Being remembered for a record is usually an ambition that any politician would like to satisfy. Shigeru Ishiba, the current Japanese prime minister, would instead prefer to have his forgotten: he is the first head of government of the Land of the Rising Sun in the last thirty years to have passed the ballot to be elected by Parliament, on November 11th.
To your predecessor, and fellow party member, Fumio Kishidadid not fare any better, having reached a ten-year negative consensus record last year, with over four out of five citizens dissatisfied with its work. To make it unpopular Kishida it was both the inability to contain the rising cost of living for citizens and the problems that engulfed his Liberal Democratic Party. The group, which has governed Japan almost continuously for seventy years, ended up on the grill first for its opaque relations with the controversial religious movement of the Unification Church, then for a slush fund scandal that blew many heads, including those of three ministers.
Thus, taking advantage of the primaries for the renewal of the leadership, the prime minister abandoned all positions and left the hot potato to his colleague. Long-time politician, considered a “free hitter within the party”, Ishiba he was elected head of the executive for the first time by Parliament at the beginning of October. However, in search of popular legitimacy, he embarked on a political gamble that metaphorically left him in his underwear. In fact, having called flash elections at the end of the month for the Lower House, one of the two branches of the Japanese parliament, it suffered a resounding defeat, losing almost 70 seats and with them the absolute majority. Elected prime minister again only thanks to the divisions of the opposition, he now finds himself leading a minority government together with the allies of the small party Komeito.
Few are convinced that he will be able to finish this mandate, also because in seven months the Japanese will return to voting for the renewal of the Upper HouseWhere Ishiba it could once again lose the numbers needed to govern. If he wants to hope to recover ground, the prime minister will have to prove capable of facing the challenges, internal and external, that the country’s path is fraught with. Among the priorities at home, it was given that of remedying the demographic crisis that is gripping the Japanese between the aging of the population and the collapse of the birth rate. Already today, in fact, the land of manga and sushi is the oldest state in the world, with 29 percent of the inhabitants aged 65 and over, while the cradles remain increasingly empty. In 2023, births fell to around 760,000, the lowest number ever recorded since demographic surveys began in the country. A problem that has strong social, cultural but also economic repercussions. By 2040, there will be a shortage of 11 million workers, and already today one in two companies is forced to keep even seventy-year-olds at their desks or on the assembly line to carry on their activities.
Ishiba it therefore certainly cannot avoid trying to rebalance these imbalances, given that Japan is right now trying to emerge from three decades of economic stagnation. It was above all Kishida before him to commit to stimulating the Japanese economy, achieving partial success, with growth last year of almost two percentage points, one of the highest values in recent decades. However, generating a further complication currently managed by his successor. In fact, wage increases have not kept pace with inflation and the average citizen has seen his purchasing power erode more and more in recent years, especially for consumer goods.
A trend that has often translated into «shrinkflation»: in supermarkets, citizens found themselves paying the same price for cartons with less fruit juice inside, onighiri with less tuna filling and so on. Ishibain addition to having addressed a personal exhortation to the gargantuan Japanese companies to continue to revise their paychecks upwards, he is also preparing to launch an extraordinary maneuver that he would like to see as a panacea for all ills.
This is an incentive package worth around 14 trillion yen, equal to 88 billion euros, which ranges from fuel subsidies to economic aid for the poorest families. It also includes an increase in the minimum tax-free income, despite the high costs for the public purse: the price that Ishiba he will pay to have the necessary external support from the Democratic Party for the People, a populist formation that had made this measure one of its flagships in the electoral campaign.
Looking outside, however, the Japanese government must deal with growing North Korean belligerence and Chinese expansionism. In November, Pyongyang dictator Kim Jong-un’s missile tests and troop deployment to Ukraine prompted an immediate response from Tokyo, which held military exercises with its US and South Korean allies. As well as quickly dispatching the Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya in Kiev to sign an intelligence agreement.
Where diplomacy fails, Japan has no intention of being caught unprepared. Last August the Ministry of Defense of the then government Kishida he asked for a budget increase, the thirteenth in a row, for the next fiscal year, bringing it to 8.54 trillion yen, around 53 billion euros, the highest figure ever.
Among the preferential partners for defense there is also Rome. «Japan and Italy, key players in the NATO-IP4 framework, collaborate on defense industry projects such as the Global Combat Air Programme, which also includes the United Kingdom, improving technological development and interoperability» explains Giulio Pugliese, researcher at the King’s College London and the European University Institute. «The increase in defense spending and Japan’s more permissive rules on arms exports complement Italy’s industrial expertise. This cooperation, strengthened by strategic partnerships and aligned with US interests, addresses shared security concerns regarding China, bridging Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific security.”
If Ishiba he could have been convinced that he had a winning hand, but now a joker has appeared that could upset his game, in the cumbersome personality of Donald Trump.
The president-elect has already announced trade tariffs which could not only directly affect Japanese exports to the United States, which is highly unbalanced in favor of the Land of the Rising Sun, but also put into crisis the supply chain of Japanese industries in China, Vietnam and other countries that have cheap productions. Not to mention the unknown in foreign policy, where the specter of the failed but attempted rapprochement, even personal, between the American leader and Kim Jong Un.
At the end of November, Ishiba he promised that he would meet the future occupant of the White House for “frank discussions”: the most important gamble of the Japanese prime minister’s career could perhaps be played out in Washington rather than Tokyo.
