Photo/Illutration Yoshihide Suga, center, the newly elected president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, meets on Sept. 15 with the new party executive lineup. From left, Taimei Yamaguchi, Election Strategy Committee chairman, Tsutomu Sato, General Council chairman, Suga, Secretary-General Toshihiro Nikai and Hakubun Shimomura, chairman of the Policy Research Council. (Kotaro Ebara)

Toshihiro Nikai, the powerful secretary-general of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, is being rewarded with influential political posts for his faction members after throwing early support behind Yoshihide Suga’s leadership bid.

His support paved the way for Suga to become LDP president and, by extension, prime minister.

The LDP General Council on Sept. 29 approved new top-ranking appointments within the party, with an inordinate number of members from the faction led by Nikai getting key election and finance posts.

With the term of Lower House members ending in October 2021, party attention was focused onto who would fill the posts where important decisions are made regarding where candidates should run, political insiders said.

Taimei Yamaguchi becomes the new chairman of the Election Strategy Committee, assisted by four acting chairmen.

In this latest round of appointments, one of those acting chairmen, Nikai faction member Takamori Yoshikawa, was moved into the new position of executive acting chairman. Yoshikawa won his first term as lawmaker at the same time as Suga and is on good terms with the prime minister.

In the 2019 lineup, the four acting chairmen posts were distributed among four factions. But another Nikai faction member, Motoo Hayashi, was named to one of the posts this time, while the faction led by Finance Minister Taro Aso was left without one.

Nikai is assisted by 25 deputies, and Nikai faction member Tsuyoshi Yamaguchi becomes the chief deputy secretary-general. Yamaguchi formerly belonged to the old Democratic Party of Japan, but Nikai named him to the top deputy post because of his high appraisal of Yamaguchi.

Teru Fukui was named director-general of the LDP’s Treasury Bureau, a role that puts him in charge of the party’s finances. He is also a Nikai faction member.

The predominance of Nikai faction members filling out plum roles in handling election and financial matters indicates that Suga intends to leave party matters in the hands of Nikai--which will strengthen the secretary-general’s sway over the party.

The party is not abandoning Shinzo Abe’s long-held dream of revising the pacifist Constitution, with key posts related to constitutional reform going to members of the faction Abe will rejoin.

Seishiro Eto was named chairman of the LDP’s Headquarters for the Promotion of Revision of the Constitution. Eto is a member of the faction led by Hiroyuki Hosoda, a former secretary-general.

Eto succeeds Hosoda in the post, while Hosoda becomes chairman of the Lower House Commission on the Constitution. In that role, Hosoda will oversee how deliberations in the chamber proceed on constitutional revision.

Tsutomu Sato, General Council chairman, noted at the Sept. 29 news conference announcing the various appointments that Suga’s fundamental point was to carry on the policy direction set by the Abe administration. The personnel picks suggest the Suga administration also aims to push forward with constitutional revision.

For the first time, a woman was named director of the LDP’s Youth Division, an important political position. The job went to Lower House member Karen Makishima. The post has long been considered essential for any lawmaker harboring ambitions of one day becoming prime minister.

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