Prime minister reshuffles Cabinet to boost support

TOKYO — A deeply contrite Japanese prime minister, tainted by political scandals and plummeting in the polls, overhauled his Cabinet on Thursday in an attempt to stave off challenges to his leadership.

By appointing a lineup of experienced political veterans from across various factions in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, Shinzo Abe tried both to restore stability to his government and to show the Japanese people he was working to put right the recent problems, analysts said.

“I reshuffled my Cabinet with a determination to go back to the high point we occupied when we regained control of the government five years ago,” Abe said at a news conference Thursday night, during which he did a long, low bow of contrition and voiced his “deep remorse” for losing the public’s trust.

Abe, who had been enjoying support ratings around the 60 percent at the beginning of this year, and looked set to retain the leadership of the LDP through to 2021has suffered a series of blows this year that saw his poll numbers tumble into the 20s.

He has become embroiled in two cronyism scandals centered around educational institutions, and his defense minister has been accused of a cover-up that would — perhaps inadvertently — help Abe pursue his goal of revising the American-written, postwar constitution.

The prime minister seemed to suggest that this cherished political goal, which would have enabled him to strengthen the Japanese military, was being put on the back burner.

“Our top priority is the revitalization of the economy,” Abe said in the press conference.

In the reshuffle, the prime minister changed 14 of the 19 Cabinet positions.

As the new foreign minister, Abe appointed Taro Kono, who studied at Georgetown University in the early 1980s and worked on Capitol Hill for Richard Shelby of Alabama, who was a Democratic congressman at the time. Among the arch-conservatives running the LDP, Kono, 54, is considered something of a moderate.