Less than a year after taking office, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba announced Sunday that he would step down from the country’s top office.
“I always said that I wouldn’t cling to this post, and would decide to resign at an appropriate time after doing what I needed to do,” Ishiba said during a news conference, adding that while it was a “painful” decision to make, “now is the time” for him to “pass the baton,” after securing a tariff deal with U.S. President Donald Trump.
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Ishiba’s resignation has been a long time coming, especially following two consecutive election losses for the Liberal Democratic Party, which he leads. The LDP, which has governed Japan for most of the post-war era, and its coalition partner lost their parliamentary majority in the lower House as a result of snap elections Ishiba called last October. In July, the coalition took another blow after failing to secure a majority in the Upper House, marking the first time since 1955 that the LDP did not hold a majority in either chamber.
Since then, Ishiba has faced growing calls from within his party to step down. Ishiba made the announcement a day before the LDP was to decide on holding an early leadership election—in effect, a no-confidence vote against him.
In Japan, a premiership turnover is common, with the average tenure at about 2 years, and long-serving leaders like the late Shinzo Abe, who served two terms from 2006 to 2007 and from 2012 to 2020, are the exception, not the rule. Ishiba is now the third“revolving-door” leader since Abe, as the party enters one of its weakest eras, also at a time when Japan is reeling from runaway inflation and its citizens saddled with pocketbook issues. The leadership change in Tokyo is also happening under global uncertainties caused by Japan’s traditional ally, the U.S., under President Trump.
Experts tell TIME that the shifting LDP leadership has knock-on effects not only for the Japanese but for other parts of the world. “Constant change means instability,” says Yoshikazu Kato, director of Tokyo-based geopolitical consulting firm Trans-Pacific Group, adding that while the country has a competitive economy, it loses credibility when its politics appear “always in turmoil.”
Stephen Nagy, a visiting fellow at the Japan Institute for International Affairs, says that Japan is moving into “a period of rotating leadership” similar to the late 1990s and 2000s, when there were six Prime Ministers over seven years after electoral reforms. “This was not a good period for Japanese policymaking, because again, there was a new leader with new policies, and there’s no follow-up. So in this sense, I think that’s a big worry.”
How Japan and the LDP got here
Ishiba’s resignation could be traced back to Abe’s death, says Jeff Kingston, a professor of Asian studies at Temple University, Japan Campus. Abe “left behind a divided LDP, following all the revelations that came to light about his close ties with the Moonies,” Kingston said, referring to the politically influential, Korean-originated Unification Church, which came under scrutiny for its financial practices. After Abe’s assassination in 2022 by a suspect who said he was motivated by a grudge against the church, an internal survey in the LDP later found that nearly half of the party’s members had links to it.
Kingston said the Unification Church scandal “morphed into a corruption scandal,” which Abe’s successor, Fumio Kishida, had to address.
“Kishida wanted to do more about cleaning house and setting campaign finance rules that were much more strict, but former Abe faction members, which were the most numerous, were dead set against this,” Kingston said, adding this was the heart of the current LDP division. This caused Kishida’s popularity to plummet because the deadlock between the conservative, Abe-led faction and the more moderate parts of the LDP could not result in policies that would offer more transparency and accountability to the public.
After the Unification Church scandal, many of the political factions in the LDP were “dissolved,” Kingston said. “The absence of factions made it more difficult to manage this internal rift of the party,” he added.
Complicating Kishida’s rule were several scandals, including one in which LDP members were found underreporting and misallocating money from fundraisers, and another involving his son hosting a private party at the official Prime Minister residence. Voters were unhappy with how he handled those scandals, and in August 2024, he announced that he would not seek another term to lead the LDP.
Ishiba, a former defense minister who had previously run for LDP leadership several times, ran to succeed Kishida. He was seen as an outspoken critic of his own party, but was also perceived as distant from Abe’s right-wing faction, which proved advantageous given the scandals hounding that segment of the party.
In a bid to regain public trust, Ishiba, after stepping in as Prime Minister, made a decision that would eventually cost him his premiership: he called for a snap election, hoping to demonstrate a public mandate. The gamble backfired, with the LDP losing seats in parliament and rendering it unable to form a majority government even with its coalition partners.
Voter discontent with the LDP became more apparent after the upper House election, when conservative Japanese voted for non-LDP parties to punish the ruling party. Worried about losing more voters, Ishiba faced pressure to step down, though in July he publicly denied reports that he planned to resign in August.
Who could succeed Ishiba
Several names that have been brought up in the past have emerged again in the search for Ishiba’s successor. The LDP will first vote for a new party leader, who will presumably become Prime Minister after a parliament vote.
One is Shinjiro Koizumi, the 44-year-old son of maverick former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who led the country from 2001 to 2006. The young Koizumi is currently in charge of the agriculture portfolio and has aimed to ease a domestic rice crisis. Experts have said that his youth could usher in a generational shift in the LDP, which has long been criticized for being dominated by older lawmakers. “What he offers the party is generational change, a facelift,” says Kingston.
Another rumored frontrunner is Sanae Takaichi, who represents the LDP’s more conservative wing and has been likened to the U.K.’s Margaret Thatcher. Takaichi, 64, topped the first round of voting in last year’s party leadership election but was bested by Ishiba in the runoff. If chosen by the party, she would make history as Japan’s first-ever female Prime Minister—a feat given the country’s history and challenges with gender inequality—though she’s not expected to espouse feminist policies.
Other names of potential successors to Ishiba that observers have floated are former economic security minister Takayuki Kobayashi, Ishiba’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi, and former LDP secretary-general Toshimitsu Motegi.
But “none of them are sustainable,” says Nagy. “They need to have broad appeal within the party, and they need to have broad appeal within the public so that the party can secure a majority in the upper House or lower House.”
What the LDP could do next
The LDP lost voters after it was unable to sufficiently address the economic issues that are top of mind for many voters, opening ground for new populist movements, like the far-right party Sanseito, to capitalize on such frustration.
The LDP and its coalition partner Komeito have been operating in a minority government since last October, with only 220 of 465 seats in the more powerful lower House and 121 of 248 seats in the upper House.
Kingston says that the party is unlikely to call for another snap election before elections are due again in 2028, as “LDP members are fearful of losing their seats.” It first has to deal with how to increase declining support, given that, for Kingston, it’s “not the political force that it used to be.”
“Basically, the LDP knows they have to set the reset button,” Kingston says. “They’ve got to reconnect to constituencies that have abandoned it over the years. They have to also respond to the aging of the LDP base and the fact that its appeal in urban areas is not as strong as rural areas, and rural areas are suffering from depopulation and aging. There’s some sort of structural issues the LDP needs to adjust itself to try to rebound.”
The LDP will likely “try to form some coalitions, or co-opt some of the policies of the parties that did quite well in the last election,” including some from Sanseito, Nagy predicts.
But what’s clear is that the dominance of the LDP has now been thrown into uncharted waters. Kato says that having to partner with much smaller parties “is kind of the end of longtime LDP-initiated, LDP-dominated politics, and Japan’s politics is entering a new stage.”
Why Japan’s PM change matters for the world
Constant change in Japan’s leadership also poses risks to other countries, Nagy says. Japan plays an important geopolitical role in the Asia-Pacific region, given its strong alliance with the U.S., and is perceived as a counterbalance against China, which is actively trying to expand its influence.
The security situation in the region has also escalated, with the apparent convergence of China and its military allies, Kingston adds. “I think this is a troubling confluence of events for Japanese leaders.”
Domestic instability might mean Japan “won’t be able to be that glue or that bridge that connects India and Southeast Asia, Philippines, Australia, and the United States, because they won’t be seen as a reliable partner,” Nagy says.
The relationship with the U.S. has been a particular challenge for Ishiba as Trump introduced huge tariffs on virtually every country in the world. The trade deal Ishiba reached with Trump just days before stepping down is expected to provide some relief. But while Ishiba has touted the deal as an achievement before stepping down, he’s leaving the premiership with many uncertainties lingering, not least how to continue dealing with the volatile U.S. President.
“It’s a very contingent agreement,” says Kingston. “It hasn’t resolved the situation at all. There’s a lot of areas that still remain unclear. So the ‘Typhoon Trump’ has not gone away.”