Japan finance minister will become new PM

Japanese Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda on Monday defeated four other ruling party candidates to become the leader of the Democratic Party of Japan. The election means Noda will soon be named the new prime minister of that country.

Noda will take over from Naoto Kan, who resigned as prime minister last week because of deep public dissatisfaction over his handling of the earthquake and tsunami that devastated northern Japan in the spring.

Noda beat out Seiji Maehara, Sumio Mabuchi, Banri Kaieda and Michihiko Kano for the position. In a final round of voting, he received 215 votes to Banri Kaieda’s 177, according to a DPJ news release.

Born in 1957, Noda is younger than most recent prime ministers, and he is known as a fiscal conservative. Last week Moody’s Investor Service downgraded Japan’s credit rating to Aa3. The debt has exploded in the wake of the natural disaster.

The DPJ has stumbled since taking power in 2009 from the Liberal Democratic Party, which had ruled Japan for nearly all of the post-World War II period.