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Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has decided to resign to make way for a new leader and prevent the ruling Liberal Democratic Party from splitting, according to state broadcaster NHK.
His decision came ahead of a party leadership election on Monday, when a majority of LDP parliamentarians were expected to force Ishiba out of office.
The prime minister’s formal resignation statement is expected at a press conference at 6pm on Sunday, said Japanese media.
Ishiba’s position as prime minister has hung by a thread since July, when his party lost outright control of the upper house of Japan’s parliament.
That setback followed a disastrous lower house election last October — a gamble by Ishiba which backfired and left the LDP without a majority in the lower house.
Ishiba, who edged into power through a leadership election in October 2024, joins a long list of Japanese prime ministers who have lasted only about a year in office.
Despite rising approval ratings in national polls, Ishiba has struggled to secure support. Over the weekend, a series of key allies either privately or publicly said that the LDP needed to find a new leader.
As Ishiba’s political future has grown more uncertain, speculation has focused on which figures in the LDP were most likely to succeed him.
Several MPs told the Financial Times that the leadership would probably be contested by Sanae Takaichi, the conservative who narrowly lost the party leadership race to Ishiba last year, and Shinjiro Koizumi, who Ishiba appointed farm minister to tackle the country’s rice shortage issues.
The LDP has ruled Japan almost continuously since 1955 but has increasingly shown signs of extreme strain as its moderate and conservative factions battle over how to steer the country through a period of steep inflation, demographic decline and a worsening geopolitical environment.
Those strains have been worsened by the recent rise of small, populist opposition parties which have drawn younger voters away from the LDP.
