Japan’s prime minister Sanae Takaichi is taking a bold gamble with her decision to call a snap election after just three months in office. With an approval rating above 70 per cent, she is hoping that her personal popularity will translate into more seats for her Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).
Takaichi’s coalition with the right-wing Japan Innovation Party has an edge of just one seat over the opposition in Japan’s lower house and has no majority in the upper house. A bigger mandate would offer the prime minister a stronger basis to pursue her controversial policies at home and abroad.
Domestically, Takaichi wants to use measures like energy subsidies and extra payments to families with children to stimulate a sluggish economy. She has called for targeted investments in sectors like shipbuilding and semiconductors to boost Japanese industry and she favours a lax monetary policy.
A foreign policy hawk who favours higher defence spending and closer ties with the United States, Takaichi triggered a diplomatic standoff with China only a few weeks after taking office. She said that an invasion of Taiwan could represent an existential threat to Japan, justifying the deployment of Japanese forces.
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Beijing demanded that she retract the remarks and when Takaichi refused, China advised its tourists to avoid Japan, where they account for a quarter of the visitors every year. The Chinese authorities also introduced export controls for dual-use goods that are used in manufacturing but could have a military application.
Takaichi owns her own position to a snap election which backfired in 2024 when her predecessor Shigeru Ishiba went to the country a month after taking office and ended up losing his majority. And her plan has already hit a complication with the decision of two opposition parties to merge ahead of the election.
The main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP) said on Thursday that it was forming a new party with Komeito, a smaller party which left a coalition with Takaichi’s LDP when she took office. Although it is small, Komeito has played an important role in helping LDP candidates to get elected and its electoral machine will now be deployed against the government.
