Abe belongs to the LDP faction led by former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori. He was also backed by Koizumi, who won for his party a sweeping victory in last year’s parliamentary elections by seeking people’s support for a contentious reform initiative to privatize postal services. (Post office savings in Japan are $3 trillion or nearly Rs 14, 000,000 crore).

Last week, NHK, which is Japan`s main TV channel, got all the three LDP presidential candidates for a live debate in a popular programme called “Sunday Project”. Abe came across as a natural winner — cool, composed, unfazed by tough questions, and persuasively articulate. Although he got 66% of the votes in the party election, popular backing for Abe, as revealed in opinion polls, has touched 80%. This support is less on account of his political pedigree and more due to his firm nationalist platform.

“It’s been 61 years since the end of World War II and we need to start working toward creating a Japan that’s suitable for the 21st century,” Abe said during a speech in August. He has declared his determination to make Japan a “normal nation”, like any other independent and sovereign member of the international community.

As part of this endeavour, he has pledged to replace his country’s 1945 constitution, which was imposed by America’s occupation force on a Japan defeated and devastated in World War II, by a new constitution “written by Japanese hands”.

In fact, Americans wrote important parts of that constitution in English, and handed them to the late Emperor Hirohito for translation into Japanese. The most contentious Article 9 of that constitution bars Japan from maintaining its own military. Abe is dubbed as “hawkish” for wanting Japan to play a more assertive role in international affairs.

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