What Fumio Kishida’s Premiership Means for Japan

The designated head of government said he aims to put in place measures to boost people's incomes, for instance, by tweaking tax laws in such a way that if companies pay higher wages, they would receive tax benefits.

Kishida also wants to protect small and medium-sized enterprises from the market power and dominance of large multinational corporations.

“Companies with many suppliers should pay attention,” said Junichi Makino, chief economist of the brokerage firm SMBC Nikko.

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Kishida’s other ideas also call for a strongly expansionary fiscal policy, including a university endowment fund of 10 trillion yen for research and technology development, and his future concept of a “digital garden city-state concept” that seeks to boost rural areas through the use of advanced technologies.

In a bid to fulfill environmental pledges and ensure climate neutrality by 2050, Kishida calls for a “realistic assessment” for restarting and building new nuclear reactors.

LDP’s ‘dovish wing’

Between 2013 and 2017, Kishida served as foreign minister and, for a time, defense minister.

The faction he leads is considered the “dovish wing” of the LDP, advocating for the nation's pacifist constitution and against the nuclear arming of Japan.

Kishida himself is from Hiroshima and several members of his family died when the atomic bomb was dropped on the city in 1945. In one of his books, he advocates for a world without nuclear weapons.

But China’s assertive foreign policy, in Kishida’s own words, has set off a “strong alarm,” prompting Tokyo to ally with like-minded countries like the US, Australia, and India to counter Beijing's growing political, military, and economic clout.

Still, Kishida’s focus would not only be on Japan’s military capability — even though he wants to expand the nation's missile defenses — but also on economic security, with an emphasis on securing supply chains for strategically important components such as semiconductors.

Reported by Martin Fritz from Tokyo.