It was an election that had all the suspense of a Noh play. On Wednesday, Shinzo Abe handily won the presidency of the country's ruling Liberal Democratic Party （LDP）, garnering 66% over the vote over his opponents, Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki （15%） and Foreign Minister Taro Aso （19%）。 While he still needs to be confirmed by a parliamentary vote, an LDP majority makes his ascendance all but automatic； on Sept. 26, Abe will succeed Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who is stepping down after more than five years in power. Koizumi's number two and chief cabinet secretary, Abe had been a lock for months, and like a baseball team up six games with 12 to go, he played it safe and vague, offering a feel-good policy platform that ran to just four pages. His milquetoast opponents sometimes seemed to be more interested in auditioning for future cabinet posts than actually contesting the race. For the 51-year-old Abe—scion of one of Japan's most powerful political families—it was less a campaign than a coronation.

　　Now things could get interesting. The outgoing Koizumi isn't just that odd, wavy-haired guy who played air guitar with President Bush at Graceland this summer； he's arguably one of the most significant—if divisive—leaders of Japan's postwar era. During his tenure, Koizumi largely dismantled Japan's stolid system of political patronage and privilege and presided over its economic resurgence after nearly a decade of stagnation. But he is also a deeply controversial figure who severely damaged Japan's relations with its neighbors China and South Korea with his trips to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japan's millions of war dead, among them 14 Class-A war criminals. And at home, Koizumi's hard-nosed economic reforms triggered a backlash among many Japanese concerned about the growing disparity between rich and poor in this traditionally homogeneous society. The relatively inexperienced Abe will be left to pick up the pieces, and while most Japanese like him, his short track record means that few can predict what direction he'll take. Pacifists say Abe is a nationalist who'll push for a militarized Japan, while allies claim he just wants a stronger foreign policy. He may be a dedicated reformer in the mold of Koizumi, or just a pretty face （by Japanese political standards） who will bend to the will of the country's vested political interests. “He doesn't really talk about details,” says Taro Kono, a Vice-Minister of Justice and an LDP reformer who has worked with Abe. “He doesn't tell us exactly what he'll do.”

　　Abe's intentions are clearest in foreign policy, where he first won public support by taking a hard line against North Korea after Pyongyang in 2002 admitted abducting Japanese citizens years earlier to serve as spy instructors for the regime. Like Koizumi, he will continue to strengthen the already close U.S.-Japan alliance. But Abe seems to want to go further. One of his few solid proposals during the campaign was a pledge to revise Japan's pacifist postwar constitution—to remake it “by our own hands,” he told audiences when he kicked off his campaign—to allow for greater leeway for the country's Self-Defense Forces （SDF）。 Little public support exists for revision, but Abe will push to allow the SDF to take a more assertive role in international military actions. The U.S. would welcome such a change, but rivals South Korea and China, wary of Abe's hawkish reputation, would certainly not. That could worsen tensions in Northeast Asia, although with Koizumi gone, both countries seem to be willing to give the new Prime Minister a relatively clean slate, and Abe appears ready to return the favor. “Koizumi set the bar so low Abe doesn't have to do much to improve relations,” says Jeff Kingston, a professor of history at Temple University's Tokyo campus. Abe's early days will likely see the first China-Japan summit in more than five years, but underlying issues, from Yasukuni to territorial disputes, can't be wished away.

　　Japan's list of domestic problems, which range from a large government budget deficit to a pension crisis to an aging crisis, are just as inescapable. The question gripping Japanese politics today is whether Koizumi's deep structural reforms remain the right way to approach economic problems—and whether Abe has the stomach for the fight. In an early sign that the pace of reform might slow, last week Koizumi's economic czar, Heizo Takenaka, announced that he would retire from government after Sept. 26, preempting any speculation that he would serve in the same capacity in an Abe cabinet. Japan's entrenched bureaucrats, Koizumi's b阾es noires from the beginning, seem to be gaining power, bolstered by the sense among many Japanese that reforms were destroying Japan's middle class. “The new Prime Minister is going to face this backlash,” Takenaka told TIME before his resignation. “I cannot be very optimistic about the policy-making process after Koizumi.” Abe was never a significant player on Koizumi's domestic reform team, and on the campaign trail he emphasized the need to strengthen the country's economic safety net, playing down the issue of reform. But even if Abe wanted to go back to the bad old days of Japanese money politics—which most analysts doubt—he can't： Japan's heavy debt and five years of pork-barrel belt-tightening under Koizumi means the government pump has run dry. “There are more reforms he could do if he wants, but the danger that Abe will hurt the economy is low,” says Richard Jerram, chief Japan economist with Macquarie Securities. Analysts will look to Abe's cabinet selections, set for early next week, for the first solid signs of his domestic and economic priorities.

　　Abe swept to power all but unopposed, but he'll still be ruling a political world of his predecessor's making. Koizumi changed the way Prime Ministers were elected, ensuring that public support is more important than the backroom political deals that once ruled Japanese politics. But those changes mean that the Japanese people now expect far more of their leaders. Everybody loves Abe today, but if the new Prime Minister falls short, his administration could be as contentious as his campaign was serene.