Kishida’s legacy: Scandals and compromise at home, global respect for security and diplomacy

TOKYO — Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will step down Tuesday, handing over leadership to his successor Shigeru Ishiba, who is expected to formally take office later in the day. He says he plans to call a snap election for Oct. 27.

Kishida’s popularity ratings were precarious during most of his three-year term due to damaging corruption scandals that eventually led him to bow out.

At home, Kishida was seen as a leader without a vision who compromised with powerful conservative nationalists within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party to stay in power. But he has won respect outside Japan, especially from the United States, for pushing bold changes in Japanese defense and security policies and for standing tougher against Russia and China.

Here is a lookback at Kishida’s leadership and his legacy:

After taking office in October 2021, Kishida made a number of major decisions, such as reversing Japan’s nuclear energy phase-out and pursuing a rapid military buildup. But he avoided controversial social issues related to gender and sexual diversity. As head of a smaller faction in the ruling party, his top priority appeared to be keeping a stable grip on power by avoiding clashes with members of the Liberal Democrats’ powerful conservative group, led by the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Abe’s assassination in July 2022 and subsequent major corruption scandals linked to Abe’s faction members left constantly in damage control mode, as his support ratings tumbled. Kishida himself narrowly escaped an explosives attack during a speech at a fishing port in western Japan’s Wakayama in April, 2023.

Investigations into Abe’s assassination led to revelations of the Liberal Democrats’ decades-long links to South Korea’s Unification Church. That was followed by a more damaging corruption scandal involving more than 80 LDP lawmakers, again mostly in Abe’s faction, involving illegal slush funds.

Several lawmakers, their aides and accountants were indicted in that scandal.

Kishida led internal probes and moved to reform and tighten political funding laws, but opposition lawmakers and voters viewed the measures as inadequate.

Public outrage over the slush funds scandal has caused the LDP to lose a few local elections this year and lawmakers within the party called for a fresh face to shake off the scandals in order to win the next national election.

Kishida ends his term as a kingmaker who could remain influential behind the scenes after he helped lift Ishiba to…