Socially liberal and strong on defence, Japan’s new premier shows promise

In a turbulent world, Japan is a quiet force for stability. Yet its domestic politics is stormy. Frequent scandals have undermined trust in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and recently led to the resignation of Kishida Fumio as prime minister. The LDP has now made an unexpected choice to steady the ship in his wake: Ishiba Shigeru, a popular gadfly who has long been an outsider and lost his previous four bids for the party presidency. To succeed, he will have to learn to lead, rather than merely criticise.

A policy wonk, he brings deep experience in defence issues. He is frank about Japan’s wartime misdeeds, and will thus help to nurture the vital but tetchy relationship with South Korea. He combines a commitment to strengthening Japan’s armed forces to enhance deterrence with a willingness to maintain dialogue with China. He is stubborn and outspoken.

On economic matters, he is less knowledgeable or passionate. Though he speaks often about reviving Japan’s forgotten regions, he offers few specifics. He will probably let technocrats run economic policy. That means wild missteps are unlikely. But so, too, are reforms that would require political will and could help boost Japan’s growth prospects, such as making labour markets more flexible. That is a pity.

The LDP came close to picking a much worse leader. Takaichi Sanae, the standard-bearer of the LDP’s right wing, won the first round of the leadership vote, besting eight other candidates, and lost the run-off to Mr Ishiba only by five percentage points. Had she prevailed, Japan would have had as prime minister a woman who plays down her country’s imperial-era atrocities, and who insists on scratching already troubled relations with China and upending the fragile rapprochement with South Korea by visiting the Yasukuni Shrine, which houses the spirits of Japan’s war dead, including war criminals. She favours big rises in defence spending, but offered no credible plan to pay for them. And she has pledged to preserve a law requiring married couples to have the same surname, which in practice means wives give up theirs. (This rule is widely resented as outdated and sexist, but social conservatives think it good for family harmony.)

That the ruling party mobilised against Ms Takaichi in the run-off is heartening. But the paucity of alternatives is much less so. Nine candidates ran, the largest field in decades, yet no transformational leader emerged: the more competent of the bunch had too little popular appeal, and those who rose in the polls were all deeply flawed.

Mr Ishiba has called a general election for October 27th. The LDP is expected to win, as it has for nearly all of Japan’s post-war history, not because voters happily support it, but because the opposition is a shambles. People remember the most recent period of opposition-led government as chaotic: the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) cycled through three prime ministers in as many years, alienated America and bungled the response to a huge earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown in 2011. If today’s opposition were wise, it would try to convince voters that it has learned from the past and offer a fresh vision. Instead, last month the main opposition party selected as its leader a man voters rejected 12 years ago: Noda Yoshihiko, the last of the three DPJ prime ministers.

So Mr Ishiba is likely to win a mandate. His energy might help him break through long-standing political logjams, in particular on social issues, such as separate surnames and gay marriage, which is not recognised in Japan despite broad popular support. Mr Ishiba has displayed a liberal streak more in line with public opinion than his party’s, which is encouraging.

Don’t provoke superpowers

But his stubbornness could also lead him astray. He has long advocated some provocative ideas, such as creating an Asian version of NATO to counter China and revising the agreement that governs how American military forces operate in Japan, to reduce what he sees as imbalances in the relationship. Both ideas would at best be distracting and at worst destabilising. If he picks impossible battles, his administration will stumble and he will struggle to keep control of a party that has never trusted him. He will have to learn pragmatism, fast. ■

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