In forming his Cabinet, Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda surrounded himself with "heavyweights" of his Liberal Democratic Party — powerful figures who head their respective intraparty factions. Although Fukuda is older than most of them, there is no denying that his lower level of experience makes him look less reliable.

One of the reasons why the birth of the Fukuda government did not turn out as glamorous as he would have liked is that it meant the end of the political style of Junichiro Koizumi, who had dominated the minds of a great majority of Japanese citizens. Many descriptions characterize the unique way in which Koizumi ruled the nation, including near-theatrical performances, populism, the surprising selection of top lieutenants, the destruction of intraparty factions, political superiority over bureaucracy, and the shift from the public to the private sector.

Koizumi's immediate successor, Shinzo Abe, failed because he tried to imitate much of what his predecessor did. By contrast, Fukuda has made a stark deviation from Koizumi's way of running the LDP and the government. Indeed, what Fukuda is doing can be taken as "breaking away from the Koizumi political regime." It is no exaggeration to say that Fukuda is trying to reverse Koizumi's attempts to inject fresh air into Japan's antiquated politics.