Japanese Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru said on Sunday evening that he intends to remain in office as prime minister, even though his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) suffered an anticipated defeat in Sunday’s elections and lost control of the upper house of the National Diet.
The final round of polling predicted the dismaying result for LDP fairly closely. While some votes were still being counted on Monday, LDP appears to have lost 16 to 19 seats.
Together with its coalition partner Komeito, LDP won 47 seats on Sunday, three short of the number needed to retain control of the House of Councilors. The outcome was better for LDP than the worst-case polling predicted, but that comes as small consolation to Ishiba and his party.
The last three Japanese prime ministers to lose the upper house resigned soon after the election, but Ishiba said he would stay on.
“I continue to have a number of duties I must fulfil for the nation, including achieving wage growth that exceeds inflation, achieving a Gross Domestic Product of a quadrillion yen, and responding to an increasingly tense security environment,” he said.
“It’s a tough situation. I take it humbly and sincerely,” he added.
Ishiba noted that LDP still has more seats than any other single party, thanks to the long dominance of the party across the entire history of postwar Japan and the highly fractious nature of the opposition.
Japanese political analysts doubted the opposition would be able to pull together enough votes to oust the prime minister, and even if they could, they might prefer to keep a weakened Ishiba in office.
Noda Yoshihiko, leader of the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP), said on Sunday he might introduce a no-confidence measure after Ishiba reveals his agenda for moving forward. Unless an emergency session of the Diet is called, it will be in recess until October, so a no-confidence vote could not be held until then.
Some observers think LDP will force Ishiba out before the opposition gets a chance to bounce him, possibly swapping him out for former economy minister Takaichi Sanae, who narrowly lost the party leadership race to Ishiba in 2024.
Unless he changes his mind about resigning, Ishiba will become the first Japanese prime minister to govern without a majority in either house of the Diet since 1955. LDP lost control of the lower house, the House of Representatives, in October 2024.
Most analysts agreed the driving force in the election was younger voters chafing against a stagnant political establishment, rejecting the mix of high taxes and heavy social spending that has long defined Japanese domestic policy, and growing increasingly wary of foreigners.
One of the most popular items on the political menu on Sunday was a sales tax cut. Every party that promised sales tax relief did well. CDP picked up 20 seats and came in second behind the fading LDP juggernaut by promising to exempt food from sales tax for up to two years. The third-place finisher, the Democratic Party for the People (DPP), also promised a sales tax cut.
Voters seemed unhappy with how Ishiba has handled trade talks with the United States. Some doubtless felt the prime minister should have taken a tougher stance, but many are worried about the 25 percent tariff set to take effect on August 1 unless Japan makes a deal with President Donald Trump. Unfortunately for those voters, trade negotiations might become even more difficult now that Ishiba’s administration has been hobbled by losses in the Diet.
“We are engaged in extremely critical tariff negotiations with the United States,” Ishiba said on Sunday as the election results came in. “We must never ruin these negotiations. It is only natural to devote our complete dedication and energy to realizing our national interests.”
The left-wing New York Times (NYT) fretted that Sunday’s election heralded “what could be a tectonic shift in what has been one of the world’s most stable democracies” as “new right-wing populist groups” made major gains.
The biggest winner on Sunday was undoubtedly Sanseito, the fiercely nationalist, anti-immigration, and even anti-tourist party. Sanseito vaulted from one seat in the House of Councilors to 15 by running a “Japanese First” campaign.
Sanseito evidently picked up a large protest vote from disaffected LDP supporters. Some of them repeated Sanseito’s core criticism that Japanese policy is too favorable to foreign visitors and residents and, even though Japan’s immigrant population currently stands at just three percent, the time to stave off the sort of migration tidal wave that swamped Europe is now. Others said they were simply tired of the old LDP policy consensus and wanted to give a young, energetic party like Sanseito a chance to shake things up.
“I used to be an L.D.P. voter, but I want change. In this election, my focus was on policies that would increase the incomes of the Japanese people. Prices are rising, but incomes are not,” one Sanseito supporter told the NYT.
“The LDP’s policies are so inconsistent, particularly the rice price policy. Japan is not growing anymore, the economy is rather in the downward trend, and we can’t keep supporting the same party any more,” said another.
The Japan Times (JT) hypothesized that a combination of low turnout and high absentee ballot levels, plus a remarkably high win percentage for DPP and the remarkable rise of Sanseito, means the election was driven by disgruntled LDP conservatives looking for a new political home, while “progressive parties failed to excite the populace enough to get them to the voting booths.”
The JT rejected the narrative of “xenophobic and regressive policies” winning the day, because turnout was low and the genuine fringe beyond Sanseito fared poorly. Instead, the public wants “LDP-like policies done competently.”
CDP’s Noda, a former prime minister, made a shrewd effort to capitalize on this discontent, but CDP is disorganized and has some unpopular members, so the LDP exodus went elsewhere.
“The combination of an aging population, increase of absentee voting, and generational changes have left the ruling coalition with fewer people on the ground to generate votes across the country,” the JT observed, predicting the demise of the turnout machine that has kept LDP in power for decades.
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