voted down prefecture and city-level LDP candidates in a show of anger against the scandal-ridden party. Though Ishiba himself has a clean image and is well-liked, legislators from the LDP are sure to have a tougher time convincing electors. The situation is thus ripe for unpredictable electoral outcomes, though Ishiba personally may manage to appe

Shigeru Ishiba is a study in contradictions. Simultaneously more and less hawkish than the rest of his party, his statements on domestic and foreign policy planks read like an exercise in injecting maximum nuance into a given issue. At the same time, his years away from the mainstream have lent his views an unpredictable edge that could lead to big

army’s actions in Korea and China as severe human rights violations, and has endorsed the much-deplored Murayama Statement of war responsibility issued in 1995, which explicitly admitted that the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces were responsible for war crimes in Asia.13 Not only that, he has roundly criticised the wartime government for its decisi