Fumio Kishida

Biography

Fumio Kishida was born in Tokyo in 1957 into a political family from Hiroshima and spent part of his childhood in New York, where his father was posted. After graduating in law from Waseda University he worked for the Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan and then as secretary to his father, a member of the Diet. He won his father's Hiroshima seat in the House of Representatives in 1993 for the Liberal Democratic Party.

Kishida was a minister of state for Okinawa, science and regulatory reform under Shinzo Abe and Yasuo Fukuda in 2007-2008, and from December 2012 to August 2017 he was foreign minister under Abe, the longest tenure of any postwar foreign minister; he helped arrange Barack Obama's 2016 visit to Hiroshima. He took over the party's Kōchikai faction in 2012 and chaired the LDP Policy Research Council from 2017 to 2020. He lost the 2020 party leadership race to Yoshihide Suga but won it in 2021 and became prime minister on 4 October 2021.

As prime minister he led the LDP through the 2021 general election and 2022 upper-house election, announced a large increase in defence spending, imposed sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, improved relations with South Korea and hosted the 2023 G7 summit in Hiroshima. He was unhurt when an explosive device was thrown at him before a campaign speech in Wakayama in April 2023. A party slush-fund scandal and low approval ratings led him to announce in August 2024 that he would not seek re-election as party leader, and he left office on 1 October 2024.