New players, new roles | Today in Japanese politics

Ishin no Kai has a new leader, Ishiba's "strange stability," and shifting alliances in the House of Representatives

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After traveling to Tokyo last month, I took a little break for the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States. It is not the easiest time to step away from Japan’s political situation, and, with that in mind, I am going to work on reviving a daily update. However, my goal will be to provide concise analysis of the top two or three stories instead of a comprehensive review of all of the major stories. I will use the “further reading” section to collect articles that catch my eye. I may continue to tinker with this format, but this may be the best way of staying on top of developments.

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Osaka Governor Yoshimura Hirofumi speaks following his election as Ishin no Kai’s president on Sunday, 1 December. Screenshot by author.

Ishin has its leader, but now it needs to figure out its role

Ishin no Kai selected a new leader on Sunday, 1 December, elevating Osaka Governor Yoshimura Hirofumi – who currently leads the party’s sister organization in Osaka – to the national leadership by an overwhelming margin. While Yoshimura is perhaps the party’s most prominent elected official, his selection could worsen the party’s existential crisis, leading it to retreat to its Osaka stronghold at a moment when it potentially has leverage vis-à-vis Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru’s minority government.

The problem is that Yoshimura is not only the governor of Osaka, and not a national officeholder, limiting his influence in inter-party negotiations in Tokyo; he is the governor of Osaka months before the prefecture is to host a world expo dogged by delays and cost overruns. The upshot is that he will be delegating substantial authority for charting Ishin’s course in national politics to other players. In this case, he will rely on Maehara Seiji, the onetime Democratic Party of Japan wunderkind – he became the party’s leader in 2005 at the age of forty-three – to serve as his co-president. Maehara was last in the spotlight in 2017, when, upon returning to the Democratic Party’s leadership, he promptly broke the party through a controversial partnership with Tokyo Governor Koike Yuriko to form the Party of Hope.