For two decades Hirohisa Fujii was a servant of Japan's powerful bureaucracy. Now, as finance minister, the 77-year-old will seek to reduce his former masters' grip on the world's number two economy.
Mr Fujii cut his teeth in the finance ministry in the 1950s - experience that could prove vital to his Democratic Party's efforts to slash wasteful spending and wrest control of policymaking away from unelected civil servants.
The veteran lawmaker is seen as a safe pair of hands to take the helm of the economy as it limps out of its worst recession in decades.
Mr Fujii, a fan of baseball and Japanese rice wine, told reporters yesterday: "My view on life is that if you square your shoulders too much, your body becomes stiff. I'll work while being relaxed."
He was finance minister once before, briefly in the early 1990s, after he left the long-ruling conservatives to join a short-lived coalition government.
A law graduate of the elite University of Tokyo, he spent more than 20 years with the finance ministry before turning his hand to politics, winning a seat in Parliament for the first time in 1977.
"He brings a sense of stability as he was a finance bureaucrat and is well-versed in financial and fiscal policies," said Credit Suisse economist Hiromichi Shirakawa.
But he is "a bit lacking" in terms of international experience, he added.
Mr Fujii is a vocal critic of the outgoing government's stimulus package and has vowed to redirect what his party deems to be wasteful spending.
But he also said in a recent TV interview that the new government would launch a fresh stimulus spending package if the economy remained in a slump.
He has signalled tolerance of the current strength of the yen and said that in principle the government should refrain from intervening in the market to sell the yen.
"I don't believe the currency market is in a wild swing. I am opposed to intervening when the market is calm,'' Mr Fujii told reporters yesterday, according to Kyodo News.
Mr Fujii has voiced support for an independent central bank and is critical of the free-market initiatives taken under former premier Junichiro Koizumi.
He will serve as a liaison between his ministry and a new strategy bureau being set up by the incoming government to draft the national budget - previously the job of the bureaucrats.
Although Mr Fujii is six years older than his predecessor Kaoru Yosano, analysts have said his age is not a major concern for financial markets.
"We're quite used to having a bunch of old buffers running the country," said Macquarie Securities economist Richard Jerram.