The Liberal Democratic Party presidential election has five candidates vying for the position, with both the party’s lawmakers and members set to cast their votes on Oct. 4.
Whoever wins faces the triple challenge of uniting members split along ideological lines, working smoothly with minority government coalition partner Komeito — which has stated it won’t tie up with an LDP leader with ideals that differ to its own — and forging some sort of agreement with a major opposition party in order to be elected prime minister in the autumn session of parliament.
Here are the candidates and a brief outline of their backgrounds and policies.
Yoshimasa Hayashi
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s chief cabinet secretary is a veteran politician who has served in a number of party leadership and government posts, including as former Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s foreign minister. He was also the No. 2 man in an LDP faction led by Kishida, which disbanded last year.
Known among his colleagues as a quiet problem solver, Hayashi, a Harvard graduate, first entered politics in 1995, winning an Upper House seat in Yamaguchi Prefecture after serving as a secretary to his father, Yoshiro, a Lower House member representing the prefecture. The younger Hayashi’s prefectural rival, former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, kept the Lower House seat after the old multiseat district system was replaced with a single seat and proportional voting in 1994.
Hayashi is on the LDP’s more liberal side. He is emphasizing his 30 years of political experience and says he will basically continue the policies of Ishiba as well as those of Kishida. Hayashi has promised to raise wages by 1%, and to establish a universal credit system, government support for low- and middle-income households to help with their living costs.
He also favors examining the single-seat district election system and is proposing parliamentary discussions about its reform that would not exclude the possibility of a return to the old multiseat district system.
Takayuki Kobayashi
Nicknamed “Kobahawk,” former economic security minister Kobayashi is positioning himself as a moderate conservative and is aggressively courting younger LDP members with his calls for the party to reboot itself and tap the energy of the younger generation. However, he also said he would choose people — from among younger members and veterans alike — for leadership positions based on their ability.
A former Finance Ministry official, Kobayashi, who studied at Harvard University’s Kennedy School, has said that while reducing the consumption tax is not simple, it might be an option to stimulate domestic demand. He is also pushing for a government strategy to turn Japan into a technological superpower, especially in the fields of artificial intelligence, genetics and space technologies.
On defense issues, Kobayashi has said that it is insufficient to raise defense spending to just 2% of gross domestic product, and that he would work to secure the necessary funding to increase this percentage. As part of Japan’s economic security measures, he would push for new laws to strengthen data security and supply chain systems.
He aims to revise the Constitution during his term as president and add a new clause for emergency situations and wording that would make clear the constitutionality of the Self-Defense Forces.
Shinjiro Koizumi
The son of former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi ran in last year’s LDP presidential election, finishing third out of nine candidates. The younger Koizumi goes into this election with numerous media polls showing he is one of two front-runners, along with former economic security minister Sanae Takaichi.
Like Kobayashi, Koizumi, who serves as Ishiba’s agriculture minister, hopes to appeal to younger party members. Koizumi went to graduate school at Columbia University and then worked as a researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington before entering politics in 2009, taking over his father’s Lower House seat in Kanagawa Prefecture.
While he says he will promote policies to quickly deal with price hikes and that he favors abolishing the provisional gasoline tax, Koizumi is also continuing an effort announced by Ishiba for ¥135 trillion ($910 billion) in domestic investment and an average wage increase of ¥1 million by 2030.
Known as a supporter of agricultural reform, Koizumi has promised to provide a social safety net for rice producers to motivate them to increase production, as well as support for new agricultural areas in mountainous regions and land that has not been traditionally cultivated.
While Koizumi drew anger from conservative members of his party for his promotion of married spouses having separate surnames, he is not pushing it as an issue in this election.
Toshimitsu Motegi
The most experienced among all candidates, Motegi, who attended graduate school at Harvard University, has been a Lower House member from Tochigi Prefecture since 1993. During his career, he has served as trade minister and foreign minister, and held key LDP posts, including as its powerful secretary-general. He is also a former faction leader.
Motegi is emphasizing economic policy proposals with specific numerical targets. They include increasing wages so they exceed the inflation rate within two years, and increasing wages by 10% within three years.
Motegi is also promising trillions of yen in local grants for living support and says each region would be free to decide how it wants to spend the money. Japan's nominal GDP, he says, would rise from the current ¥610 trillion to ¥670 trillion in three years and surpass ¥700 trillion in five years.
Motegi was involved with negotiating a U.S.-Japan Free Trade Agreement in 2020, after which U.S. President Donald Trump called him a tough negotiator. Motegi told the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan that Trump is assertive and that while Japan and the U.S. will have to agree to disagree sometimes, Japan needs to show the U.S. it is willing to take responsibility for a free and equitable trade relationship.
Sanae Takaichi
Former economic security minister Takaichi is the other front-runner in this race, according to many media polls. Of the five candidates, she’s considered the most conservative and right wing. In last year’s presidential election, she lost to Ishiba in the runoff.
Takaichi, who represents a Lower House district in Nara, is trying to soften her image this year in an attempt to appeal to a broader range of party members and voters, saying that she doesn’t want to be pigeonholed as just a conservative, especially with the rise of smaller parties such as Sanseito.
She is also toning down her hawkish rhetoric toward China and not stating directly whether she would visit Yasukuni Shrine as prime minister, something she has previously strongly supported.
Takaichi’s economic policies include abolishing the gasoline tax and raising the minimum threshold for tax exemption. She is also proposing the establishment of a committee to monitor foreign investments in Japan and support for AI, semiconductors, and other cutting-edge technologies. Her energy policy is centered on building the next generation of nuclear reactors.
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