Japan's battle-scarred main opposition party on Sunday chose Katsuya Okada as its new leader as it tries to recover from a disastrous showing in December's general election and years of drift. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's crushing win last month - his second in two years - was believed by some commentators to be largely due to the absence of a credible alternative.
The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), which governed for three years until December 2012, won just 73 seats in the 475-seat lower house where Abe's Liberal Democratic Party has 291 seats.
Okada, a 61-year-old Harvard-trained former deputy prime minister, will have his work cut out rebuilding public trust in the nominally centre-left party. Its three years in power to December 2012 were characterised by power struggles, policy flip-flops and diplomatic mis-steps.
"I want to rebuild the DPJ by returning to our starting point," Okada said in a speech before his fellow DPJ lawmakers voted Sunday.
"We are a party for consumers, ordinary citizens, taxpayers and working people," he said.
"The DPJ seeks to have a diverse, tolerant society which recognises various values... and we also have to be a reformist party."
Okada pledged that the DPJ's economic policy would seek both growth and a smaller gap between rich and poor, saying: "Mr Abe has no ideas about a rich-poor gap and income redistribution."
The party appeared to offer a fresh start for Japan when it was elected in 2009, interrupting more than half a century of almost unbroken rule by the Liberal Democratic Party. But its three-year stint was characterised by policy mis-steps and diplomatic mistakes that left voters disillusioned.
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