Behind Kishida’s second Cabinet shuffle

Japan’s widely anticipated Cabinet shuffle has revealed 11 new faces in the 19-person line-up, as Prime Minister Fumio Kishida looks for ways to freshen up his government’s image amid poor approval ratings that dropped to a low of 33.1 last December, before ticking up a notch lately. While the increased presence of women in his team was long expected, the surprise element of the shuffle, the second since Mr Kishida took office in October 2021, was his switching out of his foreign and defence ministers. Although their replacements are regarded as equally competent, the changes suggest that Mr Kishida has an eye not only on his public ratings, but also on the competing factions in his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

It is widely accepted that democratic governments need to balance competing interests in the formation of a Cabinet. A prime minister, particularly one whose grasp on power is as tenuous as Mr Kishida’s seems to be, needs to balance region, gender, ideology and inner-party affiliations. That said, his decision to increase the presence of women in his Cabinet from two to five – including Ms Yoko Kamikawa as Japan’s first female foreign minister in decades – will go down well in a nation where the ratio of women to men is 100 to 94. Abroad, too; the World Economic Forum ranks Japan 125th among 146 countries in gender equality.