‘Japanese first’: Japan’s minority gov’t projected to lose control of upper house to far-right party

‘Japanese first’: Japan’s minority gov’t projected to lose control of upper house to far-right party

To Japan now, where exit polls project the country’s governing coalition will lose its majority in the upper house of parliament, piling more pressure on embattled prime minister Shigeru Ishiba. Ishiba leads a shaky minority government. In the lower house, the right-wing populist party sans running under a uh Japanese first platform is projected to make strong gains. A sagging economy is s has sparked anti-forigner sentiment in Japan. Sunday’s results could lead to calls from within his own party for Shigaru Ushiba to step down or find another coalition partner. All right. Well, let’s get more analysis on this. And with that, I’m joined now by Jeffrey Hall, special lecturer at Cand of International Studies, and he joins me now from Tokyo. Great to have you on DW News. So what do these election results now mean for Ishiba and uh and his government? Well, in this case, uh Mr. Ishiba is going to lose his majority in the upper house. He already lost his majority in the lower house. So this is going to make it much more difficult for him and his party uh to get bills passed. But the good news is that there are center-right parties that are willing or have been willing to work with the LDP uh when they need uh to pass the budget and pass other bills. And after losing their majority in the lower house last year, uh they’ve been able to clear the budget very easily. So it is foreseeable that Mr. Ishiba could have a cooperative relationship with these center-right parties or he could reach out to the far right. All right. Well, well, um, can you you walk us through what caused this shift among Japanese voters? Well, the shift was, as uh, your report said a little bit earlier, caused a lot by economic conditions in the country in the last year. A lot of prices have gone up. The price of rice has doubled. Uh and there have been uh over the past 10 years a significant uh increase in immigrants. Uh the LDP didn’t really call it immigration. Uh but there was 1 million new immigrants who came into the country and the far right has used this uh calling it a stealth immigration policy to attack the mainstream conservatives and uh hit them from the right on immigration. and they are making major gains now and we’re going to see a far right that has almost 20 maybe even more than 20 seats in the upper house and uh they will be unrestrained in the kind of language that they could use referring to immigrants. Uh before the LDP was a big tent party and it did have some far-right people but they were moderated but now these people are outside of the LDP and they will be saying some rather extreme things I think. All right. And and how has all this been? What’s the reaction to this? We’ll say from within Japan. I think the mainstream media is shocked because they spent the last two weeks trying to debunk a lot of the misinformation being spread by this far-right party. Uh but it seems to have failed spectacularly. Maybe it even gave them more attention. But a lot of the people who support the farright get their news on the internet, so they don’t trust what newspapers and television say anyway. And so we’re beginning to see right-wing populism in Japan. Something that people said wasn’t really happening in Japan, uh, but has been happening in Europe and in North America, uh, it is now here to stay in Japan. These people have been elected for the next 6 years. And so they’re going to be around and they’re going to be saying rather extreme things. Now Jeffrey, we’re we’re running out of time. We’ve only got about 40 seconds, but I do want to ask you this. How can this change Japan’s path going forward, especially on the international stage? Well, Prime Minister Ishba is going to be in a rather weak position negotiating with President Trump because Trump will see him as a weak and embattled leader. So, this may harm his ability to act like he’s a tough guy in the negotiations with Trump because Trump knows that he’s not a tough guy. He’s a weakened prime minister. All right. Uh very interesting uh speaking to you and getting that analysis. Uh from Japan uh Jeffrey Hall uh joining us uh from Tokyo and uh Jeffrey is at Cander University. Thanks so much. Thank you Pablo.

In Japan, exit polls project the governing coalition will lose its majority in the upper house of parliament, piling more pressure on Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba. Prime Minister Ishiba leads a shaky minority government in the lower house. The right-wing populist party Sanseito – running under a “Japanese first'” platform – is projected to make strong gains. Japan’s poor economy and declining manufacturing sector has stoked anti-foreigner sentiment. Sunday’s results could lead to calls from within Ishiba’s party for him to step down or find another coalition partner.

Chapter Breakdown
0:00 PM Ishiba’s fragile ruling coalition projected to lose upper house in elections
0:41 Jeffrey Hall, Political analyst, Kanda University in Japan, on Japan’s economic woes and surge in support for far-right party

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#japanpolitics #ishiba

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