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.
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?
Japanese already overwork enough that their productivity per hour is abysmal within their peer group. That hand is overplayed as is.
Why are the Japanese leaning ultra-nationalist conservative?
I kind of get it in the States. The US has always leaned fundamentalist religious and more conservo-libertarian, more skeptical of federal government.
I kind of get it elsewhere, like the UK or Brazil.
But Japan? I thought they were… more urban? I thought work burnout + a population age cliff was their existential crisis, so why would they vote for less immigration and less control over that, unless I’m misunderstanding the platform?
Japan is ultra racist. Always has been. It probably has something to do with them living on islands, separated from other ethnic groups.
“Why would the country spawned from the Japanese Empire without significant reeducation against fascism descend towards fascism…”
Cult of personality + foreigners bad. LDP went further right since Sanseito and other anti-foreigner-spewing parties took a chunk of their voters in the last election. This correctly showed that they would go back to LDP (though Sanseito still lives).
The main opposition, CDP, merged with Komeito, LDP’s former coalition partner, to form a new centerist party (mostly to the right of the former CDP). Komeito has ties to Sokka Gakkai which, in my personal opinion, is a cult. This put off people voting on any of their new candidates. They also didn’t have time to really solidify things since the election came so fast (I suspect this was either very last-minute or not fully baked by the time the election was called).
Some other parties did get more seats. Team Mirai was one, though they seem to also have a bit of a vague platform in some regards and, at worst, may turn out to be DOGE-like techbros. Time will tell.
For parties left of center, with the CDP being gone, there are only a couple. The JCP (Japanese Communist Party) is not actually a communist party anymore but stubbornly refuse to rebrand and people are still scared of them (they’re more social democrats or somewhere thereabouts).
Japan is more or less the Israel of East Asia.
Heavy Metal Japan
Welcome to the party Japan! You’re gonna regret this in about 4-6 months after it’s to late…
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
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.
nah, parties label themselves in🇺🇲 correctly.
you have to study more theory.
Why do I think that this result has pitched an idea to the UK PM’s head?
japan is fucked up
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.
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.
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
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 content and LGBTQ if any will be shown now
I may be overreacting, but as an American, everything I said has happened here
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.
you’re not.
Hmm, I just realized that I (an American living in New Zealand) have no idea what Japanese politics are like. To Wikipedia!
Takaichi has been described as holding hard-line conservative and Japanese nationalist views,
uh oh
citing former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher as a role model and deeply influential on her personal political beliefs.
Uh oh
Like Thatcher, she is called the “Iron Lady”.
Uh Oh
Takaichi is a member of Nippon Kaigi, a far-right ultraconservative organisation
UH OH
that argues for a reinterpretation of Japanese history
RED ALERT
amongst ultranationalist lines.
WELP
Oof. Well, I guess it had to happen to Japan someday. It’s happened everywhere else. Here’s hoping it doesn’t last long and the damage is minimal.
Fascism? In my anti-communism?!
TBF fascism never really stopped in Japan. The American occupation was so clueless it changed very little of what Japan was before; the elites just kind of divided into nominal parties.
Clueless or intentional?
Clueless.
Hanlon’s razor. Also, how great a cultural understanding would you expect 1940’s America to develop?
& @hark@lemmy.world please educate me and CanadaPlus how we are clueless on fascist praxies of 🇯🇵, seeing as I begrudgingly live here.
and the biggest communist agitator died at a quite convienent time
That’s disappointing, but good to know. Thanks.
Yes, it is. America really biffed it, and the nuking a couple cities thing wasn’t great either.
Now, that’s not to say Japanese democracy is fake. The elections are real, and AFAIK the parties have gradually taken on real ideological differences. It does help explain why they’re broadly racist, still not sorry about WWII and have a lot of regional vote buying with projects, though.
Edit: Not great women’s rights either, ironically.
America really biffed it,
Pretty decent summary of American history, that. With few exceptions.
Here’s another fact you may not want to know (the reptile in the image is Sanae.)
The context in Japanese:https://www.huffingtonpost.jp/2014/10/21/hitlersenkyo_n_6019042.html
Oh!
Cool!
😬
shes the japanese margeret thatcher, doing her duty for “empress and empire of the rising sun”
Hey look at it this way, we may finally get our mechs out of this.
I mean, they may be the last thing you see, but at least we may see them.
Said to be a former heavy metal drummer.
https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=WvfplA3a02g
I do have to say that 80s Japan included some edgy subcultures involving Nazi fetishization.
Maybe Japan gets a situation like NZ where the conservitve parties and “the right” like National and Act would probably be left of the USA Democrats on the political spectrum. I can hope right?
Also reducing all politics to a left right thing is so stupid and probably the worst thing to do for political discourse but… here we are. I blame the murdoch media
Unfortunately not. Japan has been very far-right (bordering on jingoistic) for a long time now. The country’s external facade is all cute anime characters and zany fashion… But that was an intentional rebrand (heavily subsidized by the country’s propaganda department) in the wake of WW2 to distance itself from the atrocities they had committed. But internally, the country has remained extremely hardline conservative and xenophobic. And it has only shifted farther right with recent elections.
And after the war USA nudged Japan right with anything they could think of for good measure, to shape it in their own image.
But internally, the country has remained extremely hardline conservative and xenophobic.
Yeah, they also get the Mainland Chinese wolf-warriors frothing in the mouth who would love turning Yasukuni Shrine into a mountain of matchsticks.
To be fair, that is almost exactly why I moved here. Luxon seems like a somewhat worthless lump, but his most extreme position appears to be a bit further left than Elizabeth Warren. And it’s not impossible that he won’t survive the year in his role.
Also reducing all politics to a left right thing is so stupid and probably the worst thing to do for political discourse
Absolutely agree. I hate that my first reaction to every conversation has to be “…but are they a fascist?”
It more accurately happens like every second or third PM and then things swing to another faction of the LDP (or, historically rarely since WWII ended, another party though the last times that happened they faceplanted pretty quickly and it went back to the LDP)
She wasn’t gambling. This wasn’t a huge risk. Big news outlets have become dinosaurs struggling to understand a new world. Her team calculated this win using modern viral social media strategies and polling metrics. It’s not just gEnZ that is swayed by social media. Wake up NBCeeple; the Trump virus hath spread.
I wonder where they got analyst that said this was a real risk? Because when a supermajority was on the table no analyst worth their salt would make a prediction over 16 percentage points across because that’s a guess.
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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.
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.
Cancelling my vacation to Japan.
I’ll go somewhere that’s not run by fascists instead.
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That pool seems to be shrinking rapidly these days…
I mean it’s not a bad place fot sightseeing but…it fucking sucks to be Japanese
Just go before her measures kick in
they already have
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.
May you live in interesting 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.
