Tokyo, Sept. 17 (Jiji Press)–Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi will launch her reshuffled cabinet later on Thursday, retaining most of her key ministers. Takaichi, who also heads the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, gathered the letters of resignation from her ministers at an extraordinary cabinet meeting in the morning. Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara, 57, Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi, 70, Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama, 67, and Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi, 45, are expected to be reappointed. Attention is being paid to how Takaichi will treat internal affairs minister Yoshimasa Hayashi, 65, who ran against Takaichi in last year’s LDP leadership election. Hiroshi Nakatsuka, 70, former secretary-general of the Japan Innovation Party, is set to fill a ministerial post, becoming the first cabinet member from the party since it formed a coalition with the LDP in October last year. Toshiharu Furukawa, a 63-year-old LDP lawmaker in the Senate, the upper parliamentary chamber formerly called the House of Councillors, is expected to join the cabinet for the first time. The new Takaichi cabinet will be launched Thursday evening following an attestation ceremony for her cabinet ministers at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. The prime minister will hold a press conference later in the day to explain the purpose of the cabinet shake-up and how she will run her administration going forward. Ahead of the cabinet reshuffle, Takaichi revamped the executive lineup of the LDP on Wednesday. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]
