Thread by @observingjapan

With Kishida seemingly well-positioned to advance to the second round and possibly win the LDP's leadership, I guess it's time to take a closer look at him. #自民党総裁選挙

While Kono's family is more famous, Kishida is no less of a dynastic politician.

His paternal grandfather was Kishida Masaki, the eldest son of an agricultural goods dealer from Hiroshima (who spent some time in colonial Taiwan and Manchuria).

Masaki, born in Hiroshima prefecture in 1895, graduated from Kyoto University. He passed the civil service exam but ended up inheriting and running the family business, eventually establishing a department store.

He was first elected to the lower house of the Diet in 1928, and would eventually win six terms. He would serve in navy-related posts under PM Konoe and Koiso, and would chair the Imperial Rule Assistance Association's national defense committee.

Purged after the war, he returned to the Diet in 1953, served one term, and passed away in 1961.

Masaki also forged a link to another political family in Hiroshima, as his eldest daughter Reiko married Miyazawa Hiroshi, younger brother of eventual PM Miyazawa Kiichi, who was Hiroshima's governor, an upper house member, and a justice minister under Murayama.

(That makes former METI minister and LDP upper house member Miyazawa Yoichi Kishida Fumio's cousin.)

Fumio's father, Fumitake, was born in Hiroshima in 1926, Masaki's eldest son. Not unlike Abe's father Shintaro, he avoided service in the war, graduating from the Tokyo Senior High School (prep school for then-Tokyo Imperial University) in 1945.

But his advance to the university was disrupted by the final months of the war, when he was sent to Hokkaido for student labor service. His family's home was damaged and his friends perished in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

He returned to Tokyo University's law faculty -- a parliamentary colleague who eulogized him noted the challenge of having to study the new law codes as they were being promulgated -- and then passed the higher civil service exam.

He joined the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, soon to become the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, after graduating in 1948.

He married a daughter of a Nitto Fuji Flour Milling company executive, and his eldest son Fumio was born in Tokyo on 29 July 1957.

His first appearance in the media as far as I can find was in 1963, when he was appointed to lead the Light Machinery Center at the New York office of JETRO.

Fumio and his family relocated to New York. He was enrolled in public schools in New York, including PS 13 Clement C. Moore School in Queens.

Kishida himself and other sources recount racial discrimination that he experienced from his classmates. Kishida has recounted those experiences as part of his political "origin story," giving him a strong sense of justice and fairness.

Returning to Tokyo in 1966, his father's career stayed on the trade side of MITI. He became the DG for the trade policy bureau in 1974, and the head of the SME agency in 1976 before leaving the ministry in 1978.

The following year, he would make the jump into politics, finishing third in the three-seat Hiroshima first district. (In his five victories, he would never finish higher than second.)

Perhaps not surprisingly given the Miyazawa connection, he joined the Kochi-kai, the faction descended from Ikeda Hayato and the "Yoshida School" approach, at the time led by then-PM Ohira Masayoshi.

He held some minor sub-cabinet and LDP executive posts (including a long stint as the head of the party's accounting bureau) during his 13-year political career, and was close to Miyazawa, who became PM in 1991, but Fumitake died during Miyazawa's premiership in August 1992.

Both his father and his paternal grandfather died relatively young: both were only 65 years old.

KIshida Fumio, then only 35 years old, announces that he will seek his father's seat in October 1992.

Picking up with Fumio back in 1966, after returning from NYC, he was enrolled at public elementary and middle schools in Chiyoda-ku, and then in 1973 entered Kaisei Academy for high school, an elite prep school with an extensive old boys network.

(Among his classmates at the time were Mishima Yukio's son.)

I do have a certain affinity with him: he was on Kaisei's baseball team, where he was a middle infielder and batted either leadoff or second or sixth or seventh, which was basically my profile as a high school baseball player.

He was more interested in sports and socializing than studying, but also knew that a) Kaisei sent upwards of 100 graduates to Todai every year and b) his family had an extensive history at Todai.

But he failed to pass the entrance exam for the Todai law faculty in 1976. and then again in 1977. In 1978, he took the Todai exam again, as well as the Keio and Waseda exams. He failed the Todai exam a third time, passed the other two, and opted for Waseda.

Whereas he and his family had hoped (even assumed?) that he would be on a track from Todai to the bureaucracy, once he entered Waseda, he would need to find a different path.

...to be continued

Before I go further, here's Kishida's class picture from his elementary school in NYC, printed in his book. He's second from the right in the back row.

Another note: in his book, Kishida writes about his choice of university as partly aesthetic, noting Keio was "haikara" (high collar, a Meiji term originally referring to western fashion but eventually just meaning fancy or in this case maybe "preppy") and Waseda was "bankara."

Here's a good explainer from @wdavidmarx of the difference: ametorajapan.tumblr.com/post/123681636….

"The bankara look was embodied by college students who dressed daily in fraying black gakuran uniforms with schoolboy caps, capes, and high geta sandals (also called hei’i habō)."

While he says that he wanted to be a "Keio boy," he concluded that Waseda's style was more in keeping with his temperament.

Meanwhile, his description of his parents' disappointment at his failing to pass the Todai exam and settle for Waseda is excruciating.

His account of his Waseda years starts by noting his friendship with future LDP MP and defense minister Iwaya Takeshi (who, according to @oohamazaki's spreadsheet, is supporting Kono).

Actually, not just supporting Kono but running his campaign: nikkei.com/article/DGXZQO….

I guess that's a little surprising given that Kishida literally spends the first several pages of his account of his time at Waseda describing his friendship with Iwaya.

Anyway, while Kishida writes about how Iwaya, who worked for Hatoyama Kunio while at Waseda and continued doing so after graduation, inspired him to enter politics one day, it was while he was at Waseda that his father left MITI and ran for office. Fumio would campaign with him.

As he approached graduation, he did a fairly conventional private-sector job hunt and wound up at Long-Term Credit Bank (LTCB) just as the bubble economy ramped up. (LTCB, of course, would eventually be sunk by bad debts, nationalized, and sold off to become Shinsei.)

He notes that he spent the first 2.5 years working on foreign exchange at the Tokyo HQ, then the next 2.5 years at the Takamatsu office where he was involved in lending across Shikoku.

Part of Kishida's origin story is from this time in Takamatsu, the "Christmas present" story, when, with his superiors out for the holidays, he had to manage a client (Kurushima Dockyards) that informed LTCB that it could no longer pay even the interest on its loans.

He credits this experience as giving him a deeper understanding of the challenges faced by businesses and ordinary people, which he says he brought with him to Nagatacho.

(Ah, in his book, he saves the stories about helping his father campaign for a later section. He describes people visiting the campaign office who looked like characters out of the "Battles Without Honor or Humanity" yakuza films soliciting bribes for votes.)

He also describes the hardship of having to campaign in the countryside, when you have to eat whatever food is offered you no matter how recently or how much you had eaten.

If you're interested in political life in the age of multi-member districts, Kishida provides a detailed account of his father's battles with Awaya Toshinobu, who retired as the construction ministry's AVM and sought office in Hiroshima-1.

Awaya was Takeshita faction with links to the construction industry; Kishida Fumitake was Miyazawa faction and an ex-MITI guy. Kishida edged out Awaya in his first bid, in 1983, by 4,000 votes.

Awaya would win in 1986, and they would battle again in 1990, with Kishida's earning the enmity of the construction ministry.

He notes that his key formative experiences -- his childhood years in NYC, his student experiences, his LTCB years, and watching his father in politics gave him an appreciation of the things in society that needed to be changed and those that needed to be protected.

It was then around this time, after five years at LTCB, that he told his father that he wanted to become his secretary and prepare to enter politics.

His father sought to discourage him, warning that "there's nothing sweet about the political world," but he was undeterred.

It was while working as his father's secretary that he got married, arranged by his parents, to Wada Yuko, daughter of a businessman from a sake brewing family.

He recounts his father's service as the LDP's treasurer, a role Kishida would later play during the Koizumi years. (He notes that at that time, when Abe had been named LDP secretary-general, Abe noted Kishida's father had also been treasurer when Abe Shintaro was sec-gen.)

Although he refers to learning from his father's motto -- "trusted politics" -- he doesn't actually relate all that much about his work with his father or how his father shaped his own political identity.

He depended on Miyazawa to win his first election in 1993, during the "new party" boom that followed Ozawa's break with the LDP and the rise of Hosokawa Morihiro.

In his book, he rejects the distinction between "high posture" politics (e.g. Kishi Nobusuke) and "low posture" politics (e.g. Ikeda Hayato) and offers instead "right posture" politics (正姿勢) -- forthrighting expressing one's values and philosophy.

He traces this concept back to an adviser to Ikeda.

I think it's safe to say that his identity is much more rooted in the history of Ikeda's Kochi-kai than anything in particular that he learned from his father.

Like Abe, another member of the class of '93, Kishida's first taste of office was in opposition. He describes the experience of a year in opposition as an invaluable asset for his career, which I can certainly understand.

It probably helps that his position was relatively strong, as he had finished first in the race for Hiroshima-1's now four seats (something his father had never done), despite the adverse political winds.

By the way, years ago I happened upon the old HQ of the Kochi-kai in a building near the US embassy. They had vacated it by that time, and the building has been torn down and replaced by a new mixed-use development.

Let's resume, particularly now that the probability of a Kishida premiership is soaring.

As a first-term Diet member on the opposition benches, Kishida didn't have much to do. Unlike Abe, who seemed to use his time in opposition to read, study, and begin articulating his New Conservatism, Kishida asked lots of questions in committee.

He wound up on the Finance Committee (which handles revenue, unlike the Budget Committee, which handles spending) and the Education Committee.

The House of Representatives's committees don't do much legislating, but for Kishida it was an opportunity to learn the finer points of parliamentary procedure and debate and to hone his policy chops.

His first remarks as a Diet member were in November 1993, addressing Hosokawa cabinet Finance Minister Fujii Hirohisa (who would later be a DPJ finance minister) about the regressive effects of plan to raise the consumption tax and cut the income tax.

kokkai.ndl.go.jp/txt/112804629X…

His early exchanges with Fujii and other officials in these committee meetings reveal an eagerness to impress and to leverage his experience at LTCB to earn a reputation as an economic policy expert. Perhaps not surprising given that he had only just turned 36.

As the non-LDP coalition crumbled in 1994, he was also active among young reformist MPs, joining with young LDP and SDP members in something called the Association for Building a Liberal Administration and another LDP group called the "Group New Style."

As the former group suggests, he was not necessarily opposed to the Murayama-led LDP-SDP-Sakigake coalition that assumed power on 30 June 1994.

After few months later, in September 1994, he joined an LDP Youth Division trip to Taiwan, along with Abe and some other junior party members.

...Which occasioned a public difference of opinion between Abe and Kishida regarding whether Lee Teng-hui should attend the Asian Games that would be hosted in Hiroshima that October.

With China threatening to boycott, Abe said that the GOJ should "welcome Lee as a guest." Kishida, however, said that it should have been handled by the Olympic Council of Asia, but "now a political decision is required. The government should make a rational decision."

Kishida's view prevailed at that time.

Journalist Ooshita Eiji recounts another Youth Division trip to Taiwan in 1997, with Abe now the division chair. In addition to Abe and Kishida, Kono, Hamada Yasukazu, recent Yokohama mayoral candidate Okonogi Hachiro, and others.

It is worth noting that these Youth Division trips were a major point of contact between Japan and Taiwan after Japan broke off diplomatic relations.

Abe, the head of the delegation, is of course a teetotaler, as were others on the trip. Kishida, who had a reputation for being able to hold his liquor, ended up holding up the Japanese delegation's end in the numerous toasts at official functions and imbibing a legendary amount.

Just after that trip -- maybe as a reward for his feats -- he succeeded Abe as head of the Youth Division, marking him out as a rising star in the party.

In the meantime, in 1996, Kishida was reelected in the new single-member Hiroshima first district, winning 44% in a seven-candidate field.

With the exception of 2009 – when he won with only 47% -- he has never received lower than 55% and more recently has won with 60% or higher (78% in 2017 when he faced only a JCP candidate).

Now in his second term, he gained increasing prominence as a young policy reformist. He was, for example, numbered as one of the “Policy New Breed,” lawmakers in the LDP and DPJ who worked together to craft policies to manage the ongoing financial crisis.

He also was named to his first sub-cabinet post: when Obuchi reshuffled his cabinet in 1999, Kishida was named parliamentary secretary at the construction ministry (ironically given his father’s history with the ministry).

Ooshita says that at this time Kishida was becoming recognized as a “Kochikai prince,” suggesting he was in line for bigger things in the future.

It is worth remembering that this is the same time that Abe, already heavily involved in LDP right-wing groups, was becoming more vocal about Japanese abducted by North Korea. Good illustration of the different paths followed by the LDP’s post-cold war “new class.”

Kishida threw himself deeper into reformist politics after the 2000 general election, when the LDP was floundering under the leadership of PM Mori.

An antecedent of Kato Koichi’s rebellion against Mori – Kato then being head of the Kochikai – the group included 12 young MPs concerned about the party leadership.

Among those 12 were Kishida, Kono, Shiozaki Yasuhisa, Ishihara Nobuteru, Watanabe Yoshimi, Tanaka Makiko, and Hakubun Shimomura, so a broad cross-section of the party.

From that nucleus, the group quickly expanded to 42 members. (For all the excitement about Fukuda Tatsuo’s recent activities, worth recalling that this kind of activism among younger MPs concerned about LDP’s leadership is not a new phenomenon.)

That November, Kato launched his rebellion against Mori, joining forces with his ally Yamasaki Taku and his faction. In hindsight, the rebellion looks like a last-ditch attempt by the LDP’s more liberal “mainstream” against the ascendant conservative “anti-mainstream.”

Kato hoped to win enough support from within the party to pass a no-confidence motion against Mori and then usher in a more liberal administration, whether under Kato or someone who would stand a better chance of leading the LDP in 2001 HOC elections.

Kishida, along with his young Kato faction colleagues Shiozaki, Ishihara, and others, decided to back Kato completely. Suga, at the time also a Kato faction member, also supported the rebellion.

In what is apparently a running theme, Kishida, Ishihara, Shiozaki, and Nemoto Takumi strengthened their resolve to support Kato by downing dry martinis made by Ishihara.

The four later formed the “dry martini club,” gathering to drink dry martinis to commemorate the rebellion on 20 November, its anniversary.

Ultimately the rebellion fizzled when LDP secretary-general Nonaka Hiromu warned that Mori’s response to a successful no-confidence motion would be a snap election – and that the LDP would withhold its endorsement from rebels and run alternative candidates.

Nonaka permitted the rebels what Kato called “an honorable retreat”: they could abstain from the no-confidence vote without being expelled from the party. 42 LDP members abstained.

In the end, the rebellion drove a wedge into the Kochikai itself, which split into pro- and anti-Kato wings (the Koga and Tanigaki groups respectively). Some Kochikai members voted against the no-confidence resolution.

While the Kochikai would later reunite, it has never regained the prominence it once had. From having been the party’s second-largest faction at the time of the rebellion, it is now the party’s fifth largest.

Meanwhile, Mori’s Seiwa-kai would rise to become the LDP’s largest and after Mori would dominate the party leadership for most of the next two decades.

After the rebellion, Kishida followed his patron Miyazawa Kiichi into the anti-Kato half of the Kochikai. Despite his support for Kato, he treated leniently by Koga Makoto, the group’s de facto boss, and the party leadership more broadly.

In 2001, he was named the LDP’s treasurer under Koga, the new secretary-general, the same post his father had occupied towards the end of his life. Koizumi would also appoint him as vice minister at MEXT.

While Kishida ostensibly kept moving up, it is worth noting that after the Kato rebellion, Abe’s fortunes accelerated. There is a palpable sense of Kishida, having once been a promising young reformer, moving into a slower lane.

Kishida himself captured this well in a New Year’s message in his newsletter in 2005, titled “The Necessity of Balance in a New Era of National Politics.”

Kishida: 強いリーダーシップ、米国中心外交、タカ派的体質が強調されることです。それぞれの意義を否定するものではありませんが要はバランスが大切だと思っています。

"Strong leadership, US-centered diplomacy, and a hawkish tendency are emphasized. I do not deny the significance of each, but I think the point is that balance is important."

強いリーダーシップは勿論大切ですが、権力というものは謙虚に使わなければならないと考えます。謙虚さを忘れた権力は独裁者になります。
"Strong leadership is important, but I think that power must be used humbly. Power that forgets humility becomes a dictatorship."

(Interesting message for the year of the postal privatization battle.)

日本にとって米国は大変重要な存在です。しかし将来を見据えた場合、中国の存在を無視することは出来ません。日米中三ヵ国の関係のバランスが重要です。

"The United States is extremely important for Japan. However, looking to the future, China’s existence cannot be ignored. Balance in the trilateral Japan-US-China relationship is essential."

In this message, we see how the LDP’s liberals or moderates had inexorably become the anti-mainstream, reduced to cautioning the ascendant conservatives about the need for balance instead of wielding power themselves.

The newsletter can be read here: web.archive.org/web/2006060210…. (The Wayback Machine is really a researcher’s best friend.)

He had no part to play in the postal privatization battle (other than winning his fifth term in the September 2005 general election, a key milestone since it made him eligible for a cabinet post according to LDP’s customs).

As the party looked ahead to the post-Koizumi era, Kishida was part of an attempt to rebuild the Kochikai.

He was part of a group – the Asia Strategy Research Group – that drew upon Kochikai successor factions for its members that sought to make the case for balance in Japanese foreign policy in the post-Koizumi era.

Kishida wound up serving as its secretary-general. Also in this group? Kono Taro.

Abe, gearing up for his 2006 leadership bid, actually delivered an address to the group in July 2006 in an attempt to reassure them of his commitment to improving relations with Japan’s neighbors.

As it happened, Abe won the leadership by a large margin and did in fact prioritize Asian diplomacy in his first months, making Seoul and Beijing his first foreign destinations as prime minister.

However, after the 2007 upper house elections, when the DPJ took control of the upper house and Abe was fighting for his life, Abe reshuffled his cabinet – emphasizing balance instead of his ideological allies – and Kishida became a minister for the first time.

He became minister of state with a portfolio that included Okinawa, the Northern Territories, regulatory reform, people’s livelihoods, and science & technology.

When Fukuda Yasuo succeeded Abe, he stayed in this post until the end of the Fukuda government in September 2008.

Here's a photo in one of Kishida's newsletters captioned "The LDP's Seven Samurai," which they used for a poster.

Back row (L to R): Shiozaki, Kishida, Abe, Ishihara
Front row (L to R): Watanabe Yoshimi, Kono, Nemoto Takumi

This is a useful reminder that despite signs of generational change, this election is still a battle of the LDP's 90s kids. Kishida (class of '93) vs. Kono ('96) vs. Takaichi ('93) vs. Noda ('93).

In other words, three of the four candidates were elected for the first time in the same election as Abe, and have been identified as future leaders for the better part of the past thirty years.

Anyway, in the Fukuda cabinet, Kishida’s portfolio expanded to include consumer affairs. Interestingly, his diverse portfolio meant that he touched foreign policy in a couple of ways.

Naturally, Okinawan affairs meant that he was involved in gaining local support for the 2006 base realignment plan.

Meanwhile, his responsibility for consumer affairs coincided with the “tainted gyoza” incident, when frozen gyoza imported from China caused cases of food poisoning. In this role, he had to work to get answers from Beijing.

More domestically, he was involved in the Fukuda government’s efforts to create a consumer affairs agency over bureaucratic opposition.

In the five-way leadership race that followed Fukuda’s resignation – Aso vs. Ishiba vs. Koike vs. Ishihara vs. Yosano – Kishida was one of Ishihara’s endorsers, along with fellow dry martini club members Shiozaki and Nemoto.

With no job in the Aso government, he returned to the backbenches and continued working on consumer affairs.

In the 2009 general election, he was the only LDP candidate in Hiroshima to win a single-member district, holding on with just under 50% of the vote.

For the second time in his career, Kishida was on the opposition benches. He assumed a party post – serving as a deputy parliamentary affairs chairman under Nikai, the new parliamentary affairs chairman under new leader Tanigaki.

He also was selected as the chairman of the LDP’s Hiroshima chapter as the party tried to rebuild after the 2009 debacle.

It was during this interregnum that we see what I think is the first discordant note in his career trajectory.

I found while looking into Takaichi that Kishida was one of 40 LDP Diet members who abstained from voting for a resolution marking the 150th anniversary of Japan-Germany relations that had mildly critical language of the 1940 Tripartite Pact.

https://twitter.com/observingjapan/status/1434724600991080450?s=20

There is little in his past that would explain why he would do this, and it was barely remarked upon at the time (not surprisingly given that it was a month after 3/11).

In September 2011, Tanigaki elevated Kishida to parliamentary affairs chief, one of the LDP’s senior-most positions, responsible for negotiating with other parties regarding parliamentary procedures and agendas.

For the most part, this seemed to entail threats to stymie the Noda government’s agenda and also a part in negotiating the three-party consumption tax pact between the DPJ, LDP, and Komeito.

By August 2012, it appeared that Tanigaki would fail at the party’s campaign to force Noda to call a snap election and have to forego a bid for a new leadership term in September.

As the post-Tanigaki race heated up, Kishida was behind Ishihara Nobuteru, who was the early favorite, serving as one of his 20 endorsers.

Kishida did not support Abe in either round of the 2012 leadership race, voting for Ishihara in the first round and Ishiba – who won a majority of the vote in Hiroshima – in the second round.

After the LDP election, Kishida achieved another milestone. Koga Makoto stepped down as the leader of the Kochikai and named Kishida his successor, although this occasioned another splinter as Tanigaki broke away with a small group.

Although he was planning to not seek reelection in the next election, Koga stayed on as honorary chairman, leading to speculation that the Kishida faction was still the Koga faction in all but name.

After the LDP won in December 2012 and Abe prepared his new government, the first signs were that Kishida would be named the LDP’s policy chief, which would make him one of the party’s top executives.

Another rumor had him slated to chair the House of Representatives committee on rules and administration. He was not expected to end up at the foreign ministry.

Aso reportedly recommended an experienced FM to signal a break from the DPJ’s failures, and Abe was rumored to be considering former FMs Komura, Kawaguchi, and Nakasone (the younger).

Others were recommending Ishihara, who was out of the running due to his having opposed as LDP secretary-general a 2011 visit to the disputed Liancourt Rocks by right-wing MPs close to Abe.

At the last minute, however, Kishida emerged as the foreign minister, with reports citing his experience handling the Okinawa base issue under Abe and Fukuda as a key determining factor in his appointment.

However, reports also suggested that Kishida was appointed in part due to his lack of foreign policy experience, which would make it easier for Abe to run foreign policy through the Kantei as he desired.

At the same, Kishida and Defense Minister Onodera Itsunori were both seen a more moderate complements to Abe, who would be useful in softening Abe’s image ahead of the upper house elections in 2013.

The most notable thing about his tenure at the foreign ministry was its length: Kishida stayed in the role until August 2017, making him the longest-serving FM (with the exception of Yoshida Shigeru, who served simultaneously as PM + FM).

But he was largely executing a grand strategy drafted and run out of the Kantei. As an anonymous source said in a Sankei “report card” of Kishida’s first year, “Since foreign policy is decided by the Kantei, the colorless and transparent Kishida is easy to use.”

As a Hiroshima native, Kishida tried to advance limits on nuclear weapons, but it seemed that these efforts continually ran up against the reality of Japan’s reliance on the US nuclear umbrella.

This also neutralized the leader of the party’s most moderate faction, whose honorary chairman (Koga) happened to be one of Abe’s most vocal critics.

By 2014, there were regular reports of Kochikai members lamenting how Kishida had been silenced by Abe – and even opposition lawmakers were calling upon him to serve as a brake on Abe’s ambitions.

These tensions became increasingly apparent during the debate over collective self-defense in 2014-2015, when Koga was increasingly vocal about Abe’s policies while Kishida had to toe the government line.

The Kantei would also undercut him. For example, as the Kantei was exploring talks with North Korea, Kishida assured Secretary Kerry that the US would be kept informed. Kantei sources openly rejected this, stressing Japan’s autonomy.

When Abe reshuffled his cabinet in 2014, there were hopes that Kishida would be the secretary-general, but Abe felt that keeping him in position better suited his political needs.

There were hopes in 2015 that Kishida would challenge Abe in the LDP leadership election that year, as the party’s moderates hoped to regain relevance and saw Abe as a useful foil.

Kishida, however, was reportedly spooked by his experience during the Kato rebellion, did not want to challenge Abe directly and preferred to wait until Abe was exiting office.

As Kishida seems poised to take the premiership thanks to an alliance with Abe and his hand-picked candidate, it’s strange to think just how much his patron Koga and many in his faction wanted him to run against Abe.

This is not the Kochikai restoration that they had hoped for.

None of this is to say that Kishida wasn’t a successful foreign minister. He was at least as tireless as Abe in building relationships with foreign interlocutors, taking 59 trips to 93 destinations, traveling a total of 1.14mn kms.

He had some meaningful successes, including most notably for the Hiroshima-born Kishida, working to lay the groundwork for Obama’s 2016 visit to Hiroshima.

I would also count the 2015 agreement with South Korea as a success for Kishida at least, in that he worked assiduously with his South Korean counterpart to come to terms and secured what was probably the best possible deal given political circumstances.

The failure to make the deal stick has less to do with Kishida than with the leaders of both countries – but that’s a separate matter.

Given the constraints he faced, he performed his role well and the experience certainly helped round out his resume. (Between Kono and Kishida, both have accumulated expertise and experience in a fairly wide range of areas.)

Finally, in August 2017, as Abe reshuffled his cabinet in a bid to stabilize his slumping approval ratings, Kishida requested that Abe shift him to a party post, so Abe made him the LDP’s policy chief, one of the “big three” posts.

Upon assuming the post, Kishida stressed his differences with Abe. “The PM’s a conservative…a hawk. I am a liberal, a dove.” He laid this out to stress the importance of balance in politics.

This was only the first example of the many ways in which Kishida tried to stay loyal to Abe while trying to demonstrate his independence and lay the groundwork for a possible run when Abe’s second term ended in September 2018.

During this period, he tried to articulate a “kinder, gentler Abenomics,” talked about fiscal consolidation, hinted that he would oppose constitutional revision, and called for party reform and bottom-up politics.

In the end, Kishida decided not to challenge Abe as he sought a third term in 2018 and threw his faction’s weight behind him, leaving Ishiba facing long odds as the only challenger.

His decision not to challenge Abe after flirting with a run led his faction members to despair of his independence and fortitude.

In April 2019, Koga, patron of Kishida’s faction, belittled Kishida’s post-Abe chances and suggested that Suga might be the right candidate to succeed him. Not the last time Koga would question his successor’s suitability.

Kishida tried to gain some ground in the post-Abe race when he pushed for a big relief package, but this work was undone when Nikai and Komeito pushed for a broader package that forced the government to rescind and revise a budget.

Of course, by the time Abe resigned, Kishida was completely outmaneuvered by Suga (and Nikai) who sewed up the support of the largest factions within days of Abe’s resignation.

After Suga took over, Kishida was neither in government nor in LDP executive post for the first time in more than a decade. While his appearance in the 2020 leadership election was respectable, it was not obvious that he would get another shot.

That said, his willingness to declare a run against Suga when the PM appeared vulnerable showed seemingly uncharacteristic boldness and certainly helped push Suga (and Nikai) out of office.

So, after all this, who is Kishida? Is he really a dove or a liberal? The ease with which he has shifted to court right-wing votes – and, apparently, cooperate with Takaichi – suggests that he’s no doctrinaire liberal.

Ooshita suggests that Kishida – and the Kochikai more broadly – is not liberal but rather “realist.”

He quotes Kishida: “Realism in the substance of policy, in temperament politeness and humility, tolerance and patience.” (The latter being Ikeda’s motto.) “Additionally, you need to be receptive enough to accept people who think differently.“

For all the debate about whether Abe is a kingmaker, is there a clearer sign of his dominance than Kishida's willingness to jettison his faction's liberal heritage -- after all, as recently as 2018 he hinted at running on protecting Article 9 -- and embrace Abe-ism completely?