Challenges await as Kishida takes reins as Japan’s prime minister

Newly elected Liberal Democratic Party President Fumio Kishida became Japan’s 100th prime minister on Monday, taking the reins of a country battling the COVID-19 pandemic and a growing number of security threats — not to mention a looming general election that he must successfully lead his party through.

Kishida was elected in both houses of the Diet on Monday, with plans to move quickly afterward to formally name his Cabinet. He is reportedly poised to dissolve the Lower House on Oct. 14 and hold a general election on Oct. 31.

Ahead of that official announcement, a Cabinet lineup has emerged ahead that underscores Kishida’s promise to tap younger lawmakers for a handful of posts, as he seeks to turn around the image that the LDP favors aging party grandees over fresh voices and brush aside accusations that his administration would be dominated by veterans.

Of the 20 reported Cabinet posts, 13 are expected to be filled by rookie ministers, a striking contrast with outgoing Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, who had placed a high priority on continuity with his successor, Shinzo Abe, welcoming just five newcomers into his Cabinet.

Kishida’s Cabinet is expected to represent a range of ages, with its youngest member 44 and its oldest 77. Three of the 20 are women.

The lineup also reveals Kishida’s strong resolve to bestow notable Cabinet positions on relatively junior lawmakers who have won re-election three times. For the high-profile posts of digital minister and minister in charge of administrative reform, Kishida has tapped Karen Makishima, a three-term lawmaker from the faction led by party heavyweight Taro Aso. He has also picked Noriko Horiuchi, a three-term lawmaker from his own faction, to replace his LDP election rival Taro Kono as vaccination minister.

The incoming prime minister has also fulfilled his campaign pledge to bring his leadership rivals into the mix, appointing LDP Deputy Secretary-General Seiko Noda as minister in charge of tackling the declining birthrate.

At the same time, he has paid consideration to the two key factions integral to his victory in last month’s contest — the Abe-led Hosoda faction, the LDP’s largest, and the Aso faction, the second-largest.

During the leadership contest, Abe and Aso, who are both known as kingmakers possessing considerable sway within the party, were believed to have tipped the scale in favor of Kishida in an effort to preserve and even augment their power. Aso will be the party’s vice president, an honorary post.

Seven of the 20 Cabinet positions will be occupied by members of either the Hosoda or Aso factions. They will be joined by three from Kishida’s own faction and four from the Takeshita faction, which threw its support behind him in the runoff election.

For chief Cabinet secretary — a combination of the government’s top spokesperson and chief of staff — Kishida tapped former education minister Hirokazu Matsuno of the Hosoda faction. Former Olympics minister Shunichi Suzuki, Aso’s brother-in-law and the son of a former prime minister, will take over for Aso as finance chief, the first shakeup of the post in about nine years.

Outgoing education minister Koichi Hagiuda of the Hosoda faction will become trade minister while Shinsuke Suematsu of the Hosoda faction will assume the education post. There are no ministers from the Ishiba faction, whose leader, former defense chief Shigeru Ishiba, had endorsed Kono in the leadership election. Incoming justice minister Yoshihisa Furukawa left the Ishiba faction late last month.

Kishida will also keep Toshimitsu Motegi and Abe’s younger brother, Nobuo Kishi, as foreign and defense ministers, respectively. Like two of his predecessors, Kishida — Japan’s longest-serving top diplomat — will most likely continue deepening cooperation with the U.S. and other countries to counter China.

In the realm of national security, the new administration is expected to adopt a particular focus on economic security. In one signal of this shift, Kishida nominated three-term lawmaker Takayuki Kobayashi to a newly established ministerial post in charge of economic security.

On Friday, he installed Aso’s close ally Akira Amari, an ardent champion for bolstering the nation’s economic security, as the party’s secretary-general, the most powerful person after the president. Although Kishida’s faction has historically been seen as dovish, the new administration will likely continue to take a harder-line stance on China, with the ouster of pro-China Secretary-General Toshihiro Nikai.

Kishida has also vowed to create a new post within the Prime Minister’s Office for dealing with human rights issues — a position that would implicitly target China — and embraced a parliamentary motion condemning human rights abuses.

Mentioning widening income inequality exacerbated by the pandemic, Kishida is calling for a shift away from neoliberalism and the institution of a new type of capitalism, with central pillars focusing on the redistribution of wealth and boosting people’s wages to enable more to enter the middle class. He has identified compiling a stimulus package worth tens of trillions of yen to counter the economic fallout from the pandemic as a top priority for the administration.

In preparation for a next wave of COVID-19 cases, Kishida has introduced new faces in his Cabinet, replacing ministers involved in Suga’s much-maligned coronavirus response — the health minister, coronavirus response minister and vaccine minister — in an effort to carve out a new approach to dealing with the pandemic.

Kishida has pledged to strengthen the health care system by enabling the central government to set up field hospitals and requisition large-scale facilities. He suggested establishing a government agency housed under the Cabinet Office that serves as a command center to deal with public health crises. The agency would be given powerful authority and operate under its own minister to make clear where responsibility lies.

To showcase his legislative agenda and answer opposition parties’ demands, Kishida will deliver his policy speech on Friday and take questions from party representatives next week in front of the Diet.

But before getting down to business on policy issues, Kishida’s most pressing priority will be ensuring the LDP and its junior partner Komeito retain a majority in the Lower House in the general election, a victory that would confer on him a solid mandate.

The LDP and Komeito are hoping to maintain a majority in the Lower House by holding the election in the early days of his administration, while his Cabinet’s approval ratings remain high. The coalition, though, is concerned with how successful planned cooperation between the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan and the Japanese Communist Party will work out. The opposition camp is working to put forward a single candidate in as many districts as possible so as not to split votes among supporters.

Kishida’s emergence has largely been framed as a story of comeback. He dared to challenge Suga — who was backed by party stalwarts — in last year’s leadership election and lost. As a result, the former top diplomat and his faction’s members were largely sidelined from important posts over the last year. Fellow LDP lawmakers, as Kishida recalled, had said his career was finished.

Nevertheless, Kishida was the first candidate to officially challenge Suga in this year’s leadership election, raising the alarm over the public’s declining trust in politics and even declaring that Japan’s democracy is at risk.

Facing severe public backlash over his coronavirus response, Suga’s job approval ratings had plummeted into dangerous territory — prompting panic among lawmakers who feared for their electoral chances with a weak prime minister leading them into the Lower House poll.

Taking direct aim at Nikai, the longest-serving LDP secretary-general and whose management style has drawn accusations of favoritism from some lawmakers, Kishida proposed imposing a three-year term for party executives.

Even though the move angered Nikai as expected, party heavyweights at odds with Nikai, including Aso and Abe, praised Kishida’s audacity in confronting the LDP leadership and lent their support.

The entry into the race of Kono, the public’s pick to be prime minister, was initially thought to put Kishida at a disadvantage considering Kono’s high-profile social media and internet presence.

But the outspoken Kono’s liberal stances on social issues and his flip-flopping on nuclear energy ultimately turned off enough lawmakers to tilt the odds of victory in Kishida’s favor. Despite Kono’s popularity and his position as a member of Aso’s faction, he struggled to obtain backing from lawmakers in the faction, with many preferring Kishida. Understood to be a demotion from his title under the Suga administration, Kono took over the party’s public relations department.