Last Friday, members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party chose its next leader and, by extension, the next prime minister — and for the first time in ages, the house didn’t win.
In other words, the winning candidate was not the choice of a handful of party elites who gamed the system. Instead, a narrow victory went to Shigeru Ishiba, a politician who has long faced headwinds inside the party and who now promises to bring a new brand of leadership to the country.
The outcome left more questions than answers. Are formalized factions inside the LDP dead? Will Ishiba usher in a new era of political reform? Will there be major economic, security or foreign policy changes? Nobody can credibly answer those questions right now, but the way in which he won the election offers some insight as to what the future may hold.
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