Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is seen on Nov. 9, 2021, at the Liberal Democratic Party headquarters in Tokyo. (Mainichi/Kan Takeuchi)

       TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is set to relaunch his Cabinet on Wednesday after gaining a public mandate to pursue his economic and diplomatic agenda with the ruling coalition's victory in last month's general election.

       The lineup of ministers is expected to remain largely unchanged as they were just appointed little more than a month ago. One new face will be Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi, known for his close ties to China.

       Kishida's Liberal Democratic Party and its partner Komeito retained a comfortable majority in the House of Representatives, the powerful lower chamber of parliament, in the Oct. 31 general election.

       The easy victory came despite media forecasts that the ruling coalition would lose a sizable chunk of seats to an opposition group led by the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan that had unified candidates in a bid to consolidate the anti-LDP vote.

       Parliament is set to convene a special session on Wednesday to confirm Kishida will remain prime minister, after which he will name his Cabinet.

       With the world's third-largest economy hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, Kishida is set to map out and secure funding for a stimulus package worth more than 30 trillion yen ($265 billion) within the year.

       Komeito is pushing to include 100,000 yen cash handouts to everyone aged 18 or younger, though some within the government have called for higher income households to be excluded from the scheme or for vouchers to be given out instead.

       Kishida has also pledged to reduce income disparity, a response to criticism that the "Abenomics" pursued by his predecessors, Shinzo Abe and Yoshihide Suga, only boosted corporate profits and share prices while failing to increase wages.

       It remains to be seen how successful Kishida will be however, as Keidanren, Japan's powerful business lobby, has already rejected calls for across-the-board salary hikes.

       On the diplomatic front, Kishida has vowed to strengthen the Japan-U.S. alliance and deal with security challenges from an increasingly assertive China and North Korea, which recently carried out a series of missile tests.

       Hayashi, who studied at Harvard University and previously served as education minister and farm minister, will assume the role of foreign minister after his predecessor, Toshimitsu Motegi, stepped down to become LDP secretary general, the party's No. 2 post.

       Hayashi heads a nonpartisan lawmakers' group that promotes Japan-China relations and is seen as friendly toward Beijing. But he has expressed concerns over the treatment of Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang region.

       Kishida is also set to name former Defense Minister Gen Nakatani as his special adviser on human rights issues. Nakatani is a leading advocate of introducing sanctions on foreign government officials believed to be human rights offenders, similar to the U.S. Magnitsky Act.

       The LDP won 261 seats in the lower house in the general election, 15 fewer than it previously held but enough to effectively control all standing committees and force through legislation if it desires. Komeito went from 29 to 32.

       The CDPJ fell from 110 to 96 while one of the opposition groups it allied with, the Japanese Communist Party, dropped from 12 to 10 as voters apparently shunned their willingness to cooperate despite ideological differences.

       The lower house has special powers not given to the upper chamber, the House of Councillors, including having the final say in electing the prime minister, passing state budgets and ratifying international treaties.

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