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October 28, 2024 - 4:00pm
Yesterday’s general election in Japan was unusually dramatic and, potentially at least, one of its most consequential. The Liberal Democratic Party, led by box-fresh Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba (he has been in office for precisely 27 days), has lost its majority even with its customary sidekicks Komeito added on.
This leaves Japan’s eternal party of Government, which has been in power for all but four of the last 69 years, scrambling around for some coalition. Commentators in Tokyo suspect they will probably manage to cobble something together, but the party will be severely weakened. It is possible, after such a historic drubbing, that Ishiba will need to resign.
The LDP are projected to remain the largest party, but only just. The big winner on the night was the Constitutional Democrats, which increased its seat numbers from 98 to 148. There are a few other small parties who made gains and might have a part to play in a putative coalition, though at the moment no one is expressing any enthusiasm for working with Ishiba’s demoralised and tainted LDP.
Why did this happen and what lessons are there for the West? It would be very unfair to blame the result on Ishiba who is a respected figure in the country and the election result, which he has called simply “tough”. He did drop the ball on the issue of reinstating disgraced lawmakers. He said he wouldn’t although evidence emerged suggesting he might. But that was his only gaffe and he campaigned hard.
No, the hugely disappointing result for the LDP is being blamed on two factors: the faltering Japanese economy — inflation and a weakening yen — and a long series of scandals. Inflation is nightmarish in a country where prices and wages remain static for decades and companies have been known to issue grovelling apologies when even tiny price hikes have had to be announced. Japanese inflation has been running at a traumatising 2-3% in the last few years after 40 years of being close to zero, or even below.
As for the scandals, it was probably quantity rather than quality that did for Ishiba’s party — and here Keir Starmer’s Labour government might want to take note. The most recent and salient was a slush fund scandal related to fundraising parties. It lacked the juiciness or personal details of the recent revelations around Labour donor Lord Alli in the UK but left the same sour taste with the voters.
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SubscribeJustin Trudeau and Canada’s Liberal Party, take note.
My wife is Japanese. Though she has lived in the US for decades she does not speak English and will never take American citizenship. She has lived her life Japanese and will die Japanese.
Thanks to the internet my wife can watch live Japanese television and read Japanese newspapers, and she keeps an eye on what is going on in Japanese politics. We had talked about the upcoming election a couple of days ago, but she did not say anything about it since.
It’s now early Tuesday morning in Japan and I had not heard about the shocking election results on Sunday until I read this interesting article. I told my wife about them and she didn’t know either. Now she knows. She doesn’t care.
Odd. I’m not sure what to make of that.
Out of interest, what do you mean that your wife doesn’t speak English??
She speaks survival English but that’s it. Which puts me at a disadvantage in our arguments, since we have them in Japanese. My Japanese is much better than survival, but much worse than native fluency.
What is the point of your comment?
On the surface, these election results are a major upheaval in Japanese politics. As this article says, Ishiba Shigeru has only been in power for 27 days as prime minister and now he’s likely out. As this article also notes, the LDP has only been out of power for 4 of the last 69 years, in two two-year blips that were soon corrected and meant nothing.
But my wife’s reaction indicates that these election results are not the upheaval they seem. That nothing will change. That voters were not really sending any real message. That Japan will continue along the same listless course to nowhere no matter who is at the helm.
My wife goes to Japan for a visit in a few days. It will be interesting to see what she thinks then.
There’s a factor Dr. Patrick does not take into account. Governments which were in power during the pandemic have a really tough time getting re-elected. Macron is a (sort-of) exception.
It would be interesting to carry out a full audit of all free elections since 2022.
“The slush fund row came on top of the intense anger provoked by former prime minister Fumio Kishida’s arguably unconstitutional decision to give Shinzo Abe a state funeral (imagine a state funeral for Tony Blair) after he was assassinated“. Surely Tony Blair would deserve a State Funeral if he was assassinated!
No, Tony Blair wouldn’t. State funerals are reserved for the monarch in the United Kingdom, with rare exceptions for the likes of Isaac Newton, Lord Nelson, the Duke of Wellington, and Winston Churchill. They are a big, big deal, as we saw with the Queen of England. Heads of states from around the world are invited. They cost a lot in both time and money. Former prime ministers get a ceremonial funeral, which is nice, but not the same as a state funeral.
In Japan the state funeral for Abe Shinzo was the first for anyone other than an Emperor or his family since 1967. Other modern prime ministers get a “state-involved” funeral of less pomp. Abe Shinzo got a state funeral because Japanese nationalists liked him — he minimized Japan’s role in World War II and worked to weaken Article 9 of Japan’s Constitution that prohibits its military. (Japan does not have a military, only a self-defense force. Very different, of course.) And of course, there was the assassination.
China hated Abe Shinzo, and the Koreas too. China showed that by sending a no-name former low-level minister to Tokyo for his state funeral in a mean diplomatic snub.
Interesting comment. Thanks.
Ishiba Shigeru also came a little too close to expressing the unspoken Japanese desire to liberate itself not just from Article 9 of the post-war constitution imposed on them by the Americans, but to re-write the constitution itself and eventually ask the US to remove its troops from Japan. Not surprising that the Washington Post called him a threat to democracy!