LDP faction shake-up damages prospects of Kishida rivals

Just a couple of months ago, powerful Liberal Democratic Party faction leaders, including party Secretary-General Toshimitsu Motegi, were being talked about as potential successors to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

But with the political funds scandal resulting in the dissolution of four of the LDP’s six factions, they have found themselves losing momentum and power as their members start to bolt.

Motegi, who heads the LDP’s third-largest faction, appeared to be on the rise last spring when he paid a visit to Washington — a move seen as a possible challenge to Kishida’s leadership.

Having dodged an investigation by prosecutors into the slush fund scandal — which ultimately brought down the party's largest faction as well as Kishida's — Motegi has said he will not disband his 53-member faction, but key members have nonetheless announced they will be leaving.

On Thursday, LDP election strategy chief Yuko Obuchi announced that she was leaving the faction, which is officially known as the Heisei Kenkyukai. That day, the party’s political reform panel issued a report advising that factions be formally downgraded to political policy groups, stripped of their influence and made to meet tougher rules on political fundraising activities.

“I was born and raised in the Heisei Kenkyukai and have always loved it. But I made the decision (to leave) ... amid the critical situation the party finds itself in,” Obuchi told reporters.

Obuchi was followed out the door on Friday by four other members: LDP Upper House caucus chair Masakazu Sekiguchi, LDP Upper House parliamentary affairs chair Junichi Ishii, LDP Upper House policy board chair Takamaro Fukuoka and Kazuhiko Aoki.

Aoki is the son of powerful former Upper House member Mikio Aoki. The elder Aoki, who died in June of last year, served as chief cabinet secretary in 1999 and 2000 under Yuko Obuchi’s father, Keizo Obuchi, when he was prime minister.

Mikio Aoki was also an informal adviser to the Motegi faction and heavily promoted Yuko Obuchi. But Mikio Aoki and Motegi did not get along, while Motegi saw Yuko Obuchi as a potential rival for power.

It remains unclear whether those who have left the Motegi faction will form or eventually join a new political policy group. But as Motegi struggles to hold his faction together, the fate of other potential successors to the prime minister also remains in the balance.

They include former industry minister Yasutoshi Nishimura, former LDP Upper House Secretary-General Hiroshige Seko, former LDP policy chief Koichi Hagiuda, the party's former parliamentary affairs chief Tsuyoshi Takagi and former Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno, all of whom belong to the party's largest faction.

The leaders of this faction, which has been without a formal chair since former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s assassination in July 2022, were forced to resign from Cabinet and party posts, and the faction has agreed to dissolve itself. But although it was the main focus of Tokyo prosecutors’ investigation into the slush funds scandal, the top leaders were not prosecuted.

However, the faction is facing calls from the party leadership to punish the senior leaders, which could mean anything from a reprimand to expulsion from the LDP. The Abe faction’s 30 junior members, including Tatsuo Fukuda, the son and grandson of prime ministers, on Thursday expressed dissatisfaction over the way faction leaders handled the political funds scandal.

In addition to the Abe faction, Kishida’s own group will be dissolved. LDP Upper House Secretary-General Masaji Matsuyama has said he will leave the faction, and others could follow.

Two other smaller factions, one headed by former LDP Secretary-General Toshihiro Nikai and the other by LDP General Council Chairman Hiroshi Moriyama, will also be dissolved, and now attention has turned to whether their members will join new policy groups or serve as unaffiliated lawmakers.

The other faction that has decided not to disband is the party’s second-largest, which is led by former Prime Minister and current LDP Vice President Taro Aso. On Friday, however, former Defense Minister Takeshi Iwaya announced he was leaving the faction, saying he believed it was important to dissolve all factions and rebuild them from the ground up.