Noda has pledged to be a peacemaker in the centre-left Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), which is deeply split between supporters and foes of veteran powerbroker Ichiro Ozawa, who has been indicted in a political funds scandal, according to an AFP report.
Ozawa, often dubbed the "Shadow Shogun", is the party's biggest faction boss, commanding the support of some 120 lawmakers, and was a rival of Noda's predecessor Naoto Kan. He also backed a candidate who ran against Noda in the leadership contest.
But as the DPJ's new president, Noda, 54, gave the number-two post of secretary-general to Azuma Koshiishi, a lawmaker who is close to Ozawa.
Koshiishi, the 75-year-old leader of the DPJ upper house caucus, is a former elementary school teacher who was also a senior teachers union official.
The new premier also named Hirofumi Hirano, 62 -- a close aide to Ozawa ally and ex-premier Yukio Hatoyama -- to an influential post, that of the DPJ's parliamentary affairs chief.
Noda gave the post of DPJ policy chief to one of the four candidates he defeated in Monday's ballot -- the ex-foreign minister Seiji Maehara.