Can Japan’s Ishiba survive?

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Can Japan’s Ishiba survive?

Published: 20 Oct. 2024, 19:36

Michael Green
The author is CEO of the U.S. Studies Centre at the University of Sydney and Henry A. Kissinger Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

The United States, Korea and the free world all need steady leadership in Tokyo. In a period marked by questions about U.S. staying power under Donald Trump, major coercive moves by China, outright military expansionism by Russia, and dangerous proliferation by North Korea and Iran — Japan has stood as a pillar of geopolitical reliability.

Based on the vision of former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, Japan has pioneered the alignment of major maritime democracies through the Free and Open Indo-Pacific framework. Once the poster child for non-tariff barriers and closed domestic markets, Japan today has the lowest average tariff rate among the leading G-7 industrial countries and is leading on economic security and rule-making. And Japan is taking on a larger security burden with changes to the interpretation of the Constitution that allow greater collective defense efforts as well as a historic commitment to increase defense spending to 2% of GDP.

From the perspective of U.S. policymakers or their counterparts in countries like Australia, former Prime Minister Kishida Fumio was doing a fine job advancing Japan’s proactive contributions to peace while filling in the parts neglected by Abe — particularly in the crucial area of Japan-Korea relations. However, Japanese voters did not share the same high opinion of Kishida. His cabinet and his immediate family were shaken by slush fund scandals and he struggled to convince the public that he could tame inflation.

When Kishida stepped aside in September the race to succeed him as President of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and Prime Minister seemed wide open. Though the three final candidates all hewed closely to the strategic legacy of Abe. their style and experience could not have been more different. The early favorite was Koizumi Shinjiro, son of the popular former PM Koizumi Junichiro and a former researcher under me at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. At 43 years of age, Koizumi would have represented real generational change and a more moderate stance towards social issues and relations with Korea. Perhaps it was his inexperience, but he fell short of necessary votes in the semi-final round of Party voting and is now leading the LDP’s strategy for the October 27 general election — a sign that his political future remains bright.

In the final round of voting former Defense Minister Ishiba Shigeru bested Takaichi Sanae, the Economic Security Minister and a darling of the right wing of the LDP. Takaichi came as close to becoming Prime Minister as any women in Japanese history. I first met her in 1989 when I working for a conservative member of the LDP and she was on other side of the table in a parliamentary exchange working for Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder of Colorado — a small irony since Schroeder was one of the most progressive members of the House at that time. Takaichi would have pushed harder on security issues than the other candidates, but her stance on history and Korea made Washington and perhaps Seoul a bit nervous. The Yoon government would be wise to engage her, though, since her political future is also still open.

Ishiba’s triumph can be attributed to his populism, his clean image as an anti-Abe outsider within the LDP, and the Party moderates’ determination to stop Takaichi. However, he does not start his tenure from a position of political strength. Lacking a broad political base within the party, he had to promise to mainstream political leaders that he would maintain the Abe-Kishida strategic line in order to win their support. He has therefore had to walk back clever ideas that attracted popular attention but were not thought through as actual policies. In his diplomatic debut at the Asean Summit, he retreated from his promise to create an Asian NATO, which Southeast Asian leaders criticized. He has also retreated from populist lines he took on taxes and phasing-out nuclear power. The one area where he has yet to change course is his proposal to revise the Status of Forces Agreement with the United States, but that would ignite such complications in the alliance that I suspect his advisors will help him adjust that proposal as well.

Meanwhile, the sharks are circling in the water. Ishiba’s support rate is at 51% where most of his recent predecessors started out with more than 70% support. Takaichi has refused to support Ishiba by joining a unity cabinet — in some ways playing the spoiler role that Ishiba played against Abe and his successors for over a decade but with a more significant political movement behind her. The Japanese opposition parties are famously weak and divided, but former Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko has returned as the most credible leader the Constitutional Democratic Party has had in years and will be sure to punish Ishiba for any missteps.

Ishiba has some assets of his own, though. The opposition will not be ready to run the numbers needed to prevail in the October 27 national “snap” elections Ishiba has called. Victory would give him some breathing room. He has also assembled a veteran cabinet — the oldest and most male-dominated cabinet in some time, but full of proven veterans like Foreign Minister Iwaya Takeshi and Defense Minister Nakatani Gen. And while he has retreated from some of his more creative policy ideas, he has doubled down on political reform of the LDP by kicking out a dozen lawmakers involved in Kishida-era scandals. That should play well with the voters. Ishiba has also recruited some first-rate foreign policy thinkers to assist him, including Dietmember Aki Nagashima as National Security Advisor (he once served as security advisor to Noda before switching to the LDP) and Professor Kawakami Takashi, a senior advisor on foreign policy in the Prime Minister’s Office. Nagashima and Kawakami both have wide networks in the United States and Asia and are well-regarded.

Still, things could get treacherous for Ishiba. Noda’s Constitutional Democratic Party will not win a majority, but it is possible that Ishiba’s LDP-led coalition could fall short itself, forcing the LDP to accommodate smaller parties on the right that could hobble Ishiba even if he survived such a scenario in the first place.

Japan’s voters will have to decide what happens next. A new strategic trajectory seems unlikely, but Japan and the world would suffer if we returned to the pattern of replacing prime ministers once a year. When Japan had six prime ministers in as many years between 2006 and 2012, a geopolitical vacuum opened in the Western Pacific that probably had something to do with strategic uncertainty in Washington and growing Russian, Chinese, and North Korean aggressiveness in Asia. Abe reversed that and his successors stayed the course. We will need Ishiba to have a steady hand on the tiller through rough seas at home and abroad.