5 November 2021

A change of Prime Minister usually doesn’t result in much change in Japanese policies, because almost all Prime Ministers are created by the Liberal Democratic Party machine, which pursues power rather than policies. But the new PM, the 64-year-old Kishida Fumio, has made some Cabinet appointments which might lead to major changes. Of course, all the top Cabinet posts went to long-serving party stalwarts in order to pay Kishida’s debts to the faction bosses who supported him, but he also added several of the LDP’s rising stars to his Cabinet… [read more]