Born To Run; Shinzo Abe: Japan's chief cabinet secretary is the early favorite to succeed Koizumi.(Junichiro Koizumi)(Cover Story)

Byline: Christian Caryl and Hideko Takayama

The prime minister calls a snap election, he wins by a landslide and his party returns to Parliament with a huge majority. What happens next? Certainly not a public struggle over who's going to succeed the leader, right?

Wrong. Japan's political elite is already reading the tea leaves, trying to figure out who's going to become the next prime minister in September 2006, when Junichiro Koizumi, the man who guided his ruling Liberal Democratic Party to a momentous victory at the polls three months ago, must step down. The move is mandated by the LDP's internal rules, which say that Koizumi has to relinquish his post as party leader after the second of his three-year terms expires next fall. To be sure, with all the political capital he's amassed, Koizumi could probably get away with gaming the party regulations. But, given his past record of actually doing what he says he'll do, few in Tokyo doubt that the country will soon have a new leader.

And right now the smart money says it will be Shinzo Abe, 51, the man Koizumi recently named to the high-profile post of chief cabinet secretary--the top government spokesperson. So is he a candidate for the job? "It is a great honor to be mentioned in that way," Abe told NEWSWEEK during a recent interview. "For a politician, receiving strong support from the people means having a stronger position to carry out policies. But right now my job is to support Mr. Koizumi's cabinet--a job that is huge and quite heavy. I think I should concentrate on my job for now."

Knowing how circumspect even ambitious Japanese pols can be, we'll take that as a yes. Not that the question really requires an answer. In a nation where many members of the political caste are known as seshu-giin , or hereditary politicians, Abe's pedigree virtually predestines him to higher office. His father, Shintaro Abe, served as secretary-general of the LDP and ultimately rose to the position of minister of Foreign Affairs under Yasuhiro Nakasone in the 1980s. Shinzo Abe's grandfather was Nobusuke Kishi, who was first imprisoned by the Allies as a Class A war criminal in 1945 and then, in a typical cold-war twist, rose to become prime minister (and a staunch supporter of the United States) in the 1950s. It was Kishi, more than perhaps anyone else, who sealed Japan's postwar alliance with America. And Shinzo Abe, a friend of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, is not shy about invoking that bit of family history during his occasional visits to Washington.

Nor is Abe hesitant about demonstrating his conservative bona fides. He first made his name with voters by taking a hard-line position on an issue of great sensitivity in Japan: the abduction of Japanese citizens by North Korea. He's been known to poke fun at postwar Japan's reflexively pacifist principles, saying that the abductions demonstrated the naivete of a constitutional assumption--namely, that neighboring countries automatically deserve Japan's trust. So it's no surprise that he strongly favors revising the pacifism plank in Japan's postwar Constitution--and he doesn't stop there. "It is not just about Article Nine," he told NEWSWEEK. "I think we need to revise the Constitution as a whole."

Abe points out that the original document was drawn up by a small group of Americans in the occupation government in a few days. Now, he says, it's time for the Japanese people to rewrite the entire document so that it conforms more closely to their own contemporary needs--one of which is a more normal military. (At a recent conference in Tokyo, Abe said that Japan lives in a dangerous neighborhood.) "I think we need to change our Constitution with our own hands," he says. Does he think that revising Article Nine could provoke anxiety among Japan's neighbors? "Not at all. Of course, we'll have to explain ourselves fully, and not create any misunderstanding." But, he makes clear, the decision is Japan's to make, and, beyond what he terms "explaining," he doesn't seem particularly eager to assuage fears about ...