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The 44-year-old son of one of Japan’s most famous prime ministers is a narrow favourite to win a crucial ruling party vote this weekend, and become the country’s youngest leader in a century.
Shinjiro Koizumi, who casts himself as a consensus builder and regards John F Kennedy as his political model, is competing with four other candidates to lead the party that has ruled Japan for most of the past 70 years. The party’s reputation however has been hit by low wage growth, persistent inflation and an unprecedented influx of foreign workers.
Saturday’s contest combines votes from 295 sitting MPs with 295 votes representing the rank-and-file Liberal Democratic party membership.
Koizumi, who is married to a TV celebrity and has used his relative youth to promise a revitalisation of the party, is seen as having an advantage with the MPs, as well as the backing of three former leaders. Currently Japan’s agriculture minister, he has tackled a surge in rice prices.
His main rival, conservative hardliner Sanae Takaichi, appeared to be leading in polls of the broader LDP membership, particularly in rural areas.
“Koizumi is young, he has a certain appeal. The question is whether he can actually communicate with young people, or whether he is an old person’s idea of someone who can communicate with young people,” said Tobias Harris, an independent political analyst and founder of Japan Foresight. “His core demographic feels a lot like women in their 60s.”
Takaichi, who would become Japan’s first female premier, is seen as the best chance to win back conservatives who have abandoned the LDP for more radical opposition parties.
Political analysts said Yoshimasa Hayashi, the government’s chief spokesperson who is seen internally as the most qualified candidate, also had a plausible route to victory. Such a result would represent a vote for continuity and, to voters, reflect the LDP’s reluctance to reinvent itself, analysts said.
Koizumi “is popular with the general public. There will be MPs in the LDP who see him as a way to win an election in the future,” said Mieko Nakabayashi, a political scientist at Waseda University.
But she noted that he was eliminated from last year’s LDP leadership race because of concerns about his perceived inexperience.
If Takaichi were eliminated in the first round of voting, a run-off between Koizumi and Hayashi would not be between a conservative and a moderate but between youth and experience, which might favour Hayashi.
“That would change the game completely,” said Nakabayashi.
The LDP, which rules in coalition with the smaller Komeito party, lost its majority in both houses of parliament under outgoing premier Shigeru Ishiba, forcing it to rely on temporary partnerships with opposition parties to approve legislation and budgets.
Support is declining for the party as it loses its conservative base to populist upstart parties and fails to inspire a generation of younger voters struggling with economic insecurity, for which they blame the LDP as the establishment incumbent.
Among the five candidates, Koizumi has spoken most directly about that crisis within the party, said Harris.
“There is one pathway where he really makes changes and makes the party look fresher and modern,” he said. “The other is he’s a coat of paint on a rickety boat and nobody is convinced and the boat takes on more water.”
Among the very first tasks confronting the new prime minister will be a planned visit to Japan on October 27 by US President Donald Trump, whose tariff policies and negotiation tactics have left relations between the allies at their most strained in decades.
Policy divisions between the candidates on fiscal spending and interest rates have also set bond and equity markets on edge, said traders. Yields on long-dated Japanese government bonds could be especially affected by the outcome, analysts at Morgan Stanley said.
