The extraordinary session of the Diet opened on the morning of October 21, Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru and his cabinet resigned and the Diet promptly moved to elect the next prime minister.
As expected, Takaichi Sanae won comfortably, though it took a second ballot to secure victory in the House of Councillors. She won in the first round in the House of Representatives with 237 votes – she picked up various independents and quasi-independents in addition to the LDP’s 196 votes and Ishin no Kai’s thirty-five votes – and then defeated the Constitutional Democratic Party’s (CDP) Noda Yoshihiko in the second round in the upper house with 125 votes to Noda’s forty-six.
She received a vote in the runoff from Democratic Party for the People (DPFP) lawmaker Kobayashi Sayaka, who said after the fact that she had apparently voted for Takaichi by mistake.
After ceremonial meetings with party leaders and officers of the two houses of the Diet, she conferred with Ishin no Kai officials – in which they celebrated the launch of a “full-fledged reformist conservative coalition government” – then announced her cabinet (see below), after which she attended the investiture ceremony at the Imperial Palace and held her first press conference at prime minister (see below).
Takaichi’s first order of business was, of course, to announce appointments to the cabinet and other senior executive posts.
The eighteen members of her cabinet reflect a few competing priorities. It is a relatively younger cabinet, with an average age of 59 compared to the Ishiba government’s average of 63; it is a relatively more experienced cabinet than Ishiba’s, with only ten cabinet members joining their first government compared with thirteen under Ishiba; and there is a degree of balance among Takaichi loyalists (Finance Minister Katayama Satsuki, Economic Security Minister Onoda Kimi), heavyweight supporters (Foreign Minister Motegi Toshimitsu and five other members of his former faction, including Onoda), rival leadership candidates (in addition to Motegi, Defense Minister Koizumi Shinjiro and Internal Affairs Minister Hayashi Yoshimasa), and representatives from various groups and current and former factions.
It is not a particularly female cabinet, with only two women – Katayama and Onoda – included, fewer than the number of former Kishida faction members (three). There is also some continuity, with the new cabinet including Koizumi, Hayashi, Akazawa Ryosei (now running the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry [METI]), and Kiuchi Minoru (leaving the economic security portfolio and taking the economic affairs portfolio from Akazawa).
To understand how the Takaichi government will function, it may be more important to look at her “inner cabinet” – senior posts in the prime minister’s office – rather than the cabinet itself.
This group of officials, including the chief cabinet secretary, the deputy chief cabinet secretaries, and the prime minister’s secretaries, aides, and advisors, does much of the work formulating policy across ministries, shaping the prime minister’s decision-making process, setting priorities, gathering information from across the government, imposing the prime minister’s decisions on the bureaucracy, and coordinating with ruling parties.
This group is more uniformly conservative than the cabinet, including members of both Sosei Nippon, the group of conservative lawmakers that was instrumental in Abe’s comeback in 2012, and several Takaichi-led study groups. Chief Cabinet Secretary Kihara Minoru, a former defense minister, is a longstanding member of Sosei Nippon.
Both of the deputy chief cabinet secretaries, an important role for cultivating future leaders, are also Takaichi loyalists. Ozaki Masanao, the deputy chief cabinet secretary from the House of Representatives, was one of Takaichi’s endorsers this year and is a member of Sōsei Nippon.
Sato Kei, the deputy CCS from the House of Councillors, endorsed Takaichi in 2024 and has been a member of several study groups she has led as well as of Sosei Nippon. Another endorser, Matsushima Midori, will serve as Takaichi’s aide for foreign population issues.
The first meeting of the Takaichi cabinet. Source: Prime Minister’s Office of Japan
Of course, there are conservatives in the cabinet too – Katayama, Digital Affairs Minister Matsumoto Hisashi, Education Minister Matsumoto Yohei, and Minister for Special Missions[¹] Kikawada Hitoshi have all been members of Sosei Nippon – but the coloration of the inner cabinet can shape the direction of the government in significant ways depending on how Takaichi uses this group.
They could be balanced to a certain extent by executive secretary Iida Yuji. Takaichi, like both Abe and Kishida, chose a former senior official from METI for this multifarious role, which can include supporting the prime minister’s political decision-making but also managing the bureaucracy. Iida left METI in July after two years as the administrative vice minister, the top bureaucratic post in the ministry.
Unusually, she is also bringing a secretary over from the LDP headquarters staff, Tachibana Shigeaki. Meanwhile, she also made changes to other key administrative posts in the prime minister’s office, replacing Okano Masataka, head of the National Security Secretariat, with Foreign Ministry Official Ichikawa Keiichi, and naming Defense Ministry official Masuda Kazuo as emergency management lead in the cabinet, a break with the precedent of having National Policy Agency officials in the role.[²]
Ultimately, the biggest question Takaichi faces is how her government will balance between Takaichi’s own preferences, the conflicting pressures and policy divisions within the LDP (present within the cabinet), and the need to work with Ishin no Kai to ensure that the government’s external partner remains satisfied with the LDP minority government.
Policy boldness, political challenges notwithstanding
In her press conference late Tuesday evening, Takaichi sought to send the message that her government is breaking sharply with the Ishiba government on key issues.
First, she ordered her government to begin work on a stimulus package centered around policies to combat the rising cost of living, including ending the provisional gasoline tax, raising the income tax exemption, and introducing a refundable tax credit policy – though it is unclear how the stimulus will be financed.
She also signaled that her government will be guided by the idea of “responsible expansionary policy,” and sent a message to the Bank of Japan (BOJ), stating that she will aim for “mutual understanding” with the bank but that she has no intention of revising the 2013 accord between the government and BOJ aimed at “overcoming deflation.” She said that with an eye towards delivering economic relief, she is not thinking about a snap election at this time.
However, she may have sent a more significant message on defense spending. Consistent with the overall tenor of the LDP’s pact with Ishin no Kai – discussed here – she said she intends to move quickly to revise the three national security documents, last updated in December 2022 and not due for revision until 2027, as part of laying the groundwork for raising defense spending beyond the 2% of GDP.
Indeed, she instructed Koizumi to work on accelerating the pace of defense spending increases. These announcements will no doubt be useful when US President Donald Trump arrives in Japan next week for a meeting with Takaichi on Tuesday, October 28, though given the challenges in figuring out how to pay for an increase to 2% of GDP – when the ruling coalitions had majorities in both houses! – it is one thing for Takaichi to express her intentions and another matter entirely for her government to draft a credible plan that can be translated into future budgets.
Naturally, she used her press conference to stress her desire to speak frankly with Trump and deepen cooperation with the United States, and also expressed her eagerness to speak with other regional leaders at forthcoming regional summits, including South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.
She shared her affection for Korean culture and her recognition of the growing importance of Japan’s relationship with South Korea.
Now-former Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru leaves the Kantei for the final time as national leader. Source: Prime Minister’s Office of Japan
In Ishiba’s farewell remarks, the outgoing prime minister had a not particularly subtle message for his successor, expressing his hope that the next administration will “speak to each and every member of the sovereign people, with solidarity and open-mindedness, not with division and conflict.”
Meanwhile, as the LDP’s coalition with Kōmeitō formally came to an end, Ishiba expressed his appreciation to the party for its support. Ishiba left office after 386 days in the premiership, the 24th-longest tenure among the 36 postwar premierships, just behind Mori Yoshiro’s.
Notes:
1 Special missions is just a catch-all term for ministers with many policy portfolios; Kikawada’s portfolios include Okinawa and Northern Territories affairs, consumer safety, child policy, depopulation, gender equality, regional revitalization, Ainu policy, women’s empowerment, and several other areas.
2 More on Takaichi’s Kantei staff here. Also, Imai Takaya, Iida’s predecessor under Abe, will be a counselor in the prime minister’s office.
Longtime Japan politics and policymaking analyst Tobias Harris heads Japan Foresight LLC. This article was on his Substack newsletter Observing Japan. Become a subscriber here.
