Who is in the running to be Japan’s next prime minister?

Still, Japan’s new leader is not likely to fundamentally alter the country’s foreign policy, security alliance with the United States or its plans to bolster its defense capabilities, analysts say.

The three front-runners are Sanae Takaichi, a security hawk who would be Japan’s first female leader; Shinjiro Koizumi, the son of a former prime minister who would be Japan’s youngest leader at 43 years old; and Shigeru Ishiba, a veteran politician known for speaking his mind.

The LDP will announce the result of its internal election on Friday afternoon local time, and its new leader will officially be announced as prime minister at a special legislative session on Tuesday.

A majority of Japanese voters say they are eager for new faces and new ideas, according to polls, but the contenders mostly offer more of the same in the world of Japanese politics, where men, people over 50 and hereditary politicians have long called the shots. Only two of the nine candidates for LDP leader are women, only two contenders are under 60, and more than half inherited their fathers’ legislative district seats.

The LDP has been in power almost continuously since 1955 and is deeply unpopular among the Japanese public after a string of corruption scandals that contributed to Kishida’s resignation.

The new leader will face an immediate hurdle: convincing the public that they can trust the ruling party again.

“It is a really important moment right now to regain public trust in politics for the sake of Japan’s democracy,” said Yu Uchiyama, political science professor at the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

The new prime minister will also face a challenging economic landscape after Kishida’s lackluster efforts to jump-start the world’s fourth-largest economy: a weakening yen, rising inflation, growing national debt and wage stagnation.

“Clean politics is a big theme, and also whether the party can put forward a convincing economic platform,” said Mireya Solís, Philip Knight Chair in Japan Studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “I don’t believe the Japanese public feels that their standards of living are secure and stable and they have a bright future. So I think that they’re paying attention to that.”

Japan is also grappling with increasing security threats and risk of war in the region, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and China’s growing military threats. Just this week, China test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile into the Pacific Ocean, its first such test in decades. Japan later said it had received no notice of the launch.

The six other contenders for the LDP’s leadership are Kono Taro, digital minister; Yoko Kamikawa, foreign minister and the other female candidate; Yoshimasa Hayashi, chief cabinet secretary; Toshimitsu Motegi, LDP secretary general; former economic minister Takayuki Kobayashi, who at 49 is the other candidate under 60; and Katsunobu Kato, former chief cabinet secretary.

The party leadership election is typically a secretive process negotiated through backroom deals among party elders. But the fact there are so many candidates and no clear front-runner has generated excitement and given rank-and-file members an unusually pivotal role.

“There is an understanding that the stakes are very high and that leadership does matter, and how Japan moves forward in envisioning its future rests very heavily on the shoulders of the new leader,” said Shihoko Goto, director of the Indo-Pacific Program at the Wilson Center in Washington.

“I think there has been a great deal of public apathy toward party politics that has turned around a little bit” during this race, Goto added.

Here are the top three candidates who, according to polls, are running neck-and-neck in the race.

Shigeru Ishiba, 67

Ishiba is making his fifth and — he says — final bid to become prime minister. Polls show he is popular with the public because of his willingness to criticize his party and its elders — but he is largely disliked among his colleagues for the same reason.

The former defense minister is a strong backer of Taiwanese democracy and has proposed creating an “Asian NATO” to counter security threats from China and North Korea.

He has called for Japan to take a more active role in deciding how American forces are deployed here, including proposing that U.S. military bases in Okinawa be jointly managed between Japan and the United States. He is also pledging to stimulate economic growth by revitalizing rural areas and creating economic opportunities outside of the overconcentrated capital of Tokyo.

The son of a former cabinet minister, Ishiba entered politics after his father’s death. He is open about his Christianity, which is rare among Japanese politicians, who tend to keep their religious views private.

Shinjiro Koizumi, 43

Koizumi has the least political experience in the candidate pool, but perhaps has the highest name recognition as a fourth-generation politician. His father, Junichiro Koizumi, served as prime minister from 2001 to 2006.

After inheriting his father’s constituency in 2009, Koizumi has worked his way up the ranks of Japan’s halls of power and was environment minister in 2019 to 2021.

He hasn’t presented many distinctive or detailed policy ideas, analysts say, but he is positioning himself as a fresh face of the party who is tired of the status quo.

He pledges economic, regulatory and political overhauls, using the word “reform” 56 times during a recent hour-long news conference. His approach has echoed his father’s, who was known for his administrative reforms and maverick style.

An avid surfer, Koizumi is an outspoken proponent of gender equality. In 2020, after the birth of his first son, he became the first cabinet member to take paternity leave. He took a total of two weeks’ time off in the first three months after birth — a rare move for a Japanese man, let alone a politician.

Sanae Takaichi, 63

Takaichi, Japan’s ultraconservative economic security minister, is a security hawk who emphasizes the importance of Japan’s “national power” in everything from defense to the economy.

If elected, she will be the first female leader of male-dominated Japan, but is not known to be an advocate of gender equality. She has fought against allowing married couples to have different last names, and against allowing members of the imperial family’s maternal line to ascend the throne — two key litmus tests for where politicians stand on gender equality. (The other two front-runners do not oppose female emperors and support allowing married couples to have different surnames.)

Takaichi strongly opposes apologizing for Japan’s wartime past. She has pushed for a debate over Japan’s three nonnuclear principles and whether to consider allowing the use of U.S. nuclear weapons in Japan in the case of an emergency.

The newscaster-turned-politician has cited former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as her role model. She has garnered more support this time around than her first run in 2021 but appeals to a far-right, narrow base within the party and has struggled to distance herself from the political scandals.