In Electing Ishiba Shigeru, the LDP Opts for Change

The fifth time’s the charm for Ishiba Shigeru. After unsuccessfully seeking the Liberal Democratic Party’s top post in 2008, 2012, 2018, and 2020, Ishiba won the 2024 election. The former LDP secretary general and former defense minister has finally achieved his longstanding ambition of becoming Japan’s prime minister.

“I believe in the people and will speak the truth with courage and sincerity,” Ishiba said after his victory, as quoted by NHK. “I will do my best to make Japan a safe and secure country again, a place where everyone can live with a smile.”

Ishiba’s victory after falling short so many times before highlighted a sea change within the LDP. He has long been a favorite in public opinion, but LDP presidential elections strongly weigh the votes of the party’s parliamentarians – particularly in the crucial second-round run-off. Ishiba is popular with the public for exactly the same reasons he struggled to win support from fellow lawmakers: He is not afraid to challenge LDP orthodoxy, from questioning the wisdom of “Abenomics” to favoring a more assertive stance in the Japan-U.S. alliance.

Ishiba was keenly aware of the irony of his position. “[T]he people and the Diet have a different awareness of things,” he told The Diplomat’s Kenji Yoshida and Jason Morgan in a December 2023 interview. “My support comes rather from those who support the opposition parties and those who are not affiliated with any party at all.”

Ishiba continued: “...In terms of policy, then, my views are different [from the LDP mainstream]. Until I change my views and claim to support policies that I think are mistaken, there’s no chance I’ll become the prime minister.”

But circumstances combined to make an iconoclastic leader precisely what the LDP needs.

Just before Ishiba’s December 2023 interview, a massive scandal broke, with revelations that numerous LDP lawmakers had quietly pocketed excess money from fundraising events. The unreported income, amounting to millions of dollars over a three-year period, was diverted into private slush funds.

The LDP’s woes deepened as a political reform bill introduced to address the issues was sharply criticized – including by the LDP’s junior coalition partner, Komeito – for not having enough teeth. The perceived lethargic response from the LDP compounded the outrage over the initial scandal. Repeated Cabinet shake-ups and the dissolution of LDP factions, which were at the heart of the slush fund scandal, did little to assuage the public anger.

Coming on top of the previous Unification Church scandal, which involved revelations of the religious group’s influence on senior LDP members in exchange for political support and campaigning assistance, the long-time ruling party’s image was in tatters. Then-Prime Minister Kishida Fumio’s approval rating fell as low as 10 percent over the summer, and Japan’s opposition parties were gearing up for a real chance to win power in the next general election, due by fall 2025.(Ishiba is expected to call a snap election in the coming weeks; as of press time the date hadn’t been announced.)

The dramatic shift in public opinion allowed Ishiba to succeed in what he had said would be his “final battle.” The LDP needed to prove to the public that it was ready to change – and Ishiba was seen as the best candidate to drive that message home. His popularity among non-aligned and even opposition-aligned voters became an asset rather than a liability.

In the initial round of voting, which combined votes from LDP lawmakers and votes from dues-paying party members at the grassroots level, Ishiba actually came in second to Takaichi Sanae, a conservative lawmaker seen as the protege of late Prime Minister Abe Shinzo. Another public favorite, youthful former environment minister Koizumi Shinjiro, placed third, just missing the run-off.

Unsurprisingly, in the first round of voting both Koizumi and Takaichi outperformed Ishiba in support from LDP legislators, which carries the most weight in the decisive second-round run-off. In his previous attempts to win the LDP presidency, Ishiba had performed well in the first round, where grassroots votes are given roughly equal share to LDP Diet members’, but been knocked out in the run-off.

This time Ishiba flipped the script. After being stymied by his fellow Diet members time and time again, he carried the day, besting Takaichi. The LDP’s presidential run-off tallied votes from each of the 362 LDP parliamentarians and the popular vote from each of Japan’s 47 prefectures; Ishiba came out on top in both tallies, eventually winning with 215 votes, or 52.6 percent of the total. That put Ishiba in the prime minster’s seat (and further pushed back the day when Japan will have its first female leader).

Now that he’s finally climbed his way to the pinnacle of Japanese politics, how will Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru govern?

Ishiba has long argued against Abenomics, which has become monetary orthodoxy within the LDP. Instead, as he told The Diplomat last year, Ishiba wants to raise the corporate tax rate and the interest rate. He insisted that he is willing to accept short-term pain in the name of long-term benefit: “The policies which look only to the moment and are satisfied if everything is fine today are mistaken.”

On security, Ishiba is a detail-oriented defense wonk, and could be painted as a hawk. For example, he surpasses Abe’s ambition in seeking to change the Japanese Constitution. Ishiba wants to entirely eliminate the clause that foreswears “the right of belligerency” and pledges not to maintain “land, sea, and air forces.” Ishiba sees this as blatantly out of step with reality: “I believe that as long as this clause is in place, Japan’s security policies will never be aligned with reason,” he said in the December 2023 interview.

He also wants to go even further than Kishida’s pledge to raise defense spending to 2 percent of GDP, which has long been the benchmark for NATO members. “Japan’s security environment is worse than NATO countries’, so 2 percent of GDP may not be enough,” Ishiba pointed out.

However, his election may also point to new friction in the Japan-U.S alliance. There has long been a tension inherent in U.S. demands for its allies to “do more” in the service of their own defense: The more capable an ally is, the less sway the United States has over its security policy. This is precisely the goal for Ishiba, who thinks Japan should be more proactive in the alliance.

For instance, Ishiba has shown more willingness to reconsider the construction of a controversial new U.S. military base in Okinawa. “Japan must think for itself how to deploy American forces in Japan, and not simply view it as a duty to allow the Americans to put bases anywhere in Japan that it likes,” he said.

If he follows through on that approach, it will cause consternation in Washington – which insists Okinawa is a crucial strategic location for its bases – but joy among Okinawans, who have long chafed at the burden of hosting 74 percent of U.S. military installations in Japan despite accounting for just 0.6 percent of Japan’s total land area.

South Koreans also have reason for hope, as Ishiba is not tied to the harsh nationalism – and historical denialism – of the LDP’s conservative wing. Many South Koreans believe that Japan has never truly apologized for crimes committed during its colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula, from forced labor to the “comfort women.” Ishiba might be willing to provide that apology – and in so doing, finally lay a firm public foundation for renewed ties at the elite level seen under Kishida.

“There’s no need to flatter Korea or to lay out the logic of the past, but we should admit that what was a mistake was a mistake,” Ishiba told The Diplomat. “We must redouble our emphasis on the fact that it is vital for this region that Japan and South Korea understand one another and cooperate.”

Ultimately, Tobias Harris, a long-time analyst of Japanese politics, sees Ishiba as not a traditional conservative but “a political idealist, wanting ‘purer’ solutions that will not only ‘solve’ problems but will make Japan and the Japanese people better.” The big question now is what happens when Ishiba’s reformist bent meets the inertia of Japan’s – and the LDP’s – internal bureaucracy.