key takeaways
- With Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru refusing to resign from the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) leadership and the premiership, he faces a growing movement to remove him from office.
- While Ishiba could still quit voluntarily in the coming days, his defiance means that the LDP could invoke emergency measures for removing a leader for the first time.
- The longer that Ishiba stays as intra-party criticism grows, the greater the likelihood that this crisis triggers an extreme outcome, whether fracturing the party or prompting a no-confidence motion or snap election that produces a change of government.
Japan Foresight 