What the next Japanese Prime Minister means to the world

IShiba Shigeru is set to become Japan’s new prime minister after winning the presidency of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in a vote of lawmakers and party members on Friday afternoon.

A no-nonsense populist and former defense minister who won the LDP leadership on his fifth attempt – what he called his “final battle” – Ishiba, 67, emerged triumphant from a field of nine , with promises to revitalize rural areas and win back the public. confidence after a slew of scandals led to the resignation of incumbent Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. Ishiba will take over the nation’s top job on October 1 following a parliamentary rubber-stamp vote.

“Prime Minister Kishida made the decision to let the LDP be reborn and regain public trust,” Ishiba said in his victory speech. “We all need to come together to answer this.”

Ishiba’s leadership of the East Asian nation of 125 million has implications for global security, given Japan’s increasingly important role alongside the US as a check on China’s assertiveness in the Asia-Pacific. Under Kishida, who announced last month that he would not run amid falling popularity, Japan has increased defense spending and healed historic wounds with South Korea, another key US regional ally.

Hailing from Tokyo, Ishiba has both official and rebel credentials. He worked briefly in banking before starting his own political career following the death of his father, who was himself an MP and cabinet member. He is seen as estranged from the right-wing faction of the party centered around the late Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, who was assassinated in 2022, who reportedly turned down several of his cabinet posts.

This distance probably proved the key in Ishiba’s victory. LDP elders acknowledged the need for change following public outcry over the Abe faction’s ties to the controversial Unification Church, as well as misuse of political funds. “Distrust grew in the Kishida administration because it didn’t really deal with the financial scandals of the LDP factions,” says Mieko Nakabayashi, a professor at Tokyo’s Waseda University and a former Japanese parliamentarian.

Ishiba’s popularity was strengthened by his expression of the need to properly investigate any wrongdoing and reforms to regain public trust. Having served as Minister of Agriculture and Minister of Rural Revitalization, Ishiba’s economic agenda focuses on revitalizing Japan’s outlying regions.

“He has the greatest credibility as someone who understands people’s pain,” says Jeff Kingston, director of Asian studies at Temple University in Tokyo. “But he’s a straight-talking guy who doesn’t suffer fools easily, and a lot of his colleagues match that. So he can appear arrogant and condescending to his fellow MPs.”

As a result, it is perhaps unsurprising that Ishiba’s support rested more with the LDP’s broad membership than with fellow parliamentarians, many of whom still regard him as a traitor for switching parties for several years in the 1990s. He was also the most populist of the main challengers and known for flip-flopping on various issues depending on the mood of the public, including nuclear power and whether a woman could serve as Emperor.

“There are many cases where he has changed his stance, so he is sometimes seen as a weak leader who doesn’t have really strong principles,” says Hosoya Yuichi, a professor of international politics at Keio University in Tokyo. “But at the same time, he is considered an experienced and reliable politician.”

Ishiba is one of only two of the leadership candidates who do not speak English—remarkably, four of the nine were Harvard-educated—and is seen as a more conservative choice than his closest opponents, who would have been either the youngest, or the youngest in Japan. the first female leader. (The latter, Economic Security Minister Sanae Takaichi, was ahead of the first-round vote but was defeated by Ishiba in a runoff.)

However, Ishiba also has a distinct streak of non-conformity. He is one of the few LDP politicians to acknowledge Japan’s mistakes in colonizing Korea from 1910 to 1945, promising warmer ties with Seoul, although he has also openly called for an Asian version of NATO that could put him in collision. of course with Beijing.

On ties with the US, Ishiba alarmed some by calling for a rebalancing of defense arrangements, with Japan taking more control and responsibility for its own security. He has a reputation as a security advocate who likes to build and paint model aircraft and ships, which apparently line the walls of his office, and has previously expressed support for Japan’s development of its own nuclear deterrent. However, it is unlikely to deviate far from the US-led orthodoxy. US Ambassador Rahm Emanuel congratulated Ishiba in a post on X and said he looked forward to working with him to “cultivate even closer” US-Japan ties.

“We will put our heart into protecting Japan, the local areas, the rules and the people of Japan,” Ishiba said on Friday.