Do we like Yoshihide Suga?
Our score: 6 out of 10. No harmful words of his own turned up, but the rejected scholars and a false-statements apology are real stains and the record on our issues is thin.
Yoshihide Suga is the quiet bloke behind a long Japanese government. He was first elected to the lower house in 1996, served as chief cabinet secretary under Shinzo Abe, then took over as prime minister when Abe stepped down in 2020. He is not a showman, and that suits the way he has run things.
His first big stoush came within weeks of taking office. He declined to appoint six of the 105 scholars nominated to the Science Council of Japan, which reportedly had never happened before. Some of the six had criticised Abe-era security policies. Critics said it breached academic freedom, and a petition against it passed 100,000 signatures.
Suga called the decision legitimate, said it was “totally unrelated to academic freedom”, and wouldn't discuss individual cases. Where you land depends on whether you see a prime minister using a legal power or a government quietly punishing its critics. It is the main black mark on his own record.
The second stain is the cherry blossom party scandal. Prosecutors declined to charge Abe but indicted an aide, and Suga apologised to parliament for a false explanation he had given while chief cabinet secretary, saying it relied on information from Abe and his office. He also cancelled the annual party once he became prime minister, so he did change course, but it still dented his standing.
On the harm test, nothing sourced turned up of Suga attacking LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the climate in his own words. The thin point is that I couldn't open a source on his own stance on LGBTQ+ rights, so we can't call him an ally either. There is also nothing recent: he said in January 2026 that he would retire and hand his seat to a younger generation.
So would we support him? Mostly yes, with the asterisk. There are no culture-war grievances and no conspiracy talk, but also no great evidence he went out of his way for people who need it. Our own question is whether he'd back LGBTQ+ people, and that's a gap, not a pass.