Voters deliver a historic rebuke to Japan’s ruling coalition
JAPAN’S RULING coalition failed in lower-house elections on October 27th to secure a majority in parliament for the first time since 2009. This stunning rebuke of the long-dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) reflects voters’ frustrations over recent political scandals and the rising cost of living. The results are a “severe judgment” of the LDP, said Ishiba Shigeru, who took over as party leader and prime minister this month. “We must reflect from the bottom of our hearts and transform.”
The election plunges Japanese politics into deep uncertainty, after more than a decade of relative stability. Voters proved keen to punish the ruling parties, but not to hand power decisively to the opposition. “I would like the LDP to lose a bit, but I’m not quite ready to see a change of government,” says Takahashi Sachio, a pensioner who voted in eastern Tokyo. The LDP and Komeito, its governing partner, went from holding 279 seats to just 215, well below the 233 needed for a majority.
Yet unlike in 2009, when the main opposition party won a large majority of its own, this time the top opposition force, the Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP), secured only 148 seats. The rest of the vote was split between seven smaller parties, ranging from the far left to the far right. The LDP maintained a plurality, with 191 seats, and will probably hang on to power by bringing another party into its coalition or by forging alliances on specific issues with individual lawmakers.
The LDP’s troubles began to mount in the summer of 2022, after the assassination of Abe Shinzo, the prime minister from 2012 to 2020. His killer sought revenge against the Unification Church, a religious sect that some call a cult (his mother was a devout follower). Abe’s grandfather had helped the church put down roots in Japan; voters recoiled as the party’s murky ties to the church spilled into public view.
A separate scandal concerning tax evasion on political funds broke in late 2023 and led to the indictments of ten parliamentarians and party officials. The LDP’s approval ratings dropped from over 50% in late 2021 to under 30% this year, according to Nikkei, a business daily. The LDP hoped that bringing in Mr Ishiba, a party gadfly popular with the public, would help to reset its image.
Yet Mr Ishiba stumbled out of the gate. His cabinet showed little sign of the freshness voters desired, skewing old and male. He failed to smooth over relations with the party’s right wing, whose standard bearer he defeated, ensuring a contentious internal atmosphere. At the same time he backtracked on his more unorthodox campaign promises and began parroting the rhetoric of predecessors he had previously criticised, undercutting his reputation with voters as a maverick. His initial approval ratings were the lowest of any new prime minister in two decades.
He called a snap election, hoping to capitalise on his limited popularity while it lasted. Nonetheless, the LDP bungled the campaign. The party said it would not support the re-election of a dozen lawmakers who had been implicated in the funds scandal. But days before the vote muckraking journalists discovered that it had been surreptitiously funnelling extra funds to party offices in the districts where those candidates were running. “That made me think the LDP is not really trying to change, or reflecting on its mistakes,” says Kojima Tadao, a 73-year-old from western Tokyo who usually supports the ruling party but switched his vote to the CDP.
Goodbye to the gadfly?
Mr Ishiba has indicated his intention to stay on as prime minister, despite failing to clear the majority threshold that he himself set as the bar for victory. To do so, he will need to win re-election at a special session of parliament, likely to be held on November 11th. The LDP and Komeito could seek the support of independents and try poaching individual lawmakers from opposition parties.
But it will be difficult to make up their 18-seat shortfall. Another option is to bring a third party into the grouping. The most logical bedfellows would be the Japan Innovation Party, an anti-establishment Osaka-based right-wing outfit with 38 seats, or the Democratic Party for the People (DPP), which quadrupled its bloc in parliament to 28 by promising household-friendly economic policies, such as reducing the consumption tax. So far the leaders of both parties have ruled out joining a coalition with the LDP, but have left open the possibility of co-operation on specific issues.
The CDP will also try to cobble together a coalition of its own. The party outperformed expectations after bringing back as its leader, Noda Yoshihiko, the last of three prime ministers during the previous period of non-LDP government, from 2009 to 2012. “The LDP has reached its limit,” declared Ozawa Ichiro, a long-serving parliamentarian. Mr Ozawa led a rebellion from the LDP in 1993 that knocked the party out of office for the first time since it originally came to power in 1955. He also helped forge the alliance that unseated the LDP for the second time in 2009 and championed Mr Noda’s return this year.
Yet bringing down the LDP for a third time may prove a stretch. Many voters have unpleasant memories of the previous episode of non-LDP rule. The opposition parties “aren’t up to handling the chaotic situation in the world today”, says Iimori Hitoshi, a doctor in eastern Tokyo who supported the LDP. The pathway to a CDP-led government would look more like 1993, when eight diverse parties came together under the banner of electoral reform, only to fall apart less than a year later. This time, however, the opposition parties lack an overarching policy goal and would have to bridge a vast ideological gulf.
Whichever government emerges from the post-election chaos, it will be weaker and less capable than its immediate predecessors. The next administration may seek to mollify voters by stuffing a planned upcoming supplementary budget with additional handouts for households. It will be unlikely to take on growth-oriented structural reforms that require difficult compromises, such as revising labour-market policies, or tackling unpopular but urgent issues, such as raising taxes to pay for Japan’s big defence build-up. Even if he hangs on as prime minister, Mr Ishiba’s days are probably numbered. Upper-house elections loom next summer; the less powerful second chamber is traditionally a more challenging battlefield for the LDP.
Instability at home will also have big implications for Japan’s role in the world. Foreign investors have been bullish on Japan in recent years in part because of its reputation for political and policy continuity. But the election result means saying sayonara to the idea of “Japan, bastion of political stability”, writes Jesper Koll of Monex Group, a Japanese brokerage. The period in which the country showed a degree of global leadership, which began with Abe’s return to office in 2012, may be over too. The next phase of Japanese politics looks likely to be a turbulent one. ■