Japan under Prime Minister Kishida: The LDP Presidential Election and the Upcoming House of Representatives Election

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October 18, 4-5:00 p.m. California time/ October 19, 8-9:00 a.m. Japan time

The recent LDP Presidential Election ended with Fumio Kishida defeating Taro Kono in the final round to become the LDP President and then Prime Minister of Japan, succeeding Yoshihide Suga, who stepped down amidst mounting political challenges dealing with COVID and its economic consequences. This was a closer election than most other LDP Presidential elections with a great deal of intrigue about how the publicly popular Kono might fare against Kishida, who the senior LDP leadership preferred. What does this election process tell us about Japanese politics today, and how will LDP fare in the upcoming House of Representatives Election? Will Kishida last longer than Suga as Prime Minister, and what do opposition parties have to do to stop the dominant LDP to change Japanese politics? In this webinar, two leading experts on the topic, Rieko Kage (University of Tokyo) and Dan Smith (Columbia University), address these questions, moderated by Kiyoteru Tsutsui, Deputy Director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, where he is also Director of the Japan Program.

Panelists

Rieko Kage is Professor of Political Science at the University of Tokyo.  She graduated from the Faculty of Law at Kyoto University and earned her Ph.D. from the Department of Government, Harvard University.  She is the author of Civic Engagement in Postwar Japan (2011) and Who Judges? Designing Jury Systems in Japan, East Asia, and Europe (2010), both of which have been published from Cambridge University Press, and she has published broadly on issues relating to judicial politics, political participation, and public opinion.  Her most recent article, "War, Democratization, and Generational Cohort Effects on Participation in Japan" is forthcoming from Electoral Studies.

 

 

 

Daniel M. Smith is the Gerald L. Curtis Visiting Associate Professor of Modern Japanese Politics and Foreign Policy in the Department of Political Science and School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. He is the author of Dynasties and Democracy (Stanford University Press, 2018), and numerous articles on Japanese politics, party politics, and elections. He is also a co-editor of the Japan Decides election series. From 2012 to 2013, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) at Stanford University.

 

 

 

 

Moderator

Kiyoteru Tsutsui is the Henri H. and Tomoye Takahashi Professor, Professor of Sociology, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and Deputy Director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, where he is also Director of the Japan Program. He is the author of Rights Make Might: Global Human Rights and Minority Social Movements in Japan (Oxford University Press, 2018), co-editor of Corporate Social Responsibility in a Globalizing World (Oxford University Press, 2016) and co-editor of The Courteous Power: Japan and Southeast Asia in the Indo-Pacific Era (University of Michigan Press, forthcoming 2021).