Japan’s minority government faces election setback over inflation and immigration issues
Japan’s fragile minority government appears headed for another setback in a critical upper house vote this weekend, marking the first national election since Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba took office last year.
Half of the 248 seats in Japan’s Upper House of Parliament will be contested on Sunday. Ishiba’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), along with its longtime junior coalition partner Komeito, need to win 50 of its 66 seats up for re-election to hold on to its majority, News.Az reports citing Al Jazeera.
But polling suggests the coalition will fail to do so, in a potential repeat of October’s disastrous election, when the LDP-Komeito coalition lost its parliamentary majority in Japan’s more powerful lower house – the worst result since briefly losing power in 2009.
The LDP has ruled Japan for almost all of the country’s post-war history.
Inflation has been a killer issue for Ishiba, with the price of rice – which has doubled since last year due to poor harvests and government policies – becoming a lightning rod for voter discontent.
In response, opposition parties have promised tax cuts and welfare spending to soften the blow of Japan’s long-running economic stagnation.
While locals face a rising cost of living, the country’s weak Yen has attracted significant numbers of foreign tourists. Concerns about over-tourism and a lack of respect for local customs have fed local discontent, which has been capitalised on by upstart populist party Sanseito.
Initially launched on YouTube by streamer Kazuya Kyoumoto, politician Sohei Kamiya, and political analyst Yuuya Watase in 2019, the party rose to prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic as it peddled conspiracy theories and far-right talking points.
In the years since, Sanseito has successfully appealed to a small but growing section of Japan’s electorate with its “Japanese First” campaign and anti-immigration stance, rallying against what it describes as a “silent invasion” of immigrants.
While foreigners still only make up a small fraction of Japan’s population, at about 3 percent, the country has taken in about a million immigrant workers over the past three years to fill jobs left vacant by its ageing population.
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