Defense and Retaliation of Ishiba Cabinet

Extraordinary Session of the Diet was convoked on October 1st. Both Houses elected Shigeru Ishiba, the winner of presidential election of Liberal Democratic Party four days before, for 102nd Prime Minister of Japan. Ishiba immediately constructed his Cabinet. As long as looking into the members he selected, he insisted on “defense” and “retaliation” in choosing staffs of his administration. 

Ishiba is known as a specialist on defense policy. Between 2002 and 2004, he was the State Minister of Defense Agency in Jun-ichiro Koizumi administration, before the agency was promoted to the Ministry of Defense in 2007. He was appointed to Minister of Defense in 2007-2008 in Yasuo Fukuda Cabinet. One of his hobbies is making plastic models of warships.

 

He focuses on defense policy by appointing former Ministers of Defense in his cabinet or LDP board. Minister of Defense, Gen Nakatani, is another veteran expert of defense policy. When he was at the position, Shinzo Abe cabinet made a decision of the Legislation for Peace and Security, which was highly controversial over its constitutionality. It was criticized as being against the Article 9. Nakatani stood for answering questions from the opposition parties in Diet discussions.

 

Minister for Foreign Affairs, Takeshi Iwaya, worked to maintain relationship with Republic of Korea, when an incident in which a ROK destroyer directed fire-control radar to a patrol aircraft of Japanese Maritime Self-defense Force in the Japan Sea in 2018. Chief Cabinet Secretary, Yoshimasa Hayashi, also shortly worked as Minister of Defense in Yasuo Fukuda Cabinet in 2008, and LDP chief of Policy Research Council, Itsunori Onodera, did twice in Abe administration in 2012-2014 and 2017-2018.

 

Another topic about Ishiba administration is exclusion of former Abe faction and other rivals. Ishiba has been excluded from major position in the leading coalition led by Abe, after he rejected Abe’s offer of post of minister for security legislation in 2014. After that, Ishiba was appointed to minister for local policies, or excluded from administration. Ishiba’s policy group suffered from shrinking with pressure from Abe.

 

One obvious retaliation of Ishiba to Abe is appointing Seiichiro Murakami, who protested Abe’s unilateral handlings of politics. As a member of LDP General Council, Murakami opposed to Legislation of Peace and Security in 2015, arguing that the legislation should be made with constitutional amendment. He called Abe “public enemy,” when the government decided to have national funeral of Abe in 2022.

 

Ishiba picked his long-time allies in his administration. Minister in charge of Economic Revitalization, Ryosei Akazawa, and Minister for Digital Transformation, Masaaki Taira and Minister of State for Policies Related to Children, Junko Mihara, are the loyalist for Ishiba, who kept supporting him in difficult times. Appointment of those people may cause frustration of former allies of Abe, which had been the biggest power in the party.

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