Azumi to be named Japan finance minister: media (Reuters)

TOKYO (Reuters) – Jun Azumi, a former parliamentary affairs chief for the ruling Democratic Party, will become Japan's new finance minister, Fuji TV reported, after new Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's first choice for the job reportedly turned it down.

Azumi will take charge of Japan's currency and fiscal policies at a time when the world's third-biggest economy grapples with the yen's sharp appreciation and a public debt twice the size of its $5 trillion economy.

Katsuya Okada, a fiscal hawk who held the party's No.2 post, turned down Noda's request to take over the crucial financial portfolio, public broadcaster NHK reported earlier.

(Reporting by Yoko Kubota; Editing by Chris Gallagher)

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New leader Noda prepares to weather Japan's media storm (The Christian Science Monitor)

Tokyo – Call it downfall by "memo-awase." That's the term Japanese use to describe memo sharing, and the practice pretty much ensures unified Japanese media coverage of an event.

It also means that once the journalistic consensus goes negative on a politician, the Japanese public will get one-dimensional coverage hard for any leader to crawl out from under.

Today, soft-spoken Yoshiko Noda becomes the third premier exactly two years to the day after the Democratic Party of Japan's historic electoral victory ousted the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan from office, and Mr. Noda is already playing down expectations ahead of media criticism.

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"Running Japan's government is like pushing a giant snowball up a snowy, slippery hill," said Mr. Noda yesterday after winning the leadership contest for the Democratic Party of Japan that effectively made him prime minister.

Hardly the rousing speech of an inspirational new leader, Noda's words instead reflect the daunting prospects for any Japanese prime minister.

Uphill battle for politiciansAt a time when Japan faces a mountain of problems – including the reconstruction of the northeast from the devastating March 11 earthquake and subsequent tsunami, the ongoing nuclear crisis at Fukushima, and resulting energy shortages, along with a rapidly aging society and straining public finances – political stability would seem to be vital. And yet Japan’s leaders continue to change so quickly that few outside the country can even remember their names.

Japan’s media groups, which own newspapers, television, and radio stations, appear to make the country virtually ungovernable as the coverage turns damaging on each subsequent leader after a few months in office.

While in many countries a left-leaning party such as the DPJ would be able to rely on some support from the liberal wing of the media to at least balance negative reporting, in Japan the way news organizations operate tends to override any ideological loyalties or independent investigation.

How it worksOne of the major reasons for this is Japan’s "kisha (journalist) club" culture. These formal groups of reporters that are assigned to cover each major ministry and industry, host the press conferences for the entities they cover, and provide offices for journalists to work out of. After each briefing or speech, the journalists gather to carry out "memo-awase" – comparing notes to make sure they are all going to take the same line in their respective articles.

Once the agreed upon line becomes something damaging – say, a prime minister is not demonstrating leadership – the message also becomes uniform, with very few questions or inquiries to the contrary, if at all.

Because many of the TV stations take their editorial lead from affiliated newspapers, the same judgments tend to be repeated on news bulletins, leaving the damned politician without a dissenting voice.

“In recent years the media has moved toward a more neutral stance with regard to commentary on policy matters,” says Tetsuro Kato, visiting professor of politics at Tokyo’s Waseda University. “This has led to a shift in emphasis from policy to the leadership qualities of prime ministers. The media now have an even bigger role in creating and destroying prime ministers.”

Both the high levels of newspaper readership, and the high trust in what is written in them, make their message even more powerful, worrying some observers.

Polls show that up to 90 percent of the population believe what they read in the major Japanese newspapers; much higher than comparable figures for other countries.

Although Noda is widely-regarded as a political peacemaker, he is also a second-degree black belt in judo. He might need all the fight he can muster.

Noda is expected to announce his new cabinet by the end of the week.

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Japan's Maehara likely to run for PM: media (Reuters)

TOKYO (Reuters) – Former Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara, who has called beating deflation a top priority, is likely to throw his hat into the ring to become Japan's next prime minister, media said on Monday, clouding the prospects of the fiscally conservative finance minister.

Unpopular Prime Minister Naoto Kan is expected this week to confirm his intention to resign, clearing the way for Japan to select its sixth prime minister since Junichiro Koizumi ended a rare five-year term in 2006.

Japan's new leader must grapple with a resurgent yen, push ahead with efforts to rebuild from the March earthquake and tsunami and end a radiation crisis at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant -- all while figuring out how to curb a huge public debt and cure the ills of a fast-aging society.

"Foreign Minister Maehara has begun final coordination in preparation to run," the Jiji news agency reported, quoting unidentified party sources.

Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda, a 54-year-old fiscal hawk, had hoped to win the backing of Maehara -- the most popular potential candidate among voters in recent polls -- in his push to replace Kan, a once-fiery civic activist whose approval ratings have slipped well below 20 percent since he took office in 2010.

"This changes the dynamic completely, although it doesn't give you the answer to who will win," Chuo University political science professor Steven Reed said of Maehara's expected decision to run in the Democratic Party (DPJ) leadership race.

At least five other DPJ lawmakers are eyeing a run at the nation's top job in the ruling party race, set for August 29 after the expected passage of two key bills now before parliament.

The new party leader becomes prime minister by virtue of the DPJ's majority in parliament's powerful lower house.

Whether and when to raise taxes to pay for rebuilding from the March disaster and to fund the bulging social security costs of a fast-aging society will be a focus of the party race, although even Noda has been toning down his stance of favoring raising taxes soon.

Maehara, a former DPJ leader who, like Noda, has expressed concern about giant rival China's military buildup, topped the list of voters' preferred candidates in a Kyodo news agency survey, with 28 percent against a mere 4.8 percent for Noda.

But political analysts said Maehara's popularity was no guarantee that he would win the DPJ race, in which only DPJ members of parliament and not rank-and-file members take part.

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Unless Noda, whose DPJ support base overlaps that of Maehara, 49, bows out of the race, low-profile Agriculture Minister Michihiko Kano, 69, could have a better chance of winning, not least because he may gain backing from party power broker Ichiro Ozawa and his ally, former premier Yukio Hatoyama.

Kano's lack of a clear policy stance on key issues also makes it easier to get support from various quarters inside the Democratic Party, which, like its main rival the Liberal Democrats, is split over economic and foreign policy matters.

"Because Kano lacks policies, he doesn't have enemies," DPJ elder Kozo Watanabe told Reuters in an interview on Friday.

Ozawa, a former party leader who some credit with engineering the Democrats' sweep to power in 2009, cannot himself run because his DPJ membership was suspended after he was indicted on suspicion of misreporting political donations.

"Ozawa and Hatoyama will join together and that could decide the outcome," said independent political commentator Hirotaka Futatsuki. "But the situation is fluid. It's not impossible that Noda and Maehara will decide that only one of them will run."

Kan and his four short-lived predecessors have all struggled to implement policies in the face of a divided parliament, where the opposition controls the upper house and can block bills.

The political paralysis is threatening to further undermine Japan's sovereign credit rating. Standard & Poor's already has Japan on an AA-minus rating with a negative outlook. And Japanese credit agency R&I said on Monday it looked increasingly hard to keep Japan at its highest AAA rating.

($1 = 76.245 Japanese Yen)

(Editing by Alex Richardson)

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