Keidanren (Japan Business Federation) has selected a new leader just as its clout declines and it faces challenges to its role as the nation's most powerful business lobby. When he replaces the current leader, Hiromasa Yonekura, in June, Sadayuki Sakakibara, the Toray Industries Inc. chairman, will need to deal with issues affecting the nation's economy, businesses that don't belong to Keidanren and the people at large — not just issues related to established Keidanren members.

Keidanren lobbies the government to have opinions put together by the business community reflected in policy decisions. With roughly 1,300 leading Japanese firms as members, the federation served as a channel for business donations to the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party up to the 1990s. Due to Keidanren's strong political influence, its chairman used to be called the "prime minister of the business community."

In more recent years, Keidanren has been criticized for not catching up with the structural changes needed in the Japanese economy because of its focus on heavy industrial sectors such as automobiles, chemical and steel. When online retailer Rakuten Inc. left the federation in 2011, company president Hiroshi Mikitani said Keidanren had become too conservative to pursue the kind of drastic economic reform that could shake-up Japan's business establishment. Mikitani went on to lead a new organization, the Japan Association of New Economy, which comprises more than 700 firms mainly from the information-technology sector.