Kan named as Japan's new PM

Japan's parliament installed Naoto Kan as the new prime minister Friday, handing the outspoken populist the job of rallying his party and reclaiming its mandate for change leading up to elections next month.

Kan, a 63-year-old veteran with a reputation for confronting Japan's powerful bureaucrats, succeeds Yukio Hatoyama, who stepped down Wednesday.

"My task is to rebuild this nation," said Kan, who served as Hatoyama's finance minister.

He must now contend with a daunting list of problems. The world's No. 2 economy is burdened with the largest public debt in the industrialized world, sluggish growth and an aging population.

But more urgently, with upper house elections looming in July, he will need to convince voters of his party's competence after they were disappointed by Hatoyama's financial scandals and bungled handling of the relocation of a U.S. Marine base in Okinawa.

Kan's first task will be to form a cabinet, which the prime minister's office suggested would not happen until next week.

"We will work together as one in the face of the tough political situation and the upcoming upper house elections and fight together unified," he said to party members. "Our first priority is to regain the trust of the people."

A break from his predecessors

Kan pledged to confront problems linking money and politics. He also stressed the need for fiscal discipline while trying to spur economic growth.

Chosen Friday morning as new chief of the Democratic Party of Japan, Kan was voted into office a few hours later by the lower house, the more powerful chamber of Japan's parliament.

Kan received 313 votes out of 477, with Liberal Democratic Party head Sadakazu Tanigaki getting 116. The rest went to other candidates of smaller parties. The upper house approved Kan immediately afterward.

With his ordinary upbringing, Kan represents a break with the past several prime ministers, including Hatoyama, whose fathers or grandfathers served as prime ministers. The son of a businessman, Kan graduated from the Tokyo Institute of Technology's science department.

He began his political career as a civic activist in the 1970s and ran for office three times before winning a lower house seat in 1980 with the now-defunct Socialist Democratic Federation.

He gained fame in the 1990s when as health minister he exposed a government coverup of HIV-tainted blood products that caused thousands of hemophilia patients to contract the virus that causes AIDS.

Kan, along with Hatoyama, was one of several members in 1996 to found what eventually became the Democratic Party of Japan.