TOKYO – Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will step down Tuesday, handing over leadership to his successor Shigeru Ishiba, who is expected to formally take office later in the day. He says he plans to call a snap election for Oct. 27.
Kishida’s popularity ratings were precarious during most of his three-year term due to damaging corruption scandals that eventually led him to bow out.
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At home, Kishida was seen as a leader without a vision who compromised with powerful conservative nationalists within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party to stay in power. But he has won respect outside Japan, especially from the United States, for pushing bold changes in Japanese defense and security policies and for standing tougher against Russia and China.
Here is a lookback at Kishida’s leadership and his legacy:
Distress at home
After taking office in October 2021, Kishida made a number of major decisions, such as reversing Japan’s nuclear energy phase-out and pursuing a rapid military buildup. But he avoided controversial social issues related to gender and sexual diversity. As head of a smaller faction in the ruling party, his top priority appeared to be keeping a stable grip on power by avoiding clashes with members of the Liberal Democrats' powerful conservative group, led by the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Abe’s assassination in July 2022 and subsequent major corruption scandals linked to Abe’s faction members left constantly in damage control mode, as his support ratings tumbled. Kishida himself narrowly escaped an explosives attack during a speech at a fishing port in western Japan's Wakayama in April, 2023.
Investigations into Abe’s assassination led to revelations of the Liberal Democrats' decades-long links to South Korea's Unification Church. That was followed by a more damaging corruption scandal involving more than 80 LDP lawmakers, again mostly in Abe's faction, involving illegal slush funds.
Several lawmakers, their aides and accountants were indicted in that scandal.
Kishida led internal probes and moved to reform and tighten political funding laws, but opposition lawmakers and voters viewed the measures as inadequate.
Public outrage over the slush funds scandal has caused the LDP to lose a few local elections this year and lawmakers within the party called for a fresh face to shake off the scandals in order to win the next national election.
Kishida ends his term as a kingmaker who could remain influential behind the scenes after he helped lift Ishiba to a come-from-behind victory in the party's vote on Friday against staunch conservative Sanae Takaichi.
Stronger defense
Kishida, who long served as foreign minister under Abe, has won respect for his national security and foreign policies that significantly deepened ties with the United States and other partners such as Australia, the U.K., South Korea and the Philippines, while elevating the country’s international profile.
In December 2022, Kishida’s government adopted a security and defense strategy involving a rapid buildup of Japan’s military power to acquire a “counter-strike” capability with long-range cruise missiles, a major break from Japan’s post-World War II self-defense-only principle.
Kishida’s government set a five-year goal to double Japan’s military spending to nearly 2% of GDP, eventually to about 10 trillion yen ($70 billion), making it the world’s third biggest spender after the United States and China. But it's unclear how Japan will fund that spending and balance it against other urgent needs such as coping with the country's shrinking population.
In December, Kishida substantially eased Japan’s weapons export rules, allowing licensing of Japanese-made PAC-3 missile interceptors to the United States and future foreign sales of fighter jets that Japan is developing with the U.K. and Italy.
Kishida quickly joined other G7 countries in sanctioning Russia and supporting Ukraine. He has repeatedly said “Ukraine today may be East Asia tomorrow,” comparing the Russian invasion of Ukraine to China’s growing assertiveness in the Asia-Pacific region. He has worked on strengthening economic and security cooperation in the region.
“Although Kishida’s successes on foreign affairs were overshadowed by domestic political scandals involving his Liberal Democratic Party, as well as lackluster economic growth, he oversaw increases in Japan’s reputation and popularity in the region and globally, as well as the institutionalization of related partnership gains,” Mirna Galic, a senior policy analyst at the U.S. Institute of Peace, wrote in a recent article.
Better ties with South Korea
One of Kishida's diplomatic successes was Japan’s improved ties with South Korea, especially in regional security and in ties with their mutual ally, the United Sates, due to shared concerns about China and North Korea.
Kishida, under pressure from Washington and with support from South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, helped mend ties between the two Asian neighbors that have suffered over Japan’s colonial-era legacy of colonialism and atrocities. Stable relations are key to the U.S.-led united front in the Pacific.
In April, Kishida made a state visit to Washington and spoke to Congress, stressing Japan's determination to stand by America as a global partner. In 2023, President Joe Biden invited him to a trilateral summit at Camp David with Yoon where they agreed to strengthen their trilateral security framework.
When Kishida announced in August his plans to step down, Biden lauded Kishida’s leadership, saying he had helped take the U.S.-Japan alliance “to new heights.”
“Guided by unflinching courage and moral clarity, Prime Minister Kishida has transformed Japan’s role in the world,” Biden said in a statement. Kishida’s “courageous leadership will be remembered on both sides of the Pacific for decades to come,” he said.
Kishida also recently helped work out a deal with Beijing to lift a Chinese ban on imports of Japanese seafood that Beijing imposed due to Japan's release of treated radioactive wastewater into the Pacific from its wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Tensions over China's military activity near Japanese water and airspace persist.
He also deepened ties with Southeast Asian countries, the Pacific Island nations as well as so-called Global South developing countries.
G7 Hiroshima and nuclear disarmament
Kishida represents a constituency in Hiroshima and hosting a summit of the Group of Seven wealthy nations in the city in May 2023 was a highlight of his time in office aligned with his career goal of working toward a world free of nuclear weapons.
However, the G7 summit statement on nuclear disarmament defended the possession of nuclear weapons as a deterrence, disappointing and angering survivors of the U.S. 1945 atomic bomb attack.
Kishida says he adheres to Japan’s principles of not developing, possessing or allowing the deployment of nuclear weapons in its territory. Ishiba, a former defense minister, has advocated deepening a discussion among regional partners about the U.S. nuclear deterrence strategy.
“New Capitalism” never took off
Kishida espoused a “new capitalism” economic strategy calling for more equitable distribution of national wealth, an alternative to Abe's heavy government spending and hyper-easy monetary policy. Neither policy has managed to get flagging growth back on track.
Kishida’s defense and childcare policies would require big spending and the wage hikes he supported failed to keep pace with price increases.
Government moves to try to reverse Japan’s falling birth rate involved mostly childcare allowances for married couples and didn't address the problems of the growing number of young Japanese reluctant to marry and start families due to bleak job prospects, the high cost of living and a corporate culture that is unfriendly to working mothers.