Ishiba faces a tough second half | This week in Japanese politics

The budget passes, but Ishiba faces a challenging agenda, the parties debate how to respond to US tariffs, and the US-Japan defense ministerial was largely uneventful

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The rundown

The Diet passed a revised FY2025 on 31 March, the final day of the fiscal year. With the budget passed, the debate between ruling and opposition parties over the next round of campaign finance reform is heating up. Meanwhile, ruling and opposition parties are ramping up their efforts to respond to the Trump administration’s tariffs, while Japanese, Chinese, and South Korean trade ministers met in Seoul and called for preserving a rules-based trading system. Defense Minister Nakatani Gen hosted US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who praised Japan’s value as a security partner and pressure Japan to spend more. Plus: a 1990s-era document from the declassified JFK assassination files reveals that the US Embassy in Tokyo was opposed to releasing some files that confirmed that Central Intelligence Agency had a Tokyo station in the 1960s. All of this and more in This Week in Japanese Politics.