Ishiba Shigeru’s premiership is crumbling

ISHIBA SHIGERU waited years for his moment. After four failed attempts he became leader of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) last October, and thus the country’s prime minister. He called his victory a “mandate from heaven”. Less than a year later, things have fallen apart. At an election on July 20th the LDP and its smaller coalition partner, Komeito, lost their majority in the upper house for the first time since 2013. The coalition had already ceded its majority in the more powerful lower house last year. Mr Ishiba has said he will stay on, but his resignation seems inevitable. A poll by Kyodo, a news agency, shows his cabinet’s approval rating has slumped to 23%.

The political turmoil comes at a delicate moment for Japan. Straight after the vote, Mr Ishiba said that the task of concluding trade negotiations with America was a good reason for him to stay in his job. Donald Trump had threatened to impose 25% levies on all Japanese goods from August 1st. Steep sectoral tariffs have already gone into force, including a 25% levy on cars, a key industry for Japan. Then on July 23rd the two countries announced the rate would be lowered to 15%, both for cars and most other stuff. In exchange, Japan said it would make big investments in America and purchase more American rice. Mr Ishiba called this a “major achievement”—but it still leaves Japan facing higher tariffs than before Mr Trump came to power. And by completing the deal, Mr Ishiba has made himself look more expendable.

The LDP has dominated Japan’s politics for seven decades, and even now remains the single largest party in both chambers of its parliament. But the results of the upper-house election confirm that its long grip on power is weakening. Its main threat is no longer the established centre-left opposition, the Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP). Instead it is political upstarts that are luring voters away.

The most striking gains were made by relatively new parties. The Democratic Party for the People—a centrist outfit led by Tamaki Yuichiro, who has populist flair—more than doubled its seats, from nine to 22. That makes it the second-largest opposition party in the upper house, after the CDP. The Do It Yourself Party (Sanseito), a hard-right, anti-immigrant party which uses the slogan “Japanese First”, also made a breakthrough. It jumped from two seats to 15. These newish parties energised voters: turnout increased to 59%, the highest since 2012.

The LDP was on the defensive long before polling stations opened. In recent years, scandals have tainted the party’s image. Mr Ishiba, the 68-year-old scion of a political family, has struggled to give his outfit new appeal among the young. Most of all, “voters were dissatisfied with the LDP’s response to inflation,” says Uchiyama Yu of the University of Tokyo. Prices have risen steadily since 2022. Wages have not been keeping up; in real terms they have fallen for five straight months.

During the campaign, parties of all stripes promised voters tax breaks and other giveaways. That unsettled investors, who were already worried about Japan’s public debt, which stands at around 135% of GDP on a net basis. In particular, opposition parties called for a cut in the consumption tax, currently 10%. In response, Mr Ishiba, a fiscal hawk, promised a one-off cash handout of 20,000 yen ($136) per resident. That pledge was too meagre to win over many voters. And it irked many of the party’s existing supporters, who saw it as shallow and reactive.

Yet it was immigration that dominated the final days of electioneering. The country is becoming increasingly reliant on migrant workers to fill jobs. The number of foreign workers reached a record 2.3m last year. That is still only around 3% of the workforce (compared with around 20% in Britain and Germany) but is three times higher than a decade ago. Sanseito, the hard-right party, accused the government of importing cheap labour at the behest of big business. It claimed this was holding down wages for locals and causing crime.

What will the LDP do now? Lacking a majority in either chamber, it will need other parties to help it pass legislation. It could try to expand its coalition by bringing in more of them. But all the likeliest candidates have so far rejected this idea.

Once Mr Ishiba steps down, the party could install a fresher face, such as Koizumi Shinjiro, the charismatic 44-year-old son of a former prime minister. Or it could move right in an effort to fend off Sanseito: Takaichi Sanae, a nationalist who competed for the LDP’s leadership last year, has already hinted that she would consider another tilt at the top job. For years Japan had seemed to escape the populism and polarisation that has upturned politics in many other rich democracies. That is clearly no longer the case. ■