FACTBOX: Possible candidates to run for next Japan PM

TOKYO (Reuters) - Following the resignation of Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party is looking for a new leader.

Below are some senior LDP lawmakers seen as possible candidates to replace Fukuda:

TARO ASO, 67

Also, the LDP's comic-book loving secretary-general, assumed the party's No.2 position in August when Fukuda reshuffled his cabinet and party executives.

Aso lost to Fukuda in the race for the party's presidency after former premier Shinzo Abe's resignation a year ago.

He is seen as less concerned than Fukuda about controlling Japan's ballooning debt, after he expressed doubts last month about keeping to the government target of balancing the budget by 2012, suggesting that could damage the already fragile economy.

Aso, who served as foreign minister and LDP secretary-general under Abe, is seen as a hawk. He has said there is nothing wrong with discussing whether Japan, the only country to suffer an atomic bombing, should possess nuclear weapons.

But he has also said he would stay away from Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japan's war dead but is seen by many in Asia as a symbol of the nation's past militarism.

His brash manner has provoked controversy. Aso was forced to apologize over a flippant remark about Alzheimer's disease last year and stirred anger in the two Koreas in 2003 for remarks seen as praising Japan's 1919-1945 colonization of the peninsula.

KAORU YOSANO, 70

Yosano, a veteran conservative politician, was tapped as economics minister in Fukuda's cabinet reshuffle and led the government's efforts to compile an economic package last week.

Asked about the possibility of running for the top post, Yosano said he was "not thinking about anything yet".

He is seen as a fiscal conservative and a vocal advocate of a higher consumption tax rate to restore battered public finances.

Yosano and his fellow LDP lawmakers published a report in June that said the sales tax rate needed to be doubled from 5 percent to at least 10 percent by around 2015.

But some LDP lawmakers argue that the government should cut wasteful spending and boost growth to increase tax revenue, before opting for a tax hike.

Grandson of two well-known poets and a graduate of the prestigious University of Tokyo, Yosano started his political career in 1968 by joining the office of Yasuhiro Nakasone, who was prime minister in the 1980s.