A former wrestler and a television anchorwoman joined Japan's cabinet on Wednesday, as part of a reshuffle Prime Minister Shinzo Abe hopes will refocus the national political agenda on the economy. The premier has switched his focus back to the country's flagging economy after expending political capital pushing unpopular security legislation that could see Japanese troops fighting abroad for the first time in 70 years.
At an evening press conference Abe vowed that his government "will do its best" to achieve its stated goal of boosting the country's GDP to 600 trillion ($5 trillion) yen by 2020. "We need to strengthen economic measures" to achieve the target, he said. In the coming decades Japan's already flagging economy faces the threat of severe labour shortages and booming welfare costs in a country with a rapidly ageing population and one of the world's lowest birth rates.
Abe said it was with this in mind that he promoted his Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato, 59, to a newly created portfolio charged with encouraging greater workforce participation. Kato, a former finance ministry bureaucrat and a father of four daughters, is also tasked with tackling the declining birthrate and female empowerment - a key element of the so-called "Abenomics" reforms unleashed more than two years ago.
The Japanese prime minister retained about half of the current 19 cabinet members, including those heading up the key finance, foreign affairs and economics ministries.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga announced the new line-up after Abe collected letters of resignation from ministers at a noon meeting. Abe has repeatedly said women are a key part of his flagship bid to kick-start the world's number three economy and he has pushed for them to fill more senior roles in politics and business. "Creating the society in which women can shine is the biggest challenge for our government," Abe said. Yet the premier appointed only three female lawmakers as ministers, down from five appointed in the shake-up in September last year, two of whom are new.
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