Photo/Illutration Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of the Liberal Democratic Party gives a speech Oct. 29 in support of a candidate in Kumamoto running in the Lower House election. (Shomei Nagatsuma)

Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is on the brink of making a symbolic political comeback after being asked to rejoin the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s largest faction as its head.

The faction with 87 members is named after its current chief, Hiroyuki Hosoda, a former chief Cabinet secretary. But as he was to be appointed as speaker of the Lower House on Nov. 10 and needed to be replaced, the Hosoda faction convened an extraordinary meeting Nov. 9 that was attended by senior members with the express intention of wooing Abe.

Abe, according to sources, plans to accept the offer. He is expected to rejoin the faction at its general meeting on Nov. 11. and take it over as the “Abe faction.”

A new Lower House speaker customarily leaves his own party to remain nonpartisan in Diet debate. This left the Hosoda faction casting around for a successor.

Abe had Hosoda’s endorsement.

“I want Abe to become head of the faction because he served as prime minister for nearly a decade,” Hosoda said at the meeting.

No one expressed any opposition and 20 or so of those present decided on the spot to unanimously recommend Abe, according to sources.

The Hosoda faction will formally ask Abe to rejoin the faction as its leader on Nov. 10. When Abe won the LDP leadership election in 2012 that later made him prime minister for a second time, he left what was then the Machimura faction. It was later taken over by Hosoda.

After he stepped down as prime minister in September 2020 for health reasons, Abe did not return to the faction. He chose to remain working as a lawmaker with no factional affiliation.

In the LDP leadership election held in September triggered by Yoshihide Suga’s decision to step down as prime minister after only a year in office, Abe declared his support for Sanae Takaichi, the LDP policy chief, in the hope she would become the nation’s first female prime minister.

His influence with Hosoda faction members got Takaichi as far as second place in the number of ballots cast by LDP lawmakers before the party voted for Fumio Kishida to become president in a run-off with Taro Kono.

Even during the Lower House election campaign in October, Abe went out of his way to show support for Hosoda faction members across Japan.

Abe asserted that the overture “must be based on the faction’s consensus.”

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