Prime Minister Fumio Kishida made minor changes to his Cabinet this week after comfortably winning the general election. Naturally, he retained all his incumbent Cabinet ministers except for one — the minister for foreign affairs.

Kishida tapped Yoshimasa Hayashi, a policy-savvy legislator with degrees from the University of Tokyo and Harvard University, as well as experience working as a staffer for a congressman and senator in Washington.

Despite his illustrious career, however, Hayashi has often been misunderstood as a pro-China “panda hugger.”