The night of Feb. 8 was one to remember for the supporters of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Despite many polls predicting the party would win a comfortable majority, the result was a victory that surpassed every optimistic expectation. Celebrations broke out in local party offices throughout the nation once it was announced that the LDP had secured the first supermajority in the nation’s postwar history. Yet none were as happy as Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who now held in her hands the ability to reshape Japan in her image.
Although Takaichi was able to secure a monumental victory, the prospects of whether it would be a positive electoral result at all were something that was in doubt just a couple of years ago. Since its formation in 1955, the LDP had been out of power only twice, and when an explosive campaign funds scandal was exposed in 2023, it looked like that tally would be bumped up to three. All of a sudden, the traditionally dominant master of Japanese politics was shattered, and it resulted in the party’s loss of control of the lower and upper houses in the following 2024 and 2025 elections.
Worse yet, the explosion of new populist parties (such as the far-right Sanseito) was beginning to chip away at the LDP’s traditional voter base. Utilizing the campaign funds scandal as their catalyst, Sanseito was able to catch fire, winning three seats in the lower house and later fourteen in the upper house. The reasoning behind such a strong performance lay in their campaigning and labeling of the LDP as custodians of a failing status quo.
For decades, Japan underwent a period of economic stagnation known as the Lost Decades, in which problems such as a shrinking economy, the decline of real wages, and a rising inflation rate affected the livelihoods of the entire nation. To the youth and other disaffected members of the population, the policies that the LDP was implementing were insufficient and did little to diminish the scarcity of opportunities for advancement that plagued Japan’s professional sector.
Furthermore, Sanseito’s Japan First policy was attractive to many who were beginning to feel the effects of immigration fatigue and were displeased by the influx of foreigners coming into the country. It was the perfect target for the far-right leadership to use, and by campaigning to implement policies designed to lift the common man, they were able to secure a bloc of seats in both houses of Japan’s National Diet.
The LDP was left as a fractured party that had lost its base, along with the perception that it waas too moderate and incapable of addressing the problems facing a more modern and bitter Japan. Following the resignation of yet another prime minister, the LDP was at its lowest point in decades and, in a last-ditch effort, called for party leadership elections.
Enter Sanae Takaichi, a bold party member from the ultranationalist camp of the LDP. A career politician, she had a resume filled with various roles and controversies, including advising Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to renege on the nation’s past apologies for its history of war crimes during its imperial era. Yet it was her hard-right persona that won over the LDP’s members, and she would rise to become the first woman to hold the office of prime minister. Electing Takaichi was a bold gambit by an ailing party, desperate to keep up with the times and reclaim the top spot that had traditionally been its, and it worked.
In November, an opinion poll for her cabinet was in the 70% range, the first sign of overwhelming approval for the new prime minister. Later in the month, her hawkish comments that Taiwan’s survival was a “life-threatening” issue for Japan, which alarmed Chinese netizens, were met with 61 percent of respondents considering her remarks “appropriate”. When she unveiled a massive economic package with a price tag of $135 billion, alongside a slew of policies designed to curb inflation, a further 66.2 percent of respondents approved of her measures. She was beginning to be seen as a dynamic and energetic leader — a shift in opinion compared to her predecessors — and many were beginning to feel confident in the party.
These policies and Takaichi’s overall persona were seen as out of the ordinary in countries outside Japan. Yet most of the Japanese public, seeking a leader receptive to their ideals, immediately embraced what they saw as a game changer. Takaichi was a break from the previous, more moderate administrations of the past, and she was able to strengthen the LDP’s loose foothold on politics by adopting hostile measures that were anti-immigration and anti-LGBTQ. It may have been shocking for those on the outside looking in, but it went over very well with a voter base that was becoming more energized by the day.
That wave of popularity would continue into the new year, which Takaichi would use to call for a snap election in February of 2026. What followed was a tsunami of victory for the party, which won a total of 316 out of 465 seats in Japan’s lower house. It was the first time a party won two-thirds of seats in the nation’s postwar history, a truly unprecedented victory. For many outsiders, this was vindication of Takaichi’s far-right politics and persona, with her popularity translating into a massive boon for the party at the ballot box.
Yet the reason why Takaichi and the LDP were able to secure a victory of such a large caliber was not just because she swayed the nation. Rather, it was because the LDP understood which way the wind was blowing. The rise of Sanseito highlighted the failures of previous LDP administrations to capture the imaginations of voters who were growing increasingly disillusioned with the current state of affairs in Japan. It wasn’t that Takaichi was able to spark resentment toward foreigners, immigrants, members of minority groups, and so on. It was those feelings that once bubbled within the pot that finally exploded, leading to the need for change within the LDP.
Takaichi’s ascension doesn not reflect the turning of a new leaf for Japan; the leaf had already turned. It was not a vindication of her policies, but a confirmation that the nation had grown tired of what it saw as ineffective administrations doing little to address socioeconomic problems. Takaichi’s victory should be seen as a brilliant “Hail Mary” by the LDP, which shifted the narrative and seized the thunder that parties such as Sanseito were running on by electing a figure most in line with the current state of Japan. The conditions for a perfect storm, such as Takaichi, were created first rather than the other way around.
In the coming months, the Takaichi cabinet will pass legislation that will leave many outsiders dumbfounded. What measures those would be are not entirely clear, but it’s certain that they would cause many people to alter their perceptions of Japan and question how such a divisive figure was able to capture the nation’s highest office. Yet it is through that same figure that we can understand how Japan’s politics have shifted long before she took office, and from which we can ponder what that means for Japan, Asia, and the world as a whole.
Featured Image Source: The Japan News