The Dark Side of the Prime Minister’s Mind Runs Deep”… “That Man” Moves to “Down Kishida” for Blitzkrieg Visit to Ukraine

Prime Minister Kishida has been looking strangely energetic lately. Is he really in good spirits or ……” (LDP official)

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, 65, talking on a certain day, avoiding the cameras of the press. On the back of his phone is a Senja-fuda-style sticker with the four characters “Carp Boy” and “Fumio Kishida” from the Hiroshima Toyo Carp.

Hiroshima is, needless to say, the Kishida family’s hometown and their own ground. He is an avid Carp fan and threw out the first pitch at Mazda Stadium in 2016, and at the first pitch of the WBC game against Korea on March 10, he threw out a “one-bang pitch,” not unlike a member of the Kaisei High School baseball team, but his love for the Carp is probably no lie.

Prime Minister Kishida paid a surprise visit to Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, and held talks with President Zelensky. In the midst of the chaotic international situation, the G7 Hiroshima Summit to be held this May is a very important moment. Prime Minister Kishida will be making a triumphant return to Hiroshima, which holds more fond memories for him than any other place, and he is surely planning to decorate the “hometown of the Kishida family” in a triumphant manner.

However, what Kishida will be displaying at the summit may not be “brocade” but “flower arrangement. To put it bluntly, Kishida’s administration is in shambles. Although the Cabinet’s approval rating has recovered, Kishida’s biggest obstacle is that he has no allies. This is one of the reasons why his eldest son, Shotaro, who has been installed as his secretary, has not been removed from office, no matter how much he is bashed.

A secretary to an LDP lawmaker said, “The reason they don’t cut Shoutarou is because they don’t want to lose him.

He is the only person we can trust. It seems that Mr. Kishida is harboring a deep darkness that even we don’t understand.

The Abe Cabinet was also derided as a “cabinet of friends,” but at least there were cabinet members who could be consulted in times of trouble. Prime Minister Kishida, on the other hand, has fallen into a state of isolation, partly because of the “laying the groundwork” of those around him, according to one of his secretaries. A former secretary of the Cabinet continued, “At the time of Mr. Abe, he was a member of the Kiyowakai.

At the time of Mr. Abe, well-connected members of the Seiwa-kai liaised with other factions to prevent friction between the two. However, such personnel are missing from the upper echelons of the Kishida faction (Koikekai). The key person, Takumi Nemoto, the secretary general of the Kishida faction, is not functioning well. Young members of the Kishida faction ridiculed him, saying, ‘The only thing Nemoto-san can decide is the lunches at the regular meetings (the faction’s dinner meetings).

The LDP is hoping to unite in the run-up to the April local elections, but the Diet is currently in a state of chaos over Sanae Takaichi, 62, the Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry in charge of economic security, who has been answering questions about internal documents at the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. For Prime Minister Kishida, this has become an unnecessary source of worry.

The LDP heavyweights must be thinking that it would be a bad idea to have internal strife before the local elections,” he said. The summit to be held after the election may be the signal for Kishida’s ouster.

Journalist Tetsuo Suzuki analyzed the situation.

Prime Minister Kishida has no policy agenda that he wants to publicly announce. The only thing he is doing is to hide the issues in a clever way. On the other hand, because he is not authoritarian, he is easy for the bureaucrats in the haze-seki to control. The fact that tax hikes and arms buildups are being promoted and discussions about new nuclear power plants are being raised is probably the result of following the bureaucrats’ choreography. Naturally, the LDP members cannot overlook this.

So who will take the lead in “Kishida’s downfall”? Mr. Suzuki continues.

Former Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide (74). He and Aso Taro, 82, the deputy prime minister, and Mogi Toshimitsu, 67, the secretary-general, are the “three leaders” of the party, and Kan is the most prominent member of the “anti-premier faction” in the party. With an eye on the presidential election next fall, there is a possibility that Kan will take some kind of action after the summit.

What is really on the mind of Prime Minister Kishida, who is under siege? (Some titles in the text are omitted.)