Asia | The party decides

In Kishida Fumio, Japan’s old guard opts for the status quo

The incoming prime minister is an uncontroversial choice

|TOKYO

KISHIDA FUMIO, Japan’s new prime minister-in-waiting, likes to jot down voters’ views in little notebooks. After being elected president of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) on September 29th, he called his special skill the ability “to listen well to others” and warned that the growing distance between politicians and the public amounts to a “crisis of democracy” in Japan.

This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline “Sub-prime minister”

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