Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced he would step down in September, ending a three-year term marred by political scandals, according to Asian media.
Politics cannot function without public trust. I will now focus on supporting the newly elected LDP leader as a rank-and-file member of the party.
Kishida’s public support has been falling amid revelations of the LDP’s ties to the controversial Unification Church and political donations made at party fundraising events that went unrecorded.
He has also faced public discontent over wages failing to keep pace with the rising cost of living as the country finally shakes off years of deflationary pressures. Koichi Nakano, political science professor at Sophia University, stated:
An LDP incumbent prime minister cannot run in the presidential race unless he’s assured of a victory. It’s like the grand champion yokozunas of sumo. You don’t just win, but you need to win with grace.
As the country’s eighth longest-serving postwar leader, Kishida led Japan out of the COVID pandemic with massive stimulus spending. He also appointed Kazuo Ueda to head the Bank of Japan (BOJ), a scholar charged with ending the radical monetary stimulus pursued by his predecessor.
The BOJ unexpectedly raised interest rates in July as inflation intensified, contributing to stock market volatility and causing the yen to plummet.
Despite the shift away from economic policy, Kishida stuck to the hawkish security policy pursued by his predecessor Shinzo Abe assassinated in 2022. He unveiled Japan’s biggest military build-up since World War II, pledging to double defence spending to deter neighbouring China from its territorial ambitions in East Asia.
Kishida also mended Japan’s strained relations with South Korea, allowing the two countries and their common ally, the United States, to pursue deeper security co-operation.
