Credit: Unsplash

Kishida has taken office after the resignation of Yoshihide Suga.

Following the deeply unpopular handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan, as well as the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, the country’s 99th Prime Minister, Yoshihide Suga, announced he would resign from the position after only a year in office. Since then, Japan’s various political parties have been assembling candidates, and today, the new Prime Minister has been chosen. After being elected the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, Fumio Kishida has officially taken office as the 100th Prime Minister of Japan.

Fumio Kishida has formally been announced as Japan's new prime minister, a week after he won the race to lead the ruling partyhttps://t.co/yhJ4XRzppN

— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) October 4, 2021

Kishida previously served as Japan’s Foreign Minister under the 98th Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, from 2012 to 2017. Among his peers, he’s regarded as a stable, consensus-focused politician. His first focus as Prime Minister will be moving the country away from trickle-down economics, a common practice of Abe, which he hopes will lead to a narrowed income gap and greater consumer spending. He is also planning a recovery package to get Japan back into its economic prime after the severe financial damaged it endured from the pandemic.

New Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida seeks to stimulate the economy by distributing money to middle- and lower-income earners https://t.co/Lfj3UJWC9d

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) October 4, 2021

“He’s not going to be a TV star. He’s not going to capture the imagination of the average Japanese person. But the Japanese people want stability and security, and I think he will be able to provide that,” Keith Henry, president of political risk and business consulting firm Asia Strategy, told CNN.