The Second Kishida Cabinet (Reshuffled) is the 101st

Cabinet of Japan The is the chief executive body of the government of Japan. It consists of the prime minister, who is appointed by the emperor after being designated by the National Diet, and up to nineteen other members, called Ministers of State. The prime ...

and was formed by

Fumio Kishida is a Japanese politician serving as Prime Minister of Japan and president of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) since 2021. A member of the House of Representatives, he previously served as Minister for Foreign Affairs from 2012 to 2017 and ...

, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party and

Prime Minister of Japan The prime minister of Japan (Japanese: 内閣総理大臣, Hepburn: ''Naikaku Sōri-Daijin'') is the head of government of Japan. The prime minister chairs the Cabinet of Japan and has the ability to select and dismiss its Ministers of Stat ...

. The government is a coalition between the Liberal Democratic Party and the

Komeito , formerly New Komeito and abbreviated NKP, is a conservative political party in Japan founded by lay members of the Buddhist Japanese new religious movement Soka Gakkai in 1964. Since 2012, it has served in government as the junior coalitio ...

and controls both the upper and

lower house A lower house is one of two Debate chamber, chambers of a Bicameralism, bicameral legislature, the other chamber being the upper house. Despite its official position "below" the upper house, in many legislatures worldwide, the lower house has co ...

s of the

National Diet The is the national legislature of Japan. It is composed of a lower house, called the House of Representatives (Japan), House of Representatives (, ''Shūgiin''), and an upper house, the House of Councillors (Japan), House of Councillors (, ...

. It succeeded the

Second Kishida Cabinet The Second Kishida Cabinet is the 101st Cabinet of Japan and was formed by Fumio Kishida, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party and Prime Minister of Japan. The government is a coalition between the Liberal Democratic Party and the Komeito a ...

on 10 August 2022. The Reshuffled 101st Cabinet was formed following the

assassination Assassination is the murder of a prominent or important person, such as a head of state, head of government, politician, world leader, member of a royal family or CEO. The murder of a celebrity, activist, or artist, though they may not have ...

Shinzo Abe Shinzo Abe ( ; ja, 安倍晋三, Hepburn romanization, Hepburn: , ; 21 September 1954 – 8 July 2022) was a Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Liberal Democratic Party (Japan), President of the Lib ...

, the former Prime Minister, which caused low

approval ratings An opinion poll, often simply referred to as a survey or a poll (although strictly a poll is an actual election) is a human research survey of public opinion from a particular sample. Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinions ...

due to alleged ties to the

Unification Church The Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, widely known as the Unification Church, is a new religious movement, whose members are called Unificationists, or "Moonies". It was officially founded on 1 May 1954 under the name Holy Spi ...

Background

Announcement

On 6 August 2022 in

Hiroshima is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 1,199,391. The gross domestic product (GDP) in Greater Hiroshima, Hiroshima Urban Employment Area, was US$61.3 billion as of 2010. Kazumi Matsui h ...

, Prime Minister

announced his decision to reshuffle his second cabinet on 10 August, after attending the 77th anniversary memorial ceremony of the

atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki The United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, respectively. The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the onl ...

. The reshuffle had previously been planned for early September 2022. Kishida explained that the purpose of the reshuffle was to focus on issues like the

Covid-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

, global inflation,

war in Ukraine The following is a list of major conflicts fought by Ukraine, by Ukrainian people or by regular armies during periods when independent states existed on the modern territory of Ukraine, from the Kyivan Rus' times to the present day. It also i ...

and Taiwan Strait tensions.

Shinzo Abe's assassination and the Unification Church

The reshuffle was widely reported as a response to the local criticism of ties between Kishida's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the

(UC), following the

of the former prime minister,

, on 8 July 2022. The suspected gunman revealed that his mother went bankrupt for donating most of the family's wealth and assets to the UC. Although the suspect originally planned to target the leader of the UC,

Hak Ja Han Hak Ja Han (Korean: 한학자, Hanja: 韓鶴子) (born January 6, 1943, lunar calendar which is February 10, 1943, Gregorian) is a Korean religious leader. Her late husband Sun Myung Moon was the founder of the Unification movement, also known ...

, he switched to Abe because he was unable to approach Han, and he considered Abe as one of the most influential supporters of the UC. The revelation renewed local interest in the allegedly long-standing relationship between the LDP and the UC since Abe's maternal grandfather

Nobusuke Kishi was a Japanese bureaucrat and politician who was Prime Minister of Japan from 1957 to 1960. Known for his exploitative rule of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo in Northeast China in the 1930s, Kishi was nicknamed the "Monster of the Shō ...

's tenure, as well as accusations against the UC's practices of collecting donations fraudulently, so-called "

spiritual sales Fortune telling fraud, also called the bujo or egg curse scam, is a type of confidence trick, based on a claim of secret or occult information. The basic feature of the scam involves diagnosing the victim (the "mark") with some sort of secret p ...

". Public opinions on Kishida's decision to hold a state funeral for Abe on 27 September were also divided. According to a poll conducted by

NHK , also known as NHK, is a Japanese public broadcaster. NHK, which has always been known by this romanized initialism in Japanese, is a statutory corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television license fee. NHK operates two terrestr ...

from 5 to 7 August, the approval rating of Kishida's previous cabinet was 46%, down by 13% from a similar poll taken three weeks prior. Also 82% of respondents were not satisfied by the lawmakers' explanations of their ties to the UC.

Kishida's responses regarding the Unification Church

Kishida stressed that the new cabinet would have all members closely examined with regard to their relationship with the UC, but media reported that at least 30 members in the reshuffled cabinet were still related to the UC to various degrees. One of the ministers who remained in office after this reshuffle,

Daishiro Yamagiwa is a Japanese politician of the Liberal Democratic Party, a member of the House of Representatives (2003-2005: Southern Kanto proportional representation block, 2005-2009 and 2012–present: Kanagawa 18th district) in the Diet (national legisla ...

, received media scrutiny in particular for not disclosing his ties with the UC to the public before the reshuffle, as well as his ambiguous responses when being confronted by reporters about his ties to the UC. Kishida accepted Yamagiwa's resignation on 24 October 2022 as the minister following more evidences of Yamagiwa's ties to the UC surfaced and intense criticisms from the opposition parties in the parliament for his failure to remember his participation in events held by the UC and meetings with top UC officials, including the UC leader Hak Ja Han. After the cabinet reshuffle, a poll conducted from 20 to 21 August by ''

Mainichi Shimbun The is one of the major newspapers in Japan, published by In addition to the ''Mainichi Shimbun'', which is printed twice a day in several local editions, Mainichi also operates an English language news website called ''The Mainichi'' (previ ...

'' showed that the approval rating of the new cabinet dropped to 36% by 16%, with 64% of respondents viewing the ties to the UC as a very serious problem. Kishida promised to cut ties with the UC and help victims of manipulative sales by the UC.

Taro Kono is a Japanese politician serving as the Minister of Digital Affairs of Japan since August 2022. A member of the Liberal Democratic Party, he previously served as Minister for Administrative Reform and Regulatory Reform from 2015 to 2016 and fro ...

, the minister of digital affairs who was also given the special mission for consumer affairs and food safety, established a spiritual sales review committee in the

Consumer Affairs Agency The is an administrative agency of the Cabinet Office of Japan responsible for consumer protection established on September 1, 2009. Under the law passed on December 10, 2022, the Consumer Affairs Agency now also has jurisdiction over the issue ...

on 29 August. This committee initially elected 8 experts in the UC matter including former prosecutor Shiori Kanno and

Masaki Kito is a Japanese attorney at law who specializes in consumer affairs, Securities fraud, investment frauds and cases involving Cult, religious cults, especially Aum Shinrikyo, Aleph (formerly known as Aum Shinrikyo) and Unification church. He regular ...

, a lawyer representing the

National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales The (abbreviated to ) is a non-profit anti-cult association established in May 1987, comprising about 300 lawyers in Japan. It is specialized in providing legal assistance for victims of cult-related frauds, known as in Japan, from religious org ...

which has been providing legal aid for victims and reporting on the anti-social issues of the UC since 1987. The committee was scheduled to hold publicly-viewable weekly online meetings. All committee members offered suggestions for strengthening regulations or enacting preventive measures against spiritual sales.

Election of the Prime Minister

List of Ministers

Cabinet

Citation of this table: List of Second Kishida Cabinet (Reshuffled) Members

Changes

* October 24, 2022 – Economic Revitalization Minister

resigned and was replaced by Shigeyuki Goto. * November 11, 2022 – Minister of Justice

Yasuhiro Hanashi is a Japanese politician who served as the Minister of Justice (Japan), Minister of Justice of Japan from August 2022 to November 2022. A member of the Liberal Democratic Party (Japan), Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), he also serves in the House ...

resigned and was replaced by

Ken Saitō is a member of the Liberal Democratic Party (Japan), Liberal Democratic Party serving in the Japanese House of Representatives (Japan), House of Representatives. He served as the Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (Japan), Minister ...

. * November 20, 2022 – Interior Minister Minoru Terada resigned and was replaced by

Takeaki Matsumoto is a Japanese politician who served as Minister for Foreign Affairs in 2011. A native of Tokyo and graduate of the University of Tokyo, he was elected to the House of Representatives for the first time in 2000 after running unsuccessfully as an i ...

. * December 27, 2022 – Reconstruction Minister

Kenya Akiba thumb is a Japanese politician of the Liberal Democratic Party, a member of the House of Representatives in the Diet (national legislature). A native of Miyagi Prefecture, he attended Chuo University , commonly referred to as or , is a pri ...

resigned and was replaced by

Hiromichi Watanabe is a Japanese politician of the Liberal Democratic Party (Japan), Liberal Democratic Party, a member of the House of Representatives of Japan, House of Representatives in the Diet of Japan, Diet (national legislature). A native of Matsudo, Matsu ...

Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary and Director-General of the Cabinet Legislation Bureau

Special Adviser to the Prime Minister

State Ministers State may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * '' State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State * ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States * ''Our ...

Parliamentary Vice-Ministers

References

External links

Pages at the Prime Minister's Official Residence of Japan (English website):
List of Ministers November 2021 –
{{DEFAULTSORT:Second Kishida Cabinet (Reshuffled) Cabinet of Japan 2022 establishments in Japan Cabinets established in 2022 2022 in Japanese politics

Kishida is a Japanese politician serving as Prime Minister of Japan and president of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) since 2021. A member of the House of Representatives, he previously served as Minister for Foreign Affairs from 2012 to 2017 and ...