Shigeru Ishiba

Biography

Shigeru Ishiba was born in 1957 in Tokyo but grew up in Tottori Prefecture, where his father, Jirō Ishiba, was governor and later a member of the House of Councillors and a cabinet minister. He studied law at Keio University, graduating in 1979, and worked at Mitsui Bank until 1983, when he joined the secretariat of Kakuei Tanaka's faction of the Liberal Democratic Party.

He won a Tottori seat in the House of Representatives in 1986, at 29 the youngest member of the chamber, and specialised in agriculture and defence. In 1993 he backed the no-confidence motion against the Miyazawa cabinet and left the LDP for the Japan Renewal Party and then the New Frontier Party, returning to the LDP in 1997.

He headed the Japan Defense Agency from 2002 to 2004, when Japanese troops were sent to Iraq, and was minister of defense in 2007-2008 and of agriculture in 2008-2009. He chaired the LDP's Policy Research Council while the party was in opposition, narrowly lost the 2012 leadership race to Shinzo Abe and served as his secretary-general, then as minister for regional revitalisation from 2014 to 2016. He also lost leadership bids in 2008, 2018 and 2020.

In September 2024 he won the LDP presidency in a runoff against Sanae Takaichi and became prime minister on 1 October. The snap election he called that month cost the ruling coalition its lower-house majority, and after it also lost its upper-house majority in July 2025 he announced his resignation; Takaichi succeeded him in October 2025.