Shigeru Ishiba, ‘smile again’ Japanese PM who voters frowned on

Shigeru Ishiba took over Japan's ruling party promising to revive it from scandal. Less than a year later he is stepping down as prime minister after three electoral losses shook the party's grip on power. An unlikely premier who vowed to make Japan "smile again", Ishiba won the Liberal Democratic Party leadership election on his fifth attempt in late September 2024. That put him at the helm of a party that has dominated Japan's postwar politics but was at one of its lowest ebbs since its founding in 1955. His brief tenure as prime minister and party president was marked by months of fraught tariff negotiations with US President Donald Trump's administration, details of which were finalised just days before...