The Japanese leader’s election gambit, fueled by the power of her personality and some unlikely help from young voters consumed by “Sanamania,” appears to have paid off.
Japan’s conservative prime minister Sanae Takaichi has won a landslide victory after she gambled on a high-stakes snap election.
Takaichi, who took office in October after being elected leader of the governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), surpassed the 310 seats needed for a supermajority in the 465-seat lower house, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported from the official election count on Sunday evening. The supermajority allows her ruling coalition to override the upper house, where it lacks a majority.
An NHK exit poll as voting ended earlier on Sunday projected the LDP would win between 274 and 326 seats. The party and its coalition partner Ishin were projected to win a combined 302-366 seats, as voters turned out amid freezing temperatures in a rare winter election.
Currently, in Japan, it is a major issue that her party’s video has been viewed 160 million times on YouTube. Of course, the majority of those views are thought to have been for advertising purposes.
She is a far-right politician who advocates “countermeasures against foreigners,” but she paid a large sum of money to Google, a foreign tech giant, to win the election.
At the very least, online election advertising will likely be an issue for discussion in the upcoming Diet session.
Why do I think that this result has pitched an idea to the UK PM’s head?
Voters: Living expenses are too high, yen is weak and imports are expensive, we are suffering
Also voters: Let’s make the status quo stronger
she’s the anti-status quo candidate. it’s just she will move the country even move to the right.
By making it more corrupt and less affordable. All these fascists are the same
“Not my fascist, my fascist is going to help the working class people!” - Idiots, circa 2026
Anti-status quo in rhetoric doesn’t mean they are in reality.
yep. this why I need help emigrating.
I know little more from Japan than the mainstream culture knowledge. That said, Japan is said to be a place where people are cold and distant. So, things starting getting more social, they get more tourists, and then instead of relaxing in relation to the social sphere, Japan is like: “No, let’s be more cold and distant.”. Yeah, that will work.
I don’t think that’s exactly right as someone in Japan for more than a decade now.
Overtourism is a separate problem. With the yen weakening compared to other currencies, it made things more affordable. A lot of the tourist industry also collapsed around Corona and the strict (to those external) lockdowns here. That meant there also were fewer accommodations, tourism staff, etc. here. This compounded the problems.
With Corona also came increased prices of a lot of goods and salaries were largely staying stagnant. Having a bunch of extra people buying things up on the cheap yen also meant those things were harder to get for locals. Add to this the JA (basically an ag cartel) and bad weather causing bad rice harvests and people can’t even get the staple that has defined Japanese life for centuries. There’s a lot of simmering anger there. The additional influx of tourists also means that Japanese can’t even travel domestically as cheaply. Hotel prices in some areas have more than doubled since corona and peoples’ salaries have not.
There’s a whole lot going on. I could add a ton of (often illegal) short-term rentals (think Air BnB or similar) pricing people out, foreign (largely Chinese) investors buying land and buildings pricing out the locals is also causing issues. A lot of this boils over to stronger anti-foreigner sentiment that was a real hit in the last election last year and somewhat carried forward this year.
The LDP’s former coalition partner broke off with their rightward turned and formed a new party combining with the main opposition. This meant the main opposition party shifted to the right and also now had ties to Sokka Gakkai which also made them unpalatable to at least some voters. Allegedly, there’s still Moonie money and involvement in the LDP, but I haven’t followed that news much. The LDP’s rightward shift, though, did pick up those tired of the “foreigner issues” (lovely that they rarely distinguish actual residents from tourists, innit) voters who went to other parties. I’ll certainly shed no tears for the more racist parties losing seats, but this is still worrying overall.
Team Mirai, a new party of young people, did pick up votes. They claim to aim for transparency and come from mostly IT backgrounds. The worry here is they’re a bit too into the Dodge type of thing in the US, that they may be very tech-bro types, and they want to use AI for stuff. I don’t know yet. I am no fan of AI and certainly don’t want Dodge tech-bro bullshit coming in. Who knows.
I can’t vote as a non-citizen anyway. If things get bad, I’ll just have to uproot my whole life and move again, but I certainly hope it never gets there.
I’m really curious if Japan will manage to outwork their population collapse. Maybe if all of them can work 20 hours a day like their leader they will do just fine without immigrants?
Once driven into a corner they can only double down on the ideology - that lead to their current position.
Japanese already overwork enough that their productivity per hour is abysmal within their peer group. That hand is overplayed as is.
Welcome to the party Japan! You’re gonna regret this in about 4-6 months after it’s to late…
Cancelling my vacation to Japan.
I’ll go somewhere that’s not run by fascists instead.
I mean it’s not a bad place fot sightseeing but…it fucking sucks to be Japanese
That pool seems to be shrinking rapidly these days…
Just go before her measures kick in
they already have
The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP; Japanese: 自由民主党, romanized: Jiyū-Minshutō), also known as Jimintō (自民党), is a major conservative[14] and nationalist[15] political party in Japan.
I’m so fucking confused. This is why Japan’s population is in decline.
Everywhere outside of the US, ‘Liberal’ means right-wing
nah, parties label themselves in🇺🇲 correctly.
you have to study more theory.
Well relatively speaking. Up until the Trump era both major parties in the US were essentially liberal parties before the Republicans became a far right party. The right wing nationalists in other countries would probably be moderate Democrats by US standards.
It means that in the US too. Just less than the other right-wing party… who is also liberal.
For those who don’t know who the fuck she is, she is a ultranationalist conservative that worships Hitler.
I only read to the point of personality cult and it was obvious.
also backed by russia i believe, the political party is funded at least, its not surprising.
Not really, she is in the main party and she is antichina and wants to spend more on military defense.
Jesus wept, you’d think you could count on the Japanese to be wary of Russia
Do you have anything showing this backing by Russia? I’m curious at what the connection would be.
Yeah. Nowhere have I ever seen the ldp being accused of taking Russian money and there’s really no reason to.
Would love to see an actual source for that claim.
Enjoy your flavor of authoritarian rule with an ultra nationalist regime Japan. Hope voting for a personality was worth it. Pray you’ll have elections come next time cause they’re going to be “fraudulent” with a need to be “reformed”
I’m also expecting the Japanese animation studios are going to be more muzzled with their themes and less LGBTQ if any will be shown now
you’re not.
Pray you’ll have elections come next time cause they’re going to be “fraudulent” with a need to be “reformed”
She does want to reduce the number of reps in one of the houses, but that’s all I’m immediately aware of. Another party wanted to restrict naturalized citizens more, but I don’t think that made its way to the LDP platform.
The “next time” for elections in Japan is also a little less set since the PM can dissolve the lower house whenever triggering an election a couple weeks later. There are also other elections on other schedules. I don’t see it going that far at this time, personally.
Well, with a supermajority the next election would most likely be when it legally has to be.
we’re all so fucked. ppl are morons.
reptile brains arent evolved for the power of algorithm propaganda. yes we are fucked by the right, but its only temporary until clinate change decimates everything.
Oh, thank goodness. Right wrong hell until mad Max times.
Not all Japanese are, as there’s still a vocal anti-war/anti-nuclear movement, and likewise there are very small progressive groups.
But then the real problem is just how supposedly apolitical some of the younger generations are there.
yeah, but I am not stupid enough to stay. As soon as I can afford it, I am out.
japan is fucked up
Takaichi is known for favouring proactive government spending. She supports heavy government investment in critical strategic sectors in what she refers to as “crisis management investment”. These include artificial intelligence, semiconductors, nuclear fusion, biotechnology, and defence.
Her other policies aside, the economic one looks like a winner.
I’m sure the shareholders will be happy.
Yeah, you’re probably right. Just looked at unionization rate and it’s around 16%. Workers won’t see much from this investment.
Funny exerpt from wiki:
In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, the U.S. Occupation authorities initially encouraged the formation of independent unions, but reversed course as part of broader anti-Communist measures.
The cold war era propaganda and policies have really fucked everything up. There’s a straight line between them and today’s Republican/MAGA party that runs right through Reagan’s economic policies. MAGA sits at the crossroads of that and the festering racism that was never dealt with following the civil war. Unfortunately America’s world police mentality (and CIA fuckery, another result of the cold war) has spread those policies and attitudes to a bunch of other countries (who all for some strange reason have a dominant conservative media company owned by Rupert Murdoch, but I’m sure that’s just a coincidence right?).
Japan has struggled with horrendous xenophobia for pretty much their entire history so this isn’t really surprising even if it is disappointing. Unfortunately we’re seeing a rise in far right parties around the globe and there are depressingly few liberal governments left. If this keeps up it’s not going to take much to ignite WW3 with all these nationalists taking control.
Completely agree. A lot of countries were on some path or another of dealing with liberal capitalism’s collapse that gave us The Great Depression. The propaganda you mention steered these changes right back to the right - towards oligarch class dominance over working people, like it used to be before the depression. Unsurprisingly we find ourselves in a situation very reminiscent to the pre-depression environment.
She looks like a traditional japanese mask and that worries me.
This is the demon version of that smiling (but with sad eyes) meme guy.
that’s not the one I had in mind. I couldn’t find the specific one when I searched earlier though. Paler and more like the happy mask salesman
Bruh
