The runners and riders in the race to succeed Shinzo Abe as Japan's Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Democratic Party were readily appraised in the Japanese media today.

Richard Lloyd Parry, Times Asia editor, said that a surprise was not off the cards as the suddenness of Abe's resignation has left party activists in disarray.

He predicted that the LDP powerbrokers would be sitting in bars around the Diet, the Japanese parliament, smoking heavily and hunched over their mobile phones as they tried to work out exactly what was going on.

"Normally, if it were a more sedate process, Aso would be the favourite, and he still is," said Lloyd Parry. "But in the chaos you can't rule out that someone might come from the back."

Taro Aso

Aso, 66, has been LDP Secretary General - number two in the powerful party hierarchy - for only a month, after two years as Foreign Minister.

Patrician and impeccably connected, his grandfather was Prime Minister, his wife is the daughter of another Premier and his sister married into the imperial family. Has however been dogged by rumours that his family’s cement company used Korean slave workers during Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean peninsula.

Adventurous in his youth, he studied in California until his worried parents ordered him home. Aged 30, he travelled to Sierra Leone to trade diamonds, returning after two years.

Forced to apologise earlier this year after an ill-advised remark about Alzheimers. Known as an outspoken, charismatic orator, an asset at election rallies.

Has fought and lost leadership elections twice before. Has tried to show a soft side in recent years, talking at length about comic books. He greeted an ASEAN meeting in Manila this year by dancing dressed up as a medieval samurai knight.

Lloyd-Parry's verdict: "The favourite."

Nobutaka Machimura

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