Reuters :
Candidates to become Japan’s next prime minister all said they would have better policies to fight the pandemic and reduce the income gap during television debates on Friday, but they were split on diversity issues from same-sex marriage to married couples having separate surnames.
Whoever wins the Liberal Democratic Party presidency on September 29 will become prime minister because of the LDP’s majority in the lower house of parliament, and campaigning began in earnest on Friday with a series of televised debates.
Widely seen as the leading contender, vaccine minister Taro Kono, 58, recently veered from mainstream thinking in the conservative party by saying he favours the introduction of same-sex marriage, and during a debate broadcast by TV Asahi, he asked his main contender about his stance on the issue.
Former foreign minister Fumio Kishida, 64, answered by saying he had “not reached the point of accepting same-sex marriage”.
The two other candidates in the race are both women; Seiko Noda, a 61-year-old former gender equality minister, and Sanae Takaichi, 60, an ultra-conservative former internal affairs minister.
