
Foreign-policy challenges will be no less daunting. Mr Abe made diplomacy a priority,
using more than 80 overseas trips to forge close relationships with other leaders. Mr
Suga will have to build his own credibility on the world stage, at a time when
opportunities for personal contacts are limited. His first test will be to strike a new deal
with America on host-nation support, the logistics agreement that undergirds the two
countries’ security alliance and stationing of 50,000 American troops (the current deal
runs out in March 2021).
Yet the pandemic’s disruption could also help some of Mr Suga’s most prized reforms.
He has promised to create a new digital agency to push the modernisation of Japan’s
archaic government services. In 2021 the hanko, a personal seal used on official
documents, will become a harmless relic, rather than an essential tool of doing business.
So too, with any luck, will the fax machine.
If he can stabilise the economy and contain the virus, Mr Suga may be able to sew up the
LDP election by securing the support of the party’s faction bosses before the vote even
takes place, much as he did after Mr Abe’s resignation. But if Mr Suga looks wobbly as a
leader, an all-out war for the l LDP’s presidency will break out.
Plenty of ambitious politicians are itching for a turn after Mr Abe’s long tenure. Ishiba
Shigeru, a former defence minister whom Mr Suga defeated in 2020, may resume his
crusade; he will have a better shot in a regular election that includes the party’s rank-
and-file. Kono Taro, a Georgetown-educated former defence and foreign minister
currently overseeing administrative reform, could emerge as the next-generation
candidate (at 57, he is young for the seniority-minded LDP). Noda Seiko, one of a mere
handful of women in senior LDP jobs, wants to become Japan’s first female prime
minister. Whoever triumphs will find winning the election easy compared with staying
in office.