Japan’s Turning to Conservative and Populistic Politics in 2025

At the end of 2025, politics in Japan is still in a fundamentally unstable situation with minority government in one of two chambers of the Diet. While the prime minister is struggling in achieving majority in the Upper House, she reveals immaturity in handlings of politics. The government led by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is drifting with pressure from other parties which are serious about implementing their own policies.

Former Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba started 2025 with a hung parliament in the Lower House. Ishiba tried to pass FY2025 budget bill by the end of March with detailed policy discussion with some opposition parties. Japan Innovation Party (JIP) voted yes to the budget bill with a trade in which the LDP accepted introduction of free tuition for high schools or reform of social security system.

 

Although Ishiba survived the ordinary session of the Diet in the first half of 2025, the coalition of the LDP and Komeito lost majority in the Upper House election in July, facing voters’ frustration with kickback scandal over political funds by former Abe faction in the LDP. Ishiba had to step down at the end of summer.

 

The LDP elected Sanae Takaichi as its president in October. She raised conservative and populist agenda to attract voters in the LDP in her campaign of presidential election. The LDP general voters were too concerned about erosion of political basis by advance of new conservative and populist parties in local communities to elect a moderate candidate for their president. The lawmakers in the party followed that tendency which was seen among general party members.

 

Komeito’s departure from coalition, frustrated with highly conservative and populism of Takaichi’s leadership, pushed the LDP a harder position. Takaichi decided to form a new coalition with JIP which took more conservative and populistic political position. Takaichi accepted some eccentric policies of JIP, such as reduction of seats in the Lower House or introducing “back up capital” system, as a condition of building a new coalition.

 

Although the LDP and JIP secured a simple majority in the Lower House in November, Takaichi further sought majority in the Upper House. She reached an agreement with the Democratic Party for the People to introduce income tax cut by raising threshold of imposing the tax to annual income of 1.78 million yen at the end of this year. The DPP considers whether it would join the leading coalition.

 

While she was negotiating with other parties to stabilize her administration, her administration received criticisms on some controversial speeches. Takaichi indicated that a use of force around Taiwan could cause Japan’s exercising of its collective self-defense right in a Diet discussion in November. China became furious on her comment, regarding her comment as a violation of China’s domestic issue.

 

While China was putting economic and diplomatic pressure on Japan, one of Takaichi’s staff in charge of security policy revealed his own opinion to the press that Japan should possess a nuclear capability. China escalated its action toward Japan, which included large-scale military drill around Taiwan. During this exchange of countermeasures, Takaichi made no effort to mitigate them. Nevertheless, Takaichi keeps high approval rate in the polls, supposedly due to her right-wing stance in politics.

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