Japanese PM Ishiba's future in the balance

Shigeru Ishiba likes the nitty gritty of policy, cigarettes and making models, but his dream job as Japanese prime minister could go up in smoke this weekend.

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Opinion polls suggest that Ishiba's coalition could lose its majority in upper house elections on Sunday, a result that might push him to resign.

The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has governed Japan almost continuously since 1955, but whether anyone wants to replace Ishiba is another matter.

"I wonder who else wants the job," Masahisa Endo, politics professor at Waseda University, told AFP.

Ishiba, 68, a self-confessed defense "geek," is the son of a regional governor and is from Japan's small Christian minority.

He won the party leadership in September, on his fifth try, to become the LDP's 10th separate prime minister since 2000, all of them men.