Japan PM Aso set to lead his party to defeat

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party picked Taro Aso as its leader in the hopes that he would turn around its fortunes and help preserve its grip on power.

Instead, he now looks set to lead the conservative, pro-business LDP to a major defeat in a general election party executives expect on August 30.

Since Aso became the party's fourth leader in four year last September, policy flip-flops and accusations of indecisiveness have sent his support sliding, sparking turmoil in the LDP and boosting the opposition Democratic Party's chances of taking power.

The prime minister's job was "filled with dark loneliness from beginning to end," Aso told a recent news conference.

The 68-year-old, who represented Japan at skeet shooting in the Montreal Olympics, had cultivated an image as a "cool old dude" and a fan of the "manga" comics popular with young Japanese.

A Catholic in a land of Shinto and Buddhism, the dapper dresser was similarly supposed to stand out from the grey men in suits that dominate Japanese politics.

The hope was that the grandson of a prominent post-war prime minister would rally the party's standing in the polls and call a quick general election.

But the global financial crisis sent Japan plunging into its worst recession since World War Two and the chance was missed.

Since then, Aso has prioritized spending and tax cuts and planned $292 billion in stimulus spending, including cash handouts for households, putting efforts to reduce Japan's huge public debt on the back burner.

But his efforts have failed to win over voters irritated by his brash manner. Though sometimes called "the man with a 1.5 meter radius" for his ability to win over those close around him with amusing patter, voters have nevertheless tired of his off-the-cuff remarks and lack of charisma when giving speeches.

With some of these remarks he has managed to offend people ranging from doctors and parents to the elderly, while he has also been ridiculed in the media for misreading kanji, the Chinese characters used in Japanese writing.

PRIVILEGED BACKGROUND

The grandson of former Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, who negotiated the peace treaty ending World War Two, Aso is married to a daughter of another prime minister and his sister is married to a cousin of Emperor Akihito.

His inability to name the price of a cup of noodles, an inexpensive snack food favored by cash-strapped diners, was seized upon to show he was out of touch with ordinary Japanese struggling with job cuts and falling wages.

The constant struggle in the polls, as a string of minor scandals plagued his cabinet, has taken its toll.

An outspoken nationalist, Aso wants to see Japan play a bigger global security role. In 2006, after becoming foreign minister, he said there was nothing wrong with discussing whether Japan, the only country to suffer an atomic bombing, should possess nuclear weapons.

Aso triggered a furor in the two Koreas in 2003 for remarks seen as praising Japan's 1919-1945 colonization of the Korean peninsula.

But since becoming premier he has forged close ties with South Korea President Lee Myung-bak, and relations with China have remained on an even keel. He has also avoided visiting Tokyo's Yasukuni shrine for war dead, seen by many in Asia as a symbol of Japan's past militarism.

($1=92.46 Yen)

(Editing by Isabel Reynolds and Rodney Joyce)