Japanese PM Vacates Office

Tokyo has come face-to-face with the impending end to old certitudes and emerging new fragilities. Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s resignation on Sunday, less than a year since taking office, has plunged the country into prolonged instability and portends more trouble for his fractured Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). The writing has been on the wall for Ishiba’s exit since a July 20 election to half of the seats in parliament’s upper house, when the LDP—the country’s longest party in governance after World War II—and its coalition partner Komeito narrowly lost their majority. Two previous premiers were forced to demit office in 1998 and 2007 under similar circumstances, when the upper house majority was snatched from the LDP. The decisive blow in July followed the party’s loss of majority in the lower house in the snap general elections that premier Ishiba called in October 2024. Thus, this is the first time since its founding in 1955 that the party finds itself in a minority position simultaneously in both houses of parliament, a telling commentary on its current flagging fortunes.

The LDP has been crushed in its current term by Japan’s spiralling cost of living crisis, stagnating wages, large immigrant flows and the effects from US President Donald Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs. The country has little to cheer from the recent exit from nearly two decades of deflation and the Bank of Japan’s reinstatement of regular rates of interest, thanks to a record weakening of the yen, which has pushed up prices of essential commodities, coupled with an incommensurate increase in wages. Furthermore, the 15 per cent US tariffs on Japanese products, agreed in the July bilateral trade pact, were thrown into confusion subsequent to a White House sweeping executive order that slapped additional levies on Washington’s partners. Against this backdrop, forces once considered to be on the political fringe, such as the Democratic Party for the People and the far-right anti-immigrant Sanseito party, have weaponised widespread popular discontent, reaping considerable electoral dividends in July’s upper house polls.

Japan PM Shigeru Ishiba Resigns After Election Defeat

Japan’s current trajectory carries strong echoes of the rightward lurch witnessed across several mature European democracies over the past two decades. Similar to the conditions in many of these countries, Asia’s second-largest economy is grappling with an ageing population, reliance on foreign workers and a populist backlash against immigrant flows. These domestic challenges have been compounded by shifts in the region’s geopolitics, with China adopting a belligerent posture towards Taiwan and Russia’s unprovoked aggression against Ukraine. Washington’s apparent lukewarm stance towards its traditional ally has only strengthened the voices of scepticism growing louder in Tokyo against persisting with the status quo. Among the options under the country’s active consideration are the reform of its post-war pacifist constitution and establishing an effective deterrent. How soon will the dark clouds of uncertainty pass? That is the big question.