Japan’s new PM Shigeru Ishiba calls snap election — why now?

Japan's new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba speaks during a press conference

(Image credit: Yuichi Yamazaki - Pool/Getty Images)

published 4 October 2024

Shigeru Ishiba, Japan’s new prime minister, has announced plans for a snap election on 27 October “in a bid to secure a public mandate” after his surprise victory in the ruling-party leadership contest, says Leo Lewis in the Financial Times. In electing the 67-year-old Ishiba out of a nine-strong field, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has signalled its desire to “mollify an angry public”, says The Economist. His win reflects the “sense of crisis” within the LDP, which has ruled Japan with “only two brief interruptions” since 1955. A run of political scandals and public disaffection over rising living costs caused the party’s approval ratings to plummet, leading Ishiba’s predecessor Fumio Kishida to announce that he would step down in the summer. Although the party is “not yet in danger of losing power, many in the LDP worry about losing a big chunk of seats”.

Ishiba is a controversial figure within his party, but popular with the public. He has been outspoken throughout his 38 years in parliament and his genuine nature and respect for the electorate has “endeared him to voters” while making him an outsider within his party. Some still regard him as a “traitor” for switching parties for several years in the 1990s, and four previous bids for the leadership failed. So what does he stand for? A “Tokyo native” and one of only two contenders who doesn’t speak English, Ishiba has “both establishment and rebel credentials”, says Charlie Campbell in Time Magazine. He worked briefly as a banker before going into politics after the death of his father, who was also a lawmaker and cabinet member. He is seen as progressive (he supports giving women the right to keep their surnames after marriage and to be empresses) and was the most outspoken detractor of former nationalist leader Shinzo Abe, but he also became known for “flip-flopping” on issues according to the public mood.

The market reaction to Ishiba’s victory was extreme, but “reflected fragile investor sentiment” regarding a man who has “expressed support for a vaguely defined, more distributive ‘new capitalism’, but has never focused on economic matters”, says Lewis. So far, he has signalled that he will “stick to the policies of his predecessor”, which are still, essentially, “the policies of Abe”, although he has talked about raising corporation tax. He has also promised to revitalise rural areas and address population decline, although how he plans to achieve this is unclear.

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Security is set to be a major focus. Ishiba took office on 1 October and formed a cabinet “made up of numerous security and defence experts in line with his calls to strengthen regional military alliances”, reports France 24. Relations between Tokyo and Beijing are being “tested by China’s territorial ambitions” and Japan also faces a potential threat from nuclear-armed North Korea, says Nicola Smith in The Telegraph. Although Ishiba, a former defence minister, believes in a strong military to counter the Chinese threat – he has said that an emergency in Taiwan would constitute “an emergency in Japan” – he also “chooses his words carefully” and has “called for deeper engagement and more diplomacy with Beijing”.

Officials in Washington are “nervous” about some of Ishiba’s ideas, most notably his proposal of an “Asian Nato”. He has “long bristled at subordination to the US” and criticised the inequality of the US-Japan alliance. “It is an uneasy thought” to imagine earnest, serious Ishiba discussing his wish to reshape the alliance with a “mercenary, isolationist Donald Trump”, should Trump win the US election, says the Financial Times. However, to succeed as the leader of a divided party, in the short-term at least, he will need to be pragmatic and leave his own “political projects” on hold.

Emily has worked as a journalist for more than thirty years and was formerly Assistant Editor of MoneyWeek, which she helped launch in 2000. Prior to this, she was Deputy Features Editor of The Times and a Commissioning Editor for The Independent on Sunday and The Daily Telegraph. She has written for most of the national newspapers including The Times, the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, The Evening Standard and The Daily Mail, She interviewed celebrities weekly for The Sunday Telegraph and wrote a regular column for The Evening Standard. As Political Editor of MoneyWeek, Emily has covered subjects from Brexit to the Gaza war.

Aside from her writing, Emily trained as Nutritional Therapist following her son's diagnosis with Type 1 diabetes in 2011 and now works as a practitioner for Nature Doc, offering one-to-one consultations and running workshops in Oxfordshire.