Overview
- On Wednesday, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi largely retained the Liberal Democratic Party's top team, keeping Taro Aso as vice president and Shunichi Suzuki as secretary general to show internal unity.
- Takaichi is expected to maintain key cabinet ministers, with reports saying Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama will stay in place to preserve continuity in exchange-rate policy.
- The lineup is meant to calm investors after a late-July U.S.-Japan joint foreign exchange intervention that U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent later defended as supporting the yen and U.S. exports.
- Several senior LDP figures who were implicated in a late-2023 slush funds scandal were kept in prominent roles, raising questions about party reform and accountability.
- The reshuffle sets the stage for an extraordinary Diet session likely in early October to debate a two-year cut to the food consumption tax and a contested political reform bill, with the coalition lacking a comfortable upper-house majority.