Prime Minister Fumio Kishida marked 932 days in office Monday, tying with Ryutaro Hashimoto as the eighth-longest-serving prime minister in Japan since the end of World War II.
The next one for Kishida to surpass is Nobusuke Kishi, who held office for 1,241 days and ranked seventh among the 35 prime ministers in the postwar period.
To achieve that, Kishida needs to be reelected in the Liberal Democratic Party’s next presidential election in autumn. It is uncertain whether he will win.
“We take it as a result of accumulation of everyday efforts to tackle problems that cannot wait,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said Friday of Kishida’s latest milestone.
“The government will continue making its all-out efforts to work on various domestic and international issues and produce results one by one,” Hayashi added.
Kishida has already surpassed three of his four predecessors in the now-dissolved Kochikai faction, namely Masayoshi Ohira, Zenko Suzuki and Kiichi Miyazawa. The only exception is Hayato Ikeda, who held office for 1,575 days.
Ahead of the LDP election, Kishida apparently aims to shore up public support for his administration by completely defeating the country’s deflation mainly through planned fixed-amount income and residential tax cuts.
On Sunday, he will face a litmus test for his administration in Lower House by-elections that will take place amid unabated public criticism over a slush fund scandal involving several LDP factions that came to light at the end of last year.