Who Will Succeed Shinzo Abe?

On August 28, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, in a press conference, expressed his intention to resign due to his worsening health. Ulcerative colitis – an ailment that took him out of office when he first became prime minister more than a decade ago – has come back to haunt him. With his announcement, the race for Japan’s post-Abe leadership has begun.

Abe is stepping down with roughly a year left in his term, meaning the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) will have to grapple with the inconvenient reality that no one wanted to address head on – simply put, the post-Abe LDP faces a serious leadership deficit.  

The roster of likely candidates to replace Abe speaks clearly to this challenge. The most notable contenders for post-Abe leader of the party (and Japan) include Fumio Kishida (Abe’s first foreign minister, now chairman of LDP’s once powerful Policy Affairs Research Council), Shigeru Ishiba (former defense and agricultural minister), Environmental Minister Shinjiro Koizuimi, and Yoshihide Suga (the incumbent chief cabinet secretary). Other hopefuls include Defense Minister Taro Kono, former Defense Minister Tomomi Inada, and Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi.  

The most recent Jiji Press opinion poll asking voters who they think is the most qualified to succeed Abe, conducted in early August, indicates that Ishiba is pulling ahead of the pack, with close to a 25 percent approval rating. Koizumi, who came in second, trailed more than 12 points behind. Among LDP supporters, backing for Ishiba is even greater, at nearly 30 percent.  

Certainly, Ishiba has all the right credentials. He has served in cabinet positions several times, and has also served as the LDP’s secretary general — one of the most influential party leadership positions. He is also said to be good at stump speeches and enjoys connecting with voters. He is one of the top thinkers among Japanese politicians when it comes to national security matters.  

However, Ishiba comes short in one important qualification. Unlike Abe, who has demonstrated an ability to communicate his vision for Japan’s future throughout his time in his office, Ishiba does not seem to have any big vision for how he wants to lead Japan. Although his knowledge in defense, agriculture, and other public policy issues at the micro-level is helpful, he has yet to show how he wants to lead Japan at a time when the country faces a number of very serious challenges, including the significant economic impact of COVID-19 and the long-standing trend of aging and population decrease.  

And Ishiba is not alone in his inability to provide a personal vision for Japan’s future. Aside from Koizumi, none of the contenders to succeed Abe have demonstrated an ability to articulate their visions for Japan and communicate such visions to the Japanese people. To put it bluntly, with the possible exception of Koizumi, none of the contenders for post-Abe leadership inspire the Japanese people.

In fact, even Abe himself has not been doing great in the field of public opinion nowadays. While Japan continues to fare far better than most of the world in its response to COVID-19, the Abe government’s indecisiveness in coming up with the most effective response to the far-reaching impact of the pandemic has been called into question. Although Abe has been masterful at sustaining Japan’s presence on the international stage, there are many questions as to what kind of concrete achievements he was able to accomplish in seven years of his premiership. In particular, his lifelong desire for constitutional reform — including the wholesale revision of Article 9 — will go unfulfilled.  

The only thing the LDP and its ruling coalition partner Komeito have going for them at this point is that the opposition parties are utterly incapable of offering credible alternative to the voters. Since the breakdown of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), the opposition parties are in such disarray that the best they can do has been to say “no” to whatever the government and the ruling coalition present. For voters who still remember the incompetent governance demonstrated by the DPJ during their three years of holding power, just saying “no” to the government is clearly not enough to consider them a credible alternative to the incumbent LDP-Komeito coalition.

Whenever Japan has enjoyed strong leadership from long-serving prime ministers, it went through several years of weak leadership and frequent rotation of prime ministers in the years that immediately followed. With Abe’s departure from the premiership, Japan is looking at another period of weak leadership, quite possibly with frequent changes at the top. 

The irony is that it did not have to be this way. Abe had more than ample time to groom a successor, just as former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi (Shinjiro Koizumi’s father) did for Abe. But today’s barren political landscape clearly points to Abe’s failure to nurture any successors. With his term drawing to a premature end, his failure to develop Japan’s next leader may well be what Abe is remembered for.