"Nothing worked for Fukuda. He must have realized the party could not win under his leadership."
The despairing mood inside the LDP had increased pressure on Fukuda to give way before the next election to Taro Aso, the party's secretary- general, or No. 2 politician. Aso is widely expected to win the leadership now, though he may be challenged by a small field including former Defense Minister Yuriko Koike.
The feisty Aso is a former foreign minister with a strong nationalist streak, whose open embrace of Japanese pop culture, such as manga (comics), made him a somewhat quirky politician within the staid LDP. He has tried and failed to win the LDP leadership three times, most recently last year when party elders -- if not all its foot soldiers -- moved to Fukuda in search of calm after the tempests of the brief Abe era.
After his last defeat, Aso took a hiatus from government posts, traveling the country to build a wider base of support. In the course of the sabbatical he appeared to break with his previous emphasis on traditional values to take into account the bread-and-butter concerns facing most Japanese.
He published two magazine articles widely seen as political mission statements, acknowledging that the nationalist passions of the Abe government of which he had been a senior member had blinded it to the bigger economic problems.
Aso now argues for radical economic measures to fix Japan's long-term problems, most notably an increase in the consumption tax to 10% to better fund a shaky pension system that faces an aging population and shrinking work force.
Raising the consumption tax has always spooked Japanese politicians, including the reform-minded Junichiro Koizumi, the last popular prime minister. Even Koizumi saw the tax hike as one ambition too far.
But Aso's bold embrace of higher taxes and radical reforms conjures memories of Koizumi's political style: breaking with the inherent caution and stagnation of the ruling party power brokers by going over their heads to appeal to voters.
"Aso will be a hybrid," said analyst Hirotaka Futatsuki. "He is a typical old-style LDP politician at heart. But in order to be popular he has to take the Koizumi-style approach."
He may not have much time. The opposition drumbeat calling for an election has already picked up the tempo after Fukuda's resignation. Voters may be equally restless: Koizumi was the last LDP leader to win an election. The next prime minister will be the third to emerge from the LDP backrooms to run the country without going to the public for a mandate.
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Ueno reported from Tokyo and Wallace from Los Angeles. Special correspondent Naoko Nishiwaki contributed to this report.
