Yoshihide Suga, Japanese chief cabinet secretary and longtime loyal aide of outgoing Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who the party picked on Monday to lead the nation, is known to be a very private person and has allowed only occasional glimpses into his personal life.  But, one thing that is widely known about him, from his interviews, is that he bookends his day with 100 sit-ups in the morning and another 100 in the evening, and loves pancakes.

On Monday, Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) picked this son of a strawberry farmer to lead the nation by polling 377 votes in his favour of a total of 534 votes. Suga’s election caps a career that has seen him serve in key political roles, including most recently as chief cabinet secretary — an office that involves coordinating policy and bringing government agencies and the bureaucracy to heel.

Suga, 71, is known for inscrutability and has earned a reputation for wielding his power to control Japan’s sprawling and powerful bureaucracy and help push through government policies.

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When Abe announced in late August that he would resign over health issues, Suga emerged as the leading choice to succeed him, with key LDP factions throwing their support behind him. Unlike many in the conservative LDP, Suga is not a political blue blood, and grew up in rural Akita, in northern Japan. He has worked his way up with sheer hard work.

He moved to Tokyo after high school and worked odd jobs to put himself through night college, before being elected to his first office in 1987, as a municipal assembly member in Yokohama outside Tokyo.

He won a lower house seat in 1996 and has been a long-time backer of Abe, pushing him to stand for a second term despite his disastrous first run in office, which ended after just a year.

Experts say Suga is driven by pragmatism and he is seen by lawmakers along the political spectrum within the LDP as a neutral figure. But his rather anodyne image got something of a reboot last year with the declaration of a new imperial era to mark the ascension to the throne of Emperor Naruhito.

It was Suga who unveiled the much-awaited name for the era: Reiwa. And the image of him holding up the hand-drawn calligraphy for the name earned him the affectionate nickname “Uncle Reiwa”.

As prime minister, Suga will face a series of tough challenges, including containing the coronavirus and fixing the world’s third-biggest economy, which was in recession even before the pandemic.