Japan enters a year marked by political turmoil on a global scale. On Friday, the ruling party had the opportunity to select between the youngest prime minister and the first female prime minister, flirting with history in the process.
Actually, it chose Shigeru Ishiba, a 67-year-old Liberal Democratic Party backbencher and occasional party gadfly who had failed in four prior attempts to win the top job—a third, somewhat unusual option—rather than doing either of those things.
Ultimately, Ishiba may prove to be just as disruptive to Japanese politics as the others and an unreliable ally in the United States’ most vital Pacific alliance.
On an ideological level, he’s somewhere between the other two choices and a rough Goldilocks. Ishiba is largely in the center, despite his ranting departure from the party and brief stint in government a decade ago. Sanae Takaichi, whose more extreme patriotism and pro-business fervor bring to mind Trump, is on the extreme right. There was a real risk that her intention to visit the Yasukuni Shrine—a monument to generations of unrepentant Japanese militarism—would derail the newly-forged reconciliation with South Korea. Ishiba lacks the social liberalism of Shinjiro Koizumi, the 43-year-old son of a long-serving prime minister, who, due to his youth and inexperience, would have brought about a major shift in the country’s leadership.
With a combination of current lawmakers and party members from beyond, the new leader was chosen for his pragmatic approach and high approval ratings in the run-up to the national election, which is scheduled for next summer at the latest. After the younger politician lost in the first round, he made a pact with Koizumi to win over his supporters after Koizumi had maneuvered around some powerful party members who had rallied around Takaichi. She proclaimed herself to be the rightful successor to the influential Japanese prime leader Shinzo Abe, who advocated for a protectionist stance against the West and free market economics until his death in 2022, two years after stepping down from office. Ishiba, an adversary of Abe’s, represents a departure from Abeism, if only in manner rather than substance.
You could sense the relief as I was in the Prime Minister’s Office building that afternoon when the party vote came — an extraordinarily close 215-194 victory in the runoff against Takaichi. Speaking anonymously, I was able to get the impression that the people I spoke with there saw Ishiba as the obvious choice to succeed Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. Ishiba is in favor of the two most significant foreign policies implemented by the departing leader: the present defense buildup, which will treble the defense budget by 2027, and outreach to South Korea. (Like Biden, Kishida was pressured to resign due to declining popularity ratings in the run-up to the election.)
One of the foreign policy triumphs of the Biden administration has been Japan, which is pivotal to American attempts to limit and discourage China in East Asia. Despite getting caught up in certain local political and economic issues, Kishida was a natural on the international stage and a pleasure to work with. After Russia invaded Ukraine, a watershed moment in Asian security, he followed Washington’s lead in sanctioning Russia and limiting China’s access to semiconductors.
Working with Ishiba, the new Japanese leader who officially takes office on Tuesday, could be challenging because he is unusual and not always direct. His upbringing in rural areas, which he still finds fascinating, places him outside of the conventional elite. Unlike most others, he is a devout Protestant. A nerd, they call him an otaku. I began to interpret his interest in collecting military aircraft models as an indication that he is somewhat reclusive in our chats. He questions everyone’s expertise and gets fixated on policy minutiae. While serving as defense minister a decade ago—his final position in cabinet—and in parliament, Ishiba became notoriously rude to his coworkers, which made him unpopular in the Diet and the government quarter but well-liked by the countrymen overall.
Jesper Koll, an economist and investor originally from Germany who has been based in Tokyo since 1986, observes that Ishiba has a reputation for being overly controlling and obstinate when interacting with elite technocrats or worldwide peers. “He lacks a vision for the future.”
Regarding the military relationship with the United States, the most important question for Washington is how Ishiba will handle it.
It seems like Ishiba has been more provocative than the American and Japanese establishments would want in this regard. By requesting that the agreement for the deployment of U.S. forces here be revised, he came dangerously close to touching a third rail. He wanted to change the constitutional clauses regarding Japanese pacifism, thus he went in a different direction. In his vision of an Asian NATO, Japan would go from being a U.S. security vassal to a peer—albeit a close ally—in the alliance.
“He might be an issue for the U.S.,” remarks Gerry Curtis, a retired Columbia researcher from Japan who spends a significant amount of time here. The agreement with the United States, in his opinion, is out of date and smells like an occupation. Ken Weinstein, a leading Washington-based Japan observer, texted me that Ishiba is “hardest for Americans to read of the major candidates.”
So, what’s happening now? The day following Ishiba’s triumph, a Japanese official with knowledge of the matter proposed the 60/40 notion during lunch. Over the past fifty years, the United States has amended every comparable status of forces agreement with every country ranging from Italy to South Korea to Germany. The one in Japan began in 1960. To make the Japanese military even less of a self-defense force and more like a regular army, Ishiba is pushing for a pact that would let them station and train in the United States. Following Abe’s lead, Kishida increased expenditure (Japan has the world’s third-largest defense budget). Ishiba is the first of his predecessors to openly discuss the status accord. “To enhance deterrence and strengthen the alliance” is the stated goal of Ishiba, according to this official, which accounts for 60% of his motivation. What about the remaining 40%? Regarding “restoring Japanese sovereignty,” that is the part that causes concern in Washington.
Ishiba stated following this triumph that it was inappropriate to bring up any of these security concerns at this time. Bringing this up before the November election would be a mistake; it will be a subject of conversation with the future president of the United States.
The high expense to Japanese manufacturers of implementing the U.S.-inspired limitations on technology transfers to China, as well as America’s increasingly protectionist trade policies under the Trump and Biden administrations, are another issue that will challenge bilateral relations. Koll claims that “American policies” are the current cause of Japan’s problems.
A foreign affairs expert who knows the next prime minister of Japan, Hiro Akita of the Nikkei business daily, describes him as “a realist.” Japan, according to Ishiba, has to change with the times. He goes on to say that the future prime minister of Japan will not be a Charles de Gaulle, who attempted to drive the United States back fifty years ago, but rather a Japanese leader.
The Japanese-American relationship has been unusually calm as of late, but this seemingly insignificant change in leadership in Tokyo might upset the calm.