Speakers:

• Michael Cucek (Adjunct Professor, Department of Political Science,Temple University Japan campus and Adjunct Fellow at ICAS)
  YouTube, SlideShare

Overview

A half a year ago, the prospect of an LDP presidential election did not inspire flights of the imagination. After all, what could break the hammerlock the top three party factions – the Hosoda, the Aso and the Nikai – had upon the process of selecting the party leader? Who or what could outmaneuver the wily LDP Secretary-General Nikai Toshihiro, whom two prime ministers in a row found themselves powerless to budge from his post at the apex of the party’s secretariat?

Over the summer of 2021, however, several factors became catalysts for changes in the party’s internal power structures. A presidential campaign like any other had unfolded, with the faction leaders and the party’s senior officials left gasping as erstwhile subordinates have run away with the narrative and the initiative. So many assumptions about how the LDP “works” have been challenged that the unprecedented situation of half of the candidates being women has been largely subsumed.

What will we have learned from this election? Michael Cucek will offer his views, along with suggestions of avenues of future research into the contemporary LDP.

Speakers:

Michael Cucek

Adjunct Professor, Department of Political Science,Temple University Japan campus and Adjunct Fellow at ICAS

Michael Cucek is an Adjunct Professor at Temple University, Japan Campus teaching courses on the history of Japan to 1900, history of China to 1900, Japanese politics, U.S. policy & behavior in East Asia, international politics and the history of racial representation and is an Adjunct Fellow at ICAS. An alumnus of Stanford University with graduate studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara and Columbia University, Mr. Cucek has lived in Tokyo since 1994. For 15 years he was an employee of a boutique political risk research institute; he now provides independent consultation services to the diplomatic and financial communities on Japanese politics and government policy. Mr. Cucek is also an Adjunct Professor at Waseda University, teaching courses on Japanese politics and the history of Japanese media. He is the co-host of Langley Esquire’s monthly political analysis podcast Tokyo on Fire and has been a contributor to Tokyo Review, Foreign Policy, the East Asia Forum, Al-Jazeera and Newsweek Japan.