A head of government who ruled and resigned for many years almost unchallenged;

a ruling party in which contradictions were suppressed rather than loud and which had to rearrange itself - that sounds like Germany before the general election, but it describes Japan.

For the first time in about a decade, the dominant Liberal Democrats (LDP) are allowing themselves a real competition for the leadership of the party, in which the country's next head of government is also determined.

Formally, it is about the successor to Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, who is no longer running after a hapless Covid year.

Patrick Welter

Correspondent for business and politics in Japan, based in Tokyo.

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In fact, it is about the foreign and economic legacy of Shinzo Abe, who is still influential in the LDP, who ruled Japan from 2006 to 2007 and since 2012 and who surprisingly resigned in 2020 with reference to health.

Four candidates stand for election.

The spectrum reveals a hidden diversity in the LDP, which has ruled the country almost continuously for 66 years.

Candidates are Taro Kono, an established advocate of deregulation in America, Fumio Kishida, a critic of neoliberalism, Sanae Takaichi, a staunch national conservative with a penchant for paternalism, and Seiko Noda, a compassionate campaigner for the rights of women, the elderly and the disabled .

For the first time, two women are striving to become the first female prime minister.

Kono would initiate a turnaround in energy policy

The dispute is whether the government should be given the right to order a real lockdown in the fight against Covid and a right for married couples to keep both family names. It's about armament or diplomacy against the threat from China and North Korea, about the right path to economic growth and about nuclear energy. At least temporarily, it seems that the party is breaking free from the tight corset that Abe missed.

The outcome of the election at the end of September is more open than it has been for 15 years. The usual back room agreements between the party elders and the factions within the party do not work. Six of the seven parliamentary groups are formally free to vote for their members. Abe's dominance has weakened the parliamentary groups, says Yu Uchiyama, a political scientist at the University of Tokyo: "The parliamentary groups are weak, the influence of the younger generation is strong." A generation change in the party is on the horizon. Many younger MPs who came to parliament in the Abe years and fear for their seats want a popular party leader as a tailwind in the general election, which is due by November at the latest. That would amount to Kono.

With the 58-year-old Kono, Japan would initiate a turnaround in energy policy. The country is still suffering from the consequences of the triple core meltdown in 2011 at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, but has so far stuck to nuclear energy. Kono, meanwhile, wants to expand renewable energies even more. There should be no new nuclear power plants, the existing nuclear power plants should only run until the end of the statutory period of use. On the other hand, two of the candidates, Kishida and Takaichi, advocate the construction of small nuclear power plants and fusion reactors.