Japan's Leader Gets Stuck in the Revolving Door

Defying the odds, Ishiba is still PM. Will the LDP push for a recall election?

- Gearoid Reidy

The idea of the "revolving door" at the Kantei, the offices of Japan's prime minister, is a longstanding trope of English-language coverage of politics here.

It became part of the parlance in the 1990s, amid US impatience at how frequently things changed at the top while the country suffered successive financial crises. The phrase carries an unpleasant colonial snootiness, a sense that the leader of one of the world's biggest economies does not matter, that they will be gone so soon we do not need to bother remembering their name.

Right now, however, it's an accurate metaphor: In Mr. Shigeru Ishiba, Japan has a leader who is stuck inside that revolving door, spinning round and round since July's Upper House election defeat. It's anyone's guess where he will emerge – outside the building or back in the seat of power.

After his shock victory in 2024's vote to lead the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) that dominates Japanese politics, Mr. Ishiba seemed to be following the usual pattern of short-lived premiers: brief hope, swift disillusionment and then stepping down. The Lower House defeat in 2024 had left him running a minority government, and a hammering in Tokyo's assembly elections had him on the ropes. Being without a majority in either house of Parliament seemed to seal his fate; surely no prime minister could avoid responsibility for such a drubbing.