SHINZO Abe, whose Liberal Democratic Party stormed to victory in Sunday's election, returns to the prime ministership as a hawk with strident views on Japan's place in the world.
He was the country's youngest ever prime minister when he stepped into the role in 2006, aged 52, and the first one to be born after World War II, but left office abruptly citing illness after an election loss.
Now 58, the conservative ideologue will return to the prime minister's official residence with promises of a more assertive diplomacy in the face of an increasingly confident China and an always unpredictable North Korea.
Casting himself as an uncompromising leader, Abe has also voiced his willingness to amend laws to force monetary easing moves from the Bank of Japan, which would see it print more money, buy more bonds and have to meet an inflation target to achieve economic growth.
The prime minister-in-waiting will be the second man in modern Japan to serve as prime minister twice, after Shigeru Yoshida, who led the nation in 1946-47 and 1948-54.
The LDP have achieved a commanding parliamentary majority, but analysts say mostly by default with voters looking to punish the disappointing rule of the Democratic Party of Japan.
Despite the landslide, Abe may struggle with the electorate at large, where voters remember his disappointing first tenure, which ended in ignominy and bowel problems in 2007.
He was to become the first in a series of short-lived premiers in Japan, each of whom lasted around a year. His return to the job will make him the seventh change in six years.
Abe came to power as a preferred successor named by then-popular prime minister Junichiro Koizumi, for whom he had served as an eager and earnest deputy.
At the time, he symbolised the continuity of Koizumi's reform agenda as well as youth that could breathe life into an increasingly tired-looking country weighed down by a fragile economic recovery.
His tough talking on North Korea, which admitted in 2002 that it had abducted Japanese civilians in the 1970s and 1980s, also appealed to voters.
But the third-generation politician, groomed from birth for the job by his elite, conservative family, complained of illness following an election defeat in 2007 and after a series of scandals involving his ministers.
Since his return to the helm of the LDP he has aggressively championed an uncompromising Japan on the world stage.
One of his most passionate causes has been revising the country's pacifist constitution, which was imposed on a defeated Japan by the United States in 1947, seven years before he was born.
He has promised to instil patriotism among school children and to visit the controversial Yasukuni war shrine in Tokyo, seen as a symbol of Japan's war-time aggression in Korea and China.
He has long attempted to roll back the legacy of World War II defeat, including revising Japan's contrition on so-called "comfort women".
The issue has flared anew in South Korea, with calls for Japan to compensate women pressed into sexual slavery for Japanese soldiers.
During his earlier premiership, Abe remained studiously ambiguous about his beliefs and proved more pragmatic than many had expected, working to improve ties with China and South Korea.
His grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, was a World War II cabinet member and was briefly jailed as a war criminal. Kishi later became a post-war prime minister, fighting leftists to build a new alliance with Washington.
His father was Shintaro Abe, a foreign minister who never achieved his ambition of becoming prime minister. Shinzo Abe took his father's parliamentary seat in 1993 following his death and fulfilled his goal, albeit temporarily.
Abe's hawkish image may be softened by his wife, Akie Abe, the daughter of a prominent businessman. She is known for her love of South Korean culture.
The couple have no children.
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