In the first post-Upper House edition of Seijigiri, Garrett DeOrio and Ken Worsley discuss how the election results might impact the Abe Cabinet and the upcoming extraordinary session of the Diet.

We start by taking a look at the possibility of current foreign minister Taro Aso replacing Hidenao Nakagawa as LDP Decretary General. Would this be a good move for Aso’s career? With Aso having eyes set on Abe’s position, would he be comfortable having Aso be so close to him?

We move on to discussing how some of the newer candidates might function in the Diet, and use the LDP’s Tomoyo Marukawa and independent Ryuhei Kawada as examples of varying degrees of party support through loyalty.

After that, we consider DPJ leader Ichiro Ozawa’s recent meeting with US Ambassador Thomas Schiffer, and his opposition to renewing Self-Defense support of coalition forces in the ongoing conflict in Afganistan. Does Ozawa run the risk of splitting his own party on this issue? Will he come across as standing up for the will of the people of Japan on this issue? Or will it look like Ozawa is holding up the Diet session and preventing it from moving on to issues that affect people’s lives?

That brings us to Defense Minister Yuriko Koike, who we believe will survive the upcoming Cabinet re-shuffle. We discuss the possibility of her becoming Prime Minister in the future, and speculate on who might replace Abe. We agree that for the sake of his political future, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki needs to distance himself from Abe.

The day after we recorded, the Nikkei announced that Shiozaki “is expected to be replaced in the upcoming cabinet reshuffle slated for Aug. 27.”

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