Perry World House Distinguished Visiting Fellow Mami Mizutori discusses the upcoming elections and their implications for Japanese policy and politics.
2 min. read
On February 8, Japanese voters will head to the polls for their third national election in fifteen months. This is unusual even by Japanese standards, where national elections are held more frequently than in other democracies. In addition, Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae, the first female prime minister in the entire history of Japanese modern politics, made the decision to dissolve the Diet and call for a snap election after having been in that position for barely three months.
Image: Buddhika Weerasinghe / Stringer via Getty Images
According to the polls, she was enjoying an extremely high support rate of around 70% when she made this decision. Perry World House Distinguished Visiting Fellow Mami Mizutori addresses the question of whether the reasons that Prime Minister Takaichi gave are good enough to justify this snap election.
“Pundits are saying that the main reason why the prime minister made the decision is to capitalise on her high support rate hoping that this will translate into votes for the LDP resulting in a majority position in the Diet,” says Mizutori. “The jury is out. There are less than three weeks between the dissolution of the Diet and the election, making the campaign period extremely short.”
As for the biggest issues facing the Japanese electorate, Mizutori says it is “by far the economy. Following decades of deflation when neither prices nor wages went up, the country has been plunged into inflation with wage rises not catching up. This situation is affecting everyone but most acutely young to middle aged people who are in the process of establishing their professional lives, getting married, and raising families. Furthermore, although in general it is perceived that the older generation who have savings are better off in this situation, inflation eats up the value of savings and for those who rely solely on their pension for daily expenses the situation is growing more challenging to make ends meet.”
As for her predictions, “one week from election day, it is predicted that the LDP could most possibly gain the majority of seats. Therefore, mission accomplished for the prime minister.”
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