Fumio Kishida

Fumio Kishida (born July 29, 1957, Tokyo, Japan) Japanese politician who served as leader of the Liberal-Democratic Party of Japan (LDP) and head of the Kōchikai (a faction within the LDP with a liberal tendency) and became prime minister of Japan in 2021. Prior to becoming prime minister, Kishida served as foreign minister (2012–17) under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Early life and education

Kishida was born in Tokyo in 1957, the scion of a Hiroshima political family. His grandfather and father served in the lower house of the Diet (parliament), and his father also worked at the powerful Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI; now the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry). Kishida is related by marriage to Kiichi Miyazawa, a senior LDP official from the Kōchikai who served as prime minister (1991–93).

Kishida’s father, a government trade official at the time, was assigned to work in the U.S. in 1963. While there, Kishida attended an elementary school in Queens, New York. Kishida recounted in his book Kishida Vision (2020) that he experienced racial discrimination during his time in the U.S., which may have been the deciding moment in his interest in a political career. Nonetheless, Kishida said that he also saw beauty in the diversity in the U.S., which had a profound influence on him as a politician. After returning to Japan, Kishida attended public elementary and middle schools and later attended Kaisei Academy, a prestigious private school, where he played on the baseball team. He completed his education at the Waseda University School of Law (1982). After graduation, Kishida joined the Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan, Ltd. (acquired by an American private equity firm in 1999), where he worked about five years before entering politics. He married Yuko Kishida in 1988; they have three sons.

Political ascent

Kishida started his political career in 1987 when he became secretary for his father, who was a member of the lower house of the Diet at the time. Soon after his father died in 1992, Kishida made his electoral debut when he was elected as a member of the House of Representatives for Hiroshima’s 1st district—the seat previously held by his father—in the 1993 general election. Once in office, Kishida rose steadily in the government from 1993 to 2011 and took on a variety of ministerial positions, such as Okinawa and northern territories affairs, science and technology, space policy, and consumer affairs. Kishida was appointed chairman of the LDP’s Diet affairs committee in 2011, building his reputation within the LDP. In 2012 Kishida became head of the Kōchikai.

In 2012 Prime Minister Shinzo Abe named Kishida minister for foreign affairs. One of the key events in Kishida’s term as foreign minister was finalizing an agreement with South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-Se in 2015 to compensate comfort women—women who were taken as military sex slaves from Korea, China, and other countries by the Japanese military during World War II (1939–45). Another frequently cited achievement by Kishida as foreign minister was his role in arranging the visits of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Pres. Barack Obama to the city of Hiroshima—the first city in the world to be struck by an atomic bomb, by the U.S. in 1945—in April and May 2016, respectively. These visits made history as being the first time a sitting U.S. president and secretary of state visited the city and its Peace Memorial Park. Kishida became the longest-serving Japanese foreign minister since the end of World War II after serving consecutively for four years and seven months. In August 2017 Abe reshuffled his cabinet and named Kishida as the political chair of the LDP, a key appointment that would put Kishida one step closer to the prime minister position.

Ascent to prime minister

Kishida’s first attempt to become the LDP’s president—often a precursor to becoming prime minister—failed in 2020 as he was defeated by Yoshihide Suga, who became prime minister later that year. In August 2021 Kishida announced another bid to become party president. During the campaign, he emphasized his plan to impose tougher COVID-19 measures as well as implement economic policies promoting the distribution of wealth to the middle class, an issue that he fixated on in part from his childhood experience in the U.S., where he cultivated his sense of justice. Kishida also advocated for the importance of nuclear disarmament, recalling Obama’s visit to Hiroshima in 2016.

On September 3, 2021, Suga announced that he would not seek reelection in the LDP presidential election as he struggled to gain popularity as a result of his COVID-19 pandemic policies. The outcome of the election became unpredictable, as no single candidate initially secured a majority of the votes. In a runoff held on September 29, Kishida defeated Taro Kono (a former foreign minister who was expected to win because of his popularity with the public at the time) to become president. The win cleared the path for Kishida to become Japan’s next prime minister. Many political analysts believed that Kishida’s reputation as a moderate and uncontroversial liberal helped him win the election despite not having enthusiastic support from the public and party members. On October 4, 2021, Suga officially stepped down, and Kishida was appointed and confirmed as Japan’s 100th prime minister. He was the first prime minister from the Kōchikai faction since Miyazawa left office in 1993.

Kishida as prime minister

Soon after Kishida assumed office, he faced a myriad of challenges, including the need to take measures to stop the spread of COVID-19 as well as address the stagnant economy and widening inequality exacerbated by the pandemic. To tackle these issues, Kishida vowed to pursue a “new form of capitalism” to promote a fairer distribution of wealth. However, Kishida’s “new capitalism” policy has been widely criticized by both domestic and global policy experts for lacking concrete strategy and details.

In the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Kishida approved hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance to Ukraine. Additionally, he announced a plan in December 2022 to expand Japan’s defense spending, which was considered unconventional in light of Japan’s pacifist stance since the end of World War II. Kishida’s plan entailed increasing Japan’s military budget to 43 trillion yen ($318 billion) by 2027, approximately 2 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). As part of Kishida’s plan, Japan’s national security strategy laid out a more active role for the country in maintaining peace in the Indo-Pacific region. While many global policymakers, namely the U.S., welcomed Japan’s new commitment to boosting its defense, Kishida faced some criticism domestically regarding funding logistics and concerns about over-militarization. In February 2023 the lower house of the Diet approved a record-high 6.8 trillion yen ($50 billion) defense budget, up about 20 percent from the previous year.

Kishida had also put Japan’s falling birth rate at the forefront of his domestic policy. In January 2023 Kishida warned Japanese lawmakers that the country was “on the brink of not being able to maintain social functions” because of its declining birth rate. To address this issue, Kishida suggested the government double its spending on childcare-related programs from 2 to 4 percent of Japan’s GDP. This announcement raised concerns among the public and lawmakers regarding how funding would be procured for these expanded programs. In response, the Japanese government later clarified that there would be no specific target on how much funding would be allocated to the childcare budget. In February 2023 the lower house of the Diet approved a 4.8 trillion yen ($35 billion) child-related budget, only about a 2.6 percent hike from a year earlier.