Japan's New Prime Minister

Ishiba’s challenge is to unite both the LDP and Japan

by Ben Ascione, Waseda University and APP member 
First published in the EastAsiaForum, October 6, 2024

On 1 October 2024, Shigeru Ishiba was sworn in as Japan’s new prime minister. To win the top job, he overcame a crowded field with a record nine candidates in the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) leadership election. He brings extensive political experience with 38 years as a lawmaker and past roles as defence, agriculture and regional revitalisation minister.

Ishiba’s win was perhaps unexpected given his long-standing position as an outsider within the LDP. Known for his wonkish style, he often favours idealist policy solutions. Ishiba was also critical of former prime minister Shinzo Abe, earning him the ire of many of his fellow LDP lawmakers, especially among the nationalist conservatives in the Abe and Aso factions. This outspoken stance even led some Abe allies to label Ishiba a ‘traitor’.

Ishiba criticised Abe’s economic policy, Abenomics, for failing to help rural areas and small businesses, as well as his handling of various political scandals, calling for greater transparency and accountability. Ishiba also criticised Abe’s leadership style, suggesting it was excessively top-down and insufficiently inclusive of diverse public opinion.

Where Abe emphasised outcomes, Ishiba emphasises the importance of democratic processes and engaging the public in what he calls the ‘politics of understanding and empathy’ (nattoku to kyokan no seiji). Even when Abe and Ishiba agreed on policy direction, such as revising the Article 9 peace clause of the constitution or restarting nuclear power plants, Ishiba criticised Abe for being hasty and failing to build sufficient public consensus.

Despite, or perhaps because of, his position as a voice of dissent within the LDP, Ishiba successfully cultivated significant support among the more than 1 million LDP rank-and-file members. But his lack of popularity among fellow lawmakers meant that he was seemingly blocked from a pathway to the prime ministership and sidelined as a major political force.

The situation changed when a political slush fund scandal emerged in December 2023, where LDP factions were found to have underreported fundraising income to create off-the-books funds to evade spending regulations. The scandal plunged the LDP into crisis as its public support eroded. In response, former prime minister Fumio Kishida dissolved his faction as part of his efforts to recover public trust, which pressured other LDP factions — bar the Aso faction — to follow suit.

This meant that when Kishida announced his resignation, after battling for months as a ‘dead man walking’, the LDP leadership election would be contested under a new political landscape. The public were looking for a change in leadership to reform the LDP and the role that money plays in politics. And LDP lawmakers, with an eye on the upcoming upper and lower house elections that must be held by July and October 2025 respectively, would have a free hand to cast their votes rather than taking their cues from factional bosses.

The nine candidates were whittled down to two — Ishiba and Abe-protege Sanae Takaichi — who faced off in a second-round runoff vote. This time, Ishiba succeeded where he had failed before, securing enough support from lawmakers to defeat Takaichi. With the LDP still reeling from the slush fund scandal, many lawmakers perhaps felt their electoral chances would fare better with Ishiba rather than Takaichi at the helm, even if they don’t necessarily like Ishiba.

But Ishiba’s path to the prime ministership and his approach to politics present him with a number of challenges going forward.

Ishiba inherits a fractured party. Lawmakers split fairly evenly between Ishiba and Takaichi in the second-round runoff, with Ishiba winning by a slim margin of 189 votes to 173. This shows that Takaichi, who positioned herself as Abe’s successor, still commands sizeable support within the party for her brand of ‘national greatness’ conservatism. Takaichi reportedly rejected an offer from Ishiba to become chair of the LDP General Council. Takaichi and her supporters are clearly waiting in the wings for Ishiba to stumble, ready for another shot at the crown.

Ishiba also lacks a natural base within the party. This means electoral results and public support will play an outsized role in laying the foundations for him to govern. Ishiba announced a snap election a day before even being sworn into office, set to be held on 27 October, aiming to take advantage of his honeymoon period with the public. Lacking the natural charisma of former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi, who also heavily relied on public support, Ishiba is backing himself to frankly explain the difficulties Japan faces to the public — be it demographic decline, the need for structural economic reform or bolstering Japan’s defence posture — and garner their support for ideal rather than piecemeal solutions.

Another challenge is that some of Ishiba’s ideal solutions will require more than strong public backing. Ishiba has touted the idea of renegotiating the Status of Forces Agreement with the United States, which governs the legal status of US military bases and personnel stationed in Japan, to establish a more equal alliance and to give Japan a say over how the United States uses its nuclear weapons in Asia.

Ishiba has also proposed the establishment of an ‘Asian NATO’ between the United States and its allies in the region, presumably with a collective defence clause. These are ideas whose time has probably not yet come. If not handled delicately, such initiatives risk upsetting Washington, and maintaining good US–Japan relations is imperative for any Japanese prime minister to maintain support at home.

Ultimately, the longevity of the Ishiba government will depend on his ability to garner and leverage public support to rebuff pressure from Takaichi and members of the former Abe faction. This will determine whether Ishiba’s leadership heralds a more democratic era for Japan’s entrenched ruling party or ushers in a period of LDP factionalism, a revolving-door prime ministership and political volatility.

Can Abe revise Japan’s peace constitution? Unlikely

And it might not be on the agenda

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BY Ben Ascione is a PhD candidate at the Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University. He is Japan and Korea editor at East Asia Forum and a research associate of the Japan Center for International Exchange in Tokyo and APP member

First appeared in the East Asia Forum, 24 July 2016

Since the 10 July upper house election in Japan there has been widespread speculation that the government will move to formally revise the country’s constitution including the Article 9 ‘peace clause’. This now appears possible since the Abe-led Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), along with its junior coalition partner Komeito and sympathetic micro-sized right-leaning opposition parties, controls the two-thirds majorities in both houses needed to take constitutional amendments to a referendum.

Never in the years since Japan’s postwar constitution was enacted in 1947 has it been formally amended. Even though the government has the requisite number of seats, forging an agreement with Komeito and persuading the broader voting public that constitutional revision is desirable will be no easy task.

While voters want the government to focus on revitalising the economy, there is absolutely no question that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe carries ambitions to revise Article 9. He was vocal about this during his first stint as prime minister in 2006–07. His book Towards a Beautiful Country characterises Japanese security policy as irresponsible pacifism. Research by Asia Policy Point shows that Abe and about half his cabinet members are affiliated with the Diet Members’ League to Promote Research on the Constitution, Sousei Nippon (Japan Rebirth) and Nippon Kaigi (Japan Conference), all of which give high priority to rescinding Article 9. Abe’s relationship with his grandfather — Nobusuke Kishi, a former prime minister, war criminal suspect and munitions minister under the wartime cabinet of Hideki Tojo — is also said to drive his convictions.

Komeito (meaning clean governance party) holds the balance of power and the LDP will have to reach an agreement with it to move forward on any constitutional amendment. Despite Komeito’s status as the junior partner, the LDP cannot afford to lose it. LDP leverage over Komeito is limited by an electoral cooperation arrangement, which sees Komeito voters supply between 5 and 20 per cent of the votes LDP candidates receives in single-seat districts in both houses in exchange for influence as a ruling party. Many LDP politicians’ seats would be under serious threat if this deal came unstuck.

Komeito was a political offshoot of the Nichiren Buddhist movement Soka Gakkai (literally value creation study association). Its founders, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi and Josei Toda, were arrested by the wartime military government for speaking out against the abuse of the educational process for militarist purposes. Makiguchi died in jail a martyr. This history imbues Komeito with pacifist values.

Soka Gakkai members, with their distinctive combination of Buddhism, modern humanism and electioneering savvy, have been willing to extend support to Komeito and qualify their absolute pacifist stance, as Levi McLaughlin has explained. Komeito supported the LDP in passing the 1992 Peacekeeping Operations Law after negotiating principles which limit the Japan Self-Defense Forces’ (SDF) activities on UN missions to ceasefire areas rather than active conflict zones and curtail SDF use of weapons to the minimum necessary to protect the lives of SDF personnel. Komeito also supported the LDP in order to permit the dispatch of the SDF to the Indian Ocean to refuel US ships on route to Afghanistan under the 2001 Anti-Terrorism Special Measures Law and to Iraq in 2003 to carry out humanitarian operations such as building schools and water purification.

Most recently Komeito supported the Abe cabinet’s reinterpretation of Article 9 to permit limited forms of collective self-defence in July 2014 and the security-related bills last year that enabled this cabinet decision. Komeito’s rhetoric stalled the LDP and squeezed it for concessions by emphasising the need for long and wide debates rooted in concrete proposals and the need to bring the people along with these changes.

This allowed it to shift the focus of the conditions under which collective self-defence — a concept which is primarily focused on threats against targets other than one’s own country — so it could only be exercised in response to attacks that threaten the survival of Japan and the Japanese people’s constitutional right to ‘life, liberty and pursuit of happiness’. This focus on attacks threatening Japan contrasts sharply with the report in May 2014 by Abe’s hand-picked advisory group, which recommended a less restrained conception of the exercise of collective self-defence, before Komeito influence came to bear.

Komeito justified its stance to its support base by emphasising that it is a serious party and coalition partner willing to make compromises to exercise power and to continue to act as a brake on the LDP’s policy excesses. It maintained that the compromises made were better than the alternative of working from opposition. In a nutshell, Komeito brands itself as ‘the opposition within the government’.

Yet all of Komeito’s support for LDP security policies thus far has been justified within the framework of Article 9. A common rebuttal of critics who accuse Komeito of betraying its pacifist principles is that it has simply updated its pacifism to contemporary circumstances and in practical ways.

If Article 9 were to be amended, one option Komeito could possibly get behind would be to revise the second paragraph, which forbids the maintenance of ‘land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential’ in order to affirm explicitly the constitutionality of the SDF, while maintaining the first paragraph under which the Japanese people renounce ‘the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes’.

But a revision that seriously alters the spirit of Article 9 or outright rescinds it would surely be a no-go for Komeito that would seriously undermine its loyal support base.

Any LDP-Komeito agreement on constitutional revision will also need the support of the voting public to pass a national referendum, something that the LDP deliberately avoided talking about during the campaign period. Given strong public opposition, the government may focus on Abenomics economic policy for now and return to constitutional issues later in Abe’s remaining two years.