After Abe Shinzo’s abrupt announcement last month that he was stepping down as prime minister of Japan due to health issues, three senior members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party announced they would compete in an intraparty election to replace him. They held press conferences and campaign events. Media outlets organized televised debates. Opinion polls gauged each candidate’s popularity.
It had all the trappings of a normal election. Yet for anyone paying attention, the result was a foregone conclusion. Suga Yoshihide, Abe’s longtime right-hand man, had a virtual lock on the votes needed to win. Even before Suga officially declared his candidacy, five of the LDP’s seven factions had confirmed their support for him, giving him an overwhelming advantage among members of the Diet, Japan’s legislature. And after Abe announced his resignation, the LDP said it would follow emergency rules and hold a restricted leadership vote, in which only lawmakers and representatives from local chapters across Japan’s 47 prefectures were eligible to cast ballots.
Had the party followed its standard electoral procedure and allowed a more inclusive election, the other two candidates—Kishida Fumio, a former foreign minister, and Ishiba Shigeru, a former defense minister and prominent rival of Abe’s—might have had a fighting chance. LDP officials justified the emergency vote by arguing that they needed to organize a quick transition of power given Abe’s illness, but it was widely seen as a ploy by the ruling party’s old guard to tip the scales in favor of Suga.
Sure enough, on Sept. 14, he was elected president of the LDP by an overwhelming margin, and officially succeeded Abe as prime minister two days later with a vote in the Diet, where the LDP-led coalition holds a majority. In a scathing editorial, the left-leaning Asahi newspaper called the restricted vote a “bleak and pathetic” move that was “tantamount to dismissing as irrelevant the public’s keen interest” in who will lead the country.
In the absence of a more open and democratic process, LDP officials set about giving their anointed leader a much-needed PR makeover. As Abe’s chief Cabinet secretary for nearly 8 years, Suga mostly worked behind the scenes, coordinating the policymaking process and managing Japan’s giant bureaucracy. The more public-facing aspect of his job was to give twice-daily press conferences, where he became known for a bland speaking style and for giving terse and evasive responses to tough questions.
The image Suga sought to convey to the public in his campaign, though, was one of a diligent public servant who, unlike most other heavyweight Japanese politicians, did not benefit from the pedigree of a political dynasty. His father was a strawberry farmer and his mother a schoolteacher in Akita prefecture, in northern Japan. Balking at inheriting the family farm, Suga moved to Tokyo after high school and eventually landed a position as secretary to an LDP lawmaker, working his way up to a seat in the House of Representatives, the more powerful lower house of the Diet. There, he became known for his strict self-discipline and fierce work ethic, rising at 5 a.m. every morning and doing 100 sit-ups a day.
It was an impressive feat of political marketing. The savvy, back-room political operator had been transformed into a hardworking man of the people, a teetotaler whose only vice, we are told, is his sweet tooth. The consolidation of support behind Suga is all the more notable considering his utter lack of charisma. Whatever positive traits Suga may have, and however inspiring his middle-class roots may be, he comes across on television as a “deeply unimpressive figure,” Michael Thomas Cucek, a professor at Temple University Japan, observed during a recent webinar.
According to Amy Catalinac, an expert on Japanese politics at New York University, the recent election showed that “LDP politicians are just not really concerned with selecting a really popular leader.” The reason for that, she explained in an interview, is the lack of a viable alternative to the LDP. Two opposition parties that split after Abe took power in 2012 recently reunited, but their new Constitutional Democratic Party still has a long road to travel before it can challenge the LDP’s dominance.
As a consummate political insider who prizes incremental reforms, there is little indication that Suga has the gravitas or ambition necessary to tackle Japan’s long-term challenges.
In office, Suga has pledged to prioritize the fight against COVID-19 while also emphasizing policy continuity. That position is reflected in his lineup of Cabinet ministers, who are mostly holdovers from previous Abe administrations. In maintaining Abe’s policies, though, Suga has also inherited some of his predecessor’s more unfortunate tendencies. The new Cabinet has only two women, despite the Abe government’s many promises to improve Japan’s abysmal record on gender inequality.
One appointment that raised eyebrows was the selection of Abe’s younger brother, Kishi Nobuo, as defense minister. (Their surnames differ because Kishi was adopted into the maternal family line at a young age.) He has never held a Cabinet-level position and is widely seen as inexperienced on national security issues. Tapping a relative novice for such an important position is risky, especially at a time when the Japanese government is considering major decisions in defense policy, including whether to develop a first-strike capability to counter threats from China and North Korea. That would be a significant policy shift, and would test the limits of Japan’s pacifist constitution, which technically bars Japan from amassing war-making “potential.”
Why was Kishi selected, then? One theory is that his faction is trying to bolster his credentials. Faction-based Cabinet appointments have long been a feature of Japanese politics, but handing high-profile positions to inexperienced politicians often reflects badly on the government. In one particularly embarrassing incident from 2018 that made global headlines, Sakurada Yoshitaka, then serving as Abe’s minister for cybersecurity, admitted he had never used a computer. As Michael Bosack of the Yokosuka Council on Asia-Pacific Studies recently pointed out, Sakurada had gotten the job because he is a member of the faction led by the powerful LDP secretary-general, Nikai Toshihiro. It’s no wonder, then, that in poll after poll, a majority of Japanese voters say they don’t believe their government truly works for them.
Suga would be the first to admit that he is unschooled on foreign policy issues, and will likely rely on Abe in that arena. Suga’s real passion is in domestic policy, especially administrative reform; he plans to establish a new government agency in charge of digitalization, and has promised to bring down mobile phone prices. But some experts believe he will have difficulty acting independently, as Suga himself does not belong to any faction, and lacks a strong base of political support within the party.
At the same time, Suga has an intimate knowledge of the bureaucracy, and has proven himself capable in the past of crafting policies that solve a problem while also generating “knock-on benefits for key LDP supporters,” as Catalinac put it. She pointed to one of his oft-touted initiatives, a so-called “hometown tax” that he spearheaded in the 2000s, which encouraged people to send money to rural areas that had been hollowed out by urbanization. The policy directed much-needed funds to long-neglected localities, while also helping to consolidate support for the LDP in those areas.
Going forward, Suga will face some key decisions. Thanks to a wave of positive media coverage and lingering appreciation for Abe’s long term of service, the new Cabinet is enjoying approval ratings of more than 60 percent. Ordinarily, a new leader might try to capitalize on that popularity by calling snap elections, as some Japanese officials have hinted at. But in addition to the logistical difficulties involved, calling an election during a pandemic could provoke a backlash from voters who see it as politicking amid a national emergency.
Like his predecessors, Suga also faces a pressing demographic crisis, with Japan’s population slated to shrink by 16 percent by 2045. No region epitomizes this issue more than his home prefecture of Akita, one of the fastest-graying regions in the world’s fastest-graying country.
Unfortunately, as a consummate political insider who prizes incremental reforms, there is little indication that Suga has the gravitas or ambition necessary to directly tackle Japan’s demographic decline—or any of the country’s other urgent long-term challenges, for that matter. He may still go down in history as a fine prime minister; indeed, his discipline and attention to detail could make him the right person to steer Japan through the coronavirus pandemic. But Japan will likely have to wait longer for the visionary leader it really needs.
Elliot Waldman is the senior editor of World Politics Review.
