Of all the cabinet positions that incoming prime minister Yukio Hatoyama has to get right, the post of Japan's foreign minister is arguably the most crucial. Diligence and reliability are obviously required traits, but so is the ability to walk a foreign-policy tightrope without offending either of Tokyo's two largest external influences - Beijing and Washington.
The feeling in Japan is that if anyone can pull that off, it will be the deadly serious and painstakingly precise Katsuya Okada. Once Hatoyama's rival for the position of leader of the Democratic Party of Japan, Okada appears to be the perfect foil for the prime-minister-in-waiting's more laid-back approach to politics and life.
Nevertheless, Hatoyama has caused alarm in certain circles in Washington for an attitude that could be described as hostile to the United States. In an opinion piece in The New York Times days before the election on August 30, he appeared to lay the blame for globalisation, capitalism and 'the destruction of human dignity' squarely at America's door. And there is little sign of him altering his aim of closer relations with China and the rest of Japan's Asian neighbours.
Indeed, Hatoyama's first meeting with a foreign official took place on Wednesday and was, pointedly, with Wu Dawei , the vice-minister of foreign affairs and Beijing's top nuclear negotiator.
It is the job of Okada, who is expected to be officially named foreign minister when the new cabinet is revealed on Wednesday, to pursue better relations with China while not offending the country that has provided Japan's security guarantees since the end of the second world war.
Born in July 1953 in the town of Yokkaichi, in rural Mie prefecture, Okada is the second son of the founder of the giant Aeon supermarket chain, of which his older brother is chief executive. He studied law at the prestigious University of Tokyo before joining what was the ministry of international trade and industry. Okada also spent time at Harvard University's Weatherhead Centre for International Affairs before taking the plunge into politics ahead of the 1990 general election. Like so many new arrivals in the world of Japanese politics, including Hatoyama and Ichiro Ozawa, another former leader of the DPJ, Okada started out by joining the all-dominant Liberal Democratic Party. But within three years of being elected, he had become disillusioned with the party and followed fellow members of Noboru Takeshita's faction in defecting to the fledgling Japan Renewal Party.