Kishida and Obuchi Snapshots

Fumio Kishida: He inherited the leadership of his faction from Makoto Koga, his mentor. Koga, now retired, was one of the most prominent members of the LDP’s left wing and has strong China ties. Kishida is a self-professed moderate with no particular ties to China. This generational shift as well as the passing of the China/Taiwan schism can be seen across the LDP, and can be broadly summarized as the consequence of the passing of the generation with personal wartime experience—Koga never knew his father, who is enshrined at Yasukuni—and the economic and military rise of China. I could not find any specific ties to particular industries, but this is not surprising for a third-generation Diet member.

Yuko Obuchi: Obuchi, like her father, is actively pro-China, and criticized Prime Minister Abe’s visit to the Yasukuni Shrine. She cannot be tied to any particular strand of economic, fiscal or national security thought within the LDP, but she is a social liberal. I could not find any specific ties to particular industries, but this is not surprising for a third-generation Diet member. She is pretty much finished as METI Minister, given her inability in the Thursday committee session to come up with a coherent story for the political financing irregularities even though she had several days to question her staff and construct an apology-defense. This will set her political career back a decade.