Unification Church ties likely to weigh on Cabinet despite Kishida's bid for stability

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s overhaul of Cabinet ministers and Liberal Democratic Party executives emphasized factional balance and experience, with the prime minister eyeing political stability in advance of the autumn parliament session and a busy 2023 political calendar.

But shuffling the deck may do little to improve the Kishida administration's falling approval ratings, as experts say swirling controversy surrounding political connections between the Unification Church and LDP members is unlikely to go away anytime soon.

In addition to tackling his primary policy goals, Kishida faces a number of urgent tasks, including dealing with a seventh wave of coronavirus infections, inflation, concerns about energy supply and increased defense spending, as well as ensuring that a controversial state funeral for former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe does not create a further political backlash.

“I would say the new Cabinet’s aim is to keep its head down in the coming months and keep things running smoothly,” said political commentator Tetsuo Suzuki.

Following Wednesday’s reshuffle, most of the Cabinet’s 20 members, including the prime minister, are from mainstream LDP factions. They include four members of the Abe faction, the party's largest with 97 members. Kishida himself leads a 43 member faction, and three of his members are in the new Cabinet.

Four members in the reshuffled Cabinet belong to the 50-member faction headed by LDP Vice President Taro Aso, a key ally of Kishida. LDP Secretary-General Toshimitsu Motegi, leader of a 54-member faction and also a key Kishida ally, has three of his members in the new Cabinet. Kishida also included two members from former LDP Secretary-General Toshihiro Nikai's 43-member faction.

Aso and Motegi, as well as Abe faction member and parliamentary affairs chief Tsuyoshi Takagi, were reappointed. Kishida also brought in former economy and trade minister Koichi Hagiuda as policy chief. An Abe faction member, Hagiuda is reported to be one of the most likely successors to take over the faction.

There was speculation before the reshuffle that the Abe faction, a strong rival to the Kishida faction, might not see many of its ministers land roles in Cabinet following the former prime minister's assassination. The number of Abe faction members in the new Cabinet, however, was unchanged from the previous lineup. Among them is Yasutoshi Nishimura, who was given a key post as economy, trade, and industry minister.

While not much has changed in the Cabinet or the party positions, "it’s a well-balanced reshuffle overall” in terms of factional strength, says Dan Harada, head of the political lobbying group Nagatacho Forum and a member of the LDP.

Ritsumeikan University political science professor Masato Kamikubo says the appointment of Abe faction members appears to be a shrewd move on Kishda’s part to make it more difficult for one candidate from the rival faction to quickly emerge as a clear leader and create political problems for the prime minister.

"There are several candidates to replace Abe, but they don’t exert strong leadership," Kamikubo said. "He’s trying to encourage competition among Abe faction leaders in order to create confusion in the faction itself.”

But hanging over the Cabinet reshuffle and changes in party leadership is the controversy involving politicians and their ties to the Unification Church.

The controversy has simmered since Abe's assassination last month at the hands of a suspect who cited the former leader's 2021 video message expressing support for the church as his motive for murder. The suspect's mother reportedly donated over ¥100 million to the church, which has long been accused of enticing its members to make excessive donations.

Since then, there have been almost daily revelations in the Japanese media that over 100 national politicians — mostly LDP members and many of them in the Abe faction — have some sort of relationship with the church.

At his Wednesday evening news conference, Kishida said that, to the best of his knowledge, he had no relationship with the Unification Church. But recognizing the public concern over the church and its ties to the political world, he said that he has instructed his Cabinet members to review any relationships they may have with problematic social organizations.

At the same time, however, Kishida did not exclude people from Cabinet or party leadership posts even if they had a connection to the church and, according to Kyodo News, five members of his new Cabinet have ties to the church on various levels. Prior to the reshuffle, seven Cabinet ministers had links with the church.

“Kishida decided that the matter is a politician’s own individual problem, and he’s decided to wait for public anger over the ties to calm down,” Suzuki said.

It is unclear if that will happen anytime soon. Experts say those connections are going to continue to cause problems for the Kishida government in the weeks ahead.

“When the dust of the Cabinet reshuffle has settled, the issue of the church will remain. There are armies of lawyers preparing lawsuits against the church. Kishida was right to try to take some of the heat off the issue. But after the summer o-Bon holiday, it’s still going to be a major issue,” Harada said.

Opposition party leaders are calling for a formal investigation into the church’s political ties, a move that Kishida has so far rebuffed. However, the issue could remain a political problem when the fall session of parliament kicks off, and negatively impact Kishida’s approval ratings.

“Kishida is very afraid of public opinion, and the scandal has already hurt his approval rate. Japanese people, especially the older voters, remain very angry about the relationship between the LDP and the church,” said Kamikubo.

The changes in the Cabinet and party structure, he adds, were driven by the need to respond to the political fallout over the Unification Church issue as well as the need to rally public support before the autumn session of parliament, where COVID-19 policy, inflation, rising energy costs and the question of increasing the defense budget are on the political agenda. The longer term political schedule was not a major consideration for the reshuffle.

Next year, Japan will host the Group of Seven meetings, including the leaders’ summit in Kishida's home city of Hiroshima. That will give him a chance to play international statesman as his party looks to strengthen its position ahead of key local elections across the nation in April.

But such long-term thinking, Kamikubo says, was not on Kishida's mind when he made the changes on Wednesday. Pressed by the need to quickly regain public trust and firm up his support within the LDP, Kishida chose to play it safe in the hope of ensuring his short-term domestic survival in the coming months, rather than worrying about what might happen in the longer term.