Takaichi’s pick for parliament chief prompts concern over power shift

Hideki Murai, who became new parliamentary affairs chief of the Liberal Democratic Party last week, is drawing attention from the ruling parties and the opposition.

The 46-year-old has been elected to the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of parliament, six times but has never served as a Cabinet minister. It is very rare for a person with no Cabinet experience to be named the party’s parliamentary affairs leader.

The choice of Murai by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, also LDP president, for the important party position therefore is believed to reflect Takaichi’s intention to manage parliamentary business at the initiative of the Prime Minister’s Office.

The opposition bloc is increasingly concerned that there will be more cases in which parliamentary proceedings are run in a high-handed way.

Murai was picked as the LDP’s parliamentary affairs chief as part of a reshuffle of the party’s executive lineup last Wednesday.

He attended a meeting of parliamentary affairs heads of the ruling parties for the first time on Friday, where the participants agreed to facilitate parliamentary reform.

“Voters have high hopes, so I will steadily work on advancing the enhancement and improving the efficiency of parliamentary deliberations,” he told reporters after the meeting.

A former Finance Ministry bureaucrat, Murai is known as an advocate of parliamentary reform.

He has argued in the past that the prime minister should devote more time to policy decisions and diplomacy than to parliamentary meetings.

Criticizing opposition parties’ tactic of blocking or delaying the enactments of bills, by rejecting or deferring parliamentary deliberations, as meaningless, Murai played a role in drawing up a 2018 proposal for parliamentary deliberation schedules to be determined through authority if the ruling and opposition camps cannot reach agreement.

Murai became the LDP’s deputy parliamentary affairs head in 2024 and engaged in coordination between the ruling and opposition sides, but he refused to adopt the conventional strategy of paying full consideration to the opposition camp.

During the special parliament session that ended in July this year, Murai denounced the opposition’s boycott of parliamentary debates as “outdated.”

Murai’s stance caught the attention of Takaichi, who had failed in her own attempt to forcefully push ahead with parliamentary reform when she was serving as chair of the Lower House steering committee.

Since taking office as prime minister in October last year, Takaichi has sometimes been reluctant to attend parliamentary debates. She is also believed to have been frustrated with LDP officials in charge of parliamentary affairs who do not act according to her wishes.

It seems the prime minister believes it would be relatively easy to have Murai, who has limited experience in parliamentary affairs coordination, act in line with her desires.

The appointment of Murai as parliamentary affairs chief shows Takaichi’s intention of “doing things as the Prime Minister’s Office wants,” an LDP source said.

Opposition parties are increasingly alarmed.

In the extraordinary parliament session expected to be convened Oct. 5, the ruling and opposition camps are likely to clash over contentious bills such as one to reduce the consumption tax rate for food, from 8% to 1%, for two years from April 2027.

Opposition parties’ resistance will likely be limited, however, as about three-quarters of the Lower House seats are held by the LDP and its coalition partner, the Japan Innovation Party (JIP), also known as Nippon Ishin no Kai.

An opposition source warned, “The LDP will likely try to pass bills with the power of numbers without taking time to reach a consensus (with opposition parties).”

Still, with the ruling parties continuing to lack a majority in the Upper House, debates could stall if the LDP-JIP coalition proceeds with deliberations in a high-handed way in the Lower House without compromising with the opposition bloc at all.

LDP member Junichi Ishii, who has deep connections with opposition parties, was removed from the post of secretary-general for LDP lawmakers in the Upper House last week, leading to a party official lamenting that “we would have no efficient liaison if coordination between the ruling and opposition sides is deadlocked.”