Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday replaced his Ministers of Defence and Health, Labour and Welfare in a major Cabinet reshuffle, with an eye on upcoming elections for the upper house of the Parliament in 2019, to be followed by lower house elections in 2021. This was Abe's first major reshuffle after he was re-elected as the leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in September.

Abe retained six of the 19 ministers in his Cabinet and named 13 new ministers, out of which 12 were former ministers, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga was cited as saying by Efe news. The most significant change in the Cabinet was new Defence Minister Takeshi Iwaya, who replaced Itsunori Onodera at a time when the government was set to push a controversial reform to change its pacifist Constitution.