TOKYO — As sure as night follows day, Japan's next prime minister is expected to be the winner of the current race to claim leadership of the broad conservative party that has ruled the country through booms and busts for 65 of the past 69 years.
This continuity, however, masks the fact that the Sept. 27 vote to choose the next Liberal Democrat president is a very different animal to previous leadership elections. It comes as Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, 67, said the party was in its worst shape since it was founded in the mid-1950s, reeling from a wave of financial scandals.