Fumio Kishida

Born into a political family and raised partly in New York, Kishida worked in finance before winning a House seat in 1993. He became Japan's longest-serving Foreign Minister under Shinzo Abe (2012-2017), then led the LDP's moderate Kōchikai faction. After losing the 2020 party leadership race to Yoshihide Suga, he won in 2021 and took office as prime minister that October, promising a "new model of capitalism" with higher wages. His tenure delivered Japan's strongest wage growth in three decades and saw him authorize a 65% military budget hike, sanction Russia over Ukraine, and sign new security pacts across the Indo-Pacific. He survived a grenade attack while campaigning in April 2023. A year later, tangled in his party's fundraising corruption scandal and facing single-digit approval numbers, Kishida announced he would not seek re-election - stepping down in September 2024 after helping Shigeru Ishiba win the leadership race.