Overview
- Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi unveiled a party executive reshuffle that largely preserved senior figures such as vice president Taro Aso and secretary general Shunichi Suzuki to maintain stability within the Liberal Democratic Party.
- Hiroshi Kajiyama was named head of the LDP General Council while Takayuki Kobayashi stayed as policy chief and Hideki Murai took the party Diet affairs role previously held by Kajiyama.
- The reshuffle kept Yasutoshi Nishimura and Koichi Hagiuda in key positions despite both having been implicated in a high-profile late-2023 political slush-funds scandal, a choice likely to draw opposition criticism and public scrutiny.
- Changes in the House of Councillors leadership, where Masaji Matsuyama replaced Junichi Ishii with Kazuhiko Aoki as secretary general, could heighten intra-party friction because the coalition lacks an upper-house majority needed to pass the government’s agenda.
- Separately, the Japan Air Self-Defense Force said a Global Hawk reconnaissance drone is presumed crashed after debris was found off Tottori and House Speaker Eisuke Mori said he would relay Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s request that Takaichi visit Kyiv.