Japanese prime minister Shigeru Ishiba is on the political ropes after a humiliating rebuke by voters in a general election on Sunday, which saw a striking rise in the popularity of fringe populist parties. The results suggest that a country largely untouched until now by the far-right populism that has roiled European and American politics may be in for a period of messy instability.
Exit polls on Sunday night predict Ishiba’s coalition government will lose its Upper House majority, handing them their second major electoral drubbing in less than a year, following the loss of the Lower House last October.
Most of the gains in the election went to the right or far right, led by Sanseito, a new party with an anti-immigrant platform that advocated lower taxes and peddled Maga-style grievances about immigrants and globalists. Japan’s public service broadcaster NHK on Sunday projected that Sanseito could win 10-22 seats.
The Democratic Party For the People, another conservative populist party, is projected to win 17 seats and the far-right Conservative Party of Japan could win two. Komeito, the Liberal Democratic Party’s (LDP) Buddhist-backed junior coalition partner, will also lose seats. The centre-left Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan is expected to gain seats.
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If confirmed, Sunday’s result would be the first time in 70 years that a government led by Ishiba’s LDP has lost control of both branches of the Diet. One of the world’s most successful political machines, the LDP has held power for all but a handful of years since 1955.
During the campaign, the Japanese media reported that LDP candidates around the country were refusing to campaign with Ishiba, suggesting he had become a toxic figure.
Ishiba’s popularity swooned after a scandal involving the payment of gifts to rookie lawmakers in March. Record food prices and declining wages have also been an emotive electoral issue. The price of rice, a national staple, almost doubled in June year-on-year. In May, the agriculture minister was forced to quit after he infuriated voters by saying he “never had to buy rice” because his supporters gave it to him as a gift.
Sanseito advocated tougher restrictions on foreigners and other right-leaning causes, including changes to school education to make Japanese people “proud of their country’s history and culture”. Several Sanseito candidates said Japan should build a nuclear bomb.
Although he softened his tone during the campaign, Sanseito party leader Sohei Kamiya has been a high-profile anti-vaxxer and has blamed “international financial capital affiliated with Jews” for the exaggerated fears of the coronavirus pandemic. Among the party’s prescriptions was that young men should be conscripted to work on farms.
Inflation helped drive voters away from the LDP. Many are also frustrated by the threat of new US tariffs of 25 per cent, due to take effect on August 1st. Trade envoy Ryosei Akazawa was dispatched to Washington seven times in a fruitless bid to avoid the tariffs, giving the impression, said one lawmaker, that Japan was being “mugged” by US president Donald Trump, who wants to cut a $70 billion trade deficit with Japan.
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The election was prefaced by a sell-off of Japanese government bonds amid concerns that the government was floundering. Bond yields were pushed last week to their highest levels since 2008. Ishiba is now likely to come under pressure to adopt some of the populist measures of its rivals.
As the results came in on Sunday night, Yoichi Masuzoe, former governor of Tokyo, said that the rise of Sanseito “feels strikingly similar to the situation after the 1929 Great Depression when the Nazis expanded their influence through elections”.
