Shigeru Ishiba

Instead, it recommended replacing the death penalty with sentences of life without parole.

The panel also emphasized the need for greater transparency and, in November 2024, submitted its findings to the Minister of Justice and Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba.

It urged the government to impose an indefinite moratorium on executions until a comprehensive review of the legal system could be completed and any necessary reforms enacted.

The government, however, rejected those recommendations.

But it is worth thinking about because the debate happens, the debate that's happening, it's relevant now.

happens within the LDP, which is not monolithic at all, you know, which has various different factions who believe different things and look no further than, you know, the past 18 months, two years to the difference between the Ishiba administration and, you know, the Takeichi administration, even as it relates to, let's say, to immigration and to the foreign population in Japan.

So that's one thing.

And then two, kind of riffing on something that I said earlier, it's, you know, Japan's relevance to the world is something that I'm quite passionate about.

The International Monetary Fund projects that Japan's GDP will slip to the sixth place next year, falling behind India and Britain.

Meanwhile, former Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba expressed concern over Takeuchi's political course, criticizing her government and right-wing forces for a lack of honesty in addressing Japan's wartime history.

For more, we're joined by Rong Ying, Chair Professor at the School of International Studies and Sichuan University.

Thank you so much for joining us, Professor Rong.

Unfortunately, it seems that she is doing more or less the same way.

So still hopeful in terms of approval rate, but more and more people are disappointed, are losing hope that she can make a real difference in changing the future, changing Japan's growth and development.

And former Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has criticized that the cabinet repeatedly invokes the severely worsening security environment to justify their military expansion without reflecting on the root causes behind such tensions.

So to what extent is Japan's security policy under Takeichi creating a self-reinforcing cycle in which military expansion fuels tensions, and those tensions are then used to justify further expansion?