Party members take part in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) presidential election in the city of Nagoya, Aichi prefectural on September 27, 2024. Japan’s ruling party will choose the nation’s leader in a vote on September 27, with three frontrunners: the surfing son of a former Prime Minister, a veteran defence geek and an arch-nationalist who would be the country’s first woman premier.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Japan’s ruling party will hold one of the most unpredictable leadership contests in decades on Friday (September 27, 2024), a race that could result in Japan’s youngest or first female Premier, or see a popular veteran succeed in his fifth and final leadership bid.

The scramble to replace current Premier Fumio Kishida was sparked in August when he announced his intention to step down over a series of scandals that plunged the Liberal Democratic Party’s (LDP) ratings to record lows.

Polls suggest three candidates have the edge in a record nine-strong field: ex-Environment Minister and heir to a political dynasty Shinjiro Koizumi, 43; Economic Security Minister Sanae Takaichi, 63; and former Defence Minister Shigeru Ishiba, 67.

Whoever is chosen must quell anger at home over rising living costs and navigate a volatile security environment in East Asia fuelled by an increasingly assertive China and nuclear-armed North Korea.

The LDP, which has ruled Japan for almost all of the post-war era and has a majority in parliament, must hold a general election by October 2025. If Mr. Koizumi wins, he has pledged to hold a snap election that could come as early as next month.

“It’s safe to assume that Mr. Ishiba, Ms. Takaichi, and Mr. Koizumi will do quite well, but I really cannot say who out of those three will win the race,” said Yu Uchiyama, a professor of politics at Tokyo University.

“I don’t think we’ll know until the very last moment.”

The result from the ballot, compromised of votes from each of the LDP’s 368 lawmakers and an equal number distributed among rank-and-file members, is expected around 1420 JST (0520GMT).

If no candidate secures a simple majority— which is anticipated due to the wide field— a run-off poll follows between the two candidates with the most votes.

In the run-off, each lawmaker again gets one vote, but the share of the rank-and-file drops to 47 votes, one for each of Japan’s prefectures. That result is due at 1530 JST (0630GMT).

Traditionally, powerful party factions have swung in cohort behind favoured candidates, making it easier to predict who might prevail.

While the influence of party elders will still play a role, most of these factions were recently disbanded following a scandal over unrecorded political donations, making this vote harder to predict, say analysts.

Frontrunners

Polls suggest Mr. Koizumi, the telegenic son of a former Prime Minister who governed between 2001-2006, has the most support among lawmakers. However, some of his campaign pledges, such as reforming Japan’s rigid labour rules, appear to have dented his grassroots following.

If he prevails, he will become Japan’s youngest Premier, surpassing the country’s first-ever Prime Minister Ito Hirobumi, who took office aged 44 in 1885, according to official records.

Mr. Ishiba, by contrast, has proved popular among the rank-and-file but has courted controversy with his peers for going against the grain and challenging previous leaders, and has failed in four previous leadership bids. He has said he will not run again.

Ms. Takaichi, a hardline nationalist and advocate of deceased former Premier Shinzo Abe’s “Abenomics” stimulus policies, could be the most consequential pick— not least because she would be the first female Prime Minister in a male-dominated society.

She has been a vocal critic of the Bank of Japan’s efforts to raise interest rates further away from historic lows, and her election could spur a yen sell-off, market strategists say.

Her promise to reverse a trend of leaders avoiding the controversial Yasukuni war shrine if elected, could also sour relations with China, South Korea and others that view the site as a symbol of Japan’s wartime aggression.

The last Japanese leader to visit the shrine, which commemorates war dead including those convicted by an Allied tribunal of war crimes after World War II, was Mr. Abe in 2013.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi with USA President Joe Biden, Prime Minister of Australia Anthony Albanese and Prime Minister of Japan Fumio Kishida during the Quad Leaders’ Summit, in Hiroshima. File photo
| Photo Credit: PTI

India and the United States have “swapped” hosting the Quad Summit so as to allow U.S. President Joseph Biden to hold the Summit with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida from his hometown of Delaware, said sources, confirming that the summit will be held later this month in the United States rather than India. 

India would host the Quad Summit in 2025, they said, which indicated the new U.S. President, Donald Trump or Kamala Harris would visit India next year.

Also read: The importance of both Quad and BRICS

The summit, which will be held on September 21, as The Hindu reported on Saturday (September 7, 2024), and will take place in Mr. Bidens homestate of Delaware.

On the September 22, PM Modi will address a diaspora meet at the Nassau Coliseum in New York’s Long Island entitled “Modi & U.S. Progress Together” and will attend  the “Summit of the Future” at the United Nations on September 22-23. Meanwhile, possibly given that Mr. Modi will travel to the US earlier than scheduled, he will not stay on to deliver the address to the UN General Assembly, as announced before, on September 26. According to a revised provisional list of speakers issued by the UN, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar will address the General Debate on September 28th. 

According to official sources said the Quad summit swap was decided after a meeting of the Quad ‘sous sherpas’, the officials negotiating the logistics for the Quad Summit earlier this month and finalized after conversations between Prime Minister Modi and the US and Australian leaders. While originally, India had planned to host the Summit in New York on the side-lines of the UN meetings, the US has now decided to organize the event, that will fall on a Saturday. Mr. Biden travels from Washington to his home on Rehoboth Beach on the weekends. 

“Once it became clear that this year’s Quad Summit would take place in the United States around the UN General Assembly, Quad partners consulted and agreed that the U.S. and India would swap host years,” a source aware of the negotiations told The Hindu.

“This enables President Biden to host the Summit in his final year as President, and India to host in 2025, providing an opportunity for PM Modi to host Quad Leaders in India next year,” the source added.

As The Hindu reported on Saturday, confusion over the Quad Summit, that is held annually, and is meant to rotate between the Australia, India, Japan and the US as venues, has intensified over the last few months, as Indian officials attempted to coordinate schedules amidst elections in India, the US, and ruling party elections in Japan. In addition, the political commitments of Mr. Modi, Mr. Biden, Mr. Kishida and Mr. Albanese have grown more fraught owing to the US President and Japanese PM deciding not to contest for the next term, and the Quad Summit now finalised will be seen more as a “farewell” for the two leaders. 

Japanese Defence Minister Minoru Kihara (centre) delivers his statement with Philippines’ Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr.,(not in picture) during a meeting to discuss bilateral ties and defence, as well as regional security, in Philippines, on July 8, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

Japan and the Philippines signed a key defence pact on July 8 allowing the deployment of Japanese forces for joint military exercises, including live-fire drills, to the Southeast Asian nation that came under brutal Japanese occupation in World War II but is now building an alliance with Tokyo as they face an increasingly assertive China.

“The Reciprocal Access Agreement, which similarly allows Filipino forces to enter Japan for joint combat training, was signed by Philippine Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro and Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa in a Manila ceremony witnessed by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. It would take effect after ratification by the countries’ legislatures,” Philippine and Japanese officials said.

Mr. Kamikawa called the signing of the defence agreement “a groundbreaking achievement” that should further boost defense cooperation between Japan and the Philippines.

“A free and open international order based on the rule of law is the foundation of regional peace and prosperity,” she said. “We would like to work closely with your country to maintain and strengthen this.”

Mr. Kamikawa and Japanese Defence Minister Minoru Kihara later held talks with their Philippine counterparts on ways to further deepen relations. The defence pact with the Philippines is the first to be forged by Japan in Asia. Japan signed similar accords with Australia in 2022 and with Britain in 2023.

Under Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, the Japanese government has taken steps to boost its security and defensive firepower, including a counterstrike capability that breaks from Japan’s postwar principle of focussing only on self-defence, amid threats from North Korea and China’s growing assertiveness. It’s doubling defense spending in a five-year period to 2027 in a move to bolster its military power and make Japan the world’s third-biggest military spender after the United States and China.

Many of Japan’s Asian neighbours, including the Philippines, came under Japanese aggression until its defeat in World War II and Japan’s efforts to bolster its military role and spending could be a sensitive issue. Japan and the Philippines, however, have steadily deepened defence and security ties.

Mr. Kishida’s moves dovetail with Mr. Marcos’ effort to forge security alliances to bolster the Philippine military’s limited ability to defend Manila’s territorial interests in the South China Sea. The busy sea passage is a key global trade route which has been claimed virtually in its entirety by China but also contested in part by the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.

The United States has also been strengthening an arc of military alliances in the Indo-Pacific to better counter China, including in any future confrontation over Taiwan, and reassure its Asian allies. Japan and the Philippines are treaty allies of the U.S. and their leaders held three-way talks in April at the White House, where President Joe Biden renewed Washington’s “ironclad” commitment to defend Japan and the Philippines.

Japan has had a longstanding territorial dispute with China over islands in the East China Sea. Chinese and Philippine coast guard and navy ships, meanwhile, have been involved in a series of tense confrontations in the South China Sea since last year.

In the worst confrontation so far, Chinese coast guard personnel armed with knives, spears and an axe aboard motorboats repeatedly rammed and destroyed two Philippine navy supply vessels on June 17 in a chaotic faceoff in the disputed Second Thomas Shoal that injured several Filipino sailors. Chinese coast guard personnel seized seven navy rifles.

The Philippines strongly protested the Chinese coast guard’s actions and demanded $1 million for the damage and the return of the rifles. China accused the Philippines of instigating the violence, saying the Filipino sailors strayed into what it called Chinese territorial waters despite warnings.

Japan and the United States were among the first to express alarm over the Chinese actions and call on Beijing to abide by international laws. Washington is obligated to defend the Philippines, its oldest treaty ally in Asia, if Filipino forces, ships and aircraft come under an armed attack, including in the South China Sea.

Combination picture of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, Chinese Premier Li Qiang and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida (left to right). Leaders of South Korea, China and Japan will meet on May 26 in Seoul for their first trilateral talks since 2019
| Photo Credit: AP

Leaders of South Korea, China and Japan will meet next week in Seoul for their first trilateral talks since 2019, South Korea’s presidential office announced Thursday.

The trilateral summit among South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, Chinese Premier Li Qiang and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will take place in Seoul on Monday, Yoon’s presidential office said.

The three leaders were scheduled to hold bilateral talks among themselves on Sunday, according to the South Korean presidential office.

Since their inaugural stand-alone trilateral summit in 2008, the three Asian countries were supposed to hold such a meeting among their leaders each year. But the summit has been suspended since they were last held in December 2019 in China.

Efforts to boost cooperation among the Asian neighbors often hit snags because of a mix of issues, including historical disputes stemming from Japan’s wartime aggression and the strategic competition between China and the United States.

President Joe Biden called Japan and India “xenophobic” countries that do not welcome immigrants, lumping the two with adversaries China and Russia as he tried to explain the four countries’ economic circumstances and contrasted them with the U.S. on immigration at a campaign fundraiser on May 2 evening at the start of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Wednesday, May 1, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

The United States is a country of immigrants, the White House has said, defending President Joe Biden’s remarks calling two of his QUAD partners— India and Japan— as well as Russia and China “xenophobic” nations, asserting that none of these countries, unlike the U.S., welcome immigrants.

Responding to a question about the remarks made by Mr. Biden at an election fundraiser on May 2, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that the president was making a “broader point”.

“He was making a broader point. Our allies and partners know very well that — how much this president respects them,” Ms. Jean-Pierre told reporters at her daily news conference on Thursday.

“As you know, in regard to Japan, they were just here for the state visit. The U.S.-Japan relationship is an important relationship. It’s a deep, enduring alliance,” she said.

“He (Mr. Biden) was making a more broad comment, speaking about this country and speaking about how important it is to be a country of immigrants and how it makes our country stronger. And so, that’s what he was talking about,” she said.

“It relates to our relationship with our allies, that continues. We have a strong relationship with India (and) with Japan. And the President, if you just look at the last three years, has certainly focused on those diplomatic relationships,” Ms. Jean-Pierre said.

“He was talking about who we are as a country. He was talking about the importance of being in a country of immigrants, especially as you see the attacks that we have seen very recently, in the last couple of years, those attacks on immigrants, in particular,” the White House Press Secretary said, defending the president.

“The President is always going to be really clear on speaking to issues that matter to the American people. We are a country of immigrants. That matters. And we’ve seen these attacks. And so, the President is never going to shy away from that,” Ms. Jean-Pierre said.

“It is important for us to remember that we are a country of immigrants. I’m explaining what he was talking about and what he was focusing on in those comments: a country of immigrants makes us stronger. It is important to be very clear about that,” she said.

While addressing his supporters at the Democratic Party fundraiser here on May 2 evening, Mr. Biden said, “This election is about freedom, America and democracy. That’s why I badly need you. You know, one of the reasons why our economy is growing is because of you and many others. Why? Because we welcome immigrants.” “We look to — the reason — look, think about it. Why is China stalling so badly economically? Why is Japan having trouble? Why is Russia? Why is India? Because they’re xenophobic. They don’t want immigrants,” Mr. Biden, the presumptive candidate of the Democratic Party, said.

India and Japan are members of QUAD— a four-member strategic security dialogue that includes the U.S. and Australia.

Mr. Biden hosted Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a State Visit last year, while Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida visited the White House in April for an official visit.

Mr. Biden has been under attack from his opponents and the Republican Party for his immigration policies, as hundreds and thousands of illegal immigrants enter the United States every month.

Immigration is a hot topic in the November 5 presidential election in which Mr. Biden will face former President Donald Trump, the presumptive candidate from the Republican Party.

Tokyo:

Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida faced a fresh setback on Monday after his scandal-hit ruling party lost three parliamentary seats in weekend by-elections.

Results from local election authorities and media exit polls showed his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lost all three of its seats up for grabs to the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, the country’s largest opposition.

The losses in Tokyo, Shimane and Nagasaki — which could threaten Kishida’s position as party leader in a vote later this year — came after the LDP was rocked by a major kickback scandal linked to political fundraising parties.

Factions of the LDP have admitted to systematically failing to report incomes from fundraisers for years and sharing the money among their members.

“We saw very serious consequences,” said LDP secretary general and Kishida’s right-hand man Toshimitsu Motegi late Sunday, after exit polls indicated his party had lost.

“It may take a long time, but we will work hard to regain the voters’ trust,” he told reporters.

Local media said Monday that the election losses could encourage LDP lawmakers to try to bring down Kishida when his term as party leader expires in September.

“The Kishida administration stands on the edge of a cliff after losing all supplementary elections,” the influential Nikkei business daily said in an editorial.

The results highlighted “the LDP’s decline”, the top-selling conservative Yomiuri Shimbun said.

Kyodo News suggested the loss will “undermine Kishida’s political footing and prod LDP lawmakers to attempt to oust him from power before the next general election, making it unlikely he will run in the party’s presidential race around September”.

Still, the LDP-led ruling bloc controls a comfortable legislative majority, and there is no clear alternative to immediately replace Kishida among LDP members. 

The LDP was on the back foot going into the special weekend vote.

Two of the seats were vacated by lawmakers who were forced to step down over separate scandals.

The third one became vacant following the death of a member of parliament who was also a senior official in a party faction that was deeply involved in the money scandal.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
| Photo Credit: AP

Japan’s ruling party said Thursday it will discipline 39 lawmakers over a major kickback scandal linked to political fundraising parties.

At the heart of the saga are alleged payments to members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) for exceeding ticket sales quotas for the fundraising events.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida vowed in February to discontinue the events after two LDP lawmakers were charged with breaking political funding laws and three of the party’s biggest factions were dissolved.

“As head of the party, I sincerely apologise for raising doubts from the public and causing serious political mistrust,” Mr. Kishida told reporters on Thursday.

The LDP said it had urged two lawmakers caught up in the scandal — a former Education Minister and a party executive — to leave the party, the second-harshest penalty it imposes.

Two other lawmakers will lose party membership for a year, it said, and others will be suspended from party posts for up to a year or receive a reprimand.

Poll ratings for Mr. Kishida’s government are at among the lowest levels since the party returned to power in 2012.

In January, the LDP’s largest faction, once headed by ex-premier Shinzo Abe who was assassinated in 2022, said it would dissolve.

The two lawmakers facing charges had been part of the grouping.

Two other major factions, including one that Mr. Kishida himself had headed, also said they would disband in the wake of the dustup.

Factions have long been crucial to the inner workings of the LDP, with Prime Ministers distributing top positions with the politics of these groupings in mind.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s powerful sister said Monday that Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has requested a summit with her brother, adding any meeting was unlikely without a policy shift by Tokyo.

“Kishida recently conveyed his wish to meet with the Chairman of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea at the earliest date possible,” Kim Yo Jong said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

Relations between the two countries have long been dogged by issues including compensation for Japan’s brutal occupation of the Korean peninsula between 1910 and 1945 and more recently by Pyongyang’s firing of missiles over Japanese territory.

The abduction by North Korean agents of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s — forced to train spies in Japanese language and customs — has also long been a major point of contention.

Kishida has said he wants to change the relationship between Tokyo and Pyongyang and last year expressed his wish to meet with North Korea’s leader “without any conditions”, saying in a speech at the UN General Assembly that Tokyo was willing to resolve all issues, including the kidnappings.

Last month, the North’s Kim Yo Jong — who is one of the regime’s key spokespeople — hinted at a possible future invitation for the Japanese leader to visit North Korea.

She said on Monday that it was “Japan’s political decision that matters the most to pave a new charter in North Korea-Japan relationship.”

Kidnapping issue

“If Japan tries to interfere with our exercise of sovereign rights like it does now and is resolutely preoccupied with the kidnapping issue, which we have no way of solving or knowing about, it will inevitably face the reputation that the Prime Minister’s plan is nothing more than aimed at drawing popularity,” she said.

North Korea admitted in 2002 that it had sent agents to kidnap 13 Japanese people in the 1970s and ’80s who were used to train spies in Japanese language and customs.

The abductions remain a potent and emotional issue in Japan and suspicions persist that many more were abducted than have been officially recognised.

Analysts have long said that contention over the issue could hinder progress towards a summit between Kishida and Kim Jong Un.

Kim Yo Jong said that Kishida “must know that he cannot meet our leadership just because he wants or has decided to or that we will grant him such a meeting just because.” 

“If Japan sincerely wants to improve the relationship between the two and become our close neighbour to contribute to guarantee peace and stability in the region, it needs to have political courage to make strategic choices befitting to its national interests,” she said.

Japan’s former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi paid a landmark visit to Pyongyang while in office in 2002, meeting Kim’s father Kim Jong Il and setting out a path to normalise relations in which Japan would offer economic assistance.

The trip led to the return of five Japanese nationals and a follow-up trip by Koizumi, but the diplomacy soon broke down, in part over Tokyo’s concern that North Korea was not coming clean about the abduction victims.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A TV screen shows a file image of North Korea’s missile launch during a news program at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea on March 18, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

North Korea fired multiple short-range ballistic missiles toward its eastern waters on March 18 morning, its neighbours said, days after the end of the South Korean-U.S. military drills that the North views as an invasion rehearsal.

The launches were North Korea’s first known missile testing activities in about a month. Outside experts earlier predicted North Korea would continue its run of missile tests and intensify its warlike rhetoric ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November to boost its leverage in future diplomacy.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told a parliamentary session that North Korea fired “a number of” ballistic missiles into the waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan. He said the missiles fell outside of Japan’s exclusive economic zone and no damage or injuries has been reported.

Japan’s Defense Ministry said North Korea fired three missiles, two together at 7:44 a.m. and the other about 37 minutes later. They all traveled a distance of 350 kilometers (about 220 miles) at the maximum speed of 50 kilometers (about 30 miles) per hour.

Mr. Kishida denounced North Korea’s repeated ballistic missile tests as acts “that threaten the peace and safety of Japan, the region and the international society.” He said Japan strongly protested against North Korea over its testing activities, saying they violated U.N. Security Council resolutions that ban the North from engaging in any ballistic activities.

South Korea’s military said it also detected “several” suspected short-range ballistic launches by North Korea on March 18 morning. The Joint Chiefs of Staff said the South Korean military bolstered its surveillance posture and is closely coordinating with the United States and Japan.

During the South Korea-U.S. military drills that ended on March 14, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un guided a series of military training exercises involving tanks, artillery guns and paratroopers. The 11-day South Korean-U.S. drills involved a computer-simulated command post training and 48 kinds of field exercises, twice the number conducted last year.

The North didn’t perform any missile tests during its rivals’ training, however. Its missile tests are considered much bigger provocations as North Korea has been pushing hard to mount nuclear warheads on its missiles targeting the U.S. mainland and its allies. Many experts say North Korea already has nuclear-armed missiles capable of reaching all of South Korea and Japan, but it has yet to have functioning long-range missiles that can strike the U.S. mainland.

Before March 18th’s launches, North Korea last carried out missile tests in mid-February by firing cruise missiles into the sea.

Animosities on the Korean Peninsula remain high in the wake of North Korea’s barrage of missile tests since 2022. Many of the tests involved nuclear-capable missiles designed to attack South Korea and the mainland U.S. The U.S. and South Korean forces have responded by expanding their training exercises.

This year, North Korea performed six rounds of missile tests before March 18th’s launch.

Experts say North Korea likely believes a bigger weapons arsenal would increase its leverage in future diplomacy with the United States. They say North Korea would want to win extensive sanctions relief while maintaining its nuclear weapons.

Worries about North Korean military moves have deepened since Mr. Kim vowed in a speech in January to rewrite the constitution to eliminate the country’s long-standing goal of seeking peaceful unification of the Korean Peninsula and to cement South Korea as its “invariable principal enemy.” He said the new charter must specify North Korea would annex and subjugate the South if another war broke out.

Observers say North Korea may launch limited provocations along its tense border with South Korea. But they say the prospects for a full-scale attack by North Korea are dim as it would know its military is outmatched by the U.S. and South Korean forces.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
| Photo Credit: AP

Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was grilled by lawmakers on March 13 about a gathering of ruling party members at which scantily clad female dancers were reportedly told to use their mouths to receive cash tips.

Footage leaked from the event in November organised by a regional chapter of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) showed women dancing and sitting on participants’ laps. The women came from a troupe called Glamor Dancers and were obliged to use their mouths to receive banknotes hanging from those of the participants, media reports said.

One of the organisers, Tetsuya Kawabata, later sought to defend the event by saying that the presence of the “go-go dancers” were intended to ensure “diversity”.“We invited the dancers after studying from various viewpoints, including whether it matches the theme of diversity,” Mr. Kawabata, deputy head of the local LDP youth wing, told broadcaster ANN. He reportedly later resigned from the party. The LDP’s nationwide youth wing on Monday apologised and said that two MPs who attended were stepping down from their posts in the Youth Bureau, but will remain party members and lawmakers.

The episode is embarrassing for the LDP as it seeks to get more women into the male-dominated world of politics.

Mr. Kishida said on March 13 that the event “does not match the Cabinet’s goal of diversity”.

“What my Cabinet seeks is an inclusive society where all people feel the meaning of life with their dignity and diversity respected,” local media quoted him as saying.