Takaichi keeps Motegi, Katayama and Koizumi and drops Hayashi

Sanae Takaichi presented a reshuffled cabinet on Thursday after Emperor Naruhito attested the ministers at the Imperial Palace. The ceremony began at 3:15 pm. It was her first shuffle since she took office in October 2025. The message she wanted in the photographs was continuity.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara, 57, Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi, 70, Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama, 67, and Defence Minister Shinjiro Koizumi, 45, all kept their jobs. So did Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Ryosei Akazawa, 65, and economic revitalisation minister Minoru Kiuchi. Takaichi said the retained names would keep stable relationships with their foreign counterparts and would let the government carry policy through an extraordinary Diet session that opens in October.

The cut that Japanese papers watched was Yoshimasa Hayashi. The 65-year-old internal affairs minister had run against Takaichi in last year's Liberal Democratic Party leadership race, as had Motegi and Koizumi. Motegi and Koizumi stayed. Hayashi left the cabinet. Keeping rivals close is an LDP habit before a party presidential vote. Takaichi is expected to seek another term next year. Hayashi is now outside the room.

Hiroshi Nakatsuka, 70, formerly secretary general of the Japan Innovation Party, entered as minister for regulatory reform, administrative reform and children's policy. He is the first JIP minister since the party joined the coalition last October. On Friday Takaichi is due to name senior vice ministers and parliamentary vice ministers. JIP lawmakers are expected to take five of those posts.

Seven ministers are in cabinet for the first time. The rest of the list is a hold. That balance tells you what Takaichi thinks her problem is. She does not need a new foreign minister weeks before she has to manage China, the United States and a region living with an Iran war and a fresh U.S. sanctions statute. She does need to show the coalition partner some ministries after a year in which JIP had none. She also needs to show LDP backbenchers that a questionnaire she sent them still guides appointments. Nikkei reported that she cited that survey when she explained the lineup.

Koizumi at 45 remains the youngest of the senior four and the most watched for a future leadership bid. Katayama at finance is the official who will have to explain Japanese yields if the Federal Reserve's quarter-point rise on Wednesday pulls money back toward the dollar. Motegi at foreign affairs is the official who will have to explain Tokyo's line if the House Russia bill becomes a tariff on firms that still touch Russian energy through third countries.

The timing is not cosmetic. An extraordinary session of the Diet is the place where budgets, defence outlays and any tax measures have to survive a chamber that the LDP no longer dominates alone. JIP's price for that survival is now visible: one full minister, five deputy posts, and a regulatory-reform brief that lets the party tell its voters it is cutting rules rather than merely propping up the LDP. If those deputies are boxed out of real files in October, the coalition will show the strain in public.

Hayashi's exit will be read inside the party as a warning. He is a former foreign minister with his own network in Washington and Seoul. Leaving him without a portfolio reduces the number of alternative power centres at the table. It also creates a loose senior figure with time to talk to backbenchers before next year's leadership vote. Takaichi accepted that trade.

Reshuffles in Tokyo are often parsed as faction maps. This one is easier to read. The core held. A rival left. The junior partner got a seat at the table for the first time. The Diet session in October will show whether that is enough to move bills, or only enough to take a group photograph on the palace steps.