Sanae Takaichi, president of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party, was officially elected as Japan's 105th prime minister on the 18th. The House of Representatives convened a plenary session on the afternoon of the 18th and nominated Takaichi, the LDP president, as the 105th prime minister. Major Japanese outlets reported that "Prime Minister Takaichi will immediately form a second Cabinet tonight and begin official duties."
Prime Minister Takaichi became Japan's first female prime minister in constitutional history in Oct. last year. Then on the 23rd of last month, just over three months after taking office, she took a political gamble by dissolving the House of Representatives. The calculation was to break through the limits of the first Cabinet, which had a weak support base, and secure firm control of state affairs. The result was a resounding success. In the general election held on the 8th, the LDP scored a record landslide, sweeping more than two-thirds of all seats. With this, Prime Minister Takaichi quelled checks from the party's nonmainstream factions and established an undisputed "Takaichi dominant system."
The most striking point is the personnel makeup of the second Cabinet. Breaking the convention of replacing some ministers for renewal when returning to power, Prime Minister Takaichi kept all ministers from the first Cabinet in their posts. The move is seen as an attempt to ensure continuity in governance and to push key policy tasks forward quickly by riding the momentum of the election victory. It also appears to reflect a pragmatic judgment to save even the time needed to vet new appointees.
Experts singled out East Asian security and whether to revise the Constitution as the clear top priorities the second Takaichi Cabinet must tackle. Prime Minister Takaichi has presented herself as "Shinzo Abe's successor," showing a hardline conservative bent. In particular, she is firmly determined to amend the "pacifist Constitution (Article 9)," which has not been revised once since it was promulgated in 1946. The current Article 9 stipulates the renunciation of war and the prohibition of maintaining armed forces. Prime Minister Takaichi seeks to explicitly state the existence of the Self-Defense Forces to eliminate constitutional disputes and elevate the Self-Defense Forces into a de facto military. If the debate on constitutional revision bears fruit, Japan could, for the first time in roughly 80 years since the end of the Pacific War, effectively move toward becoming a "war-capable state."
A concrete security policy roadmap is already in place. The Takaichi Cabinet is rushing to expedite early revisions of the three key security documents, including the National Security Strategy, for boosting national defense capabilities. It also plans to sharply increase defense (defense budget) spending and ease arms export rules to foster the defense industry at a national level. Bills with strong nationalist overtones, such as strengthening intelligence-gathering functions and enacting a national flag desecration offense, are also on the agenda. This is expected to gain further momentum through alignment with conservative opposition parties such as Nippon Ishin.