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    Your Monday Briefing: Protests Grow in Iran

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    Plus anger builds in Japan over Shinzo Abe’s state funeral and Russia tries to conscript Ukrainians.Protesters in the streets of Tehran last week.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesProtests swell in IranIran’s largest antigovernment protests since 2009 gathered strength on Saturday, spreading to as many as 80 cities.Protesters have reportedly taken the small, mostly Kurdish city of Oshnavieh. Many fear a crackdown: “We are expecting blood to be spilled,” said an Iranian Kurd based in Germany who edits a news site. “It’s an extremely tense situation.”In response, the authorities have escalated their crackdown, including opening fire on crowds. On Friday, state media said at least 35 had been killed, but rights groups said the number is likely much higher. Activists and journalists have also been arrested, according to rights groups and news reports.Background: The protests were ignited by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who was arrested by the morality police on accusations of violating the hijab mandate. Women have led the demonstrations, some ripping off their head scarves, waving them and burning them as men have cheered them on.Context: Analysts say that deep resentments have been building for months in response to a crackdown ordered by Ebrahim Raisi, the hard-line president, that has targeted women. Years of complaints over corruption, economic and Covid mismanagement, and widespread political repression play a role.A protest in Tokyo last week against the planned state funeral for Shinzo Abe, Japan’s former leader.Noriko Hayashi for The New York TimesJapan to bury Shinzo AbeShinzo Abe, Japan’s former prime minister who was assassinated in July, is scheduled to be buried tomorrow. The state funeral has led to widespread frustration and outcry.Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets or signed petitions, complaining that the ceremony is a waste of public money. They also say that the funeral was imposed upon the country by Fumio Kishida, the unpopular current prime minister, and his cabinet. Some polls show that more than 60 percent of the public opposes the funeral.Abe’s assassination has also set off uncomfortable revelations about ties between politicians in Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party, which is still in power, and the Unification Church, a fringe religious group. The South Korea-based group is accused of preying on vulnerable people in Japan, like the mother of the man charged with murdering Abe.The State of the WarSham Referendums: Russia has begun holding what it calls referendums in occupied parts of Ukraine. The balloting, ostensibly asking whether people want to secede from Ukraine and join Russia, has been condemned by much of the world as an illegal farce.Putin and the War: President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia appears to have become more involved in strategic planning, rejecting requests from his commanders on the ground that they be allowed to retreat from the vital southern city of Kherson.Fleeing Russia: After Mr. Putin called up roughly 300,000 reservists to join the war in Ukraine, waves of Russian men who didn’t want to fight began heading to the borders and paying rising prices for flights out of the country.Emblem of Fortitude: When Ukrainians pulled a man’s body from a burial site in the northeastern city of Izium, his wrist bore a bracelet in Ukraine’s colors, given to him by his children. The image has transfixed the nation.Legacy: The backlash has also become a referendum on Abe’s tenure. While Abe was largely lionized on the global stage, he was much more divisive in Japan, where he was involved in controversial decisions and scandals. “Now people think, ‘Why didn’t more people get mad at the time?’” one sociologist said.Context: Tetsuya Yamagami, the man charged with Abe’s murder, had written of his anger at the Unification Church. A journalist said that Yamagami has become a kind of romantic antihero for some people who have felt buffeted by economic and social forces.Iryna Vereshchagina, left, is a volunteer Ukrainian doctor working near the front lines.Jim Huylebroek for The New York TimesRussia tries to conscript UkrainiansRussian forces in occupied parts of Ukraine are trying to force Ukrainian men to fight against their own country, according to Ukrainian officials, witnesses and rights groups.In two regions, Kherson and Zaporizka, all men ages 18 to 35 have been forbidden to leave and ordered to report for military duty, Ukrainian officials and witnesses said. The roundups follow President Vladimir Putin’s declaration of a “partial mobilization” last week that is also sweeping up hundreds of thousands of Russians.Moscow is also forcing residents of occupied areas to vote in staged referendums, which began on Friday, on joining Russia. Despite the votes, Ukraine’s military kept fighting to reclaim territory. Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, urged Ukrainians to avoid mobilization efforts “by any means” and called on Russians to resist Putin’s conscription.“Sabotage any activity of the enemy, hinder any Russian operations, provide us with any important information about the occupiers — their bases, headquarters, warehouses with ammunition,” he said on Friday. “And at the first opportunity, switch to our positions. Do everything to save your life and help liberate Ukraine.”Ukraine is making gains in the south, but the fighting is resulting in many casualties. And Ukraine is pushing ahead to retake areas in the northeast and the south, dismissing Moscow’s threats to annex territory.Draft: Russia’s call-up of military reservists appears to be drawing more heavily from minority groups and rural areas. Criticism is growing, and at least 745 people have been detained across Russia after protests.Death: Serhiy Sova’s body was exhumed from a grave in Izium. The image of a bracelet on his wrist in Ukraine’s colors, given to him by his children, has transfixed the nation.THE LATEST NEWSAsia PacificAuthorities operated a siren to warn residents of dangers in suburban Manila yesterday.Ted Aljibe/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSuper Typhoon Noru hit the main island of Luzon in the Philippines last night. Heavy rains and winds may cause devastating flooding and landslides.North Korea launched a short-range ballistic missile yesterday, its first such test in nearly four months.Australian rescuers raced against time and saved dozens pilot whales after 230 were stranded on a beach in Tasmania last week.Eleven children died when Myanmar soldiers fired on a school earlier this month. A U.N. expert called the attack a war crime.Around the WorldItaly voted in national elections yesterday. Giorgia Meloni, the far-right leader of a party with post-Fascist roots, is the favorite to become prime minister. Here are live updates.More than 700 children have died in a measles outbreak in Zimbabwe, driven by a decline in child immunization.Roger Federer lost the last match of his professional career, playing doubles with his friend and rival, Rafael Nadal.A Morning ReadSwen Weiland, a software developer turned internet hate speech investigator, is in charge of unmasking people behind anonymous accounts.Felix Schmitt for The New York TimesGermany has gone further than any other Western democracy to fight far-right extremism. It’s now prosecuting people for what they say online.Lives lived: Hilary Mantel, the Booker Prize-winning author of “Wolf Hall,” died at 70. Here is an appraisal of her work and a guide to her writing.ARTS AND IDEASA ferry disaster, two decades laterThe Kantene Cemetery in Ziguinchor, Senegal, has 42 graves of victims of the wreck.Carmen Abd Ali for The New York TimesIn 2002, the Joola ferry left Ziguinchor, Senegal, with about 1,900 aboard. It tilted, then capsized. More people died on the Joola than on the Titanic, and only 64 people survived.For the anniversary of the disaster, The Times’s West Africa correspondent, Elian Peltier, vividly recreated the little known incident. Alongside Mady Camara of the Dakar bureau, Peltier met with survivors who still bear scars.“Their trauma remains so pronounced — the insomnia and speech issues, alcoholism, depression, survivor’s guilt, just to name a few symptoms — but it mostly remains unaddressed,” he said.A prosecutor concluded that only the captain, who died, was culpable, despite a separate report that revealed considerable dysfunction, including warnings about the military-run ship’s condition.The relatives of most victims have given up trying to find justice, instead pouring their efforts into raising the wreck to honor their loved ones. More than 550 have been buried, but most remain 59 feet deep in the Atlantic.“The swell has been hitting these souls for the past 20 years,” Elie Jean Bernard Diatta told our reporters. Her brother Michel died while taking 26 teenagers to a soccer tournament. “They speak to us in dreams, and they ask for one thing only: to rest in peace underground,” she said.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookJohnny Miller for The New York TimesMiso-garlic sauce flavors this juicy chicken dinner.What to ReadCeleste Ng’s new dystopian novel, “Our Missing Hearts,” hits uncomfortably close to reality, Stephen King writes.ExerciseSpeeding up your daily walk could have big benefits.Now Time to PlayPlay the Mini Crossword.Here are the Wordle and the Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — AmeliaP.S. Riis Beach has long been a haven for queer New Yorkers. That could soon change with development. “Queer people will always find a way to keep a space that is sacred to them,” said Yael Malka, a photographer who visited the beach more than two dozen times this summer.The latest episode of “The Daily” is on the future of American evangelicalism.Lynsey Chutel, a Briefings writer based in Johannesburg, wrote today’s Arts and Ideas. You can reach Amelia and the team at briefing@nytimes.com. More

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      As Japan Votes, Abe’s Party Hopes His Legacy Is on the Ballot

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      Many of Shinzo Abe’s goals are central to the Liberal Democrats’ platform, and party members hoped the slain ex-leader’s memory would inspire sympathy votes on Sunday.TOKYO — When Shinzo Abe was gunned down at a campaign stop on Friday, he was no longer the leader of Japan, nor of its governing party. But as Japanese voters went to the polls on Sunday, Mr. Abe, the country’s longest-serving prime minister, was still a guiding political force, shaping their choices at the ballot box and his party’s vision for the future.“I have the responsibility to take over the ideas of former Prime Minister Abe,” the current prime minister, Fumio Kishida, told a crowd west of Tokyo on Saturday, the day after Mr. Abe’s killing, as he campaigned for their party’s candidates for the Upper House of Parliament.Many of Mr. Abe’s goals, like bolstering military spending and revising Japan’s pacifist Constitution, are still central to the Liberal Democratic Party’s platform. And party leaders hoped that drawing on his memory would give them more power to enact those ideas.Even before the assassination, the Liberal Democrats, along with Komeito, their longtime partner in the governing coalition, had been expected to win a majority of the seats up for grabs in the Upper House on Sunday. If Mr. Abe’s death results in the additional sympathy votes that some analysts expect, the coalition could gain a two-thirds supermajority in Parliament.Technically, at least, that would give it the power to achieve Mr. Abe’s most cherished goal: amending the clause in the Constitution imposed by postwar American occupiers that renounces war, and thus opening the door for Japan to become a military power capable of global leadership.Hours after former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was fatally shot in Nara, Japan, people left flowers at the site of the attack.Philip Fong/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMuch stands in the way of that goal — not least that it has long been unpopular with the Japanese public. And with inflation pressures mounting, the yen weakening and coronavirus infections again on the rise, changing the Constitution could be a harder sell than ever.“I’m interested in prices, wages, daily life, medical services and child care,” said Risako Sakaguchi, 29, who cast her votes for Liberal Democratic candidates at a polling station in Saitama, a suburb of Tokyo.Given such fundamental concerns, “constitutional revision is a kind of luxury good,” said Tobias Harris, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who oversees work on Asia.“It’s the kind of thing where if there’s nothing else going on, maybe you can focus on this,” Mr. Harris said. “But given that attention being spent on constitutional revision is attention not being paid to other stuff, there is going to be a penalty for it, especially when people are so concerned about household issues.”More on the Assassination of Shinzo AbeAn Influential Figure: Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, was one of the most transformational politicians in the country’s post-World War II history.Japan’s Gun Laws: Mr. Abe’s assassination may look like a rebuke of the country’s stringent gun laws. But a closer look at what happened actually demonstrates their effectiveness. Reactions: People in Japan, where violent crime is rare, were rattled by the assassination. Mr. Abe’s death also prompted an outpouring of mournful statements from world leaders.Mr. Abe, who was in office for nearly eight years (in addition to a brief, earlier stint as prime minister), left a legacy that went well beyond his hopes of revising the Constitution.Even after Japan fell behind China in world economic rankings, he helped extend its influence by holding a multinational trade agreement together after President Donald J. Trump pulled the United States out of it. At home, he helped bring the economy back from years of doldrums. Even if his economic policies never delivered as much as he promised, he gained international recognition for the program he called “Abenomics.”After he left office, Mr. Abe’s public statements resonated well beyond those of most former prime ministers. When he suggested that it was time for Japan to establish a nuclear sharing agreement with the United States, media outlets assumed the Liberal Democrats were considering a break with the longtime taboo against even discussing the possibility of a Japanese nuclear arsenal.For Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, the sudden loss of Mr. Abe may present opportunities as well as perils. Pool photo by Yoshikazu TsunoWithin the party, he was a kingmaker, often referred to as a “shadow shogun.” Mr. Kishida owes his position to Mr. Abe, who directed his supporters to throw their weight behind him after Mr. Abe’s first choice, Sanae Takaichi, lost a first-round ballot in the party leadership contest.Campaigning for Liberal Democrats over the last two weeks, Mr. Abe’s enduring influence was on display, drawing crowds as far north as Hokkaido and as far south as Fukuoka. His fatal visit to Nara, Japan’s old capital, was his second in support of Kei Sato, 43, a junior member of the party.For Mr. Kishida, the sudden loss of Mr. Abe may present opportunities as well as perils. He could consolidate power after the election, as he is not legally required to call another one for three years. Politicians in Japan often refer to this interval as the “golden period.”But history suggests the odds may be against him. Since the end of World War II, powerful prime ministers have typically been followed by a revolving door of forgettable faces, said Carol Gluck, a professor of history and specialist in modern Japan at Columbia University. Mr. Kishida is the second person to hold the job since Mr. Abe resigned in 2020; his predecessor, Yoshihide Suga, lasted just a year.“There’s a whole lot of prime ministers, if you add them up between 1945 and now, who did not make a mark,” Professor Gluck said.Privately, Mr. Kishida may feel some relief that he will no longer have to answer to Mr. Abe. But others in the party are sure to maneuver to fill the power vacuum.Mr. Abe, center, campaigning in Yokohama for a Liberal Democratic candidate on Wednesday.Yoshikazu Tsuno/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Abe led the largest, and most right-leaning, party faction, and he had not anointed a successor. Infighting could unsettle the party and make it more difficult for Mr. Kishida to get policies enacted.“It would have been much more predictable if Abe was still a big influence,” said Koichi Nakano, a professor of politics at Sophia University.Party power squabbles aside, the bigger question may be whether Mr. Kishida ultimately has his own vision.He once cast himself as a liberal-leaning, dovish member of the party. But driven by the war in Ukraine and increasing threats from North Korea and China, Mr. Kishida has followed Mr. Abe in calling for increased military spending and weapons that can strike missile launch sites in enemy territory.Without Mr. Abe as a driving force, though, some analysts wonder if Mr. Kishida will be able to deliver on that national security agenda.“I think Japan will lose our momentum to strengthen our defense,” said Lully Miura, a political scientist and head of the Yamaneko Research Institute in Tokyo. “We need a visible figure who can support the strong security and appeal to the public.”At the peak of his power, Mr. Abe himself was unable to push through the constitutional revisions he so badly wanted. In 2016, he presided over a Parliament in which his governing coalition had the required two-thirds supermajority. But tensions within the coalition, along with concern that the public — which must ultimately ratify any constitutional amendment — would not go along, thwarted his hopes. Changing the Constitution could be even further out of reach now, given multiple crises around the world and at home.Campaign posters outside a Tokyo polling station on Sunday. Kimimasa Mayama/EPA, via ShutterstockThe war in Ukraine has worsened supply chain problems and driven up the prices of oil and other commodities, raising fears of energy shortages in Japan. Coronavirus infections, until recently under control, have started rising again. And in the longer term, an aging population and falling birthrate raise the prospect of labor shortages and problems with caregiving.Mr. Kishida has offered no all-encompassing program to address such challenges. When running for the party leadership, he spoke of a “new capitalism,” but never spelt out what that meant, other than vague rhetoric about reducing inequality.“Kishida could get things done if there are things that he wants to get done,” said Nick Kapur, a historian of modern Japan at Rutgers University. “He has some popularity and he’s going to have a majority, but as we know, there are so many economic headwinds for everyone in the world — dealing with inflation and an emerging markets debt crisis and the war in Ukraine — and maybe that would damage any leader at some point.”Interest in politics has long been low in Japan, where the Liberal Democrats have been in power for virtually all of the postwar period — largely because of ineffective opposition parties, many analysts say. Early indications on Sunday were that turnout would be low, despite the party’s hopes for a surge in sympathy votes.Ayumi Sekizawa, 31, who works for a real estate company in Tokyo, said he had voted for the Liberal Democrats in part to show his support after Mr. Abe’s death. But he said he usually voted for them because there were “no other good parties.”He said that given the aggressive behavior of Russia, China and North Korea, he agreed that Japan needed to improve its defense capabilities.But his main concerns were closer to home. “I’m interested in the economy,” he said. “Wages should be raised, otherwise, virtually, our living standard is declining.”Makiko Inoue More

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      In Japan Elections, Rural Voters Count More Than Those in Big Cities

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      The disproportionate weight of rural voters in Japan gives sparsely populated parts of the country more representation — and more government largess — than urban areas, perpetuating what critics call an unfair system.CHIZU, Japan — The mountain village of Chizu explains a lot about how one party has kept a virtual lock on power in Japan for close to seven decades.The village, in western Japan, has long been in decline. Its population has dwindled to 6,600 people, close to half of them elderly. The obstetrics ward at the hospital closed more than 15 years ago. The once-dominant forestry industry has shriveled, and a year-end fair is no longer held.Yet last year, backed by a large dollop of central government funding, the village built a 12,000-square-foot library with a sizable children’s section. It erected a new nursery school in 2017, and the middle school underwent a complete renovation two years earlier. Construction workers constantly upgrade a sparsely traveled highway into the village. As voters prepare to select members of Parliament in a national election on Sunday, the residents of Chizu are acutely cognizant of the forces behind this largess. In Japan, rural votes count for more than urban ones, giving less-populated areas like Chizu a disproportionately large number of seats in Parliament, and more chances to register their concerns with national politicians.Chizu’s upgraded middle school.Shiho Fukada for The New York TimesThis structure plays to the advantage of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party, which has governed Japan for all but four years since 1955. The party is expected to eke out a majority in the parliamentary election, partly on the strength of support from the rural areas showered with taxpayer money.In some ways, the power of Japan’s rural population parallels the political landscape in the United States, where each state has two senators regardless of population size — giving the Republican Party an outsized advantage because of its dominance of rural states.In Chizu, the nexus between political representation and access to public coffers is unmistakable. Because its residents are represented by a heavyweight member of the L.D.P. in Parliament, “we can get sufficient government aid,” said Chizu’s mayor, Hideo Kaneko, 68, in an interview in his renovated office.Chizu is in Tottori, Japan’s least populated prefecture. In the district that includes Chizu, the member of Parliament represents fewer than half the number of voters served by the lower house lawmaker in Tokyo’s most densely populated district.Critics say such disparities, which are common in rural communities, are fundamentally at odds with the democratic principle of “one person, one vote” and have skewed Japan’s politics and domestic priorities.A campaign poster of Shigeru Ishiba, a politician in the Liberal Democratic Party in Chizu, who represents the district.Shiho Fukada for The New York TimesAt a time when an increasing proportion of the Japanese population is concentrated in urban centers, “Japan’s policies are focused on rural areas,” said Junichiro Wada, a political economist at Yokohama City University.Besides producing high agricultural subsidies, more hospital beds or smaller class sizes in rural constituencies, the voting system can nudge political debates toward policies opposed by the majority.Because rural voters skew older and lean conservative, said Yusaku Horiuchi, a professor of government and Japanese studies at Dartmouth College, they tend to elect politicians — often from the L.D.P. — who maintain the status quo.So, for example, although the bulk of the Japanese public favors changing a law that stipulates all married couples must share a surname, rural voters are more likely to support keeping the law as it is. “If the voter malapportionment is solved,” Mr. Horiuchi said, “urban voices will be heard.”Hideo Kaneko, 68-year-old mayor of Chizu, likes the status quo because it favors villages like his.Shiho Fukada for The New York TimesAdvocates for rural areas say that if representation were allocated strictly by population, Japan’s remote areas might deteriorate further, an argument that some political scientists agree has merit.Given the connection between representation and public funding, said Yuko Kasuya, a professor of comparative politics at Keio University in Tokyo, “one counterargument would be that, OK, you might have a very efficient, equal distribution of subsidies, but that would mean rural areas do not have roads, do not have shopping malls and do not have basic facilities.”Still, Japan’s courts, when presented with legal challenges to the malapportionment, have been narrowing the disparities in recent decades.Hidetoshi Masunaga, a lawyer who has led the court fight, argues that “building an election system that can properly reflect the will of the people is an urgent task.” Yet he said urban voters who might stand to gain from changes to the system are often unaware of the electoral inequities. “People don’t know,” Mr. Masunaga said, “so people don’t think it’s unfair.”One night this week in the Adachi ward of Tokyo, the most densely populated district in the country, few residents seemed interested in either of two candidates — one from the Liberal Democratic Party and another from the opposition Constitutional Democratic Party — who were campaigning near train stations.Mr. Ishiba of the Liberal Democratic Party, right, bowing to residents of Tottori prefecture during the election campaign. Shiho Fukada for The New York TimesYuta Murakami, 36, an accountant for a cosmetics distributor, said that he was aware of the differences between urban and rural districts but that he was more concerned about low voter turnout in Tokyo.“The bigger issue is just getting people to go to the polls,” Mr. Murakami said after he had given the opposition candidate a fist bump outside a supermarket.In the last election for the lower house of Parliament, in 2017, less than half of registered voters in the Adachi district voted. In Chizu, 63 percent cast votes.People are protective of their voting rights in Chizu. Many residents feel a personal connection to Shigeru Ishiba, a former defense and agriculture minister who has represented Tottori Prefecture in the lower house for 35 years and who grew up in a town close to Chizu.“We expect so much of him and rely on him,” said Satoko Yamane, 62, the owner of a clothing store featuring racks full of knitwear for women of a certain age. “Rural people have their own issues that urban people don’t understand. Even if the population is small, our voices should be heard.”Yoshiichi Osaka, 85, a barber, at his shop in Chizu.Shiho Fukada for The New York TimesAt an evening campaign stop last week in Yonago, one of Tottori’s larger cities, Mr. Ishiba stood atop a white van and addressed a group of about 40 people in the rain.“Japan should not be a place where the population keeps declining and people only move to Tokyo,” Mr. Ishiba shouted. “We need to maximize the powers of agriculture, fishery, forestry, tourism, service industries, and small and medium size companies in this area.”The region has already lost a representative in the upper house of Parliament, after Tottori Prefecture merged with neighboring Shimane under a 2015 redistricting plan that assigned one lawmaker to both prefectures.In the lower house, two lawmakers still represent Tottori. At one time, recalled Yoshiichi Osaka, 85, a barber who still gives daily haircuts in Chizu, four lawmakers from Tottori served in the Diet, as Japan’s Parliament is known. “It was good to have four places to go when we wanted to ask for help,” Mr. Osaka said.Pork barrel politics helped when Chizu wanted to rebuild its middle school and Mr. Ishiba introduced Chizu leaders to senior Agriculture Ministry officials in charge of approving national grants.Asami Kagohara, 25, left, chatting with other mothers at the spacious new Chizu public library.Shiho Fukada for The New York TimesThe $21 million upgrade gave the 134 students enrolled in the middle school a computer lab, tennis courts, a music room stocked with instruments, two courtyards and a gym with four basketball hoops and a large stage. On a recent afternoon, ninth graders rehearsing for a choral recital were dwarfed by the ample space and vaulted wood ceilings in the gym.A handful of newcomers, too, have benefited from generous government subsidies. Itaru and Mariko Watanabe, originally from Tokyo, moved to Chizu in 2015 to start a bakery, brewery and cafe in an abandoned nursery school building amid rice paddies on the edge of town.Mr. Watanabe, 50, said government grants covered half of their machinery costs, and now Ms. Watanabe, 43, and two other business partners are converting an elementary school next door into a hotel, with public money footing the renovation bill.Ms. Watanabe said she had noticed a sense of groupthink in local voting patterns. “The people who were born and raised here have connections with relatives or other residents,” Ms. Watanabe said, and they tend to vote in tandem.On a recent morning at the newly built library, Asami Kagohara, 25, a single mother of a 5-month-old son she was rocking in a carrier on her chest, said she and her parents always voted together — for Mr. Ishiba.“I feel like he protects us,” Ms. Kagohara said.Motoko Rich and Makiko Inoue reported from Chizu, and Hikari Hida from Tokyo. More

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      Who Is Fumio Kishida, Japan's Likely Next Prime Minister?

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      Though Fumio Kishida, a ruling-party stalwart, has sought to distinguish himself from the unpopular departing prime minister, he’s struggled to connect with the public.Fumio Kishida, a former foreign minister, addressed supporters after being elected as the Liberal Democratic Party’s choice for Japan’s next prime minister. Japan’s Parliament will hold a special session next week to officially select the new prime minster.Kyodo News, via Associated PressThe man all but assured of becoming Japan’s next prime minister, Fumio Kishida, is an establishment pick who has sought to portray himself as more than just another colorless bureaucrat.Mr. Kishida, 64, has called for economic policies that would distribute more wealth to the middle class, and written that spending part of his childhood in the United States instilled in him the ideals of justice and diversity.His message has not resonated with much of the Japanese public, but it was enough to win him leadership of the Liberal Democratic Party on Wednesday, virtually guaranteeing that he will become Japan’s next prime minister, a role for which he has been preparing for decades.Mr. Kishida’s father and grandfather both served as members of Japan’s House of Representatives. In 1993, he successfully ran for the parliamentary seat from Hiroshima that his father had held.Fumio Kishida at the headquarters of the Liberal Democratic Party. Next month, when Japan’s Parliament holds a special session to select the next prime minister, his appointment is essentially guaranteed.Pool photo by Du XiaoyiMr. Kishida would go on to become a stalwart of Japan’s ruling party and the longest-serving foreign minister in the country’s post-World War II history.He has been widely described as an uncontroversial moderate who holds the trust of party grandees. Still, in a political system that rewards conformity, Mr. Kishida has sought to distinguish himself from the unpopular departing prime minister, Yoshihide Suga.On the campaign trail, Mr. Kishida carried around a series of notebooks in which he said he wrote down notes and observations from people he met while traveling the country, calling the notebooks “my biggest treasures.”He has said that he feels a strong sense of justice, developed in part during a childhood stay in the United States.In 1963, his father, then a government trade official, was appointed to a post in New York. The family relocated, and Mr. Kishida, at age 6, enrolled at public schools, including P.S. 13 in the Elmhurst section of Queens, where he attended second and third grade. In a 1965 class photo, he is seen wearing a bow tie, standing in front of a giant American flag.Fumio Kishida, second from the right in the back row, in a class photo at the elementary school he attended in Elmhurst, Queens.The Office of Fumio Kishida.His classmates included children of many backgrounds — white, Korean, Indian and Native American — but he sometimes felt the sting of racial discrimination. In his book “Kishida Vision,” published last year, Mr. Kishida described a time in 1965 when a white classmate refused to hold his hand as instructed by a teacher on a field trip.Still, he came to admire the United States, finding it remarkable that students of varied backgrounds “respected the national flag and sang the anthem together in the morning.”“The U.S. was an enemy of Japan during the war and the nation that dropped the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima,” he wrote. “But I was young, and to me, the U.S. was nothing but a country that was generous-hearted and filled with diversity.”A baseball fan — he supports the Hiroshima Carp, his hometown team — he was an infielder on his high school team and an average student, failing a law school entrance exam three times. When he said he was interested in politics, his father tried to push him down another path, warning that “there’s nothing sweet about the political world.” But after a stint in banking, Mr. Kishida got his first political job, as his father’s secretary.Once in office, Mr. Kishida rose steadily, eventually being appointed foreign minister by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2012. His term was defined by two notable achievements: helping to arrange then-President Obama’s visit to Hiroshima in 2016, and finalizing an agreement with South Korea in which Japan compensated “comfort women,” the term for those taken as sex slaves by Japanese soldiers during World War II.He also courted his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, forging a bond over their shared fondness for whisky and sake as he sought to improve a relationship that has foundered on a territorial dispute over islands seized by the Soviet Union after World War II.Unlike the teetotal Mr. Abe, Mr. Kishida is known inside the party as an enthusiastic drinker. One year, Mr. Kishida wrote, he planned a birthday party for Mr. Lavrov and presented the Russian diplomat with a bottle of 21-year-old Hibiki whisky. In return, Mr. Lavrov gave Mr. Kishida an ornately bound book. Mr. Kishida opened it to find a bottle of vodka inside.“If we’re drinking, we’re friends,” Mr. Kishida wrote. “The relationship in which both sides can talk straightforwardly is the first step to international peace.”But Mr. Kishida has struggled to connect with voters. Last year, during the race to succeed Mr. Abe, Mr. Kishida suffered embarrassment when he tweeted a photo of his wife bringing him dinner at home. The image, which showed him seated in a suit and tie and his wife standing, wearing an apron, was widely mocked as out of touch and misogynistic.In this year’s race, Mr. Kishida appeared to acknowledge public dissatisfaction as he promised to introduce a “new capitalism” and encourage companies to distribute more of their profits to middle-class workers. Neither the public nor rank-and-file party members had shown much support for Mr. Kishida. But the conservative wing of the party, which dominates Parliament, opted for a safe pair of hands.Makiko Inoue and Motoko Rich contributed reporting.Taro Kono, the cabinet minister in charge of vaccinations, left, with Mr. Kishida before a debate in Tokyo this month.Pool photo by Eugene Hoshiko More

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      Who Is Fumio Kishida, the New Leader of Japan's Ruling Party?

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      TOKYO — In a triumph of elite power brokers over public sentiment, Japan’s governing party on Wednesday elected Fumio Kishida, a former foreign minister, as its choice for the next prime minister.By selecting Mr. Kishida, 64, a moderate party stalwart, in a runoff election for the leadership of the Liberal Democratic Party, the party’s elites appeared to disregard the public’s preferences and choose a candidate who offered little to distinguish himself from the unpopular departing prime minister, Yoshihide Suga.Wednesday’s leadership election was the most hotly contested in years. While party leaders usually coalesce around a candidate, this time it was not clear that Mr. Kishida would prevail until the ballots were counted in a second round at a luxury hotel in Tokyo.Mr. Kishida defeated his chief rival, Taro Kono, an outspoken American-educated maverick, 257 to 170, in a runoff vote dominated by the party’s members of Parliament.Neither the public nor the rank-and-file members of the party had shown much support for Mr. Kishida. But the conservative wing of the party, which dominates Parliament, preferred Mr. Kishida to Mr. Kono, 58, the minister in charge of Japan’s vaccine rollout.Japan’s Parliament will hold a special session early next month to officially select the new prime minister. Given that the Liberal Democrats control the legislature, Mr. Kishida’s appointment is all but guaranteed. He will also lead the party in a general election that must be held no later than the end of November.By going with the safe pair of hands, the party seemed to demonstrate its confidence that it could win in the fall election despite choosing a leader with lackluster public support.After a year in which voters grew increasingly frustrated with the government’s handling of the pandemic and associated economic woes, the party seems to be counting on the opposition’s weakness and the public’s tolerance for the status quo.During the campaign, Mr. Kishida appeared to acknowledge some public dissatisfaction as he promised to introduce a “new capitalism” and encourage companies to distribute more of their profits to middle-class workers.In doing so, he is following a familiar template within the Liberal Democratic Party, which has been adept at adopting policies first introduced by the opposition in order to keep voters assuaged.The party leadership election was notable in that it was the first time two women vied for the top post. Sanae Takaichi, 60, a hard-line conservative backed by Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, and Seiko Noda, 61, a left-leaning lawmaker who called for more rights for women, the elderly and those with disabilities, were eliminated in the first round. More

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      Japan Faces Big Problems. Its Next Leader Offers Few Bold Solutions.

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      The country’s governing party, with a stranglehold on power, bucked the wishes of the public to select a moderate mainstay.TOKYO — With the world’s oldest population, rapidly declining births, gargantuan public debt and increasingly damaging natural disasters fueled by climate change, Japan faces deep-rooted challenges that the longstanding governing party has failed to tackle.Yet in choosing a new prime minister on Wednesday, the Liberal Democratic Party elected the candidate least likely to offer bold solutions.The party’s elite power brokers chose Fumio Kishida, 64, a stalwart moderate, in a runoff election for the leadership, seeming to disregard the public’s preference for a maverick challenger. In doing so, they anointed a politician with little to distinguish him from the unpopular departing leader, Yoshihide Suga, or his predecessor, Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister.Elders in the party, which has had a near monopoly on power in the decades since World War II, made their choice confident that, with a weak political opposition and low voter turnout, they would face little chance of losing a general election later this year. So, largely insulated from voter pressure, they opted for a predictable former foreign minister who has learned to control any impulse to stray from the mainstream party platform.“In a sense, you are ignoring the voice of the rank and file in order to get somebody the party bosses are more comfortable with,” said Jeff Kingston, the director of Asian studies at Temple University in Tokyo.The final results of the leadership runoff election between Mr. Kishida and Taro Kono on Wednesday.Pool photo by Carl CourtBut choosing a leader who lacks popular support carries the risk of a backlash that leaves the party weaker after the election and makes Mr. Kishida’s job harder as the country slowly emerges from six months of pandemic restrictions that have battered the economy.Mr. Kishida will need to win the public’s trust to show that he is not just a party insider, said Kristi Govella, the deputy director of the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.“If challenges start to arise,” she said, “we could see his approval ratings decrease very quickly because he is starting from a point of relatively modest support.”Mr. Kishida was one of four candidates who vied for the leadership post in an unusually close race that went to a runoff between him and Taro Kono, an outspoken nonconformist whose common touch has made him popular with the public and with rank-and-file party members. Mr. Kishida prevailed in the second round of voting, in which ballots cast by members of Parliament held greater weight.He will become prime minister when Parliament holds a special session next week, and will then lead the party into the general election, which must be held by November.In his victory speech on Wednesday, Mr. Kishida acknowledged the challenges he faces. “We have mountains of important issues that lie ahead in Japan’s future,” he said.They loom both at home and abroad. Mr. Kishida faces mounting tensions in the region as China has grown increasingly aggressive and North Korea has started testing ballistic missiles again. Taiwan is seeking membership in a multilateral trade pact that Japan helped negotiate, and Mr. Kishida may have to help finesse a decision on how to accept the self-governed island into the group without angering China.As a former foreign minister, Mr. Kishida may have an easier time managing his international portfolio. Most analysts expect that he will maintain a strong relationship with the United States and continue to build on alliances with Australia and India to create a bulwark against China.“We have mountains of important issues that lie ahead in Japan’s future,” Mr. Kishida said after his election on Wednesday.Pool photo by Du XiaoyiBut on the domestic front, he is mostly offering a continuation of Mr. Abe’s economic policies, which have failed to cure the country’s stagnation. Income inequality is rising as fewer workers benefit from Japan’s vaunted system of lifetime employment — a reality reflected in Mr. Kishida’s campaign promise of a “new capitalism” that encourages companies to share more profits with middle-class workers.“Japan’s accumulated debt is growing, and the gap between rich and poor is growing,” said Tsuneo Watanabe, a senior fellow at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation in Tokyo. “I don’t think even a genius can tackle this.”On the pandemic, Mr. Kishida may initially escape some of the pressures that felled Mr. Suga, as the vaccine rollout has gathered momentum and close to 60 percent of the public is now inoculated. But Mr. Kishida has offered few concrete policies to address other issues like aging, population decline or climate change.In a magazine questionnaire, he said that he needed “scientific verification” that human activities were causing global warming, saying, “I think that’s the case to some extent.”Given the enduring power of the right flank of the Liberal Democratic Party, despite its minority standing in the party, Mr. Kishida closed what daylight he had with these power brokers during the campaign.He had previously gained a reputation as being more dovish than the influential right wing led by Mr. Abe, but during the leadership race, he expressed a hawkish stance toward China. As a parliamentary representative from Hiroshima, Mr. Kishida has opposed nuclear weapons, but he has made clear his support for restarting Japan’s nuclear power plants, which have been idled since the triple meltdown in Fukushima 10 years ago.And he toned down his support for overhauling a law requiring married couples to share a surname for legal purposes and declared that he would not endorse same-sex marriage, going against public sentiment but hewing to the views of the party’s conservative elite.“I think Kishida knows how he won, and it was not by appealing to the general public, it was not by running as a liberal, but courting support to his right,” said Tobias Harris, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington. “So what that’s going to mean for the composition of his cabinet and his priorities, and what his party’s platform ends up looking like, means he could end up being pulled in a few different directions.”Fumio Kishida, second from the right in the back row, in 1965 at the elementary school he attended in Queens.The Office of Fumio Kishida.In many respects, Wednesday’s election represented a referendum on the lasting clout of Mr. Abe, who resigned last fall because of ill health. He had led the party for eight consecutive years, a remarkable stint given Japan’s history of revolving-door prime ministers. When he stepped down, the party chose Mr. Suga, who had served as Mr. Abe’s chief cabinet secretary, to extend his boss’s legacy.But over the past year, the public grew increasingly disillusioned with Mr. Suga, who lacked charisma and failed to connect with average voters. Although Mr. Abe backed Sanae Takaichi — a hard-line conservative who was seeking to become Japan’s first female prime minister — to revitalize his base in the party’s far right, analysts and other lawmakers said he helped steer support to Mr. Kishida in the runoff.As a result, Mr. Kishida may end up beholden to his predecessor.“Kishida cannot go against what Abe wants,” said Shigeru Ishiba, a former defense minister who challenged Mr. Abe for the party leadership twice and withdrew from running in the leadership election this month to support Mr. Kono.“I am not sure I would use the word ‘puppet,’ but maybe he is a puppet?” Mr. Ishiba added. “What is clear is he depends on Abe’s influence.”The Japan News printed an extra edition on Wednesday after the election of Mr. Kishida.Philip Fong/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDuring the campaign for the party leadership, Mr. Kishida appeared to acknowledge some dissatisfaction with the Abe era with his talk of a “new capitalism.” In doing so, he followed a familiar template within the Liberal Democratic Party, which has been adept at adopting policies first introduced by the opposition in order to keep voters assuaged.“That’s one of the reasons why they have maintained such longevity as a party,” said Saori N. Katada, a professor of international relations at the University of Southern California. “Kishida is definitely taking that card and running with it.”Makiko Inoue More

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      Taro Kono, Japan's Most Popular Prime Minister Candidate, Far From a Shoo-In

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      Taro Kono has by far the highest poll numbers of any candidate to lead the governing Liberal Democrats. But party elders don’t think so highly of him.TOKYO — If popularity were the deciding factor, there would be a clear front-runner to become the next prime minister of Japan.Polls have found that the public favors Taro Kono, the cabinet minister overseeing Japan’s coronavirus vaccine rollout, by at least two to one in the race to lead the governing Liberal Democratic Party — which, in effect, is the race to become prime minister. His Twitter following of 2.4 million dwarfs those of his three rivals combined.But in the back rooms where Japanese political decisions are made, Mr. Kono, 58, is not nearly as well liked. His reputation as the Liberal Democrats’ most outspoken nonconformist and his left-leaning views on social issues put him out of step with the party’s conservative elders.Those people will have considerable sway on Wednesday as the Liberal Democrats choose a successor to Yoshihide Suga, the unpopular current prime minister and party leader, who said this month that he would step aside. Whoever takes his place will lead the party into a general election that must be held by the end of November.In past party leadership elections, unity has made the winner a foregone conclusion. But this time, the political horse trading has sometimes seemed at odds with popular sentiment, even as the public has expressed dissatisfaction with the party’s leadership on the pandemic and the economy. That disconnect partly reflects complacency among the Liberal Democrats, who have been in power for all but a few years since 1955 and seem confident that they will win the general election no matter who they choose.“Right now, their thinking is that they can’t lose to the opposition,” said Masato Kamikubo, a professor of political science at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto. Yoshihide Suga, center, said this month that he would step aside as prime minister and the Liberal Democrats’ leader.Pool photo by Kim Kyung-HoonMr. Kono differs from his rivals in style as well as substance. Unlike a long string of stodgy Liberal Democratic politicians who seemed to have little interest in inspiring the public, he assiduously courts popular opinion.After Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, made him foreign minister in 2017, Mr. Kono developed an avid Twitter following in both Japanese and English, with playful posts about food, his prowess with Japanese children’s toys and meetings with cartoon mascots.As the minister in charge of vaccines, he has sometimes responded personally to Twitter users’ questions. Fumie Sakamoto, an infection control manager at St. Luke’s International Hospital in Tokyo, said she believed his personal touch may have helped ease public fears about the vaccines.“He’s always been willing to communicate about vaccination in a positive and easy-to-understand manner,” Ms. Sakamoto said. After a slow start in the first half of the year, more than half of the population in Japan is now fully vaccinated, putting it ahead of the United States and many other countries around the Pacific Rim.But other issues have put Mr. Kono on the wrong side of his party’s power brokers.He has repeatedly voiced his opposition to nuclear power, a sacred cow for the Liberal Democrats. He now supports same-sex marriage and a proposal to change a law requiring married couples to share a surname for legal purposes — positions that are popular with the public but opposed by the party’s influential right wing.Mr. Kono, center left, at a Tokyo vaccination site. As the minister overseeing Japan’s Covid-19 vaccine rollout, he has engaged directly with Twitter users.Yuri Kageyama/Associated PressMr. Abe, who resigned last year because of ill health, has backed Sanae Takaichi, 60, a hard-line conservative, for the leadership. Ms. Takaichi, who would be Japan’s first female prime minister, has strong backing from the right wing of the party, but her poll numbers are low. Another woman in the leadership race, Seiko Noda, 61, has little support from either the public or the party.Many Liberal Democratic members of Parliament consider Fumio Kishida, 64, a moderate with tepid support in the polls, to be the safest choice, according to media tallies of lawmakers.Mr. Kono, whose father and grandfather were both Liberal Democratic lawmakers, has long made it clear that he wants to be prime minister. But he did not follow a traditional route to power. He left a place at one of Japan’s most prestigious private universities, Keio, to study at Georgetown in Washington instead.Mr. Kono’s polished English and extensive travel experience as foreign minister would make him a welcome choice for prime minister among Japan’s allies, political analysts said. “For Washington, he would be the most comfortable person,” said Shihoko Goto, a senior associate for Northeast Asia at the Wilson Center in Washington.On China, Mr. Kono does not invoke the kind of hawkish rhetoric that Ms. Takaichi and Mr. Kishida have been using during the campaign, but he would be likely to maintain the party’s policies on military cooperation with the United States, Australia and India. Sanae Takaichi has low poll numbers, but former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and other conservatives support her for the leadership.Kazuhiro Nogi/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesGiven his work on diplomatic and military issues — Mr. Kono also served as Mr. Abe’s defense minister — he is “probably the best-prepared person for the prime ministership in that sense,” said Narushige Michishita, vice president of the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo. But some say his confidence has led to arrogance and even impetuosity. Last year, as defense minister, he decided with little consultation to cancel a plan to buy an American missile defense system, angering Japanese military leaders who heard about the decision after the fact.“Maybe he’s too American,” said Kunihiko Miyake, a former diplomat who has been an adviser to Mr. Suga. “He’s very direct, honest, sometimes blunt,” Mr. Miyake added. “And sometimes so self-righteous that nobody can catch up or nobody feels willing to help.”Mr. Kono, who declined to be interviewed for this article, has a reputation for being short-tempered with Japanese bureaucrats. He recently crusaded against the fax machines that are still used in government offices, making waves by taking on one of the shibboleths of the bureaucracy.In an interview with the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan’s largest daily newspaper, Mr. Kono acknowledged that he might need to speak more carefully. “However, I do not intend to mince words when it comes to pointing out the fallacies of bureaucratic thinking that is not attuned to reality,” he said.On Twitter, he has also become rather notorious as the Japanese politician most likely to block his critics — so much so that he spawned a hashtag, #IwasblockedbyKonoTaro, in Japanese. When asked about the practice in an interview with TBS, a broadcaster, he defended it.“I don’t feel the need to have a conversation with people I don’t know who slander me,” he said.A nuclear plant in Mihama, Japan. Mr. Kono has spoken out against nuclear power, but he supports restarting long-idled plants as part of a plan to reduce carbon emissions.Kyodo News, via Associated PressMasahiko Abe, a professor of English and American literature at the University of Tokyo, said he was blocked by Mr. Kono after suggesting that the minister did not understand the government’s policy on university entrance exams.“I don’t mind that he’s sometimes aggressive and even arrogant from time to time,” Mr. Abe said. But, he added, “If he says anything wrong, I think we have the right to correct him.”People who have worked with Mr. Kono said he believed that policy debates were more productive if they were rigorous. “The reason why he understands the discussion is because he is demanding,” said Mika Ohbayashi, a director at the Renewable Energy Institute, a research and advocacy group, who served on a climate change advisory panel with Mr. Kono.As a candidate for the leadership, Mr. Kono has calibrated some of his past positions. Despite his opposition to nuclear power, he said he supported the restart of Japan’s nuclear plants — the vast majority of which have been idled since the triple meltdown in Fukushima 10 years ago — as part of a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.“He is looking at his liabilities and he is trying to figure out how he can cement support within the party,” said Mireya Solís, co-director of the Center for East Asia Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution. Hikari Hida contributed reporting. More

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      Why Japan's Liberal Democratic Party Is Likely to Stay in Power

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      The country has free elections, opposition parties and, lately, public discontent. So why are the Liberal Democrats nearly assured to remain in power?TOKYO — When people think of preordained elections these days, they tend to look to Russia or Iran or Hong Kong. But in Japan, a parliamentary democracy and the world’s third-largest economy, the same party has governed for all but four years since 1955, and most expect it to win the general election due by the end of November.So on Wednesday, when the Liberal Democratic Party chooses a successor to Yoshihide Suga, the unpopular prime minister and party chief, it will almost certainly anoint the prime minister who will lead Japan into the new year.But why, in a country with free elections, where voters have expressed dissatisfaction over the government’s handling of the coronavirus and the Olympics, can the Liberal Democratic Party remain so confident of victory?They’re good at shape-shifting.The Liberal Democrats try to be all things to all people. The party formed in 1955, three years after the end of the postwar American occupation of Japan. Yet the United States had a hand in its gestation.Supporters cheering after the Liberal Democratic Party was formed in a merger in Tokyo in 1955.The Asahi Shimbun, via Getty ImagesFearing that Japan, which had a growing left-wing labor movement, might be lured into the Communist orbit, the C.I.A. urged several rival conservative factions to come together. “They didn’t necessarily like each other or get along, but they were engineered into one mega-party,” said Nick Kapur, an associate professor of history at Rutgers University.The new Liberal Democratic Party oversaw Japan’s rapid growth during the 1960s and 1970s, which helped to solidify its power. And over the decades, it has morphed into a big tent, as reflected in the candidates seeking the party’s top position this week.Sanae Takaichi, 60, is a hard-line conservative. Fumio Kishida, 64, is a moderate who talks about a “new capitalism.” Seiko Noda, 61, supports greater rights for women and other groups. Taro Kono, 58, eventually wants to phase out the nuclear power industry.Such variation helps explain the Liberal Democrats’ longevity. If voters tire of one version of the party, it pivots in another direction. Party leaders have also shrewdly co-opted policy ideas from the opposition.Mieko Nakabayashi, a professor of social sciences at Waseda University in Tokyo, likens the party to Amazon. “You can find anything to buy, and they will deliver it to your house,” she said. “Therefore people do not need any opposition party to buy something else.”The opposition is weak.A dozen years ago, the opposition Democratic Party of Japan rode to a landslide victory. It was only the second time that the Liberal Democrats had lost. But it turned out that voters were not ready for so much change.Yukio Hatoyama, the Democratic Party leader, during elections in 2009.Hiroko Masuike for The New York TimesThe new government said it would break up the “iron triangle” between the Liberal Democrats, the bureaucracy and vested interests. While voters recognized problems with that arrangement, “they in general appreciate the competent bureaucracy,” said Shinju Fujihira, executive director of the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University.The Democrats’ promise to close an American base on Okinawa also proved difficult to fulfill. They waffled on a plan to raise a consumption tax, and they pushed for a strong yen and cuts in infrastructure spending, policies that hindered economic growth.Then came the nuclear meltdown at Fukushima in 2011, triggered by an earthquake and tsunami. The government’s mishandling of the disaster sealed the public’s impression of a bungling party, and the opposition has struggled to recover ever since.In recent years, the Democratic Party has split and new opposition parties have formed, making it harder for any one of them to capture voters’ attention.The opposition’s brief time in power “left a major scar,” said Mireya Solis, co-director of the Center for East Asia Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution. The Liberal Democrats don’t win alone.Since 1999, the Liberal Democrats have partnered with another party, Komeito, that has helped to keep them in power.Komeito is the political arm of a religious movement, Soka Gakkai, that was founded in the 1960s and can regularly deliver a bloc of votes.Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, right, with Natsuo Yamaguchi, the Komeito Party leader, at the party’s convention in Tokyo last year.Jiji Press/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn Japan’s bifurcated election system, voters select an individual candidate in some districts and choose a party’s list of candidates in others. The Liberal Democrats and Komeito strategically choose where they back candidates, effectively swapping votes.The parties make an odd pairing: Mainstream Liberal Democratic policy is hawkish about bolstering Japan’s military capabilities, while Komeito is much less so.But Komeito knows the partnership has pragmatic benefits.“In order to maintain power, if you continue to insist on only your own ideologies, it would not work,” said Hisashi Inatsu, a Komeito member of Parliament from Hokkaido who said the Liberal Democratic Party had backed him in three elections. There may also be financial incentives for such vote-swapping. Amy Catalinac, an assistant professor of politics at New York University, has analyzed districts where the parties coordinate closely.“What we found out is that the L.D.P. and Komeito are using pork to reward places where supporters are switching votes to the other party as instructed,” she said, using the colloquial term for government spending targeted to local constituencies.Apathy helps.In many ways, the Liberal Democrats benefit from voter apathy. When the party suffered its rare loss in 2009, voter turnout was 69 percent. When it returned to power in 2012, less than 60 percent of voters had showed up. Independents don’t see much point in voting. “They’re not going to be mobilized if the opposition doesn’t have something to offer them,” said Richard Samuels, a Japan specialist who directs the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Inertia is potent in a country where the trains run on time, everyone has access to health care and, now, an initially slow Covid-19 vaccine rollout has started to surpass those of other wealthy countries.“It’s not that great right now, but it could have been worse,” said Shihoko Goto, a senior associate for Northeast Asia at the Wilson Center in Washington. “‘Stay the course’ doesn’t seem that unattractive to many people.”Makiko Inoue and HIkari Hida contributed research. More

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      Sanae Takaich Hopes to Be Japan’s First Female Leader

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      If Sanae Takaichi wins, it would be a milestone for the country. But some feminists hope it doesn’t happen.TOKYO — Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, often talked about creating a society in which women could “shine.”Now, a year after he resigned because of ill health, Mr. Abe is backing a woman, Sanae Takaichi, to lead the governing Liberal Democratic Party. If party members elect her this month, she will almost certainly become Japan’s first female prime minister.Ms. Takaichi, 60, is considered a long shot. If she beats the odds, it will be a significant milestone for Japan, where women make up less than 15 percent of Parliament and only two of the current cabinet’s 21 ministers are female.But Ms. Takaichi, a hard-line conservative, is a divisive figure among Japanese who want politicians to do more to empower women. She rarely talks about gender equality, and she supports some policies, such as a law requiring married couples to share a surname, that feminists say diminish women’s rights.“For her to be up there on a pedestal as a shining example of a different, improved, changed society for Japanese women would be the worst possible thing that could happen,” said Noriko Hama, an economics professor at Doshisha University Business School in Kyoto.The Liberal Democrats will hold their leadership vote on Sept. 29. Yoshihide Suga, the unpopular current prime minister and party leader, said this month that he would step aside.Whoever party members choose is highly likely to be named the new prime minister by Parliament. He or she will then lead the party into a general election that must be held by the end of November. The Liberal Democrats, who have governed Japan for almost all of the postwar period, are heavily favored to win that election.Ms. Takaichi, who was first elected to Parliament in 1993 from Nara Prefecture in western Japan, has been a staunch ally of Mr. Abe’s since 2006, when he began his first, brief stint as prime minister, and through his return to power in 2012. She served repeatedly in his cabinet, where her portfolios included — ironically, in some feminists’ view — gender equality.Ms. Takaichi, left, with then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, center, and the rest of his first cabinet in 2006. Kazuhiro Nogi/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesUnlike Mr. Abe, Ms. Takaichi has said little about the gender gap, though she has called for tax deductions for child care and doing more to support women’s health.But on many other far-right policies, she echoes Mr. Abe. She supports amending the pacifist Constitution, a contentious position in a country wary of military aggression. In a campaign speech Friday, she vowed to “protect the national sovereignty and honor at all costs.” (She did not comment for this article.)Like Mr. Abe and other conservatives, Ms. Takaichi argues that Japanese atrocities during World War II have been overstated and objects to further official apologies for them. She regularly visits Yasukuni Shrine, a memorial in Tokyo honoring Japan’s war dead — including Class A war criminals from the World War II era — that is a flash point for historical sensitivities in China and South Korea.On social issues, Ms. Takaichi opposes same-sex marriage and legal changes that would allow women to reign as emperor. And she opposes changing the century-old law requiring married couples to share a surname for legal purposes, an issue often seen as a litmus test among conservative power brokers.She has said that revising the law could lead to divorce or extramarital affairs. Ms. Takaichi, who is divorced, used her birth surname professionally during her marriage.Political analysts say Mr. Abe, who still wields considerable influence in the party, has calculated that Ms. Takaichi’s gender will overshadow her lack of policies supporting women. “Abe is just pretending to respect and proactively promote women,” said Naoto Nonaka, a professor of politics at Gakushuin University in Tokyo.Ms. Takaichi visiting the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, which honors Japan’s war dead, in 2014. Yoshikazu Tsuno/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Abe is widely seen as having fallen short on his promises to advance women in society. In the World Economic Forum’s annual analysis of gender gaps, Japan, which has the world’s third-largest economy, ranks 120th out of 156 countries. Women still struggle to gain traction in Japanese politics, particularly at the national level. Yuriko Koike, the governor of Tokyo, founded a party in 2017 in an attempt to disrupt a national election that year, but Mr. Abe led the Liberal Democrats to victory, while Ms. Koike’s party drew only lukewarm support.Another woman in the Liberal Democrats’ leadership race, Seiko Noda, 61, has explicitly promoted gender equality, as well as rights for older people and those with disabilities. But she barely secured enough signatures from party lawmakers to qualify as a candidate.The Liberal Democrats’ far-right wing has held sway for a decade, and analysts said women in particular had to tack right to rise in the party. “In order to compensate for this disadvantage of being a woman, you have to show over-loyalty to the conservatives,” said Mari Miura, a professor of political science at Sophia University in Tokyo. “And that means you have to be hawkish and anti-feminist.”Gender aside, Ms. Takaichi is an unusual leadership candidate because she does not come from a prominent political family. The top contenders, Taro Kono, 58, and Fumio Kishida, 64, are both sons and grandsons of members of Parliament. Mr. Abe’s grandfather was also a prime minister.Ms. Takaichi’s mother was a police officer in Nara, and her father worked for a car company affiliated with Toyota. In a memoir, Ms. Takaichi wrote that she had been admitted to two prominent private universities, Waseda and Keio, but that her parents wanted to save the tuition money for her younger brother.Instead, she attended Kobe University, a state school, where she played drums in a band and drove a motorcycle. After graduation, she spent a year in the United States, interning with then-Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder of Colorado, a Democrat.From left, Taro Kono, Fumio Kishida, Ms. Takaichi and Seiko Noda, all candidates to lead the Liberal Democratic Party, at a debate in Tokyo on Saturday.Pool photo by Eugene Hoshiko“I was amazed that she was so interested in how the U.S. government worked,” Ms. Schroeder wrote in an email. “A lot of Americans aren’t interested in that! She was very dedicated and dug into any project she was given.”Ms. Takaichi, who has often cited Margaret Thatcher as a role model, decided her best path to power was to align with Mr. Abe. “Her candidacy became viable in a way that it wouldn’t have been without” him, said Tobias Harris, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington and a specialist in Japanese politics.She has never strayed far from her mentor’s agenda. Ms. Takaichi has even unveiled an economic platform that she calls “Sanaenomics,” an obvious reference to Mr. Abe’s so-called Abenomics. It includes monetary easing and strong fiscal investment, two principles that he promoted.Ms. Takaichi raised eyebrows in 2014 when she posed for photos with Kazunari Yamada, a Holocaust denier who leads the fringe National Socialist Japanese Workers party. Years earlier, she had endorsed a book by a Liberal Democrat that praised Hitler’s campaign tactics.Taku Yamamoto, Ms. Takaichi’s ex-husband and a fellow lawmaker in the party, said being photographed with someone was not a sign of an alliance. “We politicians accept anyone who wants to take a picture with us,” he said, adding, “I have had my photo taken with members of the Communist Party.”References to Nazi Germany are not as politically explosive in Japan and other Asian countries as they can be in the West. “The issue seems very distant in Japan regarding the Holocaust,” said Kiyoka Tokumasu, 20, a student studying education and international affairs at International Christian University in Tokyo.Ms. Tokumasu said she knew little about Ms. Takaichi’s positions but would welcome a female prime minister.“Having a high-profile woman represent a country where the politicians are predominantly male will create a ripple effect,” Ms. Tokumasu said. “Hopefully, while she’s in her role, we can influence her to support more laws and ideologies that create a more gender-equal world.”Hisako Ueno contributed reporting. 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