Taro Aso, a colourful nationalist with a knack for offensive gaffes, has been chosen by Japan’s embattled ruling party to lead the country through recession, demographic crisis, financial turmoil and a general election.

With Japanese politics deadlocked and chaos-ridden, Mr Aso will become the country’s fourth prime minister in three years.

Political analysts believe he may also go down in Japanese history as one of its shortest-serving premiers. Mr Aso’s role, say ruling bloc grandees, is to provide the divided and exhausted Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) with a fighting chance in a general election likely to be called at the end of October.

But while Mr Aso – a self-styled comic-book aficionado and former Olympian – is widely recognised and does have a populist touch, he may not be able to reverse a swelling tide of public anger with the LDP.

If an election to the Lower House of Japan’s parliament were held tomorrow, suggested some polls last week, the LDP would lose heavily to an increasingly bullish and confident Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). That result would effectively wrench from the LDP the control over Japan’s destiny that it has wielded almost without pause for 52 years.

In a foregone conclusion to an internal ruling party leadership race decried by several MPs as a “worthless charade”, Mr Aso was overwhelmingly voted-in as president of the LDP. The 68-year old scion of one of Japan’s most famous political dynasties secured 351 of the 527 votes, beating the first ever female candidate to stand in the LDP’s presidential election by a huge margin.

With that victory, the ever-controversial Mr Aso will automatically become prime minister on Tuesday, replacing Yasuo Fukuda, whose sudden resignation three weeks ago unleashed what has been an increasingly bizarre 12 days of campaigning. Mr Fukuda, like his equally ill-fated predecessor Shinzo Abe, spent their time in power watching their own and their party’s popularity sinking to record lows.

Mr Aso’s is a leadership that is expected to be troubled from the outset. He is expected to select a new cabinet tomorrow and will face immediate problems on the economic front. Japan’s export-driven economy has suffered from the early phases of global downturn, and the aging of the population has begun to place extreme pressures on the public purse.

Mr Aso’s campaign speeches suggested he intends to fall back on the old Japanese political staple of increasing public spending in order to stimulate the economy. Decades of that strategy have left Japan with a public debt of around 180 per cent of GDP and an extensive network of “roads to nowhere” and other pork-barrel projects.

On the diplomatic front, Mr Aso’s natural hawkishness could also ensure a rough ride.

Japan has only barely managed to put its diplomatic relationship with China and Korea back on track after the tumult caused by Junichiro Koizumi. While the charismatic former prime minister managed to charm his own electorate with bold promises of reform, Japan’s Asian neighbours saw an unreconstructed nationalist who deliberately antagonised historical sensitivities.

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