Yasuo Fukuda emerged Friday as the clear favorite in the race to replace Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as president of the Liberal Democratic Party, in what is shaping up to be a two-man contest with LDP Secretary General Taro Aso.
Blindsided by Abe's sudden announcement Wednesday that he intended to resign, the LDP hurriedly kicked off campaigning for a new party president on Friday.
The two men will officially register as candidates Saturday morning, but Fukuda, a former chief Cabinet secretary, emerged Friday as the front-runner after securing the backing of the leaders of almost every LDP faction, whose memberships taken as a whole amount to a majority of the party's Diet members.