Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s recent announcement that he will step down as head of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in September — and, consequently, his role as president — has cleared the way for a new chapter in the country. Internationally, Kishida has strengthened the alliance with Washington and tightened diplomatic ties with Seoul. But his legacy in domestic politics is much more fragile, with a battered economy and no answers to how to finance spending to strengthen the military and revive a steadily declining birth rate. Added to this is deep discontent with the LDP following several alleged corruption scandals, which have put it in the eye of the storm in recent years. Whoever succeeds him will face the challenge of reconnecting with an increasingly disenchanted electorate.
“His resignation was inevitable,” said Dr. Koichi Nakano, a professor of political science at Tokyo’s Sophia University, over the phone. “He is isolated and losing support within the LDP. He had little chance of winning the internal elections.”
Last Wednesday, Kishida, 67, announced that he would not seek re-election in his party’s primaries, which will be held in September, in order to “show society that the PLD will change.” His continued leadership of the Cabinet was linked to his maintaining the presidency of the PLD, since the leader of the party with a parliamentary majority is the one who heads the government.
The LDP has been in power for the longest time since its founding in 1955, with only two short periods of time: 1993-1994 and 2009-2012. The opposition, for its part, has not yet established itself as a viable alternative due to internal fragmentation, a lack of charismatic leadership and an unclear political agenda. As a result, voter turnout has continued to fall over the past decade, due to widespread apathy.
That virtually uninterrupted LDP control, however, contrasts with the short tenure of prime ministers that has characterized Japanese democracy since 1945, with the notable exception of Shinzo Abe, who was shot dead in 2022 while giving a street rally. His tenure – in two stages, from 2006 to 2007 and from 2012 to 2020 – has been the longest in the country’s modern history. And of the 34 prime ministers that Japan has had since the end of World War II, only eight (the last, Kishida) have managed to remain at the head of the executive for more than 1,000 days. His retirement, according to many analysts, marks a return to that frequent rotation of seats.
“When the leader of a country, whether it is a democracy or not, dominates politics for so long, he ends up shaping the system to his liking,” Nakano says. “Democracies are usually better equipped to find a successor because they are supposed to have constitutional mechanisms for doing so, but Abe, during his tenure, managed to find the seams,” he says. This expert is not surprised that, given the circumstances, “his successors are ephemeral.”
Knowing what’s happening outside means understanding what’s going to happen inside, so don’t miss anything.
KEEP READING
After Abe resigned for health reasons in 2020, he was replaced by Yoshihide Suga, who was burdened by his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and his determination to hold the Tokyo Olympics, despite overwhelming public opposition, only a year after taking office. In 2021, Kishida came to power, who, with little public support, managed to win the approval of the highest echelons of the LDP for “offering continuity.”
A renewal in view of the elections
The party’s image has been badly damaged in recent years, after the assassination of Abe brought to light the links of some of its leaders with the controversial Unification Church and, more recently, by an irregular financing scandal in which more than three million euros were allegedly defrauded. Ironically, Kishida, hit by the internal crisis and with a popularity rate that does not exceed 25%, leaves his post with the same promise he made when he arrived: “To win trust, the LDP has to move towards renewal.” Now he considers that the most obvious action to do so is for him to take a step back.
Analysts from the Eurasia Group consultancy write in a note that “the appointment of a new PLD leader is crucial because national elections are approaching [en 2025]. The party’s approval rating is at an all-time low, and it must look for someone capable of reversing that trend and obtaining good results at the polls.”
Among the possible contenders, there are names of old acquaintances. The favorite, according to polls published by local media, is Shigeru Ishiba, a former defense minister who has unsuccessfully tried to lead the party on four occasions. Also in the spotlight is Taro Kono, minister of digital transformation and previously head of foreign affairs and defense. In 2021, he lost to Kishida, a defeat that represented a blow to the new generation of politicians within the LDP who aspired to a renewal of the faction system that has dominated the party from the shadows. Following the fundraising scandal, Kishida ordered the dissolution of most of them.
Another candidate could be Toshimitsu Motegi, the LDP secretary-general with a reputation as a tough negotiator and diplomatic experience who observers say could strengthen ties with Donald Trump if he wins the US election in November. The betting is also on Shinjiro Koizumi, the former environment minister who grabbed media attention in September when he surfed the waves at Fukushima in an attempt to calm concerns about the wastewater discharge from the power plant that was mothballed after the triple disaster of an earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident in 2011. He had previously made headlines for being the first sitting minister to take paternity leave.
There are also two female ministers who are vying to become Japan’s first female leader: Economic Security Minister Sanae Takaichi and Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa. The former is known as the iron lady Japanese, ultra-conservative and a frequent visitor to the Yasukuni shrine, which is rejected in the region because it is considered a symbol of Japan’s militaristic past. Kamikawa, for her part, is a Harvard graduate and has been recognized for promoting equal participation in politics, an arduous task in a nation where only 10% of parliamentarians are women. She has headed the Ministry of Justice for three terms and, in 2018, approved the execution of the 13 members of the Aum Shinrikyo sect, responsible for the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, the deadliest in the country.
Japan currently ranks 118th out of 146 countries on the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Index, the worst ranking among G-7 members. “Is the LDP willing to have a female prime minister?” asks Dr Nakano. “Because even if society has preferences, the reality is that they cannot be directly voted for.” The LDP primaries are limited to dues-paying party members – just over a million – and the votes that carry the most weight are those of parliamentarians. “Kamikawa has a chance, but I think the LDP will only elect a woman as its leader if it is really desperate, to show the electorate that it is willing to vote for a woman.” [de las generales] that they are a renewed party and that a substantial change has occurred,” predicts the expert.
Follow all the international information atFacebook andXor inour weekly newsletter.
