Ishiba’s task: make Japan’s vicious cycle a virtuous one

In Europe, we are better at producing reports recommending what needs to be done than at producing political leaders capable of doing it.

On September 9 one of Europe’s most respected statesmen, Mario Draghi, a former president of the European Central Bank and former prime minister of Italy, produced a huge study of Europe’s economic weaknesses and how to remedy them, which promises to gather dust on the shelves as neither Germany nor France nor any other major European Union country has a government strong enough to act on it.

Japan is also in the habit of forming committees to produce recommendations few of which are implemented. A prime example was Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s Council on New Form of Capitalism Realization, which was set up shortly after he took office in 2021.

It would be unfair to say that this council achieved nothing during its three years of operation, but few, if any, ordinary citizens would say that Japan now has a “new form of capitalism” – or even that it is moving noticeably toward one.

That lack of noticeable change is a big reason why the public approval ratings of Prime Minister Kishida and his government hit record lows, and why he was forced to recognize that he should not run for re-election as leader of the Liberal Democratic Party on September 27.

Nonetheless, while Japan shares our European habit of producing fine but un-implemented recommendations it is at least changing its leader. This makes it a good moment to ask what newly elected Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba might be able to do.

Normally the cynical but well-justified answer is: not much. Faces may change but the political party – the long-ruling Liberal Democrats – and the system the party inhabits does not. This time,