Kishida Stands Down

How new will the next Japanese PM be?

By Takuya Nishimura, Senior Fellow, Former Editorial Writer for The Hokkaido Shimbun
The views expressed by the author are his own and are not associated with The Hokkaido Shimbun
You can find his blog, J Update here.
August 21, 2024. Special to Asia Policy Point

On August 14, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced at his press conference that he would not run in the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) presidential election this coming September. His campaign would have been for a second term as president of the LDP. The new party leader elected on September 27 will become the next prime minister of Japan by virtue of the LDP’s voting power in the Diet. 

An extraordinary session of the Diet is expected next month after the LDP election in order to vote on the next prime minister. The date has not yet been selected. When it is, this will mark the end of the current highly unusual political situation in which a wildly unpopular prime minister has overstayed his tenure.

In his press conference, Kishida emphasized the need for change in the LDP. “It is necessary for the LDP to show its change before the nation. The first step for it, which is very easy for the people to understand, is that I am going to stand down. I will not run for coming presidential election,” said Kishida. His diplomatic work had ended the day before after a telephone call with the prime minister of Mongolia.

In aftermath of the LDP slush fund scandal, Kishida lost public confidence when he failed to explain how and why the kickback system of ticket sales for fundraising parties was created and operated. His inability to regain public support led to miserable defeats in the April by-elections of the House of Representatives. These losses generated serious concerns among LDP lawmakers about the coming elections of both houses of the Diet.

Kishida alienated himself from other LDP lawmakers by dissolving his faction, the Kochi-kai, and then by appearing before the Political Ethics Council of the Diet to describe his own involvement in the slush fund scandal while urging other LDP lawmakers to take responsibility. The lawmakers were frustrated with Kishida and demanded his resignation. Under these circumstances, Kishida could not keep his administration going.

Kishida confessed, as the LDP president, he felt responsible when details of the slush fund scandal first began to emerge. This created expectations that he would step down over the summer. And he has.

The race to succeed Kishida will be short and fast. Former LDP Secretary General and former Minister of Defense Shigeru Ishiba announced his candidacy, if he would be able to secure necessary nominators, as soon as Kishida ended his press conference. The current Secretary General, Toshimitsu Motegi, has not hidden his ambition either. Within hours of Kishida’s announcement, Motegi had a one-on-one meeting with LDP Vice President Taro Aso.

The race likely will be between those two men. Two former prime ministers, Aso and Yoshihide Suga, who hope to maintain behind-the-scenes leadership, may influence the race. Aso would prefer Motegi in order to control the next administration. Ishiba would be the better vehicle for Suga. But it is unclear whether Ishiba will want or need Suga’s support.

Other possible contenders include Minister for Economic Security Sanae Takaichi, Digital Minister Taro Kono, and former Minister for Economic Security Takayuki Kobayashi. However, each of them is still struggling to marshal support in the LDP. Kono’s faction boss, Aso, has yet to endorse him. Takaichi has not expanded her wing of the LDP beyond ultra conservatives. And Kobayashi has not built a significant youth movement.

One of the biggest obstacles for the lesser contenders is LDP election law. Article 10 of the Rules for Election of President of the LDP states that “only those members nominated by at least 20 Party Diet members shall be accepted as candidates.” Collecting 20 supporters is not easy, because those supporters will be isolated if their candidate loses in the presidential election. Twenty supporters have to be ready for exclusion from cabinet posts and party leadership positions, if they fail. The 20-person requirement means that four or five candidates would be the maximum number. 

So long as the 20 party-member requirement remains in place, factional politics will be the order of the day. The supporters of the winner become mainstream in the next administration and act as a quasi-faction. To maintain collective power in politics, LDP lawmakers take collective action. The meeting between two leaders of the former Kochi-kai, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi and former Minister of Defense Itsunori Onodera, on the same day of Kishida’s announcement demonstrated that they would maintain their factions.

Both the former Abe and Nikai factions are too fragmented after the slush fund scandal to unite in the presidential election. Some members are no longer affiliated with the LDP. It is possible that the LDP will field new candidates against their former members in the next election. That is what former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi did in the postal reform election in 2005 against his political enemies. An old-time kingmaker, Shin Kanemaru, once said that factional breakdown was “dispersed horse manure in a river stream (maguso-no-kawa-nagare).”

Although young LDP lawmakers have expressed concerns about factional politics, the LDP has no choice. The opposition parties criticize the LDP’s routine replacement of a leader in order to escape responsibility for any failure, in this case the slush fund scandal. The opposition also derides the LDP’s factional politics as old-fashioned.

Yet, it is undeniable that the LDP remains the choice of voters in Japan. The opposition parties have not presented a clear alternative to the LDP. They have never agreed on basic policies such as constitutional amendments or nuclear power generation. It is necessary for them to propose which parties will construct a new administration and who will be the prime minister. The leading opposition party, the Constitutional Democratic Party, needs to discuss its idea for a new administration in its September 23 presidential election—four days prior to the LDP’s presidential election.