Freedom of expression during each prime minister's tenure

Every prime minister since 1991, ranked by how the freedom of expression changed from their first day in office. Politare shows what happened during a tenure; it does not claim the office-holder caused it.

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Results

Order

#	Prime minister	In office	Total	Per year
1	Fumio Kishida	10 Nov 2021 – 11 Nov 2024	+0.2 points 2021 → 2024	+0.1 points/yr
2	Ryutaro Hashimoto	11 Jan 1996 – 30 Jul 1998	0.0 points 1995 → 1998	0.0 points/yr
3	Junichiro Koizumi	26 Apr 2001 – 26 Sep 2006	0.0 points 2000 → 2006	0.0 points/yr
4	Shinzō Abe	26 Dec 2012 – 16 Sep 2020	−6.1 points 2012 → 2020	−0.8 points/yr

Sorted by total, highest first. Every row is indexed to the last count complete before the first day in office ("from" marks a start that had to move because that count had no data, or because the period cut it); Levels are per cent changes, rates are differences in points; "per year" compounds levels and divides rates. Tenures with under 12 months, or under three observations, are left out. points, 0 to 100, V-Dem's 0 to 1 index times 100 · V-Dem Institute, V-Dem dataset v16 (v2x_freexp_altinf): the freedom of expression and alternative sources of information index, the press, academic and private speech and the media's independence, as V-Dem's country experts rate them, with V-Dem's confidence interval; the 0 to 1 index times 100 · Japan data · as of Sep 2026.