What Japan’s Next Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba Means for the World

Ishiba Shigeru is set to become Japan’s new Prime Minister after winning the presidency of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in a ballot of party lawmakers and members on Friday afternoon.

A plain-spoken populist and former defense minister who gained the LDP’s leadership on his fifth attempt—what he called his “final battle”—Ishiba, 67, emerged triumphant from a nine-strong field on promises to revitalize rural areas and win back public trust after a slew of scandals led to the stepping down of outgoing Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. Ishiba will assume the nation’s top job on Oct. 1 following a rubber-stamp parliamentary vote.

“Prime Minister Kishida has made a decision to let the LDP be reborn and win back the public’s trust,” Ishiba said in his victory speech. “We must all pull together to respond to this.”

Ishiba’s leadership of the East Asian nation of 125 million has implications for global security given Japan’s increasingly prominent role alongside the U.S. checking China’s assertiveness in the Asia-Pacific. Under the outgoing Kishida, who announced he wouldn’t seek reelection last month amid plummeting popularity, Japan has beefed up defense spending and healed historical wounds with South Korea, another key regional U.S. ally.

A Tokyo native, Ishiba has both establishment and rebel credentials. He briefly worked in banking before embarking on his own political career following the death of his father, who was himself a lawmaker and cabinet member. He’s seen as distant from the right-wing faction of the party centered around the late Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving Prime Minister who was murdered in 2022, having reportedly turned down several cabinet posts under him.

That distance likely proved key in Ishiba’s victory. LDP elders recognized the need for change following public opprobrium regarding the Abe faction’s ties to the controversial Unification Church as well as the misuse of political funds. “Distrust grew in the Kishida administration because he didn’t really deal with the financial scandals of the LDP factions,” says Mieko Nakabayashi, a professor at Tokyo’s Waseda University and a former Japanese lawmaker.

Ishiba’s popularity was bolstered by his outspokenness on the need to properly investigate any malfeasance and for reforms to regain public confidence. Having previously served as agriculture minister and rural revitalization minister, Ishiba’s economic agenda focuses on revitalizing Japan’s outlying regions.

“He has the most credibility as somebody who understands the pain of the people,” says Jeff Kingston, director of Asian studies at Tokyo’s Temple University. “But he’s a blunt-spoken guy who doesn’t suffer fools easily, and many of his colleagues fit that bill. So he can seem arrogant and condescending to his fellow lawmakers.”

As a result, it’s perhaps unsurprising that Ishiba’s support lay more with LDP’s broad membership than fellow lawmakers, many of whom still regard him as a traitor for switching parties for several years in the 1990s. He was also the most populist of the main challengers and known for flip-flopping on various issues depending on public mood, including nuclear energy and whether a woman could serve as Emperor.

“There are many cases when he has changed his stance, so he is sometimes regarded as a weak leader who does not have really strong principles,” says Hosoya Yuichi, a professor of international politics at Keio University in Tokyo. “But at the same time, he is regarded as an experienced, reliable politician.”

Ishiba is one of only two of the leadership candidates who doesn’t speak English—remarkably, four of the nine were Harvard-educated—and is seen as a more conservative choice than his two closest challengers, who would have been either Japan’s youngest or first female leader. (The latter, Economic Security Minister Sanae Takaichi, was ahead on the first-round vote but was defeated by Ishiba in a runoff.)

Yet Ishiba also has a distinct maverick streak. He is one of the few LDP politicians to acknowledge Japanese mistakes in its 1910-45 colonization of Korea, which promises warmer ties with Seoul, though he has also openly called for the establishment of an Asian version of NATO, which may put him on collision course with Beijing.

Regarding U.S. ties, Ishiba has alarmed some by calling for a rebalancing of defense arrangements, with Japan taking more control and responsibility for its own security. He has a reputation as a security hardliner who is fond of building and painting models of aircraft and ships, which reportedly line his office walls, and he has previously voiced support for Japan developing its own nuclear deterrent. However, it’s unlikely he would deviate far from the U.S.-led orthodoxy. U.S. Ambassador Rahm Emanuel congratulated Ishiba in a post on X and said he looks forward to working with him to “cultivate even closer” U.S.-Japan ties.

“We will put our hearts into protecting Japan, local areas, rules, and the people of Japan,” Ishiba said Friday.