Japans Fumio Kishida Sees Approval Rating Rebound

The improvement comes after Kishida’s approval rating suffered a severe blow following the assassination of his revered predecessor Shinzo Abe in July 2022 by an assassin who was enraged over the Unification Church, a controversial South Korean syncretic religious movement. Subsequent revelations of extensive contacts between Kishida’s Liberal Democratic Party and the church deeply shook public confidence in the prime minister.

While Kishida’s approval rating is nowhere near where it was pre-assassination, it has increased 13 percentage points to 32% since reaching a low of 19% on Feb. 3. His disapproval rating fell 15 points during that period, from 68% to 53%.

Experts say the improvement can be traced to his new national security strategy and defense buildup program unveiled in December aimed at countering China and North Korea. It also comes as Kishida has mended ties with South Korea despite serious historical grievances in the face of those national security threats.

China’s close relations with Russia and Japan’s strong support for Ukraine have underscored to Japanese voters the importance of having strong relations with the United States and other allies, said Ken Moriyasu, a diplomatic correspondent at Nikkei Asia.

“Japanese voters are looking at Xi’s aggressive actions and finding they trust Kishida’s strategy because it is very much in line with the United States,” he said.

Allied governments praised Japan’s new national security strategy, which set up Kishida well for visits to the United States and other G-7 countries in January as the group’s president for the year. Kishida also made a surprise visit to Ukraine in March — a trip that occurred at the same time that Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Moscow.

“He’s been very steady, very articulate, very strongly focused on the war in Ukraine and what it means for systemic stability around the world,” said Sheila Smith, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who focuses on Japan. “That’s a position that the Japanese public have been consistently in support of, and there’s been a real appreciation for Kishida the statesman.”

Taiwan at top of the agenda at G-7 summit 

This weekend’s summit provides a marquee opportunity for Kishida to reinforce his foreign policy approach by focusing on East Asia’s most dangerous political fault line: Taiwan.

“Taiwan is the most important topic of the upcoming G-7,” said Moriyasu, noting that a communique from a G-7 foreign ministers’ meeting held last month ahead of the summit called peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait “an indispensable element in security and prosperity in the international community.”

“When historians look back at the Hiroshima summit, they will remember it as the time when the G-7 made it unequivocally clear that the Taiwan Strait is not a domestic Chinese issue, but a matter of international concern,” said Moriyasu.

Recasting Chinese aggression toward Taiwan as the same sort of fundamental challenge to the international liberal order as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine helps align European and Japanese interests and signal mutual commitment to preserving the global system.

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