Shigeru Ishiba has won the leadership election of Japan’s governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and is set to become the country’s next prime minister.
The former defence minister, 67, prevailed on Friday in a tight contest, defeating Economic Security Minister Sanae Takaichi, 63, in a run-off after none of the nine candidates won a majority in the first round of voting earlier in the day, reflecting a broad struggle over the direction of the LDP, which has ruled Japan for all but four of the past 65 years.
The conservative LDP has sought to relax Japan’s self-imposed, post-World War II military restraints, though the Japanese public remains largely wary of abandoning its pacifist traditions.
The choice between Ishiba and Takaichi was especially significant. While neither was expected to drastically reverse Japan’s bolder security stance, they represented different visions about how it should be pursued.
Takaichi claimed to be the ideological successor to the late prime minister, Shinzo Abe, who pushed for a more assertive Japan, often to the dismay of its neighbors.
Ishiba, however, was a prominent Abe critic who “urges humility in Japan’s approach to its history,” said Tobias Harris, a Japanese politics specialist and founder of Japan Foresight, a political risk advisory company.
Ishiba’s win represents “a rejection of a quarter century of dominance by Abe and his national greatness conservatives, the triumph of a style of politics that has been pushed to the margins of the LDP for most of Ishiba’s career,” Harris wrote in a profile of Ishiba this week.
Takaichi, considered the most conservative candidate in the race, had pledged to visit the controversial Yasukuni Shrine as prime minister. The shrine honors Japan’s war dead, including convicted war criminals. The last prime minister to visit was Abe in 2013, a move that sparked criticism from China, South Korea, and the United States.
