Japanese prime minister will step down amid record-low approval ratings

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced he would step down next month after grappling with record-low approval ratings.

Kishida’s announcement came only days before his ruling Liberal Democratic Party was set to announce the date of its triennial leadership vote, which is required to take place in September. While making progress in foreign policy, coming from his experience as foreign minister, he was widely seen as unable to confront the other problems crippling Japan, including a plummeting birth rate, stagnating economy, and growing debt.

A poll from NHK last week found that Kishida’s approval rating had halved since taking office, now resting at 25%. Another poll, cited by the BBC, had his approval rating at just 15.5%.

“In the upcoming presidential election, it’s necessary to show the people that the Liberal Democratic Party will change,” Kishida said at a Wednesday press conference announcing his decision.

“A transparent and open election and free and open debate are important. The first easy-to-understand step that indicates that the LDP will change is for me to step back,” he added.

The LDP, which has ruled Japan since 1955, interrupted only by two brief interregnums, has been wracked by scandals in recent years. Two of the most recent involve connections to the controversial South Korean Unification Church, known more popularly as the Moonies, and campaign finance violations.

Kishida’s moves to pass legislation to reform campaign finance rules and attempt to dissolve the Japanese branch of the Unification Church failed to boost his declining popularity.

The next leadership election will see the LDP’s 1.1 million dues-paying members casting their votes for the next leader while the party’s elected leaders will cast their own votes. Dues-paying members and elected lawmakers each get 50% of the vote in the contest.

The leadership elections have been long dominated by powerful factions within the LDP, according to the Associated Press, though the main factions have dissolved themselves amid the recent finance scandals.

Japan has become known for its revolving-door prime ministers, with former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who ruled from 2012 to 2020, being the longest-serving in Japan’s history. Kishida, though only holding power for under three years, is the eighth-longest-serving prime minister in Japanese history.

Despite the instability, the LDP is unlikely to lose power in the next general election, with the opposition struggling to achieve significant electoral breakthroughs.

In the postwar period, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, Japan’s staggering economic growth gave rise to fears that it would one day surpass the United States. These fears disappeared following Japan’s “Lost Decade” in the 1990s, when economic stagnation and other problems crippled growth to an extent that it hasn’t recovered from since.